NO,” TINA SAID, WHEN OFFERED A DRINK. “Nothing. Thanks, Teach.” With each word, her voice got fainter.
Barrett kept staring. That’s how bad she looked. Ghostly-pale, and thin. What a body she used to have! Huge breasts that made all her tops too tight. She actually looked flat-chested, now, in that oversized tunic. The hair was different, too. A lighter color. And not wild, like she wore it back in the 80’s. Shiny and too wavy, like she’d set it with old-fashioned rollers. She looked so unlike the old Tina.
He was talking too loudly. Around them, people glanced over. The new student body and philandering faculty.
How much he’d loved her, years back. And still do, he thought, blinking back tears. As he gulped his Scotch on the rocks, he knew she’d caught those tears.
Her smile was still mischievous, knowing.
Back then, Topo Gigio’s had been their place. Everybody at Liberty State loved the brick-oven pizza, the camaraderie. Students and teachers. Students with teachers.
Their table, this had been, as far from the window as possible. Right by the kitchen, so you heard shouting, and the clattering of trays and dishes, but at least it was safe. Safe, Barrett thought, bitterly. Like a nightlight could protect you from that snarling creature in the closet. Or the Wicked Witch.
Like she’d read his mind, Tina smiled again.
Outside, she was in the car. Waiting. On this early January night, parked next to a dead Christmas tree. Just like back then, she was spying. But unlike back then, tonight they both knew she was there.
“Goodbye?” His wife Olivia laughed, shrilly. “She wants to say ‘Goodbye!’ What was that twenty years ago? When she left you, to fuck the whole world?”
“I don’t understand,” he said, avoiding her eyes. Long, twisted spikes, they made him think of. “Maybe she’s moving…far away.”
“Hell,” Olivia said, “Wouldn’t be far enough.”
Hell, he thought, had been his home for the past twenty years. Like an endless, torturous night with her, but without Tina. Ceremonies and dinners that made his head spin, even when he wasn’t downing Scotch. He was almost fifty then, close to seventy now. If he believed in God, he would’ve prayed for death. Instead, he destroyed himself, slowly. Day by day.
He was a rich man, who hated money. An administrator, who hated the system. Once a professor, who hated the kids…
All but one.
And she’d left him.
Why, he wanted to scream now at Topo Gigio’s, did you leave?
“When did you quit?” he said, instead. “Drinking, I mean.” He himself clutched his glass for dear life.
“I…didn’t.” Tina shifted, uncomfortably, in her seat. She hugged herself, like she was cold.
But it was toasty-warm in Topo Gigio’s. Or was it? Booze, Barrett realized. The one thing it did, was keep him warm. Pamper his stiff bones.
“I mean…” she went on, “I just…stopped. I had to.”
The waiter was back. Or was he a new one? A wiry kid with black, spiky hair, he seemed eager to be rid of them. “Have you decided, yet?”
Barrett hadn’t even looked at the menu. Thin-crust pie, had been their favorite, back then. Extra-cheese. Mushrooms, for him. And for her…
His heart lurched. Something that once repulsed him, but that he’d grown to love. That extreme saltiness he’d missed sucking off her lips and tongue. Like a lovesick teen, he’d preserved this one link he had with her.
“Anchovies?” he said. “Do you still eat pizza with anchovies?”
She took so long answering, the waiter tapped his pen against the pad. “No,” she said finally. Her eyes were so sad.
Now Barrett was angry. Scotch or not, his whole body felt on edge. His rage was childish. Who cared if she still ate anchovies? He knew something was coming, to make him angrier. But what? And why now, after all these years?
“Goodbye,” my ass, he thought.
For once Olivia was right. This was bullshit.
Poisoned Apples continues...
