“Four-oh-four Rocking Horse,” she said, reviving. She popped up and did her little dance again, tossing invisible cash onto the table.
He supposed now he’d just have to murder her instead. Baja’s didn’t take American Express, so he put down the Banana Republic Visa and the cash he had, distractedly trying to make a plan.
She was drunk enough. In the Lexus, he leaned over and kissed her, and she reached almost immediately for his belt. She could barely kiss, all the hurry-up in her hand. “Not here,” he said, but she unbuckled him and lifted it out.
Cheese and chips and too many Sam Adams and still that crispy chicken flavor. The Lexus needed air, according to the little orange light, and the woman in the passenger seat was now fellating him like she wanted to get things over with. “Not here,” he said again.
“I don’t want to go home,” she said. “I hate my place.”
“But this is a Baja’s parking lot.”
She laughed, only in order to say, “You make me laugh.” Perhaps everyone had done this before, accidentally fucked a coworker on nacho Friday, but did it have to be done as a grim reenactment of the last time? Back in the corner booth, she’d had him defending James and the Giant Peach, denouncing nutmeg (not a happy flavor), describing the brazen bulls Greek kings used to kill their queens, now he felt anonymous again. “I better go pee,” she said, but she didn’t sprint for Thumper. She squatted between two pickup trucks and climbed back in.
He took her to the house on Rocking Horse Lane and let her fall asleep on the couch. In the basement, he retrieved his kit and knives and changed. He listened to the subterranean sounds of the neighborhood as he greased beneath the naked bulb — the switches of preprogrammed sprinklers, the swamp coolers falling back to work, even in October. He glued on the charred eyebrows, sealed the sharp teeth in. He washed the yellow, snake-slit contact lens in saline and eased it on. He combed the wig up, full fry, cinched the big belt tight atop his happy sooted tatters. He slid a few unscabbarded knives through the belt. The nails came last or he’d shred everything in the process.
He approached the couch in squeaking shoes, leaned over the back, and watched her sleeping. Now was when the menace should awaken something in him. The secret man was here.
He leaned further, grazed his nails across her face, punctured the couch leather claw by claw next to her ear. He bit down on his gums with his cutlery teeth until a drop of blood rolled over his lips, oiled itself redder on his smile, and fell onto her neck. She didn’t wake.
Fine. He had too much beer in him for a chase scene, anyway. He aimed a fingernail for either side of her trachea. He would just rip it forward and hold her down while she drained. Then he’d get a U-Haul, find someplace to torch the couch (a show-house couch might not be missed), torch her, grind her teeth and any stubborn bones, Clorox the living room and the Lexus, and return the van. He’d have to chainsaw the couch to move it by himself. That would be dusty. Sometime in the A.M. you could expect Eliza and her dad to come peeking through the windows. He was supposed to FaceTime with Owen’s therapist at noon.
He didn’t mind hard work. He hadn’t become a murder clown following paths of least resistance.
There were Tums in the glove box. He loved Tums, but he was afraid to go even that far in his suit.
He woke her up at 5 A.M. “I fell asleep,” she said. A couch crease had left a rather gorgeous scar along her face.
“Let’s get doughnuts. I’ll drive you home.”
She blinked at him. “We didn’t even—”
“You mean you don’t remember? You cooed, you cried...”
She yawned, squeezing her eyes to size her headache. “That’s fucked up, Dennis.”
He apologized. “I took a long shower and slept upstairs. We’ll never speak of it again.”
It didn’t mean he was never going to murder her — just because he hadn’t murdered her last night. When the morning papers were dropped off at Donut Time, he spread the crossword and watched her make quick work of it and the Jumble.
The sunrise woke up a little rain. Saturday was supposedly a workday, but hooky made things sweet. “I like your face,” she said. “It’s a real face. Some faces look like you could reach right through them.”
He leaned forward and she tested the reality of his scruff. “You shave like a dad,” she said.
He thought he understood what she meant by that — she meant she’d finally realized she didn’t want and hadn’t wanted him. That was okay. A lover you always half-suspected was trying to kill you. He’d never killed a friend before.
“I am a dad.”
“I know. Riley? Jonas?”
“Owen.”
“Owen. And you never miss a soccer game?”
The black jelly in a halved doughnut trembled as a cement mixer drove by. “The soccer games are in San Jose, actually.”
“Christmases and campouts?” He looked at her, but she was already looking at him. “Your ex won’t even let you have a campout? Really? You shave like such a great dad.”
“It’s not her. Owen never liked me very much,” he said. “I thought I’d be a fun dad. Nieces and nephews always liked me. I’ve got all the Roald Dahls.”
She waited.
“He’d get hysterical if his mom tried to leave us alone.”
“He didn’t grow out of it?”
“He was four when we divorced, and she waited three years before they moved away. My days were impossible. He refused to get out of the car when she brought him over. They’ve been in California now for seven and a half years.”
Lauren’s forehead wrinkles were legibly sympathetic. Her eyes, though, were wondering what had scared the kid. “He’s old enough to explain himself, isn’t he?” she said.
He told her about the therapist he paid for. “Part of me is a little proud of him, for figuring me out so fast. How long did it take you to learn to hate your dad?”
“He said he was voting for Trump and I pretty much declared it.” She’d noticed the drop of blood on her collar, was scraping at it casually, unsurprised to find it there. “I couldn’t believe him. But I figure I only need to hate him till Hillary wins.”
Lauren admitted her plan for the day was to carve pumpkins and decorate her place for Halloween. He should help. When it was time to FaceTime the therapist, she’d leave him alone. “Do you like pumpkins?”
“I like knives,” he said.
At the Safeway next to Donut Time, Lauren turned the pumpkins carefully, examining their personalities, she said. She asked him what candy they should get, and he realized his tooth- and earaches were gone. She directed him to a costume store, just opening, where she bought cobwebs and some cartoonish plastic bones, and then to an art supply where she got a large roll of black construction paper. He drove slowly in and out of parking lots so the knife kit in his trunk wouldn’t clank.
He followed Thumper from the Baja’s lot back to her duplex. The street looked vaguely familiar — maybe he’d bought a kayak off Craigslist somewhere over here?
She brewed them coffees that bore no relation to the Styrofoam stuff from Donut Time. He could feel its strength right through the mug. He leaned back against the counter, savoring, while she, with impressive fluidity, ran a razor over the blackout paper, tracing the profiles of cats and crones. She didn’t even draw the line in pencil first. He held the paper to the windows and she taped it on.
She brushed the shreds off the kitchen table and got out a mixing bowl and knives. She looked at him. “I’m going to say it even though I don’t think it needs to be said.”