White Oleander - Janet Fitch [65]
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said as we walked back to the car and I collected Caitlin. My first trick, I thought, trying out the sound of it.
Through the kitchen window, I watched Olivia emerge from her house, cinnamon and beige silk, hair sleeked back. I was peeling apple slices for Justin and Caitlin’s snack. I watched her climb into the champagne Corvette, back it out, and I understood.
For her, it was a job. She was earning her car, her copper pots, just as much as someone pasting up magazines or delivering mail. These men weren’t lovers, the Rastaman, the BMW. They were customers. The kneeling was just more subtle, the service more discreet, the illusion more substantial, and the payoff no half-bag of dope.
I ANNOUNCED to Marvel that I was starting an exercise program, so I could be ready for the army. I tied on my gym shoes on a cloudy morning, put my hair back, did a couple of jumping jacks, touched my toes, stretched my hamstrings against the fence, the full display for her approval. The army would be a good place, job security, benefits.
Then I ran around the block once and knocked on Olivia’s door.
She was dressed in white jeans and a sweater, loafers. On her it looked sexy, I tried to see why. The shoes weren’t quite school shoes, they were slimmer, with a tassel. The sweater lightly skimmed her body, the neckline showing one shoulder. I had drawn that shoulder, which gleamed as if polished as it slid out from the soft ginger wool. Her hair was caught in a long silver pin, which probably cost more than the pot I’d just earned.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
She invited me in, glanced over my shoulder as she shut the door. On the stereo, a man was singing in French, sexy, half talking. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I’ve wanted to see you, but I’ve been so busy. Excuse me, I was just cleaning up.” She loaded glasses and plates on a lacquered tray, emptied a crystal ashtray with cigar butts. I wondered which man was the cigar smoker. The Mercedes had been there again. The fan turned slowly, stirring cigar-sour air. She carried the tray to the kitchen, poured some coffee. “Milk?”
The coffee was so strong it didn’t change color when she poured the milk in. “You look different,” she said. We sat down at her dining room table, gilded chairs with harp backs. She pulled out small mats with Dutch tulips for our cups.
I took out the bag of pot from my pocket, put it on the table. “I sucked a fat kid’s dick at the park. He gave me this.”
She held the bag in her hand, in the palm, the fingers lightly cupped around it, and I thought it was the way she would hold a man’s penis. She turned her hand over, knuckles to the table, and shook her head. The two vertical lines scored her brow. “Astrid. That’s not what I meant.”
“I wanted to see how it felt.”
“How did it feel?” she asked softly.
“Not great,” I said.
She handed it back to me. “Roll one, we ’ll smoke together.”
I rolled a joint on the elegant mat, a parrot-striped bloom. I wasn’t good, but she didn’t offer to help. While we smoked, I looked around and thought how much come all this must equate to, the framed botanical prints and harp-backed chairs and fat wooden shutters. It must be an ocean. If I were Olivia, I would have nightmares about it at night, a white sea of sperm, and the albino monsters that lived in its depths.
“Do you like having sex?” I asked her. “I mean, do you enjoy it?”
“You enjoy anything you’re good at,” she said. “Like an ice skater. Or a poet.” She got up, stretched, yawned. I could see her slim belly as she lifted her arms. “I’ve got to run an errand, would you like to come?”
I wasn’t sure. Maybe my mother was right, maybe I should run. She could steal my soul. She was already doing it. But who else did I have, what other beauty was there? We agreed to meet down the block, so Marvel wouldn’t see me in her Corvette.
She had the top down, a white polka-dot scarf tied over her hair and around her neck, front and back, Grace Kelly—style. Was there ever a woman so glamorous as Olivia Johnstone? I slid into the