“I killed the ones in Oslo, too. They weren’t real people. No one is. Was. So I killed them, but not before they—Anyway, she died. And I haven’t thought about them, the killers that I killed, not really.” I ran my fingers down the bullet track. Physical pain was easy to deal with. “The people I’ve killed were just objects, things to be removed. They only mattered as far as how they affected me. Everything, everyone used to be like that. Not anymore. Do you understand?”
She shook her head.
“She opened me, and now it’s all different. I feel different. I do things differently, like with Karp.”
“You still haven’t told me about that.”
“I don’t understand why I did it. I don’t understand it at all. Rage. I’ve never felt it before, not really.”
She looked skeptical.
“Mostly I would feel a kind of disgust, and irritation. I would look at them and think, You’re in my way, and I’d move them aside. Like moving a chair.” I thought about it. “Or like twisting the barrel of a rifle, breaking it so it can’t be used against you. I felt some annoyance, maybe. Not rage. People weren’t worth getting angry about.”
Neither of us said anything for a minute. It should have been getting warmer by now.
“You’re not wearing your watch,” I said.
She glanced at the pale band around her wrist. “No.” Silence. “So I still don’t know what happened with Karp.”
“It was Julia. A woman who looked like her. Except she didn’t, not really. It just—I was thinking about her, then I came out of his loft, and there they were. She ran. I hit him so he couldn’t breathe, took all the fight from him, then dragged him into the elevator and hit him again. Beat him. Hands, elbows, knees, feet.” My bones began to fill with lead again. I felt heavy enough to sink through the bed, through the floor of the trailer, into the dirt.
After a moment she said, “Did it hurt him?”
“Yes.” My knee hurt so much I couldn’t think. “Something’s burning.”
She jumped up, ran into the kitchen. “Shit.” She turned off the stove and came and sat down again. “That’s it for the soup.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Knee?”
“Yes.”
“There’s always the Vicodin.”
I was talking anyway. I nodded tiredly. The bed shifted as she leaned, handed me pills and glass.
The water was cold, and ached all the way down my gullet. “She loved me. She wouldn’t now, not like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like this.” I thumped the mattress. “If she were here she’d say he was a monster who would have just kept hurting people, and that he deserved what he got. She’d probably even try to believe it, but—” If I wanted, I could remember every creak and pop and spatter.
“So now you’re saying he wasn’t a monster?”
“No, he was. Is.”
“Okay. Then you think he wouldn’t have kept hurting people?”
“Of course he would have kept doing it!”
“Don’t yell. I told you you’d get mean if you didn’t take those pills. I’m just trying to figure this out. Geordie Karp was a sick son of a bitch and I’m glad you hurt him. He probably deserved everything he got.”
“Yes, but how do you stand it, every day, not being sure? Even you’re saying ‘probably.’ I never used to feel this way.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You used to kill people and not care about it much one way or another. But you’re upset about Geordie—even though he’s not dead, and even though you hurt him for a good reason. Yes? You’re upset that you feel when you practically kill someone?” She waited for my nod. “You don’t think that’s an improvement?”
“She said that I was like Karp.” That I used to be. That I pretended to be.
“She said—?” She cleared her throat. “So she died, when?”
“Five months and four days ago.” And a few hours: it had been midafternoon.
“And you saw Geordie for the first time in New York just this week.”
I nodded, shivered.
“But you said she told you—That she said you were like Geordie.” I shook my head. “Someone else said that?”
“No. She just asked me who he reminded me of.”
“And that was… when?”
“Three days ago.” Or two, or four, or whenever I’d been under the trees.
“That’s who was in the woods, wasn’t it? You see Julia.”
“Yes.”
Silence. Then she said, “What’s that like?” and my muscles locked up. Nothing worked, except my eyes. I wept soundlessly. I couldn’t even turn away.
She got up, sat down again, stared some more, and after a while hitched herself closer and pulled me awkwardly to her chest. She didn’t say anything, just stroked my head. The touch of her hand was like someone taking an axe to a dam; I wrapped my arms around her waist and keened. I hated her for not being Julia, but I couldn’t let go, and I couldn’t stop. Her hand went on stroking my head, and I wanted to shout, Stop! No! This is mine!, but that touch just kept widening the breach.
“She’ll never see this place,” I said. “You have, but she never will. I’ve never seen her grave. I should have stayed, in Atlanta. Should have helped her mother. Seen to her things.” Her clothes still lying on the floor in front of my washing machine.
It was getting dark out, and quiet. Tammy shifted, the couch creaked; her shoulders looked tight and tired. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, smearing the ointment. I didn’t want to talk anymore.
“I think I can make it to my own bed, if you help. The bathroom first.”
I used the toilet again, brushed my teeth, paused in the middle of wiping my mouth with the towel. It wasn’t my face anymore. It wasn’t just the smudges under my eyes, the smears of antibiotic, the scab. The muscles moved differently, as though someone else’s bones were trying to emerge.
CHAPTER TEN
Morning. I hobbled out of bed, made coffee, took it and the blood-stained folder to the table. Tammy was still asleep. I leafed through the documents. The pictures. The medical evaluation. The passport, the birth certificate and certificate of adoption. Karp was the legal adoptive father. No mention of permanent residency application, and the visitor’s visa had expired. I had no idea what the INS would make of that. No mention of the Arkansas couple on any official paperwork, though I found check stubs I had missed the first time around, records of bimonthly payments to J. Carpenter. There was no photo of either Jud or Adeline Carpenter, no hint of their age or anything but the fact that they were “good Christians who believed in old-fashioned family values,” and some details about the congregation they belonged to. What would they do now that Karp was permanently out of the picture and the money supply dried up? What would happen to the child?
I pushed it all to one side, took my coffee to the door, and opened it. It was a bright, cold morning. The season had shifted. The vibrant color of a week ago had faded and everywhere I looked bare branches poked through the threadbare tapestry. Careful of my strapped and swollen knee, I propped myself more securely against the doorframe. My coffee and breath steamed. During the night, fog had frozen on the fallen leaves and spiky turf, riming the world in sparkling hoarfrost. Something small had left tracks across the gray carpet, and while I watched the tracks expanded as the sun warmed the ground. Where a bird had hopped about on the hood of the rented Neon, bright green showed through.
“How’s your knee?”
I turned awkwardly. Tammy looked tired and frowsy in her pile of blankets.
“It’ll take my weight. But I’ll have to keep it strapped for a while. Coffee’s hot.”