“Cheers,” she says, and they down them with all due haste.
Seconds pass. She looks at him. He can see the intelligence in her eyes at work, making some set of complex assessments. She leans in incrementally and her nostrils flare once: Billy would swear that she was sniffing him, if there was a way that that made any sense at all.
She leans back. “Okay,” she says. “I don’t know you well, Billy Ridgeway, but you seem like an honest guy, and I like that.”
“Thank you,” Billy says, and as he says it he realizes that he’s starting to yearn for Elisa Mastic. Maybe this breakup with Denver — for that is how he is now thinking of it — doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Maybe it’s a piece of good luck. Maybe it’ll be an opportunity: a chance to start over with someone who doesn’t know all his flaws.
“I’m going to ask you a question,” she says. “And I want you to answer honestly.”
“Okay,” Billy says. “Is this a test?”
“This is a test,” Elisa says.
“I’m ready,” Billy says. This is normally the kind of thing that would make him nervous, but the bourbon is helping.
“The question is: What is the worst thing you ever did?”
Billy blinks. He doesn’t want to think about whatever might be the worst thing he ever did. And whatever it is, he’s certain it’s bad, and he doesn’t want to let his bad side enter into full display. Absolutely not. The whole point, the whole goddamn point of this conversation is to showcase only his good side: to be charming and funny and charismatic. He looks around for a story that will highlight those aspects of himself but also maybe seem a little mean or over-the-top. It takes him a minute to find something that qualifies; during that time Elisa calmly examines her hand, all five fingers extended in front of her.
“So I had this girl over,” Billy says. This is a Denver story, which gives him a queasy feeling, but he needs something. Elisa raises her eyebrows in a way that conveys a very guarded species of interest.
“We’d been out,” he says, “out at some restaurant or having drinks or something, after what had already been a pretty long day, and then we got back to my place, totally exhausted, and I remembered that I didn’t have any clean laundry for the next day, and instead of just saying screw it I insisted that we go out to the Laundromat. This girl just wanted to lie on the couch and I made her get up and come with me because I wanted the company. I even made her carry a bag with the sheets and pillowcases.”
A thin smile from Elisa.
“And so we’re at the Laundromat, and it just seems like it’s taking forever, it’s like time has just slowed to a crawl. A fucking crawl. And then after we’ve spent like a year there we have to move everything over to the dryer. Bam, another year gone. We’re not even talking to one another we’re so tired. And so finally everything’s clean, and we go back to my place, and she immediately goes up to the loft and curls up on my bed. Just like direct on the mattress: the sheets are still all in the laundry bag. And I’m like come on, come on, we need to make the bed and she just, like, grunts. So, thinking I’m funny, I get the fitted sheet out and I just pull it over top of her and tuck it in on all four sides. She starts to giggle a little, so I figure it’s okay. So then I put the next sheet on over top of that, and then finally the comforter, and by this point I think she wants to get out, she starts kind of squirming but she’s really too tired to figure out how to make her way out of it, and then I start poking her. Like, index finger, right in the ribs. And she says stop it but she’s laughing at the same time, so I don’t stop right away, I poke her a couple more times, and she starts to shriek, cause it tickles her, right? and finally she starts to thrash her way out of the sheets and she gets her head out at last, and I’m laughing, and even she’s laughing a little bit, but then it just tips somehow and she starts crying. These big, hot, frustrated, tired tears. And — that’s it.”
Elisa watches him until finally he raises both palms, as if revealing the absence of more to tell.
“What did it feel like?” she asks, softly.
“It felt bad,” he says. “I don’t like making people cry.”
“No, before that.”
“Before what?”
“Before she started to cry. When you had her under the sheet and were poking her. What did that feel like?”
“I don’t know,” Billy says. “I thought I was being funny, I guess. I was just playing around.”
“The woman in the story. Are you bigger than her?” Elisa asks.
“Yes,” Billy says.
“Are you stronger than her?”
Billy doesn’t think of himself as strong, exactly, but is he stronger than Denver? “Yes.”
“And what did that feel like?”
“Being bigger and stronger, you mean?”
“Being bigger and stronger. Exerting power. Using it to scare someone.”
“I don’t think she was scared, exactly.”
“Let me tell you something,” Elisa says. “If you say stop it to someone who is bigger than you? And stronger than you? And they don’t stop whatever it is that they’re doing? It’s scary. Trust me.”
“Okay,” Billy says. “What are you trying to say here?”
“What I’m trying to say, Billy, is that you seem like a gentle, peaceful guy, a real nice guy, and I think you’ve worked hard to come across that way, but I think there’s a part of you, and maybe it’s a part that you don’t look at all that closely, that wants to be powerful and that doesn’t give a good goddamn about anything else.”
Something inside Billy twinges. A flinch moves through his face. Elisa’s eyes change character again, communicating some faint satisfaction, an approval, almost, at seeing Billy hit upon something inside himself that may be true.
Billy turns his empty shot glass with his fingers, tries to reflect upon the part of him that likes being bigger and stronger, that likes being powerful. Elisa is right: that part is there. It moves inside him like an animal, cloaked by shadows. He can kind of glimpse its outlines but it moves away from his inspection, not wanting to be fully perceived.
“Thoughts,” Elisa says.
“None,” Billy says, and he expends some willpower to ensure that that’s true.
“All right then.”
The third round of shots lands on the table. They raise them.
“To thoughtlessness,” Elisa says, and tosses hers back.
“To thoughtlessness,” Billy answers, and he does the same.
“You want to know the worst thing I ever did?” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Sure.”
“Don’t give me that sure. Either you want to know or you don’t. I’ll tell you if you want to know. But you have to understand that this isn’t some hipster game for me.”
“Okay,” Billy says. “I get it. I want to know.”
Elisa regards him suspiciously.
Billy puts on his most earnest face despite a sinking certainty that it actually makes him look totally goofy and insincere. “You can trust me,” he says.
“No, I can’t. But I’m going to tell you anyway, as a gesture of my good faith.”
“Okay,” Billy says.
“I killed a man,” Elisa says.
“What?”
“I killed a man,” she says again. “It was an accident.” She takes a deep breath. “I killed a man,” she repeats, like it’s something she has to say to herself regularly, “and I was never caught.”