It is here that she leans forward and holds up a hand. This is her signal. I have said something important. "Rules," she says. "What are rules?"
"A definition? You want a definition of rules?"
"What are rules to you? Your definition, yes."
"Right and wrong," I reply. "What is legal versus illegal. Moral versus immoral. Humane versus inhumane."
"Sleeping with a married person is immoral, wrong, inhumane?"
"If nothing else, it's stupid. But yes, it's wrong. Not a fatal error or unforgivable sin or illegal, but dishonest. Yes, definitely dishonest. A broken rule, yes."
"Then you admit you are capable of dishonesty."
"I admit I'm capable of being stupid."
"But dishonest?" She won't let me evade the question.
"Everyone is capable of anything. My affair with Benton was dishonest. I indirectly lied because I hid what I was doing. I presented a front to others, including Connie, that was false. Simply false. So am I capable of deception, of lying? Clearly I am." The confession depresses me deeply.
"What about homicide? What is the rule about homicide? Wrong? Immoral? Is it always wrong to kill? You have killed," Anna says.
"In self-defense." On this point I feel strong and certain. "Only when I had no choice because the person was going to kill me or someone else."
"Did you commit a sin? Thou shall not kill''
"Absolutely not." Now I am getting frustrated. "It's easy to make judgments about matters one looks at from the distant vantage point of morality and idealism. It's different when you're confronted by a killer who's holding a knife to another person's throat or reaching for a pistol to shoot you. The sin would be to do nothing, to allow an innocent person to die, to allow yourself to die. I feel no remorse," I tell Anna.
"What do you feel?"
I close my eyes for a moment, firelight moving across my lids. "Sick. I can't think about those deaths without feeling sick. What I did wasn't wrong. I had no choice. But I wouldn't call it right, either, if you understand the difference. When Temple Gault was hemorrhaging to death in front of me and begging me to help, there are really no words for how that felt and how it feels now to remember it."
"This was in the subway tunnel in New York. Four or five years ago?" she asks, and I answer with a nod. "Carrie Grethen's former partner in crime. Gault was her mentor, in a sense. Isn't that right?" Again, I nod. "Interesting," she says. "You killed Carrie's partner and then she killed yours. A connection, perhaps?"
"I have no idea. I have never looked at it like that." I am jolted by the thought. It has never occurred to me and seems so obvious now.
"Did Gault deserve to die, in your opinion?" Anna then asks.
"Some people would say he forfeited his right to be in this world and we're all better off now that he's gone. But my God, I wouldn't have chosen to be the one who carried out the sentence, Anna. Never, never. Blood was spurting through his fingers. I saw fear in his eyes, terror, panic, the evil in him gone. He was just a human being dying. And I'd caused it. And he was crying and begging me to make his bleeding stop." I have stopped rocking. I feel Anna's full attention on me. "Yes," I finally say. "Yes, it was awful. Just awful. Sometimes I dream about him. Because I killed him, he will forever be part of me. That's the price I pay."
"And Jean-Baptiste Chandonne?"
"I don't want to hurt anybody anymore." I stare at the dying fire.
"At least he is alive?"
"I take no comfort in that. How can I? People like him don't stop hurting others, even after they're locked up. The evil lives on. That is my conundrum. I don't want them killed, but I know the damage they do while they're alive. Lose-lose, any way you look at it," I tell Anna.
Anna says nothing. It is her method to offer silences more than opinions. Grief throbs in my chest and my heart beats in a staccato of fear. "I suppose I'd be punished if I'd killed Chandonne," I add. "Without question I'll be punished because I didn't."
"You could not save Benton's life." Anna's voice fills the space between us. I shake my head as tears fill my eyes. "Do you feel you should have been able to defend him, too?" she asks. I swallow and spasms of that agonizing loss rob me of my ability to speak. "Did you fail him, Kay? And now it is your penance to eradicate other monsters, perhaps? To do it for Benton, because you let monsters murder him? You did not save him?"
My helplessness, my outrage boil over. "He didn't save himself, goddamn it. Benton wandered into his murder like a dog or cat wandering off to die, because it was time. Jesus!" I am out with it. "Jesus. Benton was always complaining about wrinkles and sagging and aches and pains, even during the early years of our relationship. As you know, he was older than I. Maybe aging threatened him more for that reason. I don't know. But when he reached his mid-forties, he couldn't look in the mirror without shaking his head and griping. 'I don't want to get old, Kay.' That's what he would say.
"I remember late one afternoon we were taking a bath together and he was complaining about his body. 'Nobody wants to get old,' I finally said to him. 'But Ireally don't_ don't to the point that I don't think I can survive it,' was his reply. 'We have to survive it. It's selfish not to, Benton,' I said. 'And besides, we survived being young, didn't we?' Ha! He thought I was being ironic. I wasn't. I asked him how many days of your youth were spent waiting for tomorrow? Because somehow tomorrow is going to be better? He thought about mis for a moment as he pulled me closer in the tub, touching and fondling me beneath the steamy cover of hot water scented with lavender. He knew exactly how to play me back in those days when our cells came alive instantly on contact. Back then, when it was good. 'Yeah,' he considered, 'it's true. I've always waited for tomorrow, thinking tomorrow's going to be better. That's survival, Kay. If you don't think tomorrow or next year or the year after that will be better, why bother?' "
I stop for a moment, rocking. I tell Anna, "Well, he stopped bothering. Benton died because he no longer believed what was ahead was better than what was past. It doesn't matter that it was another person who took his life. Benton was the one who decided." My tears have dried and I feel hollow inside, defeated and furious. Feeble light touches my face as I stare into the afterglow of fire. "Fuck you, Benton," I mutter to smoking coals. "Fuck you for giving up."
"Is that why you had sex with Jay Talley?" Anna asks. "To fuck Benton? To pay him back for leaving you, for dying?"
"If so, it wasn't conscious."
"What do you feel?"
I try to feel. "Dead. After Benton was murdered…?" I consider this. "Dead," I decide. "I felt dead. I couldn't feel anything. I think I had sex with Jay…"
"Not what you think. What you feel," she gently reminds me.
"Yes. That was the whole thing. Wanting to feel, desperate to feel something, anything," I tell her.
"Did making love with Jay help you feel something, anything?"
"I think it made me feel cheap," I reply.
"Not what you think," she reminds me again.
"I felt hunger, lust, anger, ego, freedom. Oh yes, freedom."
"Freedom from Benton's death, or perhaps from Benton? He was somewhat repressed, wasn't he? He was safe. He had a very powerful superego. Benton Wesley was a man who did things properly. What was sex like with him? Was it proper?" Anna wants to know.
"Thoughtful," I say. "Gentle and sensitive."