Love & Lies: Marisol's Story (9 page)

Gio waited for me by the door after class. “Wow, she really loved your dialogue!”

I glanced back at Olivia, but she was surrounded by the English majors, and Mr. Hairdo was waiting his turn too. “I know,” I said. “I’m kind of amazed.”

We headed for the outside door. “It
was
really good—the best one of all. I bet you
will
write a novel this year.”

I basked in the additional praise. “I hope so. I mean, that’s why I took this time off.”

Gio pushed the door open, and there, sitting on a bench reading a book and twirling her hair around her finger, was Diana Tree. He was obviously not surprised.

“Hey!” he called.

She bounded toward us like a lanky colt. “Hey! Hi, Marisol! Wow, I’m so glad to see you again. I couldn’t believe you and Gio were taking the same class.”

It was strange seeing her again. I knew she must know all about what happened between Gio and me last spring—she’d been there for some of it. And I’d known, even then—anybody with eyes could have seen—that she had a crush on the boy herself, which made it pretty likely that she wasn’t actually all that happy to see me again. But she was one of those people who just don’t have any meanness in them, or much of a protective coating, either, and I had no intention of getting in her way or screwing up whatever might be going on between her and Gio. Even if it meant dragging myself down
out of the clouds of conceit and acting like a regular human being.

“Hi, Diana,” I said. “Good to see you, too. Are you here for the weekend?”

“Yeah. There’s this Arts Festival thing going on this weekend, and Gio thought I’d like to go to it.”

“Right. Down at the river. I was thinking of going too.” I realized too late what Diana would feel she had to say then.

Her smile drooped just a tiny bit, but she pushed it back into place. “Oh, do you want to come with us? We were going to get something to eat first and then—”

Think fast.
“Thanks, but I can’t. I promised to meet a friend of mine . . .” I gestured vaguely into the distance as if there were an actual meeting place where my imaginary friend waited impatiently. I didn’t like lying to her, but in this case it really was for her own good.

“Marisol just knocked it out of the park in class,” Gio told Diana. “She read this incredible piece, and now the teacher is in
love
with her.” He was kidding, but I knew my face flushed anyway.

“No surprise. You’re such a good writer,” Diana said.

“Thanks.” I glanced at my watch. “I really should get going. Maybe we’ll run into each other later at the festival.”

“Good!” Diana said. They both waved and wandered off in the direction of the river—not, I noticed, touching each other in any way.
Damn, Gio, get a clue.
I began to walk purposely in the opposite direction, but then realized there was nothing I wanted over there, so I just ducked into a doorway until they were out of sight. Now what? I had been thinking
the lunch-with-Gio thing might be a regular occurrence, and I was disappointed, not only because I couldn’t continue to wallow in my classroom victory, but also because I enjoyed talking to the guy as much as I ever had. Could we really not be friends just because he’d once declared his inappropriate love for my lesbian self?

I was back in front of the Center for Adult Education again, trying to decide what to do with the rest of the day—grab a slice of pizza at Bertucci’s, slink down to the festival and hope I didn’t run into the zinesters again, or just go home and work on the assignment—when Olivia Frost slipped through the door of the Center, her white sandals slapping lightly against her heels.

“Just the person I was hoping to run into!” she said, smiling.

S
HE DIDN’T EXACTLY ASK ME
to have lunch with her; she just said she was starving and didn’t I love Café Algiers, which was her favorite restaurant in the Square, and before I knew it, there I was, once again sitting across a tiny table from Olivia Frost.

“I know it’s hot,” she said, gathering her skirt above her knees and fanning her long legs with it, “but I have to have my coffee. Do you like espresso?”

“I do,” I said, “except those tiny cups don’t last long enough.”

She laughed. “Well, then, we’ll just have to order two or three right off the bat. Coffee is the blood in my veins.”

Just the idea that she
had
blood and veins and other human organs made my own circulatory system pound in my ears.

She leaned across the table and pointed to the menu. “Tell me, do you like hummus? They make the best hummus here I’ve ever tasted.”

