by now.”
“Ree!”
“Well, you killed everybody else you ever slept with. Kimmie, I knew you weren’t planning to do it, but suppose you couldn’t help it? Suppose it got under your skin, and you couldn’t rest as long as I was alive?”
“That only happened with men.”
“You’ve killed women.”
“My mother, and I explained that to you. And I never had sex with her, anyway. It was just—”
“And what about Angela?”
“Angela.”
“She picked you up in the dyke bar, and her husband was hiding in the closet—”
“Oh, Angelica.”
“I was close.”
“And his name was Brady. He wasn’t in the closet, he was hiding behind a Japanese screen.”
“Thanks for clearing that up, Kimmie. The point is you slept with her and you killed her.”
“Yeah.”
“Strangled her with a scarf or something.”
“A silk scarf.”
“Herpes, I think you said.”
“Hermes.”
“I know, silly. Ehr-mehz. Poh-mahr.”
“Ree, they were going to murder me. He wanted to do me just for the thrill of it, and she loved the idea.”
“I know, you told me.”
“She was one vicious cunt. She brought me home so her husband could rape me, and when I turned out to be eager and willing, they decided the only way to keep it interesting was to kill me. She had it coming.”
“I know.”
“And how could I let her live once I’d killed him?” She frowned. “Okay, I have to admit I enjoyed it. Doing her with the scarf, feeling her squirming underneath me. But it’s the way I’m hard-wired, Ree. Killing gets me off. I can’t help it.”
“Kimmie, it’s one of the things about you that gets
“I would never, ever, hurt you. Not for anything.”
“But how could you know you wouldn’t feel the need? The only woman you ever went to bed with wound up with a scarf around her neck and her eyes bulging.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s not?”
“Boise.”
“Huh?”
She took a breath. “After Provo,” she said, “I went to Boise. That’s in Idaho.”
“And?”
“All I wanted,” she said, “was to come here. To you. But I couldn’t do that if it meant putting you in danger. So I had to find out.”
“How could you do that? What would — oh, you slept with a woman! In Boise? They have girl — girl bars in Boise?”
“Well, they had at least one of them. They made it hard to find, I’ll give them that. But I went there and I found a woman to go home with.”
“And you had sex.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And she’s still got a pulse?”
“Unless she stepped in front of a bus.”
“You didn’t mention it.”
“No. I thought you might be jealous.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, yeah. Or that it might trivialize what we’ve got, or something. Stupid, huh?”
“So how was it?”
“A successful experiment, because I had absolutely no desire to hurt her. Not at the time and not afterward. I didn’t want to see her again, either, but I had, like, warm feelings toward her.”
“What was she like?”
“I don’t know. Late thirties, dark hair. A little dykey, I suppose.”
“Was she better than me?”
“Absolutely. That’s why I spent the rest of my life in Boise and never gave you another thought.”
“What was the sex like with her?”
“Sort of vanilla. Kissing, touching. You really want to hear this?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s see. She went down on me and I came. Then I went down on her, and she couldn’t come.”
“With that magic mouth of yours? That’s hard to believe.”
“She said she’s pretty much non-orgasmic. Her big thing is getting her partner off. Which she managed twice, because I came again while I was eating her.”
“Just from doing it?”
“I was touching myself at the same time. And beside that—”
“What?”
“Well, I was thinking about you. That’s what I did while she was doing me, too. Thought about you, made believe it was you I was with. Jesus, Ree, you honestly thought I was going to kill you?”
A shrug. “I thought there was a chance. But I figured it was worth the risk.”
She reached out, took Ree’s hand in hers. She was at a loss for words, but that was all right. She didn’t need to say anything.
THIRTY-THREE
“So I’m Luke,” the fellow said, “and this is my buddy, Gordo. His folks named him Gordon, and he had the nickname for years before he found out it means
“By then it was too late,” Gordo said. “So I’m at the gym five days a week, making sure the name never fits.”
“So why don’t the four of us take a booth? It’s hard to hear in the crush at the bar. Like, I didn’t manage to catch your names.”
“You guys get the table,” she said, “and we’ll join you in a minute. Right now, nature calls.”
“The only thing men can do and women can’t,” Gordo said, “is go to the bathroom alone.”
“It’s true,” Ree admitted. “We need company.”
And in the bathroom she said, “What do you think, Kimmie?”
“I think they’re morons.”
“But are they morons we want to fuck?”
“I don’t know. Which one would you want?”
“No, you pick.”
“I can’t. I don’t want either of them.”
“Then let’s get out of here, Kimmie. I know another place.”
Two nights before, after dinner at the Thai place and an hour of HBO, they’d gone to bed. And after an hour or so she’d said, “The strap-on’s nice.”
