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I got her a bottle of Perrier from the trailer’s small refrigerator, twisted the cap off, and held it out to her. She didn’t see it, or me. “Jackie?” I said.
“For Christ’s sake, what the— Oh, thanks,” she said. She took the bottle from me, but didn’t do anything with it.
My phone rang. I had left it in the small bedroom, on the dresser, and I went in to look. In my hurry I tripped over something I really should have seen—the large box of Kathy’s possessions. It had moved into the trailer with us, and now occupied the narrow space between the bed and the dresser. Jackie still hadn’t been able to make herself go through the stuff, but she kept it nearby in case she had an unfortunate fit of conscience. I stepped around it and looked at my phone.
The phone’s face was lit up with the caller’s ID: It was Rita. I hesitated, trying to decide whether I had anything to say to her right now. I looked back out at Jackie, still frowning, staring straight ahead, and moving her lips in some unvoiced conversation with an invisible friend. I looked back at the phone, still undecided, and it stopped ringing. A moment later it bleeped, the signal that Rita had left a voice mail.
I picked up the phone and saw that there were now twelve unanswered calls from Rita, each one with a voice-mail message.
I suppose I should have called back, or at least listened to the messages, but I didn’t really want to; I did not want to get sucked back into any kind of whirlpool that might be swirling around my old life as it went down the drain. I had no patience for an argument about what color the trim should be around the pool at the new house, or why Astor’s skirt was too short. These things no longer seemed to be a part of me or who I was, and I did not have any subtle yearning to go back to them, nor any feeling of obligation. I do not actually have a sense of duty; I never have—except to myself. In the old days, I would have called Rita back because I had learned that it was the kind of little detail that kept her happy, and I needed her to maintain my pretense of fitting in. She was a large part of my camouflage; people saw a married man with three kids, and therefore did not see the monster I really am.
But now? I could not raise any real interest in Cody’s grade on a reading test, or Rita’s opinion of my laundry. I felt a very small twinge as I thought of Lily Anne—the only direct biological connection I had to the future, my DNA’s only shot at immortality. But after all, whatever happened I would certainly be allowed to see her every now and then, and in the interim, a little girl really needed her mother, much more than a father with a tendency to slice and dice whoever happened to come under his knife.
So I put the phone down and looked back out at Jackie. She was still staring, her forehead lightly creased by a frown, but at least her lips had stopped moving.
I went back out to the couch and looked down at her. She apparently didn’t notice me, and she didn’t move. I sat beside her. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
She looked at me, still frowning. “What? Oh, no, it’s— Listen, if I said to you, ‘You’re a lightweight piece of crap,’ what would you say?”
“I don’t … I, um,” I stammered. “I mean, are you going to say that to me?”
Jackie looked startled, and then gave a small laugh. “Oh, no,” she said. “Not you, just—it’s a line; it’s something Tonio says to me in the next scene.” Tonio was one of the bad guys in our gripping little drama, the one Jackie—as Amber Wayne—suspected of gunning me down.
“Oh,” I said, and I admit I was relieved. “So you don’t think I’m a lightweight piece of crap?” I was fishing, and rather shamelessly, but why not?
“Dexter, don’t be a dope,” she said, and she pulled me close to her. “I think you are the farthest thing you can be from a piece of crap.”
“But still a lightweight?” I said. In spite of the long morning’s work, she smelled very good.
She nuzzled in against my neck. “Heavyweight champ,” she murmured. Then she bit me.
I jumped. “Ow,” I said. I looked at her and, although she was still looking at me, and no longer frowning, she looked very serious.
“The question is,” she said, “what are we going to do about it?”
And there it was, right out in the open.
“Well,” I said, trying to feel my way ahead cautiously, “what would you like to do about it?”
Something flickered across her face—dismay? irritation? I couldn’t say. And then she gave a small snort and shook her head. “One of the things I really like about you is that you are not at all like any other guy I’ve ever known,” she said. “But there’s a downside to that.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Dexter—that was your cue. You were supposed to say that you want to run away with me; you can’t live without me; you need me like the air you breathe—”
“All of that,” I said, very uncomfortable. “But I don’t … I mean, I wanted to know. I mean, what you think.”
She shook her head again. “I’m the girl; you’re the boy,” she said, poking me with a finger so I would understand which one was me. “You’re supposed to tell me what I think, you big dope,” she said. “Convince me—don’t you know anything about women?”
“I guess not,” I said. “Is there a book …?”
She punched me in the arm, not nearly as hard as Deborah did. Or used to do, I guess I should say. I rubbed it anyway. “Asshole,” Jackie said. “And you’re still not saying.”
“Well,” I said, feeling very uncomfortable, “I, um … I guess I …” She was watching me steadily, those huge violet eyes fixed unblinkingly on me. I took a deep breath. “I guess I, um … I need you like the air I breathe. And, um, I want to run away … with you?”
Jackie kept watching me for what seemed like a very long moment. And then at last she smiled and reached her hands around and clasped them behind my neck.
“Better,” she purred. “Much better.” And she pulled my face down to hers.