I wasn’t a particular fan of hummus, but I was in the mood to be tutored by Olivia Frost in all things. “I’ll try it,” I said.

She laid a long-fingered hand over my small, scruffy knuckles and said, “Something tells me you aren’t always this agreeable.”

I wasn’t making this up, was I? There was something going on here. “Why do you think that?” I asked.

She lifted her hand and sat back in her chair to appraise me. “Because you’re smart. You think for yourself. You’re a little scornful of some of the other people in the class.”

“How do you know—”

“By the look on your face when you’re listening to them. You’re used to being the star, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say that . . . exactly.” But she gave me a knowing smirk, and I had to laugh. I had a feeling this was a case of it-takes-one-to-know-one. “I guess that’s true sometimes.”

“Well, you’re definitely the star in my class. I can tell already. And someday, when the rest of the world knows you’re a star too, maybe you’ll look back and remember that I was your first real teacher.”

Okay, she’d only heard one thing I’d ever written, and it was two pages long. Besides, teachers didn’t usually tell you this kind of stuff until the class was over, so you couldn’t lord it over anybody else, or slack off on your work because, duh, you were the
star
. There was definitely something unteacher-like going on here, and, even though my ego was big enough to file this kind of flattery in one corner and still have plenty of room to dance, her praise was making me a little dizzy.

“Thanks. How long have you been teaching?” I asked, to get the focus off myself.

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Seems like forever. I love teaching. I was born to teach.”

“Where else do you teach?”

“At Harvard.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “It’s not as good a gig as it sounds. The students all think they know more than I do. It’s exhausting. I prefer teaching adult education. Those people appreciate a good teacher.”

I nodded, wondering if I was one of “those people.”

“You’re not the usual adult ed student. Why aren’t you in college?”

“I deferred Stanford for a year so I could write a novel.”

Olivia almost did a spit-take with her coffee. “You plan to write a novel
before
you go to Stanford? I knew you had balls when I first saw you.”

No matter how good-looking she was, that irritated me a little. “I don’t think it takes
balls
to write a novel.”

She laughed. “Okay, then, chutzpah. Nerve. Ambition. It does take all of those, and I suspect you’ve got them in spades.”

A waiter came around then, and Olivia ordered for both of us, which gave me a chance to sit back and look at her. She had the waiter under her spell immediately as she cocked her head and flirted. Maybe that was all she was doing with me, too, adding me to her life list. If so, I wasn’t complaining. After all, flirtation was the way things got started, right? Not that I’d had much practice using my own latent seduction skills, but I figured there was no better time to begin.

Over lunch we talked about our families. I explained the origin of my Carmen and Dorothy story, which she seemed to find fascinating. Then Olivia told me about growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis and waiting impatiently to go to college on the East Coast, where she felt all intellectual life was being lived.

“I was so alienated from my family and their friends—there didn’t seem to be anybody else like me back there. Or anybody like you, for that matter. I felt so isolated—I longed for a larger life. I could practically taste it!” She leaned forward as she spoke, and it seemed as if we were alone in the café—no, alone on the planet. The way you feel when you really click with somebody.

I leaned in too and said, “I liked the hummus.” Clearly, flirtation did not come naturally to me, but Olivia laughed and squeezed my hand.

She insisted on paying the bill and then said she planned to go down to the Arts Festival at the river for a little while, and did I want to come with her? The farthest thing from my mind was Gio and Diana—my earlier conversation with them had been erased by the hour with Olivia—so I happily agreed.

On the walk down we spoke again about writing a novel.

“You know what you have going for you, don’t you?” Olivia asked me.

“Ah, no, but I hope you’ll tell me.”

“The worst enemy of creativity is self-doubt. But you’re so confident—that will make all the difference.” Her arm gently surrounded my shoulders. “I wish I’d had your confidence at your age.”

The back of my neck prickled as her hand grazed it, but I tried to remain calm. Could my pathetic attempt at banter actually be working? “Well, you aren’t exactly ancient, are you?”

