LOVE AT FIRST DATE

Chapter 9: His Nemesis

"Another thing about nicotine, which I found amazing," Michelle prattled on, "is that it ultimately undoes the positive effects of drinking spring water, just as a Diet Coke or a Starbuck's does. In other words, whereas spring water purifies epidermal tissue, cigarettes, soda and coffee actually act as a poisoning agent."

"You're kidding," Olivia panicked. "I drink Diet Coke all the time!"

Tony felt like his head was about to explode. He never thought he would see the day, but he suddenly felt himself longing for Gerald to arrive. In the past ten minutes of listening to Michelle and Olivia, he had learned more about epidermis than he'd ever wanted, needed, or hoped to know. He glanced around the restaurant, tempted to flag down that stocky head waiter and order a third dessert just to have another guy to talk to for a couple of minutes.

"Umm…" he interrupted.

"See, with supermodels, Olivia, their body is their tool of the trade… like a police officer's gun, or a carpenter's hammer, or an artist's paints…So if you're smoking just to make your family crazy, you really should try something else. I can help you think of something, if ya like."

"Would you?" Olivia beamed, promising God that she wouldn't even try whatever Michelle came up with if only He would divinely intervene and make Michelle her sister-in-law. She'd always wanted a sister: an older sister. Someone who knew more than she about epidermal physiology and holistic hair-thickening agents, and what to do if some guy comes up to you claiming to be a modeling agent, only looks a lot more like a serial killer. Michelle just seemed to know everything.

"Uhhh…" Tony interjected.

"Where did you ever learn all this?" Olivia asked, staring intently at Michelle's flawless complexion, convinced that she obviously knew what she was talking about and religiously practiced what she preached.

"Oh," Michelle giggled with a blush, "I'm just one of those voracious readers. It's just this curiosity I have about—well, everything, I guess. But I've never just looked at the pictures in French Vogue. I've always read every article, too. They're really quite insightful, I find."

"So, listen, umm…" Tony said.

"I like to read, but I get lazy about it a lot," Olivia admitted. "For instance, if you hadn't mentioned the Turlington article, I probably—"

"Okay, read this!" Tony erupted from across the table, halfway up on his feet, his dinner napkin cascading to the floor. "If I hear one more word about hair, skin, lip gloss, or goddamned Whatshername Turlington—"

Olivia's first inclination was to bark "Bite me," but Michelle had already begun to speak, so she decided to demonstrate her knowledge of manners and refrain from interrupting.

"I'm sorry, dear. Sit back down. No need to get yourself all upset like that," Michelle fussed, getting out of her seat and successfully managing to soothe the savage into lowering himself back into his own, much to Olivia's disbelieving eyes. "What would you like to talk about instead? Hmmm?"

"Anything but this stuff! Anything!" Tony sulked with self-pity.

Olivia watched, spellbound by Michelle's mystical powers as she coaxed the animal's hand away from his brow, where his fingertips had left a series of white stripes from scratching back and forth in mental anguish. It had been mind-bogglingly clear to Olivia for years, now, that the man knew nothing about skin care. Yet the government still felt he was intellectually fit to be taxed with the awesome task of protecting America. If Congress only knew him as well as she did…

"Fine, dear. We'll just move onto something you like. How's that?" Michelle suggested, reaching for her purse and gesturing for Olivia to take hold of her hand. "In fact, how would you like some peace and quiet for a few minutes while Olivia and I go to the ladies room?"

If she hadn't observed it with her own eyes, Olivia would never believe the remarkable effect Michelle's calming, unruffled tone and manner could have on the beast. He had gone from the angry stage to the sympathy-seeking stage in only a matter of mere seconds, which Olivia couldn't recall ever having witnessed before. It generally took him a solid five minutes of bellowing, minimum, before he would even consider phasing into the self-pitying mode. He was even listening to what Michelle was saying, and complying with her requests, which astounded Olivia more than anything, given how thick and bullheaded she knew him to be.

"Do you have a purse, Olivia?" Michelle checked.

"No, Lou and Mrs. Maddigan won't let me carry one—on his orders," she groused, incapable of maturely concealing her palpable disdain for him a moment longer.

