“I can’t,” he said. “Not until I’m married.”
“But you are married, silly. What do you think we just did?”
He shook his head, held up a hand as if to ward off Satan. “I’m engaged to be married,” he said, “and when my fiancée and I are man and wife in the eyes of the Church, then I will, uh, perform oral sex on her. But I’ve never done that with her, or with anyone else. I can’t, I won’t, I—”
“That’s why you wouldn’t go down on Rita.”
He gaped.
“Yeah, she told me. ‘This gorgeous guy, he’s got a beautiful dick, plus he’s a really great kisser, but he wouldn’t kiss me where it counts.’ But you wanted to, didn’t you?”
“If circumstances had been different—”
“They are. Look, it’s fine for Kellen Kimball to save the tip of his tongue for the girl he’s going to marry. But that’s got nothing to do with you right now, because you’re not Kellen Kimball anymore. Right now you’re Sidney Teibel, and you’re married to me, so you get to have your cake and eat me, too.”
“But—”
She touched herself, dipped her fingers into her wetness, then held her hand to his face. “Can you smell how hot I am for you?”
What was he going to do, hold his breath? He hesitated, then took hold of her wrist, brought her moist fingers to his nose, inhaled her essence.
“That’s me,” she told him. “That’s me, that’s my love for you, Sidney. You breathe me in and part of me becomes a part of you. Open your mouth.”
His lips parted. And it was his hand on her wrist that brought her fingers into his mouth. His lips closed around her fingertips, and he sucked on her fingers like a greedy infant.
“Oh, Sidney,” she said, and arranged herself again on the bed, making room for him to kneel at her feet.
“Oh, yes,” she said “Take your time, Sidney. Eat me good. Make me crazy.”
What he lacked in acquired skill he made up for in enthusiasm. He took hold of her buttocks in his hands and he glued his mouth to her crotch, and he went at her as if for sustenance. If he could have maintained an elementary tempo she’d have gone off in minutes, but he had the natural lack of rhythm of a white boy from Utah, and she kept getting thrown off stride.
Maybe she couldn’t get off, but she could tell he wasn’t more than a few strokes away, just from thrusting against the bedsheet while he worked away at her. Her hand fastened on the knife she’d wedged beneath the mattress. It was a folding stiletto, and she’d tucked it away already opened and ready for use, and she looked down at the back of his head and rehearsed the movement in her mind: lean forward, the arm swinging in a great half-circle, the blade descending...
No.
This wasn’t a game, for God’s sake. The marriage had to be consummated.
She put the knife out of sight, sat up, tugged at his upper arms. “Now!” she cried. “Sid, Sid, I want you inside me. Now!”
He flung himself forward — on her, in her, and she locked her thighs around his hips and met his feverish pelvic thrusts with thrusts of her own. His mouth sought hers and she tasted her own juices. He was right on the brink, and she figured she’d fake an orgasm of her own, timing it to coincide with his, but her body surprised her with a genuine orgasm before she could create a bogus one.
“Oh, Sidney,” she said, as he lay panting on top of her. “Oh, my darling husband. Oh, what could be better than this?”
And almost without effort, and certainly without a second thought, she slipped the knife right between his ribs and into his heart.
Zero.
The first thing she did was take a shower. He had one of those infinitely adjustable shower heads, and she fixed it so that hot water sprayed down on her with great force. His shampoo and conditioner were one of those overpriced signature brands they sold in hair salons, and she used them lavishly, because what good would they do anyone after she left?
Zero.
Nobody left on her list, because while there might be only a single body in the bedroom, slowly working its way from 98.6º to, say, 72º on the Fahrenheit scale, Kellen Kimball wasn’t the only man who’d just died. He’d also been Sid, the man she met on Race Street, the man who took her to bed in Philadelphia and never paid the price.
Until now. Now he was dead, and she’d killed him.
Oh, not literally. She wasn’t delusional, she knew what she’d done and to whom she’d done it. But she also knew that Kellen Kimball was a Mormon, that he’d participated in proxy baptisms, and if a proxy baptism could get some dead guy into heaven, why couldn’t a proxy marriage get Sid off her list? Yes, she’d killed Kellen — but the same thrust of the knife had killed Sid as well. And if there was a real living and breathing Sid out there, well, so what? Because in her own little world he was a dead man.
She got out of the shower, finally, and used two of his towels to dry herself. There’d been a third towel, the one he’d wrapped himself in, the one that had hidden his hard-on-in-progress when he returned to her. His sport shirt and chinos were folded on top of the lidded toilet, along with his socks and underpants, and she carried them to the bedroom and arranged them on the chair next to the bed.
She thought there ought to be another article of clothing, and she found it on a hook behind the bathroom door, a single white cotton affair with some marks on it that might have been Nordic runes, or perhaps Masonic symbols. This, she knew from her Internet research, was his Mormon garment, to be worn beneath his clothes at all times, for reasons the Internet had been unable to explain all that coherently.
Should she put it on him? It was constructed like a jumpsuit, except without arms or legs. Sort of like a clumsy and loose-fitting leotard. No cinch to get a live person into it, and sure to be trickier still with a dead one.
Never mind. He seemed a safe candidate for Mormon heaven, whatever sort of place that might prove to be, and she didn’t figure he needed to be wearing his garment to get in.
She went through his wallet. His cash came to less than a hundred dollars, but she took it all the same. If there was any more money hidden in his apartment, she certainly couldn’t find it.
She took the knife. She’d bought it in Provo, in a sporting goods store, and the clerk might remember the sale. Not that it mattered — plenty of people had seen her with Kellen, in Dragon’s Keep and the juice bar and on the streets of Provo, and they could describe her to the cops, and what good would that do them? A pretty young woman in a skirt and blouse. So?
Still, she held the knife under running water for a few minutes, then closed it and stowed it in her purse. She added the ring from her finger and went back for the one she’d placed on Kellen’s. The rings and the knife could all go in a storm drain, or could as easily be abandoned in some public place where they’d be quickly scooped up and carried off by new owners.
She left, and locked the door after herself. With any luck at all, she’d be long gone before anyone unlocked that door, or broke it down.
Unfinished Business
“The Sumatra Blue Batak Tarbarita Peaberry,” the man said. “Could you describe that for me?”
It’s coffee, she thought. From Sumatra. What more do you need to know?
“Well, it’s a sort of medium roast,” she said. “And it has a good deal of body. I would say that it’s assertive without being overbearing.”
He nodded encouragement. He had a high forehead and an academic presence, the latter reinforced by his clothing — an olive-brown corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches, owlish glasses with heavy tortoiseshell frames, clean jeans, chukka boots. A strip of lighter skin on the appropriate finger showed he’d once worn a wedding ring. But the lighter skin was starting to blend in, so he’d stopped wearing it a while ago.