The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects

Chapter Eighteen

~1988~

Perhaps it started with hysteria. Robert Keller had always been hysterical. His father had called him a whining sissy boy, and often compared him to The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

"You're always making mountains out of molehills, Robby!" his father would yell whenever his son came to him with yet another ludicrous complaint, or suspicion, or idea.

But Robert never stopped believing that the world was at fault wherever he looked.

The final straw came when he was eighteen. He was a tall, lanky boy that never seemed to fit in wherever he went. He was attractive, yes, but he had the demeanour of a germaphobe; that "Stay away from me" aura. He seemed to radiate hostility. However, once you broke down his Jericho walls, Robert was actually pretty sweet; a gentle, intelligent character who had lost his mother at a young age and quietly despised his dismissive father.

Her name was Olivia Diankov. She was an exchange student from Ukraine. With her dark curtain of raven-black hair and inquisitive olive-green eyes, coupled with her more than voluptuous figure, she would have been at home on the cover of Vogue - and she chose to sit in the cafeteria with Robert Keller.

At first he'd tried to ignore her. His loner instinct told him that she was either lost and confused, or that she had been dared to sit with him, as some kind of weird cheerleader initiation. Either way, ignoring her was his best option.

But ignoring someone as stunning as Olivia Diankov was as easy as writing underwater. Try as he might, Robert couldn't do it. He tried to tell his eyes to focus on the tray of mouldy cheese sandwiches before him, but his eyeballs were disobedient children. They strayed to his silent lunch partner and ogled her. He admired her glossy hair flowing past her shoulders and kept out of her heart-shaped face with a red-and-white candy cane Alice band. He admired the curve of her childlike nose, the sparkle of a tiny diamond stud glistening in the sunlight. And he admired her red, full lips parting as she lifted her cheese hamburger and took a bite, closing her eyes to savour it.

He had to admit: She was truly a beautiful creature.

Their silence persisted as days grew into weeks, until finally he could take no more.

"Do you know how unhealthy hamburgers are?"

Her eyes flew open from her moment of bliss. She carefully returned the half-eaten burger to its position on her plate, as if she were afraid to bruise it. She stared across the table, her emerald eyes boring into him; appraising him as if seeing him for the first time.

Robert instantly thought that she probably hadn't understood him. After all, she was from a completely different country. Her first language probably wasn't even English. He reddened, feeling foolish, and went back to munching his stale bread and dry cheese, the only thing his no-good father could provide for him.

"You remind me of a blue-eyed rat when you eat that cheese of yours," he heard a thickly-accented voice say.

He dropped his sandwich and eyed Olivia in amazement. "You...understand English?"

She tilted her head to one side, one perfectly shaped eyebrow arched. "Why wouldn't I?"

Robert spluttered an apology, afraid that he had offended her, but she waved it off.

"I'm glad you can speak, Robert," she said, a wide smile on her gorgeous face. "It has taken you exactly five weeks and two days to do so!"

From that moment, Robert and Olivia were inseparable. He had fallen head over heels, and she had been there to catch him in her perfect arms. They made love for the first time, five months into their relationship, in Robert's lumpy bed. Olivia, he was ecstatic to learn, was as innocent as he was. They learnt the art of lovemaking as they went along, and Robert was surprised to discover that he was quite good at it.

After their graduation, Class of '88, Robert, who had been stashing money away like a miser, bought a one-way ticket to Kiev - accompanied by his fiancée.

Olivia's parents spoke fluent English, although they weren't all that excited about her marrying an outsider, but Olivia was adamant that Robert was the man for her. They came to accept the quietly intelligent man as their son. Ivor Diankov loaned Robert money for college. Robert wanted to study psychology. He wanted to know what made people do the things they did - what made them tick. Why had his mother killed herself? Why was there so much evil in this world?

Olivia just wanted babies, and, after their quick wedding, she fell pregnant. Robert couldn't wait for their child to be born. He knew how lucky he was; he had come so far.

And then, six months pregnant, on Robert's birthday, his wife was found in an alleyway, raped and strangled. A textbook called 'How the Mind Works' was swimming in a puddle at her feet - a birthday present for him.

Shortly after, Martin Olov tearfully confessed to the crime, and was hanged - but Robert still felt empty.

The world had once again proved that it was ugly.