Fiction: "Herbert"

An excerpt from "Herbert" by Erin O'Riordan, edited for general audiences

My first boyfriend, Shane, asked to borrow my car one weekend. He didn't tell me where he was going. I knew right away that this wasn't a good idea. I realized over the next week or so that Shane wasn't a good idea. I broke up with him.

This levelheadedness when it came to the opposite sex has served me well. My second boyfriend, Phil, kept eyeballing my sister Francis. I gave him the boot. Phil was followed by Victor. Victor had a good run, but I also knew that the end would come sooner or later. When he left, I was sad, but not devastated.

After Victor came Steve. Steve stole my ATM card one weekend. I testified against him. He's now serving six years on a similar charge.

I, Liv Stenke, am not a foolish woman. I'm not given to falling so madly in love with a man that I can't see his flaws. At the age of twenty-eight, I was determined that no matter how fine a man's body, I wouldn't lose my head.

This was before I'd heard of Dante Sugar.

The first time I heard the name Dante Sugar, I was at the county records building on business. I was in the ladies' room, freshening my rock-candy-pink lipstick in the gold-rimmed mirror over the speckled marble sink. Two women who worked in the county assessor's office sat in adjoining stalls, apparently not realizing that I was there.

"Guess who was at the concert in the park last night?" the first said. "Dante Sugar."

I wasn't even sure she'd heard her right. Dante, as in the thirteenth-century Italian poet? Sugar, as in the stuff you sprinkle on your grapefruit in the morning? What kind of name was that?

The second broke out in a lascivious guffaw. "Oh my God," she said.

The first woman chortled. "What's so sweet about Dante Sugar, anyway?"

"Oh my God," said the second woman, apparently of limited vocabulary. "How about his sweet little behind? Or that sweet little sports car he drives around in? You've got to be kidding me. How can you even hear his name and not fall totally in love with him?"

"I heard his name," I said. That shut the women up quickly. "And I'm not totally in love with him. As a matter of fact, this Dante Sugar sounds like an arrogant SOB."

The name was stuck in my head, though. I repeated it to myself in the elevator as I checked my reflection in its mirrored ceiling. Dante. Sugar. Dante. Sugar.

I met Dante Sugar, three weeks later, at a company brunch. It was a formal occasion, held at the old Henderson mansion. I filled my plate carefully: a quarter-baguette with smoked salmon and brie, fruit salad, a lemon scone with clotted cream and key lime curd. I set my plate down at the mayor's wife's table and went to the bar for a coffee with cream and a mimosa. When I returned, he was at the next table with the mayor's entourage. Dante Sugar was one of the mayor's aides.

Dante Sugar sat, his large hands buttering a lemon scone. His polo shirt of soft gray heather, much too casual for the occasion, brought out his cinnamon-sugar color. His skin, like his last name, would not betray his heritage. He might have been Cherokee, or Palestinian, or b&w. His rust-brown hair curled gently. It hung in his face, partially obscuring long, dark, curling eyelashes and brown-green eyes, the backs of two sea-turtles.

His cinnamon lips parted. He said, "I must ask the waiter for some orange mar-muh-lahde." His voice was thick as the condiment he requested

Oh, please, I thought. Mar-muh-lahde? Ridiculous. "I must ask . . .?" An affectation. He's just as impossible as I imagined.

Yet the wall of my common sense had already begun to come down.

To read more, please visit http://www.cafepress.com/aeess.317016393 and check out my short story anthology (recommended for readers 18 + only)!