It took me by surprise, and I blinked stupidly. “Um,” I said. “I don’t know.” I looked around the room for a clue that wasn’t there. “I don’t see any board games,” I said.
“Damn,” Jackie said. “I could really go for a good round of Monopoly.” She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to one side. “So, what would you do if you were at home? With your wife and kids?”
“Oh, probably watch TV,” I said.
Jackie made a face. “Yuck,” she said, and I must have looked surprised, because she laughed. “I know,” she said. “But just because I make TV shows doesn’t mean I have to like them.”
“It doesn’t?” I said, and it was really sort of hard to imagine. I mean, I enjoy my job-both of them, in fact. Why else would I do them?
“No,” Jackie said. “I mean, there’s some good stuff now and then. But mostly, I’d rather stare at the wall. In fact, I usually can’t tell the difference.” She shrugged. “It’s the business. You do an awful lot of crap, just to get into a position where you get a chance at something worth doing. But then you get a reputation as somebody who’s really good at doing crap, and the good stuff never comes along, and the money is too good to turn down.… Eh,” she said, spreading her hands in a what-the-hell gesture. “It’s a good life. No complaints.” She frowned and was silent for a moment, and then she shook herself and said, “Hey, look at me. Sliding back into the dumps again.” She clapped her hands together. “Fuck it. How about a nightcap?” And without waiting for an answer she disappeared into her bedroom.
I stood uncertainly for a moment, wondering whether I was supposed to follow her. Before I could decide, she came back out, holding a bottle in her hands. “Get a couple of glasses,” she said, nodding at the sideboard. “You know, tumblers.”
I followed her nod to the large silver tray that stood on the table beneath a mirror. It held a silver ice bucket with silver tongs, four wineglasses, and four tumblers. I took two tumblers and joined Jackie on the couch. She set the bottle reverently on the coffee table and I looked at it as I sat. It was a very nice bottle, with a large wooden stopper on top and a palm tree etched onto the front, and it was filled with a brown liquid.
“What is it?” I asked politely.
Jackie smiled. “Panamonte,” she said. “The best dark rum I ever tasted.”
“Oh,” I said. “Should I get some ice?”
Jackie gave me a look of mock horror. “Oh, my God, no,” she said. “Putting ice in this stuff is a capital crime.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know much about rum. Except the kind you mix with Coke.”
Jackie shook her head vigorously. “This ain’t it,” she said. “Mixing this with anything is like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.” She pulled the cork out of the bottle and poured a little rum into each tumbler. “Try it,” she said. She picked up both glasses, passing me one and raising the other in front of her face. “Sláinte,” she said.
“Salud,” I told her.
I sipped. It was not at all what I’d expected. I have never been a real Drinker, but there are times when Social Custom demands that you drink, and so I have from time to time, and I usually don’t like it. And I have found that most brown liquors that are served after dinner are smoky, with a sharp taste that I don’t like, no matter how much someone insists that it is very rare and the best ever, and I have never been a real fan of such things. But this was like nothing I’d ever tried before. It was sweet but not cloying, dark and rich and crisp, and probably the smoothest thing I’d ever tasted. “Wow,” I said. It seemed like the only appropriate thing to say.
Jackie sipped from her glass and nodded. “Yup,” she said, and for several minutes we just sat and sipped.
The rum seemed to take the dark edge off things for Jackie. She visibly relaxed as the level in her glass went down. To my surprise, I did, too. I suppose it was only natural; as I said, I am not a drinker, and I’d already had a mojito and several glasses of wine this evening. I probably should have been worried that all the alcohol would make me too dopey to be really effective as a bodyguard. But I didn’t feel drunk, and it would have been a shame to spoil the experience of sitting on a couch and drinking rare dark rum with a celebrity. So I didn’t: I sat; I enjoyed; I drank the rum slowly, savoring each sip.
Jackie finished hers first and reached for the bottle. “More?” she said, holding it toward me.
“I probably shouldn’t,” I said. She shrugged and poured a splash into her glass. “But it’s very good,” I said. “I’ll have to get a bottle.”
She laughed. “Good luck,” she said. “You won’t find it at the corner store.”
“Oh,” I said. “Where do you get it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “This was a gift.” She lifted her glass in a half toast and sipped. She rolled it around in her mouth for a moment and then put the glass back down. “Those letters,” she blurted. “They scare the shit out of me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I mean, why?” she said, hunched over and staring down into the glass. “What did I do to make him hate me?”
“He doesn’t hate you,” I said.
Jackie looked up. “He’s trying to kill me,” she said.
“That’s not hate,” I said. “In his own way, he actually loves you.”
“Jesus fuck,” she said. She looked back down at the glass. “I think I’d rather have hate next time.” She picked up the glass and sipped, and then swung her eyes to me. “How come you understand this rotten psycho bastard so good?” she said.
I suppose it was a fair question, but it was an awkward one, too. If I told her the truth-I understood him because I was a rotten psycho bastard, too-it would seriously undermine our relationship, which would have been a shame. So I shrugged and said, “Oh, you know.” I took a small sip from my glass. “It’s like you were saying before. It’s kind of like acting.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. She didn’t sound convinced, and she didn’t look away from me. “Thing is, in acting, you find a piece of the character inside your own self. You expand it, you shape it a little, but it has to be in there or you don’t get the job done.” She took a small sip, still looking at me over the rim of the tumbler. “So what you’re really saying is, there’s something inside you”-she tipped the glass at me-“that is like this crazy asshole.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “So? Is there?” She sipped. “You got a killer in there, Dexter?”
I looked at her with astonishment, and deep in Dexter’s Dungeon I could feel the Passenger squirming with discomfort. I have lived my life among cops, people who spend every waking hour hunting down predators like me. I have worked among them for years, for my entire professional life, and not a single one of them had ever had the faintest misgiving about Dexter’s snow-white character. Only one of them, in fact-Dear Sergeant Doakes-had ever suspected that I am what I am. And yet, here was Jackie-a TV actress, of all things! — asking me point-blank if there was a Wicked Other inside me, behind Dexter’s carefully crafted smile.
I was too amazed to speak, and no amount of sipping could cover the growing, horribly awkward silence as I groped for something to say. Short of admitting she was right, or denying everything and calling for a lawyer, nothing occurred to me.
“Cat got your tongue?” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “Just … just … more like rum got my tongue.” I lifted the glass. “I’m not used to this stuff,” I said, sounding rather lame even to myself.
“Uh-huh,” Jackie said. “But you’re not answering my question, either.”
She was very insistent for someone who should have been a mental lightweight, and I began to wonder whether I had been too quick to decide I liked her. She was clearly not going to accept any cautiously phrased evasions, and that left Dexter somewhat on the ropes. But I am renowned for my conversational quick feet, and seldom at a loss. In this case, I decided that the best defense really was an all-out cavalry charge, so I put down my glass and turned fully toward her.