"We'll take our time. How's that?" Michelle turned and suggested to him, pushing some hair off his forehead in yet another impressive show of her inborn animal-taming abilities. "Order yourself an after-dinner drink. It'll relax you, dear, okay?"

"All right," he sulked, clearly still brooding though definitely no longer inflamed. "You… just make sure she behaves in there," he reminded Michelle, shooting a look at Olivia, but a strikingly different one than she was accustomed to: His eyes had said "Please?" to her this time, actually requesting, rather than ordering, that she keep her finger out of her throat.

"Are you gonna be okay out here alone?'" Michelle double-checked, glancing around the room in search of Cleavage. "Did you remember your gun?"

The formulation of an actual, though miniscule, smile materialized on the animal's face as he gazed up serenely at Michelle, nodding in the affirmative. There was something going on with his eyes, too, Olivia could swear. They were getting mushy and glowy-looking, like there was a heart beating inside him somewhere, as ludicrous a notion as it seemed. Granted, he used to have a heart — a rather big one, at that — back when she was much younger. But it had gradually dissolved, for no cause or reason that Olivia could discern, right around the time she had entered her teens and begun to notice boys. Olivia had just chalked his overnight moodiness and irritability off to old age. Granted, he wasn't quite as old as her ancient sixtysomething parents, but he was right up around the same age of most of her friends' parents.

"I'll stop and ask that headwaiter, who got you those appetizers so quickly, to bring a drink over," Michelle decided on second thought, unable to locate Cleavage's whereabouts.

As nauseating a sight as it was to behold, Olivia watched, for as long as her stomach would allow, as the beast leaned in and planted a kiss on Michelle's lips. Eeeew!

Tony watched them weave through the tables over to the headwaiter, Olivia's hand clutching Michelle's similar to the way she used to hold onto his own for dear life. From the time she was a toddler, Olivia had never been comfortable in large, crowded environments. Tony wondered if Michelle had just naturally sensed that when she'd reached out and offered her hand.

From across the room, Cleavage followed the trail from Tony's eyes to Olivia's hand tucked inside Michelle's. She watched as the battle-ax gave instructions to Morty, the headwaiter, while pointing back and forth between the cluster of after-dinner liquors behind the bar and Tony at the table. Since a one-on-one with Tony was obviously never going to happen, Cleavage briefly wondered about the possibility of getting a fourseome going. She immediately dashed the thought, however, wanting to kick herself for having been so nasty to the old bag earlier, who would surely never allow her to join the love fest now. Sadly, Cleavage resigned herself to accepting the distinct likelihood of never getting to sink her teeth into hunka-hunka Tony Almeida.

With his usual lightening speed, the headwaiter approached and set a drink down in front of Tony. Lifting it to his mouth, he smiled from the almond-reeking scent that instantly overwhelmed his nostrils. Michelle had ordered him a glass of Frangelica — possibly the girliest after-dinner drink in existence. There was so much he had to teach her.

His eye caught the appearance of Gerald standing nervously by the front of the restaurant, trying to smooth out his raggedy hair with his saturated palms. Generally, Tony would've smelled him coming and safely concluded that the Frangelica must have knocked his sixth freak-sniffing sense temporarily out of whack.

"You're a half-hour early," he growled as he always did, given Gerald's annoying penchant for arriving no fewer than thirty minutes early whenever he was granted an audience, or summoned to appear before him.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Almeida, sir," Gerald quaked with wild-eyed fear, standing at rigid attention, his body visibly rattling as noticeably as his voice was breaking. Tony arched an angry eyebrow, snarling at him in feigned disbelief.

"Uhh, excuse me? What did you just—"

"Agent!" Gerald sputtered in horror, catching his unforgivable error. "Yes, sir, Agent Almeida, sir," he quickly corrected himself, terror now replacing the fear in his eyes and sweat glistening off his heavily coated brow and upper lip. Tony took his time sipping down the Frangelica, allowing the seventeen-year-old to languish in his panic a little longer before releasing his eye-lock and granting him permission to breathe again.

"That's better," he grumbled on the outside while snickering on the inside, thoroughly enjoying himself. Laying the empty glass down, he casually tapped his fingertips atop the small plate in front of him, which originally held a sinfully large wedge of chocolate mousse cake, though no longer contained even so much as a singular crumb.

