Could she possibly have a life? A life, say, where she stayed in one place, and had the same name all the time? A life she might even share with another human being?
Like, for example, Rita?
It seemed ridiculous even to imagine it. She’d never had sex with another woman, never wanted to, never really gave it a thought. Then she and Rita spent one unplanned night, having a weird sort of phoneless phone sex, and the next day she was out of there like a bat out of hell. And since then they’d had real phone sex, which is to say they did it over the phone, telling each other stories, and most recently talking about what they’d do to each other if they ever found themselves under the same roof again.
Would she even want to?
Would it be repulsive to kiss another woman on the mouth? Or on the breasts? Would it turn her on to go down on another woman? Or would it turn her stomach?
She’d done just about everything there was to do with men, and she always enjoyed it. The fact that some people regarded an act as perverted or unnatural never bothered her. For God’s sake, hadn’t she killed a guy, crossed him off her list, and then fucked him one last time? If she could get off doing that, why draw the line at eating pussy?
No, that wasn’t the problem. The sex would be all right. It might be quieter and less exciting if it was girl on girl, but it might just as easily be better.
The question was what came afterward.
With men, there was no question. The bed a man shared with her was his deathbed. As soon as she could arrange it, she whisked him out of the world and wiped him off the slate.
And with women? Would she feel the same compulsion, the same genuine need to take her partner’s life?
Maybe. Maybe not. She could see the logic in either answer.
It was her father’s sexual abuse that sent her down the path she’d been walking all her life. He’d been her first lover, and she’d killed him for it, and all the men since then had been her lovers on the way to becoming her victims. If she slept with a woman, that wouldn’t be her father all over again, would it? Women were different. Women were soft where men were hard, yielding where men were obdurate. Women had never abused her.
And yet…
The first person she ever killed was her mother.
That was something she didn’t think about too often. For some reason it was easy to forget, even as her mother had been an essentially forgettable person. And it was easy, too, to regard her mother’s death as a means to an end. By killing her mother, she set the stage for the murder/suicide the police would discover.
Still, it was hard to pass off matricide as an afterthought. And, no question, she blamed her mother for the abuse. Either the woman deliberately overlooked it or she was willfully obtuse, refusing to see what was right in front of her eyes. She probably welcomed it, because it saved her from the unpleasant duty of satisfying her husband.
Well, she had a lot of ways to look at it. But it was hard to get past the fact that she’d killed the woman, and would she feel a need to kill other women?
She didn’t want that to happen to Rita.
For God’s sake, she had fun with Rita. She enjoyed being with Rita. And it wasn’t just girls being pals, girls dashing off to the bathroom together to talk about which boys were cute and which weren’t.
No, it was sexual. It was sharing sex histories — Jesus, getting her gay hairdresser to teach her how to give a blow job! And it was phone sex without a phone, and then phone sex with a phone, and lots of mutual assurances that there was nothing genuinely lesbian about what they were doing, until they’d passed that point and recognized that it didn’t matter whether their actions made them lesbians. If you were here I’d touch you. If you were here I’d go down on you. Wish you were here…
All she had to do was get on a plane to Seattle. A nice dinner for two in a comfortable suburban house. Rita would cook, she’d bring the wine. Nuits-Saint-Georges, because it had certainly done the job before.
And then what?
What was required, she realized, was an experiment. She had to go to bed with a woman and see what happened. Not what happened in bed, although it would be good to know if the acts repelled or delighted her, but what happened afterward. If she could walk away from her female partner without harming her, and if the woman’s continued existence didn’t drive her crazy, then maybe she and Rita had a chance.
If not, she’d stay the hell away from the whole state of Washington. Because she didn’t want anything bad to happen to Rita. Because, well, she seemed to care about Rita.
Maybe even loved her. Whatever the hell that was, and it wasn’t something to think about, not now. If ever.
First things first. Was there even a lesbian bar in this perfect shithole of a town?
There almost had to be, and it couldn’t be too hard to find. But it would be closed at this hour, and in any case she wasn’t in shape to go cruising. Not in this outfit, not with her hair such a mess, not when she sorely needed a shower. It wouldn’t be hard to pass as a lesbian, dressed and groomed as she was, but it might be tricky to find somebody who’d want to go home with her.
A different outfit, she thought. And her hair fixed in a more becoming fashion, and maybe just a touch of lipstick.
She had to get out of this town. But when?
“Little late to be out walking.”
She’d been aware of the car alongside her but hadn’t paid attention until the driver lowered the window and spoke. She turned her head, took in the dark late-model sedan, the driver’s face hard to make out. And just then the dome light came on, as if a look at him would be reassuring.
And it was, sort of. Forties, jacket and tie, eyeglasses, balding, hair still dark. A little jowly, a little pudgy. A businessman, maybe a corporate guy. A solid citizen, for sure.
“Neighborhood’s coming back,” he went on. “Still, I have to say it’s got a ways to go. Young woman like yourself shouldn’t be walking around at this hour.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“Neither could I. Full moon, gets me every time.” He leaned across the seat, opened the door in invitation.
She had to get out of this town. There might be a lesbian bar here, but there’d be a lesbian bar in another city, and she could go there and get a fresh start. But it was so easy to give in to inertia, to wear the same schlumpy clothes to the same time-killer job, to bring home take-out food to her squalid little room, to put the world on hold while the days turned into weeks.
All she had to do was get in the car and that would change. The back pocket of her jeans held a folding knife, and its four-inch blade was long enough to reach his heart. By the time his body worked its way down to room temperature, she’d be on a bus out of here.
She’d leave because she’d have to leave. That made him her ticket out.
So what was she waiting for?
Not a good idea, a little voice warned her. Say something, or don’t say anything, but turn around and go back to the hotel. Whatever you do, don’t get in the car.
She got into the car.
TWENTY-TWO
“Seat belt,” he said.
He was looking straight ahead, hadn’t glanced at her since he pulled away from the curb. So he’d noticed earlier that she hadn’t fastened her seat belt, but waited until the car was rolling before saying anything.
Because she might have changed her mind and opened the door, but it had locked automatically when the gears engaged. She noted the set of his jaw, the sheen of perspiration on his forehead.
Whatever you do, don’t get in the car.