“Have a fight with you girlfriend, whatsername-Ronda?”
“Ronnie. No, not exactly.”
“Ronnie.” She smirked. “Sounds like a boy’s name.”
Calvin shrugged. Normally he would have stood up for his girlfriend if someone were to say something like that, but he had other things on his mind. He looked at his cell phone. It was still off.
“Want something to drink?” said Calvin.
“Sure. What do you got?”
“Some beer in the fridge, some vodka.”
“Vodka.”
“Shots or you want me to mix it with something.”
“I’ll do some shots, but only if you do some with me.”
“Coming right up.”
Calvin went into the kitchen to retrieve the vodka and a pair of shot glasses. On his meager wages he was pretty much a bottom shelf kind of guy. He didn’t drink much more than a few beers at night to take the edge off, but he liked to keep some hard stuff handy just in case.
Calvin lingered in the kitchen for a moment before returning to the living room. His eyes went to the knife block on the counter. No, too messy. He looked around for something else. There was twine in the junk drawer, but what could he do with that?
Reentering the living room, Calvin set the bottle and shot glasses on the coffee table. He poured a shot for Celia and one for himself.
“I’m not a big vodka drinker,” she said, “but I never say no to a drink. Not as bad as whiskey, at least. That, I cannot stand. Especially scotch. Yuck. People say it’s so good, but… I don’t know. Not my thing.”
“Me neither. You want something to chase that with. I’m gonna have a beer. I don’t do shots without a chaser.”
Celia picked up her shot and downed it. She swallowed and made a face almost like she’d sucked on a lemon, and then said, “No, I don’t need no stinking chaser.”
“Suit yourself.”
Calvin searched the open fridge for something he could use, anything, but what was he going to do, smash her in the head with a jar of pickles. Too messy and what if the jar broke? There’d be pickle juice all over the damn place.
Calvin grabbed a beer. He was having a hell of a time with this. As much as he told himself to go with it, like both Hazel and Mr. Ghastly had told him, he was nervous about killing Celia. It was what Mr. Ghastly wanted, what would elevate him to the next level of his training, but the struggle, the inability to find a proper weapon, was killing him.
I should be killing her.
Back in the living room he took a shot chased with beer. He figured the liquor would help him go with it, as Hazel and Ghastly had said. If only he could lose his inhibitions a bit he just might be able to go through with this.
“Chicken,” said Celia with a sly smirk, maybe even a sexy smirk.
Damn, everything about this woman exudes eroticism.
“What do you mean?”
“Gotta have a chaser. That’s chicken, right? Better yet, that’s a party foul.”
“Party foul? What is this, high school?”
“You know what a party foul is, right?”
“Uh, I guess. I sorta remember getting punched in the arm a few times for stuff like that, but I didn’t really hang out with people who enforced the whole party foul thing.”
“That’s boy shit. When you’re with me a party foul means you have to do something I ask of you.”
Jesus, where’s this gonna go?
“I want you to take your shirt off.”
Calvin’s eyebrows rose. “You kidding me?”
“It’s a party foul. If I have a party foul you can make me do whatever you want.”
I bet I could.
Though he wasn’t crazy about it, Calvin took off his shirt. He immediately took another shot and had the beer to his lips when he realized what he was doing and put it back on the table. He swallowed the firewater and felt like he was going to vomit. His eyes watered and he had to swallow repeatedly before the feeling went away. As soon as he thought it was safe, he took a swig of his beer and kept a hold on it.
“Almost had another party foul,” said Celia with a flash of her devilish grin.
She was enjoying this way too much.
Calvin was beginning to resent Celia more than normal. “You better not have a party foul,” he said. “I’ve got something in store for you.”
Celia poured herself another shot. She brought it up to her lips and downed it. She said, “Maybe next time I’ll grab a beer and chase it just to see what you’ve got in mind.”
“Now that wouldn’t be a party foul, would it? Can’t be a foul if you’re doing it on purpose.”
She shrugged. “Party foul’s a party foul. Some of us are gluttons for punishment.”
Calvin nodded.
He could feel the liquor hit his bloodstream, the affect of which was far more singular that downing beer, and he wasn’t a big drinker when he did drink. A couple brewskis at night did the trick. Drinking shots would throw him for a loop if he didn’t watch out.
“I have to use the restroom,” Calvin said. “You can find something to listen to if you like. I’ve got Music Choice on the TV. In the five-hundreds.”
Without hesitation, Celia reached over the coffee table and grabbed the remote, bending down more than necessary, showing off her cleavage.
Calvin locked the bathroom door once inside. He didn’t have to use the toilet, just needed a reason to get away from her. It was driving him nuts having her in his apartment. Try as he might, he couldn’t let himself go. The words of Hazel and Mr. Ghastly bounced around his mind like rogue pinballs and there was nothing he could do to change the way he felt, and what he felt was that he wanted to get Celia out of his goddamned apartment. She didn’t belong there.
More importantly, he didn’t think he could kill her, and that’s what he had to do.
I can’t kill her. What am I gonna do with the body? Where am I gonna go? What about the cops? Who? What? Where? When?
He knew exactly where he would go. He would go to the Museum of Death, that’s where he would go. He’d live there with Hazel, and… And then what? That, he didn’t know. What was Hazel going to do? What was her plan?
Heart palpitating, Calvin had to steady himself and take a deep breath. He could go out there and tell Celia she had to leave. She would be upset, but she would be alive and Calvin could go to sleep without something horrible on his conscience. Then again, if she were to leave he would be letting Mr. Ghastly down.
He would be letting Hazel down.
Why do I care about Hazel so much anyway? I hardly know her.
The sound of various music stations came through the door: funk, rap, disco, new wave. He caught glimpses of songs, but not enough to recognize any one artist or group. Celia must have had a good ear for music. That or she was determined to find a specific station, because she was plowing through the channels. Probably looking for slow jams.
Calvin looked in the mirror. The flesh was the same, but something in the eyes was off, something inside the eyes. Some people call eyes the window to the soul, but Calvin didn’t really know what that meant. Was the soul in the brain? Was that the implication? He kind of thought that maybe the soul resided in the heart, and that the brain was the control center of the body. The more he thought about it, it seemed kind of stupid to think the soul was in the heart. Sounded like a romanticized view of human anatomy.
What he saw though the windows of his eyes was menacing, evil, what he would have called Manson eyes had he seen the same in the eyes of an adversary, or even someone he made eye contact with in passing. It was madness he saw in his eyes, but it was restrained. Perhaps what Hazel and Mr. Ghastly had been trying to get him to do was to unleash that madness. Let it go.