Gerald promptly snapped into action, emptying his pockets, one by one, and laying the contents on the precise spot Tony had indicated. He then hurriedly went about the routine tasks of turning his pockets inside-out, rolling each pant leg up and back down again, and removing and shaking each shoe out to prove that he wasn't covertly concealing anything. Tony snickered to himself again, wishing Lou were still there. Lou always so enjoyed this particular segment of their finely honed inspection procedure.

"Is everything all right, sir?" the maitre d' gingerly approached the table and inquired as half the restaurant stared intently at Gerald.

"Couldn't be better," Tony muttered, deftly digging out and flashing his C.T.U. identification, grateful that Michelle wasn't around to catch him doing it again.

He sifted through the contents on the plate, meticulously separating and categorizing the items into neat, logical piles, pausing for a moment to unwrap Gerald's last stick of chewing gum and fold it into his mouth. Sitting up a little straighter, he began inspecting each item, though with no expectation of actually finding anything incriminating, like a cigarette lighter or a roach clip. After all, Gerald had been prepared to come before him. Only when Tony would spring a surprise inspection would he ever turn up any items of true evidentiary value.

What concerned him, however, was what he didn't find in the pile, once again: namely condoms. Though Tony was hardly anyone to talk at the moment, having himself just committed the most egregious violation in the entire protect-thyself handbook, he nevertheless glared up at Gerald, who already knew what was coming.

"Your sister and I don't engage in sexual intercourse, sir, Agent Almeida, sir," Gerald croaked like the nervous wreck that he was, eyes forward, not daring to look directly at AgentAlmeidaSir without prior authorization.

"My foot," Tony snarled, patting around his pockets for the condom he always brought along for the express purpose of adding it to the pile whenever Gerald's pockets failed to produce one. Gerald's hard gulp assured him that he hadn't forgotten his vow to personally remove the freak's testicles and feed them to him, should he ever catch Gerald even so much as looking at Olivia with lust in his heart.

"We remember what the definition of 'jail bait' is, don't we, son?" Tony pop-quizzed him.

"Yes, sir, Agent Almeida, sir," Gerald responded like a terrified inductee on his first day of boot camp, precisely as Tony and Lou had meticulously trained him to do.

It was the only military training Gerald was ever likely to receive, natural-born flunky and full-time slacker that Tony was convinced he was. A taste of boot camp couldn't do the kid any harm, he had rationalized back when Lou had originally begun barking orders at the scraggly-haired pill popper, ecstatic to find an outlet through which to fondly relive his glory days as an Army Drill Sargeant. Tony couldn't remember if he had ever congratulated Lou for coming up with such a superb concept. It was the perfect way to terrify Gerald into thinking about the ramifications of his actions before, not after, taking them. It also simultaneously taught him important life lessons, like respect for his elders and, even more importantly and to the point, respect for women — Olivia, specifically.

While Tony knew that he could no sooner control Gerald's raging seventeen-year-old hormones any more than he had been able to harnass his own at that age, he could at least safeguard Olivia's chastity by passing along to Gerald the sage teachings of his father and grandfather regarding the handling, treatment, and overall attitude toward women:

First and foremost, they were not there for the using and disgarding, both Tony's Dad and grandfather had begun drumming into his head long before Tony had ever hit puberty. Women were gifts from the testosterone gods and, as such, were to be treated with the utmost respect and kindness, his elders had carefully schooled him. Women weren't mere slabs of beef, there but to satisfy a young man's sexual urges, then simply tossed aside after fulfilling a momentary purpose: that's what the testerone gods had created airbrushed Playboy women for. Real, live, actual women, on the other hand, had real, live, actual emotions and minds and enormous contributions to make to a man's life. Their thoughts were to be listened to; their sentiments toward their own bodies respected; and their mystical, miraculous charms cherished, like precious jewels.

Gerald hadn't given Tony the impression that he understood any of those rules, concepts, or practices; just the opposite, in fact. The kid had struck him as a natural-born hit-and-run Casanova humpmeister — the type who kept a score card, and couldn't wait to get Olivia alone long enough to establish celebrity status among his buddies for having been the guy to bag the best looking babe in the school; possibly even on the planet.

