Olga Dies Dreaming(111)
Finally, long after all the Christmas records on the stack had played and they had been listening to the turn of the table for longer than either of them noticed, Olga told him about Dick. All of it. And then she told him about the incident in college. And the very bad online date. And the drunk groomsman who trapped her in a stairwell at work that one time.
And she felt the balloon in her chest—the one that had been taking up so much space, pressing everything out of its proper place, pinching lungs so they could not get enough breath, pushing on her heart so that it altered its natural beating rhythm—deflate. Not completely, but nearly. Each story, each sentence she put out into the world allowed her insides to resume their proper place, reclaiming the space as its own. And when she was done, for a moment, she lay there, appreciating the freedom to fully breathe and relearning the beat of her own heart.
* * *
MATTEO TOOK HER hand and after a long minute finally spoke.
“I don’t know really what the right thing to say is.”
“I don’t know that there is one right thing to say,” she replied.
“Then, I guess I’m afraid to say the one wrong thing. Except, I guess, to say that it’s okay. Not what happened to you, but—fuck, see? So easy to say wrong things.… I guess, thank you. For telling me. For … trusting me.”
Olga let his words wash over her and they felt good. Warm. Yet still not enough. Not obvious enough for her to know she was safe. Not enough to know she was still loved. She was frightened to ask for what she needed now, but felt no other choice.
“And me? Do you still like me? After all of this?”
He rolled towards her now. “What? Girl, are you crazy?” He went to put his arm around her and stopped himself. “Actually. Wait. Is this okay?”
“Co?o.” She laughed. “Don’t be that guy. Don’t make me that girl.”
“What girl?” he asked, confused.
“The girl who is going to break.” She pulled his arm over her. “I’m still me; you just know a lot more now. And you are cool with it,” she said, more to herself than him.
“Well,” he said, “most of it.” Before her heart could fully sink, he quickly began again. “Olga, I want to do this with you. For real. But I told you what I needed, and that was for you to not disappear. I trusted you and you broke that trust, and I know it wasn’t intentional. It’s your very fucked-up coping mechanism. But I think for this to work, we can’t accept that as a way to deal with things. You need a new coping mechanism. And to go to therapy.”
“Matteo, no. I don’t believe in—”
“—hold up, let me talk for a second. We”—he made a point of saying—“need therapy not because you are broken, or because I’m broken, but because it’s a lot to manage. I need to learn to live without … all of this stuff, and you need to learn how to not shut me out when you’re going through shit. Because that hurts, girl. Both of us. Bad.”
She put her face close to his. “I’m really sorry.”
“I know you are.” And he kissed her softly. “But, there’s another thing. Olga, you can’t be washing money for these Russian cats. It’s all blinis and vodka shots until you end up dead in Little Odessa, and I love you too much to risk that happening. If you need money until you figure out what you want to do next, please let me help you.”
Olga laughed a bit. “Matteo, listen, I absolutely will stop, I promise, but I think when you offer to help you’re misunderstanding how much money I’m making off this right now.”
Matteo sat up and took her hands and took a deep breath.
“Okay. Listen. Now I guess I have to tell you something. It’s, uh, not a secret or anything, I just never had a reason to tell you … but, I’m, like … rich? Not, you know, Selby brothers rich, I’m not there, but, I, uh, I own a lot of properties.”
“What?” Olga asked, sitting up now.
“When I left the banking job, and sold the loft, I had a lot of cash. And when my mom passed, I was so sad and lost and all I had, I felt like, was here—this place. The neighborhood, the borough, the people I’d gotten to know. So, you know the bodega on the corner? Well, the owner of the building wanted to sell, and Sammy—who owns the bodega—was sure if they sold, they’d kick him out and knock the building down for one of those shitty new constructions like you live in. And, well, I just didn’t want to lose the spot. I like getting my coffee there, seeing Sammy, seeing the boom-box dude, shooting the shit. So, I offered the owner all cash, and…”
“Sylvia’s!” Olga exclaimed. A light dawning on her now.
“Yes … and, well, frankly, a lot of spots. Lots of old spots. Here, Williamsburg, your ’hood. I mean, that’s why I was in Noir that night in the first place. This Irish pub I dig over on the other side of the park … a bunch of spots, and they all have apartments upstairs and I just kept everybody’s rent the same and, frankly, it’s a lot of fucking money. Every month. And I get to keep going to these places I love, and they get to keep their stores and their apartments. Ninety percent of my real estate work is filling up my own apartments, though, honestly, most of my tenants don’t leave. And, Olga, it’s so much money I frankly don’t get these other cats. How much money does one person need? But I guess that’s the quintessential American question, right?”