He swung out another, placing it next to his, but I ignored the gesture and went to the other side of the table, opposite him, and pulled up a chair. We both sat, facing each other, Jones with a shrug and a disarmingly rueful smile.
“What would you like for breakfast?” he asked.
“Whatever you’re having,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim black object, putting it on the table. While he held it in place with his left hand, he jabbed his middle right-hand finger at it repeatedly, then stopped. He looked up at me. “On the way,” he said genially. He put the black thing back in his pocket.
A discreet chime sounded. Jones rose and went to a cabinet on the wall behind him. When he opened it I could see two plates of food sitting there. A mouthwatering aroma wafted out with the steam. I realized how hungry I was.
Jones set one plate in front of me and one at his place and turned back to get two cups of what smelled like first-rate coffee. I stood up and reached across the table to swap our plates.
He saw me doing it and laughed heartily. I was starting to truly hate his laughter. “They’re exactly the same,” he said, still laughing at me. “I don’t care which one I have.” And to prove it, he picked up a fork and took his first bite of his eggs.
A large omelet, slices of toast, sausages, coffee — it was a decent breakfast and I ate all of it. I also drank all my coffee, after switching cups while Jones watched, grinning. I drank it black because Jones did.
When I put down my fork on my empty plate he asked me, “Feeling better now? How about a smile?”
“I’m no longer hungry,” I said, “but I don’t feel like smiling at you.”
“You did last night,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
“What are you talking about?”
“Last night. I made you happy then.”
I pushed to my feet, the chair catching on the rug and falling over. I didn’t care. “You miserable smug bastard!” I glared at him. “You raped me. You raped me!”
“I didn’t,” he said, shaking his head but still smiling. “You loved it. I had trouble keeping up with you. So demanding!”
I stared at him. I couldn’t believe his gall, his calm denial.
“What’s the matter? Didn’t I measure up to your usual lovers? You told me I was better than Jonny.” The words seemed to ooze out of him.
“You lie,” I told him. “You drugged me and you raped me. You are the first man to ever sex me.”
His mouth dropped open, the phony smile gone at last.
“Your first?” A sly look spread across his face. “You were a virgin? Delightful! Well, good thing that’s behind you now. You should thank me. You will thank me.”
I sighed. A total disconnect. I picked up the chair and returned it to its spot at the wall.
“I started to ask you last night — in the car,” I said. “What’s your first name?”
“My first name? Euclid. Euclid Jones.” He mock-bowed. “At your service. And yours is Nicole, isn’t it?”
He seemed happy with the change of subject. Like what he had done to me the night before had no consequences, no real meaning. And like my moving on to something totally different was the most natural thing in the world. I felt cold inside.
“No. Jonny told you, but you got it wrong. It’s Nikola. Do you — did you have a daughter?”
“Why do you ask?”
“That room, that was a girl’s room.”
He gave me a lazy smile. “It is a girl’s room.”
“Whose?”
“It could be yours. Think about it. You said you needed a place.” He gave me a considering look. “We’ll have to get rid of that body hair — your underarms, your legs...”
I didn’t want to go there. “How many of those books have you read?” I gestured through the doorway to his big front room.
“Most. Well, some. I inherited them with the apartment.” Another smile. “I’ll call you Nicky.”
“Show me. I love books.” Nobody calls me Nicky.
He led the way to the front room and the books. “What would you like to see?”
I looked around and noticed his tab where he’d left it the night before. The display screen was blank. No more IQ test. No longer needed, I guessed.
“What’s up there?” I gestured at the upper shelves, which held fat volumes that looked like sets of books, uniformly bound.
“Let’s see,” he said, sliding the ladder over to the area I’d pointed out, and mounting it with lithe grace, totally confident of himself.
I waited until he was reaching to his right to pull free a book, complaining that these books were wedged in and hard to pull out, leaning over the edge of the ladder. Then I yanked the ladder hard to his left.
As I’d hoped, he lost his balance, dropping the book to the floor, flailing with his arms and falling. What I hadn’t expected was that his left leg got entangled with the ladder, between the rungs, causing him to hit the floor headfirst with a solid thud.
I approached him with my knife out. His leg was still hooked in the ladder, his head and shoulders on the floor. His head seemed to be at an awkward angle.
His eyes followed me, but the rest of him didn’t move.
I nudged his body with my foot. No resistance, limp.
“I think you broke your neck. What do you think?”
He blinked at me, rapidly. Then a tear formed at the corner of his left eye. His lips seemed to quiver, but no words came out. He was breathing shallowly.
“I can’t leave you like this,” I told him.
He blinked slowly.
I gestured with my knife. “I’m gonna have to kill you,” I said. “That was my intention anyway.”
His lips opened, formed an O.
“Why? You’re wondering why I want to kill you?” I laughed, a short humorless bark. The first and last time he would hear me laugh.
“I want to kill you because you’re such a clueless arrogant fool.”
He blinked several times.
“I want to kill you because you’re the enemy — an enabler of the fire troopers, a user of girls.”
I wanted him to argue with me, to defend himself, to justify himself, but he said nothing. Not even his lips moved now. But he was looking directly at me, giving me his full attention.
“But most of all I want to kill you because you stole from me the only thing I had left that I valued. You raped me. And you didn’t even care.” I wanted to work myself up into a rage, but instead I felt a cold knot forming within me.
He closed his eyes — in resignation? In defeat?
“Open your eyes, damn you!”
His lips compressed and his eyes stayed shut. Denying me to the end.
I slit his throat and watched his blood and his last breaths gurgle out and then stop.
It was strangely unsatisfying. I knew I had done what I had to do, but I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt defeated.
I sat down in one of the big chairs and cried. That didn’t make me feel much better, but gave me the necessary resolve to finish what I’d started.
I went through his pockets until I found his remote, that black object. It felt oddly comfortable in my hand, like it had been molded to fit it, and I guess it had.
I looked over at the alcove. My hologram was still there, still watching me.
“One of us is damned,” I said. I looked at Jones’s remote. There were a variety of buttons of different sizes, shapes, and colors. Some had letters or numbers. Some had pictograms. One showed a dotted stick figure. I touched it. The hologram disappeared. Satisfied, I stowed the remote in my pants.
Then I started pulling the books off the shelves, dumping them in a growing pile on the floor, fallen open, any which way. This felt sacrilegious to me until I realized that none of these books called out to be read. They were dusty and old, with fine print and dull titles. None seemed to be fiction. I doubted Jones had looked at even one. The book he’d pulled out was titled Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers. Another was about “stray shopping carts,” whatever they might be. I grabbed them with a growing frenzy. They made a huge pile on the floor before I’d pulled half of them off the shelves.