All said, Tony just didn't trust the guy. And neither did Lou, who was up to his neck with four daughters and had commented to Tony on Day One that Gerald reminded him of a "back-alley mutt sniffing around one of them weirdo France Poodles… Y'know… them fluffy white stuck-up dogs." Together they had devised a three-month, boot-camp-style torture test for Gerald, figuring that if he was still coming around after that amount of time in simulated hell, it would mean that he had legitimate feelings for Olivia and wasn't just harboring ulterior motives of becoming a locker room legend.

Now, fully two months later, Gerald was still steadily holding his ground, much to SirAgentAlmeidaSir's shock and chagrin.

"What are you doing to him!" Olivia's whispery voice came squealing up from behind Tony, racing past him and over to Gerald's side.

"Honey?" Michelle said in confusion, placing a gentle hand on Tony's shoulder and staring at the terrified young man whom Olivia was trying to hug. Gerald's arms were too rigidly frozen at his sides, however, for even Olivia's frail little arms to slide through.

"See, Michelle?" Olivia fumed in near tears. "Do you seewhat I mean?"

Michelle looked down at Tony sitting cavalierly slumped and cross-legged in his seat, contentedly chewing Gerald's gum and counting the money inside his wallet. He paused to recheck the pictures of Gerald's parents and seven-year-old sister, moving on only after he was certain that none of the faces matched the FBI's latest most-wanted mugshots.

"Hello, sir, ma'am, sir… I… Hello, ma'am, miss… ma'am… Oh, my God!" Gerald panicked, with tears forming in his eyes.

"Agent," Tony murmered quietly. "Agent Dessler."

"Hello, Agent Destler, ma'am," Gerald promptly gave it another shot, his heart racing at a dangerous pace, even for someone so youthful and vital as he.

"Do you see what he does to Gerald?" Olivia whined in misery to Michelle as loudly as her whispery voice would allow. "Relax, Gerald. Don't pay any attention to him. He's not God."

"Honey, is this really necessary?" Michelle asked with a disapproving "tsk" of annoyance in her tone, wrestling Gerald's wallet free from his hands.

"I was all done looking at it anyway," Tony confidently assured her, appearing immensely pleased with himself. Michelle angrily laid the wallet amid the other possessions and gave the dessert plate a slight push in the terrified young man's direction.

"Gerald, you can return your things to your pockets," she authoritatively assured him, still shaking her head at Tony.

"Thank you, Agent, ma'am," Gerald sputtered, though visibly and firmly refusing to move a muscle without permission from Tony himself.

"'Agent Dessler, Ma'am,'" Tony casually corrected him, like a fifty-pound cat toying with a mouse he had trapped into a corner.

"Thank you, Agent Des…"

"That… that won't be necessary, Gerald," Michelle assured him, holding her palm up to him like a school crossing guard. Tony slumped down a little further and criss-crossed his arms over his chest, seeming a bit bored already, now that he wouldn't have Gerald to terrorize anymore.

Noticing the crinkled, discarded wrapper, Michelle thrust a cupped hand under Tony's mouth, demanding the gum he was happily gnawing away on. Women: They always eventually showed up and spoiled all the fun, like they had alarm clocks built inside them somewhere. He cooperatively tilted his head forward just enough to allow the pilfered gum to drop into her palm.

"I was already done with that, too," he proudly assured her, watching as she dug into her purse and replaced Gerald's gum with a stick of her own. Her head hadn't stopped shaking yet, nor had her tongue stopped tsk-ing as she moved across the table toward Olivia, who by now had collapsed into her chair and was sobbing in frustration.

"How come I had to be the one to get him for a brother?" she wept inconsolably as Michelle soothingly rubbed her skeletal shoulders. "Sit down, Gerald!" Olivia pleaded with her boyfriend.

"I… I can't do that, Miss Almeida," Gerald informed her in the trembling voice.

"Don't call me that!" Olivia wailed even harder as Michelle shot another thoroughly annoyed look across the table at Tony. He snickered, pretending not to notice.

"Mizz," he wasted no time in correcting Gerald, putting hard emphasis on the "z's" and stringing them out as though the salutation contained about thirty of them.

"That'll be enough, dear," Michelle barked at him, now petting the back of Olivia's head with one hand and digging through her purse in a frenzy with the other, praying she still had some aloe-treated tissues left and wondering what in the world she would do if she didn't. "Sit down, Gerald," she ordered him.

