Kill Me

by Stephen White

  What I was observing right then, I thought, was type-two silence, the silence of reflection.

  The pause in our conversation grew from seconds to a minute, and then more. Finally, he said, “I misspoke earlier. I said that if I thought you were a danger to yourself, I would be compelled to take some action, based on the circumstances.”

  “Yes? But that’s not completely accurate?”

  “I omitted a word. The word I omitted is ‘imminent.’ I am only required to take certain actions if I judge that you are an imminent danger to yourself. Or to someone else.”

  “That allows for some leeway,” I said, seeing his invitation for what it was. “Wiggle room.”

  He didn’t exactly nod, but he certainly didn’t shake his head, either. He was agreeing with my assessment.

  My doctor had some wiggle room.

  “So we can talk?” I said, thinking I was accurately reading the invisible-ink message he’d inserted between the lines of our conversation.

  “I think we can talk,” he said. “When we reach unsteady ground—if we reach unsteady ground—I’ll let you know. If I see unsteady ground looming up ahead, I’ll let you know that, too. When I do, you can decide if you would like to proceed any further with me. How is that?”

  “You’re asking me to trust you?”

  He pondered the question. “I’m … inviting you to trust me. Without it, there’s not much point for you to talk with me any longer.”

  “There’s some risk here for me,” I said. “Serious risk. If my trust turns out to be misplaced.”

  “For me, as well,” he said.

  I saw that was true, too.

  He grew silent again, but that time it was most certainly type-one silence, the entreaty silence. I used the void to try to recognize what it was he expected I should be seeing.

  I couldn’t see it, whatever it was. Nada.

  “We’ve been talking about vulnerability,” he said, offering me a hint.

  Generous of him. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. That cocktail of self-disclosure and vulnerability I’ve been learning about,” I said. “What is necessary, but is not sufficient? We’re about to get intimate, huh? You and me?”

  “Looks like it,” he said. “Looks like it.”

  “My first time with a man,” I said. I couldn’t resist the joke. Character flaw, no doubt.

  He could.

  “Actually, I think the first time was with Adam. But I’m honored to be the second.”

  “You may be reluctant to believe what I’m about to tell you,” I began. “But it’s all true.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I’ll deny this if it’s ever repeated to me outside this room.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “There are these people that I call … the Death Angels.”

  I felt an electric shock of pain travel from someplace deep inside my skull, into my brain stem and then down my spinal cord, where the agony dissipated into my tissue as though my backbone was a lightning rod buried in loamy soil. I took a deep breath to recover from the shock before I said, “You really can’t tell anybody any of this.”

  “I understand. I can feel your vulnerability all the way across the room.”

  “That’s kind of you to say, but you can’t understand. Not really. I haven’t told you anything yet. But this is where you’re going to have to trust me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Probably vice versa, too.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I was determined to tell him everything but it took me another minute to begin. I tried a number of transition lines in my head. Some cute. Some not. I finally said, “At great expense, I’ve hired them—these people I call the Death Angels—to kill me if I ever get sick or injured in a way that will leave me incapacitated.”

  I studied him as I spoke, but could see no reaction from him save an involuntary change in the size of his pupils.

  “Recently, I learned that my illness has advanced to the point that a previously agreed-upon threshold has been reached. I’m now fair game for the Death Angels. They are obligated to end my life. There is no mechanism for me to reverse that process.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Dead serious,” I said.

  “Go on,” he said.

  I did. I told him everything.

  FORTY-FOUR

  I reminded myself that the newsstand man had insisted that I had only five minutes inside Lizzie’s place.

  I wasted too much of one of those minutes in a zombied, open-mouthed amble through the flat’s spacious front rooms—the living room, dining room, study, and kitchen—thinking this stupid thought: Thea could have been the person who’d decorated Lizzie’s apartment. That’s how familiar it all felt to me.

  The decor was a mix of contemporary and antique styles dotted with a few quirky pieces that fit neither category, along with enough of an Asian influence to make a noticeable difference. Designwise, the place looked like small versions of similar rooms in our Ridgway home.

  How weird was that?

  The focus and flow of the living room were both directed toward a series of three big windows that faced the Hudson. Later that day the windows would frame the sun as it set to the west, toward Colorado. A lovely chenille chaise—an upholstered altar to solitude and comfort—rested in front of the windows, flanked by a delicate Chinese tea table that supported a reading lamp and a foot-high pile of books.

