Louisville, Kentucky. Unbeknownst to Rachel, I’d lived in their attic off and on for the past two years, during which time I’d routinely gone through her purse and their medicine cabinets, documenting every detail of their lives, checking their medications. I knew Rachel’s medical history, or thought I did.
“How long have you been carrying this particular syringe?” I said.
“I got it in Savannah, at the drugstore.”
“Don’t you need a prescription?”
“Not when you’ve got a smile like mine!”
I knew about the smile. What I didn’t know was if she’d been planning to kill me with the syringe.
“Why’d you get it?” I said. “Seriously.”
“When I was a kid I got stung by fire ants,” she said. “In the drug store in Savannah, a guy was saying how bad they were this year. I wanted to be ready in case one of us got stung on the beach.”
That’s the funny thing about Rachel. When she wasn’t being crazy, she was quite capable.
We kept walking. I could tell she wanted to ask me something. Finally she did.
“Are you allergic to anything?”
“Cheesecake.”
“What?”
“It makes me fat.”
She might have muttered the word “asshole” under her breath.
We walked some more, and I said, “Nicotine.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“Still, it’s a poison. If you distill it and concentrate it to its purest essence, it’s one of the deadliest poisons on earth.”
“Is that the little black one in your kit?”
I keep a poison kit in my belongings. It’s essential in my line of work. I’d made the mistake of warning Rachel about it early in the vacation when I’d caught her about to dab some Ricin on her wrist, thinking it was part of my cologne collection. When asked why I carried a kit filled with poisons, I came up with the bullshit excuse that I was delivering it to the Justice Department in Miami.
“You need to stay out of that kit.”
“Fine, don’t worry. But is it the black one?”
“It’s the clear one, in the vial.”
“That’s the one that can kill you?”
“It is.” Though it was the clear one in the vial, like most poisons, I had built up an immunity to it over time. The only poison I’m unable to handle is Tetrodotoxin, or TTX. Of course, I would never tell Rachel that, nor would I carry TTX in my kit. I love Rachel, but I couldn’t trust her not to kill me.
“You must really trust me to tell me about your Kryptonite,” she said.
“Of course. How can a relationship thrive without trust?”
After a few minutes we were able to make out the lights and wrought iron balcony of The Seaside Bed and Breakfast. The balcony’s ironwork was famous, unique, and more than a hundred and fifty years old. It had been handcrafted in Boston and shipped to St. Alban’s Beach by rail. The architect who designed it was murdered in the alley behind the local bar the very night the installation had been completed. Local legend had it that the original owner of the Seaside had the architect killed so he wouldn’t be able to replicate the design elsewhere.
I said, “After we shower I thought I’d take the rental car to the hospital to check on the kid.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Just to recap,” I said. “We’ll go inside, strip down, make sure we’ve gotten rid of all the ants, take a hot shower, make wild, passionate love, then drive to the hospital.”
“Whoa, cowboy,” she said.
“Whoa?”
“On the sex part.”
“Why?”
“You owe me an explanation. And an apology.”
“For what?”
“You said a relationship can’t flourish without trust.”
“I said that?”
“You did.”
“Then I stand by it.”
“Prove it.”
“Okay. How?”