"I… I can't do that, Agent Destler, ma'am," he regretted to inform her in a gulping voice, sounding only moments away from joining his girlfriend in a pool of tears. "Not without the Lieutenant's permission, ma'am," he clarified.

Tony smirked, looking down at his shirt and pressing a moistened fingertip against what appeared to be a stray chocolate crumb, then bringing it up and inspecting it before putting it into his mouth.

"For Pete'ssake, he is not a Lieutenant. Sit down, Gerald!" Michelle ordered him again, enormously relieved as she pulled one of only two remaining aloe-treated tissues out of her purse, quickly scanning the crowd for well-groomed women, just in case Olivia required a few more.

Gerald glanced fearfully at Tony, who slowly closed and reopened his eyes, signaling his permission for Gerald to collect his pocket possessions and seat himself.

"I was a Lieutenant in the Marines," Tony factually reminded Michelle. "You technically retain your title until death, y'know."

"Which shouldn't be too long from now if you don't stop upsetting this entire table," Michelle barked again, dropping herself into her seat in an aggravated heap before Tony had the chance to jump up and pull it out for her — or, better yet, order Gerald to perform the task for him.

"I leave you alone for five minutes…" Michelle snapped at her wit's end, checking Olivia's condition again.

She sighed deeply, not even sure if she still wanted the slice of carrot cake sitting before her, with one large forkful conspicuously missing. The culprit's eyes gazed wantonly at it, but after having made perfect wrecks of both Olivia and Gerald, Michelle had no intention of rewarding his actions. She would have the carrot cake wrapped, take it home, and enjoy it during that silly Navarone Guns movie, or whatever in the world it was called.

"Gerald," she said across the table, "there's no need for that 'Mizz Almeida' business. Address Olivia by her first name as you always do. "

"If Gerald and I hold hands, Michelle, will you be able to keep him under control?" Olivia sniffled, gently dabbing her tears, just as the beauty editor of Elle recommended, instead of wiping back and forth against the exceptionally delicate and sensitive epidermis surrounding the eye region.

"I, umm… I can't do that," Gerald informed Olivia.

"Gerald, take hold of Olivia's hand this instant," Michelle snapped, turning to Tony. "And you… you just stop those intimidation tactics, mister." Tony responded by tilting his head a little lower and snickering again.

After a few minutes of deadly silence, the tension at the table was mericifully broken when he lightly kicked Michelle's foot under the table and glanced down at the long-ago-forgotten yellow shopping bag on the floor between them.

"Well?" he offered with a conciliatory grin, giving her a nod of encouragement to see what "we bought." Michelle's eyes immediately brightened as she reached down and snatched the bag. Olivia, who appeared to be as big a natural-born snoop as Michelle herself, gazed at it longingly.

"What did you get?" she asked, excitedly squeezing Gerald's hand as he sat paralyzed in his chair, waiting for his testicles to be lobbed off at any moment for holding Mizz Almeida's hand right smack in front of the Lieutenant.

Michelle was about to hand the bag over to Olivia, but hesitated at the last moment and passed it across the table to Gerald instead, hoping to make him feel a little more welcome.

"Why don't you do the honors, Gerald," Michelle suggested, watching his eyes widen in alarm while Olivia's widened in sheer delight. Michelle heard Tony sigh deeply, but ignored him. Gerald glanced furtively over at the Lieutenant, seeking permission to fulfil MizzDestlerMa'am's request. Tony gave it brief consideration, then nodded his chin, authorizing Gerald to move.

Stunned, Gerald gingerly dug into the small shopping bag, producing an object tightly wrapped in tissue paper and held together by a sticker bearing the logo of the little Italian couple's store. His hands shook as he tried to undo the wrapping without tearing it, realizing that he had forgotten to procure permission to compromise the integrity of the pulp.

"Just open it!" Olivia insisted in a whispery holler, no longer able to contain her curiosity. Gerald reluctantly ripped into the tissue and gasped at the handmade porcelain piece in his hand. It was a watering can for plants, molded into the likeness of an ancient fertility god. The figure's arm was bent into the shape of a handle, with a grossly exaggerated fertility organ subbing as the watering can's spout, extending outward about six times the distance it biologically ought to.

