“What did you do?”
“What do you think? I got out of there. I just grabbed my coat and ran.”
“Out of the house.”
“I would have run out of the state if I knew the way. I just took off like a maniac. I got all the way over to your house before I remembered you weren’t home.”
“Where was I? Oh, right. Visiting Aunt Claire.”
“Then I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to go to the movies but I didn’t have any money with me so I couldn’t. I wound up at the library. I couldn’t find anything very interesting but each time I started to go home I thought of Roberta and went looking for another book.”
“And while you were at the library—”
“She was killing herself.”
“How did she do it, exactly?”
“She had these tranquilizers and I guess she took a lot of them first. Then she closed herself up in the kitchen and shut the door and everything and turned the gas on.”
“You mean the stove?”
She nodded. “She shut off all the pilot lights and then turned on the stove and the oven. And I think she put her head in the oven, or maybe I’m mixing it up with Sylvia Plath.”
“The one who wrote those poems named Ariel? I’ll have to get that book one of these days.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Well, just to see what it’s like. I thought she killed herself in her car.”
“No, she put her head in the oven.”
“Are you sure? I read something about her. I thought she sat in her car in the garage with the motor running.”
Ariel looked at him, then at the portrait on the wall. “I’m pretty sure it was the oven,” she said. “Anyway, we don’t have a garage.”
He stared hard at her, his eyes protruding behind his glasses. Then he said, “Who found her? David?”
“Uh-huh. They’d taken her away by the time I got home.”
“Jesus. Ariel? How do you feel about it?”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how I feel about it, if you want to know. I suppose it’ll take me a week or so before I figure out how I really feel.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I mean, will I miss her? We didn’t get along very well but maybe I’ll wind up missing her all the same. How can I tell for sure?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
“That’s right.”
He studied her. “You’ve changed,” he said.
“How?”
“I don’t know exactly. You seem older.”
“Really?”
“You even look different. Your face.” He nodded at the portrait. “More like her.”
“You really think so?”
“Yeah... Ariel?”
“What?”
“You didn’t do it, did you?”
“Didn’t do what?”
His eyes drew away from hers. “You didn’t just happen to kill her, did you? Like in a dream?”
She stared at him.
“Just kidding,” he said.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Sure, that’s just what I did. First I smothered Caleb in his sleep, never mind that I happened to love him, and then I took a car and ran over Graham, and then I fixed it so Veronica got leukemia—”
“Is that what she’s got?”
Her eyes flared. “I don’t know what she’s got. But whatever it is I gave it to her, right? And then I shot Debbie Channing and Greta Channing and his wife, I don’t remember her name—”
“Elaine.”
“I don’t care what her name was. Then I shot her, and then I put him in his car and shot him, and then I made Roberta take pills and put her head in the oven. What kind of a person do you think I am?”
“Ariel, I was kidding!”
“You’re supposed to be my friend. How could you say a thing like that?”
“I said I was kidding.”
“That’s no way to kid.”
“I’m sorry. Ariel? Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Yes you are.”
“Only dogs get mad.”
“Well, don’t be angry.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Ariel?”
“I’m not angry,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He reached for her hand. At first it lay lifeless in his. Then she returned his squeeze and both of them relaxed.
“Hey, Ariel?”
“What?”
“How do you make a dead baby float?”
“What?”
“I said, how do you make a dead baby float?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s a riddle. How do you make—”
“A dead baby float. I don’t know.”
“You give up?”
“All right, I give up.”
“Well, it’s easy,” he said. “You take one dead baby, two scoops of vanilla ice cream, some chocolate syrup—”
“Gross,” she said.
“—and some soda water, and a maraschino cherry—”
“Utterly gross and disgusting,” she said, but then she started to giggle, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop.