Yeah, this is happening.
Time becomes muddled again as we play beneath the sheets for what feels like forever, then we’re lying side by side and staring at the ceiling. Finally I fall asleep. Saturday rolls around and starts with us being all over each other. We take a lunch break. It’s pouring with rain outside, it lands heavily on the roof and I never understood until now how the sound of rain can be romantic. It’s just like all those books I read said it’d be like. We eat cheese on toast and we don’t really talk about much, if anything really, yet there is nothing awkward about the long patches of silence, just as there is nothing awkward about the fact I’m down to one testicle because of her. She doesn’t apologize for it and I don’t tell her how annoyed I am by it. We spent the afternoon in her bed and the room gets darker as the evening sets in. The rain keeps getting heavier. The house is comfortably warm. We soak in the bathtub for an hour and now we finally do talk beyond things like are you hungry and do you like how this feels. We talk movies and books and music.
Saturday becomes Sunday and the rain eases but doesn’t disappear. I wake up and stare at Melissa and I can honestly say I feel no desire to kill her. I watch her sleep, but I’m thinking about how it would feel to tear her apart, to dig my fingers and a knife into her flesh, and deconstruct her as painfully as I can. . And I could too. . and it would be fun-but I would never hurt her.
I know what this feeling is. Watching her, knowing I could kill her at any second, I know that eventually-if not today, if not tomorrow-I am going to need to sort out my life. She wakes and smiles and wishes me good morning.
“So, Melissa, apparently you kill people,” I say, after wishing a good morning back to her.
“Apparently.”
“You any good at it?”
“Exceptionally.”
“You want to meet my mother?”
She laughs, and we end up making love. Afterward, I think back to that moment when I stood in the crippled woman’s house, looking at her fish. At the time I didn’t take any because I knew they would not fill the emptiness I felt. Did I know then what I know now? That I was in love with Melissa?
All the killings, the fantasies, and now they’ve ended and what I’ve found is love. It seems as though my life has followed the pages of a typical romance novel. I feel like a regular Romeo, and Melissa the beautiful Juliet.
I get up, get dressed, make conversation, and suddenly I am on the street, walking to my apartment, cars and pedestrians moving around me, and life is still a blur. Every now and then I’ll realize I’ve crossed a street or gone around a corner without being aware of it. The city looks pretty good on a Sunday morning. I get wet as I walk, but it doesn’t bother me. I think of my future, which is something I never really think too much about. I know that I’ll never be caught. I’m far too clever for that. In contrast to what everybody learns, in contrast to what they believe, sometimes the bad guy will get away with it. That’s just life. Live and learn.
A happy ending to a happy life. That’s what it comes down to. I was happy as Joe the Christchurch Carver, but now I’m even happier as Joe the Romeo. This crazy mixed-up world has taken it upon itself to find me true love, to find me companionship. I’ll leave my job and find something far less menial. With a cat, and with a wife-to-be, the possibilities for my future are endless. I’ve lost two fish, but I have gained something even better.
I’m at the steps to my apartment building when a car screeches to a halt right next to me. I start to go for my gun, but then I see that it’s Sally driving. That’s why the car screeched-people like her are crap drivers. I can’t even imagine how somebody with her condition can have got a license, but figure it must be in the same tradition that they are given jobs-that whole forcing her kind into trolley-pushing positions. She opens the door and races around the car toward me, leaving it running. She’s puffing, as if the twenty-feet jog has taken it out of her. I have a can of cat food in my hand that I can’t even remember buying. My briefcase is God knows where. The sun is out, the breeze is warm, and for once it isn’t too hot. It’s just perfect. One moment I am alone, the next Sally is here. And she is crying.
Sighing, I put a hand on her shoulder and ask her to tell me what’s wrong.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I’m worried that my neighbors will walk by and stare at me. I’m worried they might think this woman is my girlfriend. I can do much better than Sally. In fact, I already have.
“Sally? What’s wrong? Why are you here?”
“Because you live here,” she says, trying to catch her breath. I wonder where she got my address from.
“Okay. What do you want?”
She looks up and down the street, but for what I don’t know. There are only two parked cars. One’s empty. The other has two people in the front seat facing each other and talking animatedly. I figure the passenger is a hooker, and the driver a man short on cash.
“To talk. To ask you something.”
I suck in a mouthful of air and swallow it down. She’s going to cry even more when she asks her question and I have to reject her. One woman in my life is enough. Given the speed at which she pulled up, I figure she’s been busting for a while to get her feelings for me off her chest.
“Okay. What is it you want to ask?”
“I don’t want you lying to me anymore, Joe,” she says, her voice suddenly getting louder.
“What?”
“No more lies,” she says, and she adds anger to her increasing volume.
I’ve no idea where any of this is coming from, and I’m not sure what to say. I can’t figure out what she means by my lies. I didn’t even know people like her were aware when they were being lied to.
“Okay, Sally, just take a deep breath,” I say, and then, just to prove I’m just like her, I add, “Oxygen comes from trees.”
She takes in a deep breath and her face seems to settle, but only a little. I figure she’s preparing herself to ask the big question, but she probably isn’t preparing herself to receive the big rejection. I will have to tell her that it’s not that I’m not interested in having a relationship with her, it’s that I’m not interested in having a relationship with anybody. It’s times like this that I see that having women like me this much can be a curse.
It’s best to get this over with. “Okay, Sally, Joe can’t listen long. I’m on my way out.”
“But you’re just arriving!” she shouts, the frustration back on her face within seconds. “I saw you! I’ve been waiting since Friday night! I had to keep coming back, and back. I wanted to wait inside your apartment, but I couldn’t. I chose different corners to wait around. Sometimes I’d fall asleep. Sometimes I’d go home and rest a few hours. Sometimes I’d drive around the block, looking for you. I didn’t think I’d get a chance. I wouldn’t have, not on Friday night. Not yesterday either. But they don’t think you’re coming back. That’s why hardly anyone is left.”
Her face is red and puffy. It looks like she’s spent much of her waiting in tears. “They? Left? What are you talking about, Sally?” I ask, but of course she probably doesn’t know. She never does. Her world is full of kittens and puppies and good-natured, God-loving, extra-smiley people. She doesn’t have the ability to really understand anything at all. It’s probably a nice innocent life to be living if you aren’t aware of it.
She wipes a palm across her cheeks, smearing the tears.
“You have to tell me, Joe.”
“Look, Sally, take a deep breath and tell me what’s so important.”
“I want to know about your scars.”
Her comment throws me off balance. “What?”
“I was thinking about them. They didn’t look old enough to be from your childhood.”