"Geeziz!" Tony barked, quickly jetting up from his seat, momentarily confused as to what to do: cover Olivia's eyes or snatch the fertility god from Gerald's hands before a blessing had the chance to, God forbid, transfer itself into his loins.

"Self-portrait?" Olivia giggled up at Tony as he buried the pornographic porcelain back in the shopping bag and handed it over to Michelle, who for some unimaginable reason was finding the episode just as funny as Olivia did.

Another round of uncomfortable silence was broken by the muffled jangling of the cell phone inside Tony's pocket.

"Mom. Yeah, hi," he said, still glaring at Gerald as if the watering can incident were all his fault. "Of course," he continued. "Where are ya, anyway? Ya didn't even say… What do ya mean 'of course what'? Of course I took her from Lou. You didn't exactly leave me much choice, and I wasn't about to … She's fine, Ma… No… Mom, he's fine, too. They're both sitting right here. Where are you? Ya sound like you're on a plane…"

He listened quietly as Amanda Almeida rattled off her complete itinerary, including what his Dad was thinking about ordering for dinner that evening. Tony's pained eyes drifted over to Michelle, looking at her pleadingly, despite knowing there was nothing she could do but hold his hand, which she had already taken upon herself to do. He wallowed in her eyes gazing upon him, quietly and sympathetically, which was exactly what he needed at that moment. She always seemed to know precisely what he needed and when.

"Of course she did, Mom. She always does… Mom, it wasn't my… Ma, I didn't do anything to him…" Tony growled impatiently, listening for another moment while he rubbed his eyes, then turning and speaking to Gerald loudly enough for Amanda Almeida to overhear. "Gerald, did I lay one finger on you?"

"No, sir, Agent Almeida, sir."

"See? … No, Gerald's driving her. Mrs. Madison's gonna be— Mrs. Maddigan. Whatever, Mom. She's gonna be there by the time they arrive. We're just finishing up… Yeah, I will. Don't worry… Nothing, just watching TV… 'Cause I'm tired… I feel fine, Mom. Geeziz. It's just been a long week. Do ya… Mom? Do ya wanna talk to her? She's right here… 'Cause I just don't feel like sitting at a bar all night, Mom. I'm tired…"

As he held the phone out in Olivia's direction, shaking his head, Amanda Almeida could still be heard talking about the arrival of her girlfriend Lillian's third grandchild and reminding her son of the unlikelihood of ever meeting a nice, eligible women inside his living room.

"Mommy? Hi," Olivia cooed happily and brightly. "Huh?… Of course not… Mom, I didn't take any pills. Ask him yourself if you don't believe me… No, Mom, I'm just in a good mood… 'Cause I was talking to Michelle, this really nice lady he works with…"

Tony's eyes tripled in size as he leapt to his feet, staring wildly at Michelle. He couldn't believe his ears. He shot Olivia a threatening look, leaning in and taking hold of Gerald by the neck as if to promise Olivia that he would cavity-search him right there on the spot if she dared tip their Mom off about his relationship. Michelle rushed around the table and angrily tried to free Gerald, who'd begun weeping softly.

"Nah, she just works for him," Olivia casually continued with nonchalance, not the least bit phased by her brother's eyeballs screaming at her. "Nah, there's nothing there. You can tell… 'Cause ya can just tell, Mom. She can't stand him. It couldn't be more apparent… Ask Lou if ya don't believe me. He met her, too… 'Cause he dragged her along, that's why. You know him. She works for him. What was she supposed to do? Tell her boss 'go bite me?'… I forget her last name," Olivia lied, soothingly caressing Gerald's forearm as she watched Michelle muscle Tony back into his seat. "Yellow floral. An Isaac Mizhari … Uh-huh… Yeah, I will, Mom, I promise… Okay… Okay, Mom… Tell Daddy I love him, too, okay?… Okay… Okay, Mom… Okay…"

Olivia shook her head, reaching across the table and handing the talking telephone back over to Tony, then turning her full attention to Gerald, who was blowing his nose in Michelle's last aloe-treated tissue.

