“Because she was dead.”
“And her death made his suicide plausible. It gave him a reason. I don’t know, maybe there was another way to handle it. But this was the only one I could come up with.”
“And it worked. No, don’t take your hand away, I want your fingers in me. Unless your hand is bothering you.”
“No.”
“You could move your fingers if you wanted. Just a little, so they don’t cramp up on you. Oh, that’s just so nice. Darling? When you told me about the man in New York, the one you had to shoot.”
“Yes.”
“You told me how it felt.”
“This was different,” he said. “It wasn’t thrilling.”
“No.” He took a moment to review the memory. “There was no feeling attached to any of it,” he said. “A little revulsion, I suppose, but it was off to the side and out of the way. I was aware of it after the fact, but I didn’t have time to pay any attention to it while it was going on. I had these things I had to do and I was doing them.”
“Checking them off the list.”
“Sort of. Working hard to get them done right.”
He took a breath. You don’t have to say this, he told himself. Took another breath. Yes, you do.
He said, “Before I went over there, I ran it through my imagination.”
“Like a visualization exercise.”
“I suppose so. And I thought it would be exciting. I got hard at the thought of taking hold of her, and doing her.”
“Strangling her.”
“Strangling her. And then it was as I described it. Passionless, robotic. That’s while it was going on. Afterward it was—”
“Awful.”
“Worse than awful.”
“It’s over now, baby.”
“I know.”
“You can let go of it. That’s what we’re doing, we’re letting go of it.”
He nodded. “But first,” he said, “I have to tell you about Roberta Ellison.”
“I don’t know who that is. Oh, wait! Pregnant Girl? Don’t tell me you went back to see her after all? You did! Oh, I want to hear this. Did you get to fuck her?”
He told her the stratagem he’d used, making sure the little boy had gone up for his nap. Told her how he’d noticed perfume on his return, known the opportunity was there for him. Told her how he’d shocked the woman (“Do you suppose he eats her pussy?”) and manipulated her until she led him upstairs.
He lay beside her, facing her, breathing her breath, sharing her body heat beneath the blanket, keeping his fingers tucked snugly inside her. The earlier narrative had been dry and clinical, but he recounted this episode as it had happened, and as he talked she began moving against his hand, moving around his fingers, making little sounds deep in her throat.
When she’d caught her breath she said, “Oh, baby, if she had half as good a time as I did just now, she’s got to be the happiest Milf around.”
“I left something out,” he said.
“That’s okay, darling. That’s a super bedtime story and I won’t mind hearing it again the next time you tell it to me. And just think of all the bedtime stories you’ll get to tell me. Years and years of stories.”
“Think so?”
She propped herself up on an elbow. “Oh, I do,” she said. “Isn’t that what you want? For us to be together?”
“Of course.”
“I’m still Fantasy Girl, right?”
“Right.”
“Because otherwise what’s the fucking point? You know?”
“I know.”
“We got away with it, and I’m a rich widow. And for a while I’ve got to go on being a rich widow living on Rumsey Road, and you’ve got to be an ex-cop on Osprey Drive. But there’ll come a time when it’s okay for us to meet.”
“We already met.”
“At the Baron? Oh, when I thought you were a hit man. Who knows about that? Just Bill Radburn? Okay, so in a couple of weeks you come to the Baron again, and we’ll flirt a little. And the next day you have a beer with the sheriff and tell him you saw me at the Baron and I didn’t even recognize you from the Winn-Dixie lot, and we sort of hit it off, and you were thinking of asking me out. And you’re a little hesitant, and what does he think, and he tells you to go for it.”
“And we start seeing each other.”
“And it’s a perfectly dignified courtship, because they don’t have to see the part where we’re fucking each other’s brains out in a rented time share somewhere.”
“And we get married,” he said.
“When the time’s right. If you think you’d want to be married to me. If I’m still Fantasy Girl.”
“You’ll always be Fantasy Girl.”
“Then I don’t see a problem. I don’t want to live in that fucking house of his. I’m glad I get to own it, but I’ll be way happier when I get to sell it. If we stay in the area I’d just as soon keep my job, but we don’t have to. We could live anywhere. Do you care where we live?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. I’m not rich-rich, but I’ll always have some money, and you’ve got your pension—”
“Whoopee.”
“No, really. We’ve got enough to be comfortable, and that’s plenty.” She stopped, looked at him. “I’m chattering away, all excited, and you’re not. Is something wrong?”
“I have to tell you the rest of the story,” he said.
And he told her how his hands had found Pregnant Girl’s pale throat, and how his excitement had built with the urge to apply pressure.
“I wanted to kill her,” he said. “I don’t know how close I came. How do you measure that sort of distance? I know my hands were ready, they wanted so much to tighten their grip that it was almost impossible to hold them back.”
“And then what happened?”
“I let go of her throat.”
“Where did you put your hands?”
“On her stomach.”
“And the urge you’d felt—”
“Passed.”
“And now you can’t stop thinking about it.”
“That’s right.”
“And you had to tell me so I’ll know to be afraid of you.”
“Something like that.”
“Give me a minute, let me think. Okay. Put your hands on my neck.”
“The hell I will.”
“The hell you won’t. I’m serious, baby. Okay, you’re on your side, and I’m going to lie facing away from you, and I want you to put your hands on my throat. God damn it, Doak, just do it, will you please? Now how do you feel?”
“Sick to my stomach.”
“Are you excited?”
“I just told you, I’m—”
“Sick to your stomach. Do you want to wring my neck?”
“Jesus, Lisa—”
“Because you can, you know. You’re bigger and stronger and I’m not even struggling, I’m just lying here. Is it exciting that I’m helpless?”
“No.”
“You can move your hands now. Do what you did with her, hold my stomach. It doesn’t pooch out and you’re not likely to feel anything kicking, but hold me anyway. Baby, I’m not afraid of you. You’re not gonna kill me.”
And later she said, “I’m glad you insisted on telling me the rest of the story. And I’m glad I made you put your hands on my throat. It’s good to have all of that out of the way. Everything’s gonna work out for us, you know.”
“I’m beginning to believe it.”
“But we still have some big issues to deal with. Like, do you think I should let my hair grow long again?”
“I like it like this.”
“So do I. See? Some big issues, and we just settled one of them. Everything’s working out.”