“Which I’m sure are miles from the truth.”
“For instance?”
“This is just crazy guessing, but—”
“Go ahead, Rita.”
“Well, what I decided is you’re sort of a spy. Like with some super-secret government agency? And you travel around on assignments, and when I don’t hear from you for a really long period of time, that’s because you’re out of the country.”
“Wow.”
“I told you it was crazy. And then I thought — now this is even crazier, and maybe I shouldn’t say it.”
“No, say it.”
“Well, I thought whatever it is that she does, you know, it’s for our government, so it’s okay. And next I thought, well, suppose it’s
“I guess.”
“But what I realized was I don’t care. What side you’re on, I mean. I don’t
“Although that does sound like fun.”
“Yeah, it sort of does, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t work for the government, Rita. Not ours or anybody else’s, either. I work in a pretentious coffee shop in Salem.”
“Where they burn the witches?”
“That was in Massachusetts, wasn’t it? Somewhere in New England, anyway. I’m in the one in Oregon, and all we burn is the French Roast coffee.”
“You’re in Oregon?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s not so far, is it?”
“It’d take a while on a bicycle,” she said. “Rita, it’s not far, not really, and anyway I wouldn’t have to take a bike. I know how to drive. But first there are things I have to tell you, and the only way this is going to work is if you just listen and don’t interrupt. And then when I’m through you can ask anything you want, or say anything you want. Or just tell me you don’t want to have anything to do with me, and hang up, and I’ll have to live with that.”
“My God, Kimmie.”
“So here goes.”
Long pause. “Kimmie?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m just having a little trouble getting started.”
It was very difficult to get started, and not much easier once she did. She couldn’t say anything without worrying about the way it would be received. But she forced herself to keep going, and there was a point where she stopped being concerned by Rita’s reaction.
She’d asked Rita not to interrupt, and she didn’t, not even with an occasional sharp intake of breath. She found herself entertaining the notion that Rita wasn’t listening at all, that she’d put down the phone and left the room, that her own carrier had dropped the call.
None of that mattered. She was speaking of things she had never confided to anyone, and it was as if all those words had been dammed up somewhere within her, and the effect of releasing them was surprisingly powerful.
All those years of being the good little soldier, and you couldn’t say they’d ended when she killed her parents. That just gave her another secret to keep.
She’d shared bits and pieces with some of the men she’d been with, just before or after she killed them. And she’d told a bit of her story to Angelica while she got the woman to tell her where the money was stashed, and while she slipped the Hermes scarf around her neck.
Maybe those brief confidences had been an attempt to break the dam, to let it all out and relieve the pressure. But this was vastly different, and somewhere along the way she slipped into an altered state, as if she were a trance medium channeling her own thoughts.
When she stopped, when the words ran out, she couldn’t have guessed how much time had passed. Nor would she have been able to say what incidents she’d recounted and what ones remained unreported. All she knew, really, was that she was done, that she’d said all she needed to say.
She was waiting for a response from Rita, but Rita was silent herself. She knew she was still on the line, though. Her breathing, while shallow, was audible.
When it was clear Rita wasn’t going to speak, she said, “That’s it. You can talk now. Or not, if you don’t want to.”
“I wasn’t sure you were done.”
“Oh, I’m done.”
“I never would have guessed any of that, Kimmie. Except—”
“What?”
“Well, you know. Thinking you were a secret agent. I wondered if you ever had to kill anybody.”
“And what did you decide?”
“That you probably had to, and that you were probably good at it.”
“Because I’m a heartless bitch.”
“Because you’re the strongest human being I’ve ever met in my life.”
“I guess you don’t get out much.”
“I mean it, Kimmie. Should I be calling you that? That can’t be the name you started out with.”
“I like it.”
“Really?”
“I like it when you say it.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Oh, I was just thinking. I like when you say Kimmie almost as much as you like it when I say cunt.”
“Kimmie, you’re awful!”
“I’ve killed more men than I can remember and saying a yummy word like cunt makes me awful?”
“It is a yummy word, isn’t it?”
“Delicious.”
“If you were here—”
“If I were there what?”
“If you were here, I’d grab you like a bowling ball with two fingers up your ass and my thumb up your cunt, and I’d suck on your clitty until your bones melt.”
“You didn’t just come up with that, Rita.”
“No, it’s one of a few hundred things I think about all the time.
“But now that you know what I am—”
“You’re my Kimmie, that’s all I need to know. I love you.”
“Oh God.”
“I do, I do. I love you and I’m in love with you. And I don’t have to be jealous of any of the guys you’ve been with because they’re all dead. Not that I was ever jealous anyway, because what do I care what you do with men? What has any of that got to do with us?”
“Nothing. I love you, too.”
“I know you do.”
“You want to know something awful about me? I