"Mom?… Ma… I can't hear ya, Ma," Tony said, allowing his voice to trail off as he held the phone a little further and further away from his mouth. "You've gotta… Mom, you've gotta speak up a little… Mom?… Look, either my battery's dying or your flying through a—"

He softly clicked the phone shut and turned it off. His head was spinning. He closed his eyes for a moment, then checked his watch, conducting a quick calculation of Gerald's drive time against Mrs. Maddigan's estimated time of arrival at the Almeida house.

"I'm gonna give Mrs. Madison a call from the pay phone, sweetheart," he said to Michelle, exasperated. Aside from Chappelle, nobody had the power to drive him quite so crazy as Amanda Almeida, Grandmother Wannabe of the highest order. He dug a credit card out of his wallet and handed it to Michelle.

"If the check comes, just sign for it, okay, honey?" he asked, stooping over to kiss the top of her head and promising to return in just a few minutes.

Heading for the back of the restaurant, he stopped and turned after a couple of steps.

"Hey, Olivia," he said a little meekly, watching her glance up with her usual scowl. "You, uhh… Thanks for that. Ya handled that really well… with Mom, I mean."

Olivia turned her head toward Michelle in shock, trying to determine if she thought this might be some kind of a trick. Michelle lifted her eyebrows and barely discernibly shrugged her shoulders, signaling her opinion that his compliment had sounded genuine to her.

"Umm… thanks," Olivia responded cautiously, still a little suspicious of Tony's intentions and not quite stupid enough to let her guard down just yet.

After making his call and stopping off at the men's room, Tony reapproached the table, listening to Michelle explain to Gerald the unfortunate statistical odds of a rock band succeeding these days, but reminding him of the good news: that record companies were well known for sending their headhunters into college towns, where many a rock band had been discovered in the past, and invited on the spot, to come in and record a demo.

"Besides, there's no better fun to be had than four solid years in college," she was in the middle of concluding before Tony abruptly jumped in and interrupted.

"Gerald, I wanna show ya something," he said, placing his hand on the back of Michelle's chair.

Gerald leapt to his feet like someone had just informed him that a bomb was taped to the bottom of his chair.

"Yes, sir, Agent Almeida, sir."

"Siddown, Gerald, and pay attention," Tony continued with remarkable calm, proceeding with a demonstration of how to pull a woman's chair out when the time arrived to get up and leave. Michelle rolled her eyes at Olivia and proceeded to dutifully participate, placing her hand into Tony's palm and rising to her feet in tandem with the chair moving out from beneath her.

"Got that?" Tony grilled Gerald, whose head bobbed affirmatively like a canine figurine mounted on the back ledge of a car window.

Michelle stood patiently waiting for Tony to go through the motions of reseating her again when he clasped his hand around hers, instead, signaling their departure. Remembering that he had counted only eleven dollars when he'd rifled through Gerald's wallet, Tony paused to fish a few twenties out from his own, tossing them on the table in the freak's direction.

"You can keep her out 'til eleven," he announced.

"Uhh… who, sir?" Gerald sputtered.

"My sister, ya idiot," he responded with amazing control. "One second late in getting her home and Mrs. Madison is gonna be on the phone with me. Do ya understand that, Gerald?"

"Yes… Yes, sir, Agent Almeida… sir…" Gerald stuttered in wholesale disbelief.

Olivia's intoxicating cat's eyes had themselves grown to mountain cat proportions, wildly darting in confusion between Michelle, Gerald, and her suddenly-not-so-disgusting-anymore brother — or at least the body of her brother. She had no way of identifying the entity that had apparently seized control of it at some point between the telephone, men's room, and his return to the table.

In her confusion, she only half-heard the directives he proceeded to rattle off to Gerald, warning him to listen up good because he was only going to say it once: None of those Freddie Krueger-type movies or Olivia would be up all night; park yourself outside the ladies room door and wait for her, 'cause there are all kinds of nuts out there in the world and there's no such thing as "too safe"; don't even try driving over the speed limit 'cause someone at his office had already been ordered to check the satellites at fifteen-minute intervals, including all local lover's-lane haunts, should he possibly be so stupid as to even think about stopping at one.

Olivia tried to catch Michelle's attention and was confounded at first when she noticed her looking a little misty. There was a small smile on her face, however, as she gazed up at Tony, so she obviously wasn't upset with him; evidently just the opposite, as far as Olivia could ascertain from Michelle's overall lovey-dovey expression.