She laughed. “Not exactly. How old do you think I am?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Twenty-five?”

She smiled her perfect, lipsticked smile. “Twenty-eight.”

“So, ten years older than me.”

“A decade. A lifetime, at your age,” she said wistfully, retracting her arm.

I dared to lean against her and whisper, “Yes, but I’m very mature for my years, you know.”

“I’m sure,” she said. “And you’re kind of adorable, too.”

Adorable?
No one had ever called me
that
before. I looked fully into Olivia’s eyes for the first time, daring myself to hold them until hers gave way, but she’d had more practice. My eyes fell into hers, my equilibrium completely destroyed, and I had to look away in order not to swerve into a building.

We turned the corner onto Memorial Drive, which was blocked off to traffic for the Arts Festival. There were a lot of skaters, skateboarders, and bicyclists to dodge, so we crossed immediately to the grassy strip along the river where the artists had set up their booths. A girl with a fiddle was fronting a scruffy bluegrass band, and we stopped to listen for a minute while I tried to control my wildly beating heart.

Without speaking we wandered through a few booths hung with watercolor landscapes and monotonous pictures of boats. The craft booths were better, and I managed to get my mind on something other than the nearness of Olivia’s body. Several potters were displaying beautiful pieces, and I contemplated getting a few mugs for the apartment. But they weren’t cheap, and if Damon broke one, I’d have to kill him, thus severing my relationship with Birdie for good.

Olivia found something she liked at a jewelry booth. She
was holding earrings that looked like clumps of grapes to her lobes. “Do you like these?”

“On you, sure.”

“But not on you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t wear much jewelry. It gets in my way.”

She put a hand on her hip. “When you’re digging ditches? Or fixing the plumbing? Come here. These would look great on you.” She held a pair of green enameled leaves to the sides of my head, her fingers brushing my ears.

“Oh, no,” I said, backing away. “Way too . . . green. And leafy.”

“Not an environmentalist, huh?” She put them down. “Are there any here you like? Lesbians are allowed to wear jewelry, you know.”

Her
gaydar was in working order, but it rattled me a little that she would say that so nonchalantly. Was she making an announcement, or just commenting on my obvious interest in her?

“I know that,” I said, not looking up. I scanned the rows of earrings, but there were none I could imagine wearing. Also on the table lay rows of pendants, most of them strung on silky black cords. One caught my eye immediately: a polished amber stone—the colors swirling from gold to copper to a rich auburn—inlaid in a plain silver setting. It was like a meditation stone, something you could hold in your hand and contemplate for hours. I picked it up and it felt good in my hand, just heavy enough.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Olivia said. “I can see you wearing that.”

I looked at the price tag. Forty-five bucks. Not terribly expensive for a spoiled brat, but way too much for a part-time novelist and coffee shop waitress.

“I don’t think so,” I said, laying it back on the table reluctantly.

“But you love it! I can tell!”

“It’s kind of expensive. I can live without it. Besides, it would look better on you than me.” For a brief moment I toyed with the idea of the coffee shop waitress buying the beautiful necklace for her beloved teacher, but realized immediately how sketchy
that
would look.

We walked away from the booth, but Olivia kept looking back as if she thought the pendant might follow me, its rightful owner. After a few more booths, we found an empty bench near the water, in sight of the fire jugglers.

“You know what? I’m just going to run back and get those grape earrings after all,” Olivia said. “Won’t take me a minute. Wait here?”

I was happy to sit down and have a minute to myself to think about what was going on. But no sooner was Olivia out of sight than I saw Gio and Diana coming my way.
Crapola.

“You did come!” Diana said. “Where’s your friend?”

“She’s . . . um, looking at jewelry.”

Diana perched on the bench next to me and Gio sat down next to her.

“Did you hear that band down by the bridge?” he asked. “They’re called Girlyman—they’re really good.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard them before. They’re great. Maybe I’ll . . . we’ll go down there later.”

I really didn’t want Gio sitting there when Olivia came back, but I couldn’t think of a way to get rid of him that didn’t seem suspicious.