Free Hating Olivia: A Love Story by Mark Safranko

she had nothing to say. But when her old man phoned not long afterward, she agreed to go over to his newest digs, and she was bringing me along. She hadn’t seen the guy in over two years.
    “I just hope I did the right thing,” she sighed after hanging up. “You did, no question. And I’ll be there, don’t forget. What could possibly go wrong?”
    Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.
    Livy’s father was holed up in a second-floor flat in the old North Ward of Newark. It was a quiet neighborhood—as in funeral-parlor quiet. We squeezed the Nova into a tight spot and walked around to the back of the orange baked-brick two-family house.
    Livy was jittery. She tripped more than once in her platform heels.
    “Just relax,” I encouraged her, tossing my smoldering cigarette butt into a hedge. “If it’s too much to handle, we’ll just split, got it?” We climbed the wooden staircase that gave out on a view oftwo-by-four backyards, some with plots full of the tangled vines of tomato and pepper plants. Enrico Tanga made us wait before he opened up. Was he having his revenge on us for freezing him out that afternoon when he’d surprised us in the act? You can always count on people to be weird that way.
    Livy’s papa was handsome—I could see right off where she’d inherited her swarthiness and lush head of hair. His clothes—plaid shirt and khaki trousers—were neatly pressed. Despite his lack of ostentation, there was something of the delicate dandy about him. Latin dudes from the old school—they all think they’re Valentino or Sinatra.
    “Come on in,” he said, letting us into the sun-splashed kitchen. I took note that he and his daughter did not touch. Odd—especially for dagos.
    Livy introduced me. We shook hands. There was nothing much in the place—a ficus tree with sagging leaves in one corner; a few sticks of plain, functional furniture; a stove with an old-fashioned stainless-steel pot; a three-quarter-sized refrigerator. The sum of its parts suggested a man who was not planning on staying very long—or who wasn’t really living there at all.
    We sat around the small table. Enrico broke out a jug of Chianti and poured three glasses.
    “So—what is it you do, Max?” he said without looking at me.
    “Musician … I’m, uh, trying to write, too.”
    He didn’t press for details, which was lucky for me. He was much more interested in his daughter. There was some unspoken tension between them that I couldn’t put a finger on. I wrote it off as the typical family antagonism.
    He asked a few perfunctory questions about the circumstances of her life—nothing about her screams of passion that afternoon we’d been going at it—before getting on to the crux of the issue.
    “Talked to your sisters?”
    “No.”
    “Mm-hmm…. Heard from your mother?”
    “No…. ”
    “Doesn’t surprise me…. You thought of getting in touch with her?”
    Livy shrugged.
    “I’m sure she’s conquering the world with her precious career and all that. Well, I just hope she’s happy with her life now—after what she did to the rest of us.”
    I kept watch on Livy. She shifted uneasily in her chair.
    “Right, Liv? Wouldn’t you agree with me on that?”
    That’s when she bridled. “I don’t want to get into all that again! It’s none of my business! That’s between you and her!”
    “Hey—all I’m saying is that your mother was the cause of all the—”
    “It was you, too!” Livy cried, catapulting out of her seat like a surface-to-air missile. “Don’t forget that! Don’t you forget it for a second!”
    She grabbed her purse and turned to me. “I’m getting out of here! Are you coming with me or not?”
    She bolted for the door. Enrico jumped up and tried to block her way.
    “Olivia! All I wanted was to talk to you! Don’t go getting all bent out of shape here!”
    But his daughter evaded his grasp. A pained grimace creased his face as he watched her stomp down the stairs.
    “Nice