But Olivia herself began to better understand Michelle's odd reaction when her suddenly-not-so-disgusting-anymore brother paused on his way past her and patted her head, asking instead of ordering her to be good tonight, and in a voice that Olivia could've sworn sounded civilized. She nodded in stunned agreement, turning around and watching him lead Michelle by the hand through the maze of tables, pausing to give "a little something extra" to the portly headwaiter who'd gotten the appetizers to the table so quickly.

Back out on the street again, Tony drew in a deep, cleansing breath of the cool, crisp, evening smog. Things felt right with the world. Life was good. If he could only murder Gerald and dispose of the body where he knew it would never be found, life would be better than good: It would be perfect. Perhaps between God and the testosterone overlords, one of them would come up with a plan of ridding Gerald from Olivia's life, and henceforth his own, in a way that wouldn't hurt her too deeply. She was still young — hell, she had just turned sixteen less than two months ago — so Tony felt confident that she would be able to emotionally recover from Gerald's untimely demise without suffering permanent damage. At that point, she would only have eight more men to run through before meeting up with her own "tenth." Someone hopefully far more befitting and worthy of her than a pill-popping, chain-smoking, aspiring rock star, with every statistic going against him; not to mention his singing voice and bass-playing abilities.

He glanced down at Michelle, whose heels were back to gently clicking against the cement. She was being quiet and reflective, which was a bad sign. It meant that, with his luck, she would inevitably feel like talking again the second The Guns had begun to play. He should probably get her chatting now so she'd be all talked out by the time Greg Peck walked into the briefing room, thinking he had been flown into Greece for some R&R, only to discover that he was about to be sent on a harrowing covert mission to save a couple of thousand WWII soldiers from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. But Michelle seemed so content, thinking whatever it was she was thinking, that Tony generously decided to allow her to continue.

He would tell her later about how something his grandfather had once said on the subject of "trust" had suddenly popped into his head while dialing Mrs. Madison's number: "In a situation involving two or more people," Pop had assured him, "you never have to worry about trusting them all as long as you know you can always trust one."

All these years later, Tony had only just realized what that sentiment meant.

It meant that he didn't have to long for the day when he could trust Gerald to take good, responsible care of Olivia — a day that was never going to arrive — as long as he knew he could trust Olivia to make smart, responsible decisions and judgment calls in the best interests of herself. Once Olivia became the keeper of her own shots, Gerald would likely end up just dashing his own corrupt plans and acquiescing to Olivia's wishes, instead. At that point, Gerald would effectively be rendered wholly inconsequential in the scheme of things.

His pills would no longer seem so enticing to Olivia at the cost of having to ultimately sacrifice her natural skin glow; mindlessly sitting through yet another band rehearsal wouldn't hold quite the same cognitive appeal when she could be immersing herself in a sizzly epidermis article instead; a vodka-laced Starbuck's or Diet Coke would no longer go down as smoothly as a cold bottle of natural spring water that purified, not poisoned; nor would a cigarette or a joint seem so desirable when she could be inhaling a huge plate of vegetarian curry instead.

The revelation had given Tony pause to realize that until Olivia had the freedom and space to start making decisions for herself, Gerald would continue making them for her.

It had also given him pause to acknowledge the strides that Olivia had already demonstrated just that afternoon alone: the way she had taken the initiative, for instance, to help him out by hiding Michelle directly under their Mom's own nose; and the confidence-booster she had given Michelle when she'd told their Mom that Michelle's dress was an Isaac Mizhari. Olivia could spot a Mizhari from two planets away, and knew full-well that it wasn't his or any other designer's creation. Olivia had just said that, knowing how proud it would make Michelle feel to think that her hand-sewn creation could be mistaken for a runway original — and by a fellow French Vogue aficionado, on top of it all.

Tony had also factored in that Olivia wasn't the same girl today as she was at this very same time yesterday afternoon, now that Michelle was in the picture and had made such an impactful impression upon her.

Michelle would probably understand and agree when he explained to her later tonight about his last-second decision to loosen Olivia's leash a bit and see how responsibly she handled an entire night out with Gerald, unsupervised. In fact, Michelle would probably say the very same thing he had said to himself: that he could always tighten the reins again, should Olivia ever give him cause to.