“Sweetie, this isn’t my first rodeo,” Delilah continued. “Sometimes it’s cheaper to render someone. Especially when there’s a multimillion-dollar policy on the line. I can handle it.”
We went back inside. Berenice was deep in conversation with a young guy at the bar whose blond hair brushed the collar of his polo shirt. Edging closer to them, I noticed his skin was preternaturally clear, as if he’d never had a pimple in his life. He smelled like baby powder.
“Who’s your friend?” Delilah asked, gesturing for the bartender at the same time.
Berenice opened her mouth to speak, but the man talked over her. “I’m Fred. And who are you?”
“I’m Delilah. Can I get you a drink, Fred?”
He held up a glass with brown liquor in it. “I’m good.”
“Oh good. Come here often, Fred?”
Berenice was getting restless. Our eyes met and it was almost too much. I tried to imagine what she’d look like in thirty years, when we would be figuring out how to consolidate our couches and what colors to paint the walls. Then she smiled and I threw off all the weight of a future I’d lost. It was time to make a new future.
“Hey, Flame… let’s dance! I love this song!”
Two women onstage were singing the hell out of En Vogue. Berenice jumped up with me instantly, and we wiggled around the floor with a few other people, singing along:
I kept Delilah and Fred in my line of sight. She’d lured him in completely; he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. The lights strobed, and Delilah snuck something into his drink. I needed to keep Berenice away from the bar. “Why don’t you sing something? I bet you have a favorite karaoke song.”
She gave me a mischievous look. “Maaaaybe.”
“What is it?” I played along.
“I’ll do it if you promise to dance.”
I nodded enthusiastically and Berenice flipped through the thick song book to find her number. Meanwhile, across the club, Fred was stumbling against Delilah like he was blackout drunk. Motioning to Berenice that I’d be right back, I made a beeline for them.
“Oh look, it’s my friend Enid! Remember Enid, Fred?”
“Sh-sh-good to meeyou…” Fred put his arm around me. “Lesgo honey.”
“Let’s go? Yeah, that’s a good idea, Fred.” Delilah looped his other arm around her shoulder and we practically dragged him into the street. We tried to prop him against the side wall of the club, but he kept sliding down. I caught a glimpse of his mark as his shirt rode up. 2365 C.E.
“Holy shit.” I pointed at it and Delilah’s eyes widened.
“Oh, Fred. You’ve come a long way to meet girls, haven’t you?”
Fred regarded us blearily. “Sno girls… jus mew-mewtalated men.” He grabbed my shirt in a desperate attempt to stay standing. “You know? Do you know? Iss wrong. Sad. Men sh-should have pride. Women serve. Snatural.”
I tried not to recoil in disgust. “What did you give him?”
“A lot of GHB. Mix it with booze and people will melt.” Delilah gave me a hard smile.
“I think you’re right that this is our guy.”
“Great. Can you hold him a sec?” Delilah was rooting around in her purse. “Oh, perfect.” She pulled out something that looked like a scrap of paper, which she folded in half. Now a tiny needle stuck out of the fold, and she quickly jabbed it into Fred’s neck. “You can let go now. Let’s have a drink.”
I heard Fred thump to the ground behind us.
“What was that?”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just say I know a guy in Virginia who is great at causing heart attacks.”
We got back in time to see Berenice take the stage. Her earrings winked stars as she threw her head back and belted out an old Runaways song that sounded new again.
She had a great growling voice, and suddenly all I wanted to do was dance. With each pulse of the disco lights, another memory of Berenice bloomed. We met at a Daughters meeting in 2020; we shared mojitos afterward; she always laughed at my obscure critical theory jokes with genuine appreciation. We kissed for the first time in Powell Library, on the wide sunlit stairway with its worn Spanish tiles. At an applied cultural geology conference in Phnom Penh, we skipped out early to get sugary cakes at Brown Coffee; we played footsie under the table and I looked into her face and knew at that moment that I loved her. We watched a particularly terrible episode of The Geologists on her beaten-up old sofa and decided it made sense to move in together and share my new couch. I jumped up and down, hands in the air, making sure Berenice saw me cheering for her with crazy, intoxicated joy. I couldn’t wait to get back to 2022 and tell her all about it.
THIRTEEN
BETH
Irvine, Alta California (1992 C.E.)… East Los Angeles, Alta California (1992 C.E.)
Now we were murderers for sure. What happened with our teacher Mr. Rasmann wasn’t like with Scott. We hadn’t been surprised or attacked. We’d killed him to get revenge for something he hadn’t even done to us. I don’t think any of us could forget the way we left his body on the floor, ripped up and battered like an old sleeping bag after a summer at Girl Scout camp.
Four days after that night at Mr. Rasmann’s apartment, we met at Lizzy’s house to listen to records. That was the pretext, anyway. All we could talk about was what we’d done.
“I mean, the guy did deserve it. You saw those pictures in his shitty, fucked-up look book—he was molesting girls at our school.” Lizzy was plucking invisible things out of the shag rug on her bedroom floor as she talked. Soojin, Heather, and I drank peach wine coolers we’d stolen from the fridge. Lizzy’s parents were on a trip to Jordan again—some kind of academic conference. Lizzy’s mom had given me an extra-long hug when they left earlier in the evening, and made both of us promise to clean up any “riot grrl ragers” in the works. I couldn’t decide whether it was more embarrassing that she knew the term “riot grrl,” or that she’d used the word “rager” non-ironically.
“I guess, but…” I kept thinking of that strange woman, telling me I didn’t have to do something I’d regret. Then I thought about Mr. Rasmann’s eyeballs and wanted to barf.
Soojin broke in hotly. “He was raping a ton of girls. We had to do something.”
“It’s not like he wasn’t going to do something creepy to us. He probably put Valiums in that booze.” Heather screwed up her face as she contemplated it. “Plus, think of all the other girls we saved. Maybe we even saved their lives. Guys like that start with rape but they become serial killers.” Heather had been obsessed with serial killers ever since the Night Stalker murdered some people in Orange County when we were kids.
“What if we get caught?” I asked. “I don’t think we can say it was self-defense.” I looked expectantly at Lizzy, our decider.
“We’ve got to get our stories straight. We can say he tried to get us drunk and told us to take off our clothes. Which, basically, that was going to happen.”
“But then why didn’t we run away and call the police?” I was dubious.
“I dunno… maybe we reacted in the moment? Or, like, he grabbed one of us?”