  The books were all novels, mostly genre titles written by popular writers who showed up on weekend morning shows. The whole scene felt quite poignant.

  I felt illicit being there, seeing it.

  What was I hoping to find inside Lizzie’s place? I didn’t know. I’d decided that I wanted to be able to guess what had been in the boxes that had been carted off overnight by the Death Angel Moving Company. And I wanted to find an indication of where Lizzie might have gone next—a note on the refrigerator with a forwarding address would have been a particularly welcome touch.

  I wanted to know what was missing from her home.

  I wanted to see photographs of her with her family, or her lover.

  I wanted to learn her real name.

  I wanted to know what magazines she bought every evening from the newsstand man.

  Mostly, I wanted to find something that might give me leverage that would buy me the time I needed to wrap things up with Adam before the Death Angels implemented their end-of-life services plan.

  I checked the refrigerator door for that note with her forwarding address. Alas, no luck.

  Although it was far from full, the refrigerator hadn’t been cleaned out. Lizzie liked plain yogurt, and the labels on disposable containers revealed that she was disposed to buy takeout from the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle. She drank Sancerre, and had a dozen itty-bitty cans of Sapporo beer on the top shelf next to a four-pack of Starbucks Double Shots and a six-pack of stubby cans of Diet Coke.

  Lizzie liked her caffeine.

  On the second shelf of the refrigerator sat the clear plastic clamshell of organic raspberries that Lizzie had bought from the Korean grocer downstairs.

  She hadn’t eaten any of the berries.

  She had indeed been home, though. The newsstand guy wasn’t lying.

  Lizzie’s study was oddly masculine. It was a small room, maybe seven or eight feet by ten, with frosted-glass pocket doors that faced toward the living room and the distant George Washington Bridge. The back wall of the study was lined with a long built-in credenza and floor-to-ceiling shelves of a solid dark wood—walnut, I thought, or mahogany. A simple desk—nothing more than a huge piece of lovely old teak on a couple of cast-iron trestles—sat in the center of the room.

  Other than one more reading lamp the desktop was a void, but I thought a vague rectangular outline of dust showed where a laptop computer had rested directly in front of the chair. The bookshelves on the opposite wall were packed spine to spine; I figured it was safe to assume that Lizzie’s library hadn’t been dist
urbed during the impromptu move the night before. The credenzas below the shelves appeared to have solid fronts. I pressed on the wooden panels in a few places, expecting a hidden door to pop open.

  Nothing. What a waste of space.

  Damn. Who has an office without yesterday’s mail, without files, without unpaid bills?

  Who has an office without photographs?

  My watch said I’d killed two minutes by then.

  Where are all the magazines she buys?

  What had I learned? Nothing.

  Shit.

  A narrow, wainscoted hallway with parquet floors led from the entryway toward a powder room and two bedrooms. I skipped the powder room and turned in to the door of the first bedroom. It was an afterthought room, not a guest room. Lizzie didn’t have frequent guests, or if she did, the guests slept in her bed. The only furniture in the spare room was a pair of matched Queen Anne chairs that I imagined had once been sitting where the chaise currently rested in front of the Hudson River windows.

  The closet? Off-season clothes, nothing else. No shoe boxes of canceled checks. No old love letters tied with ribbon secreted on the top shelf.

  Her scent, yes. Plenty of that. On those hanging clothes. Spices and flowers and that alluring aroma of fresh laundry that had been dried in the sun.

  Three minutes gone.

  Off to the master.

  I took one step inside her bedroom and the phone rang. The ring was muted, but still distinct enough to cause my heart to jump in my chest.

  Fuck.

  What was it I had agreed to with the newsstand man? If the phone rings, I was supposed to exit immediately, make my way to the fire stairs, wait five minutes, and then head back down to the lobby.

  I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around for the phone, thinking, Caller ID, have to see the caller ID .

  There was no phone next to Lizzie’s bed.

  Had there been one on her desk in the study?

  No.

  Had there been one in the kitchen?

  I didn’t think so.

  Huh?

  Where were the phones? Had the middle-of-the-night movers packed them up? If they did pack them, why?

  Most important, where was the phone that was ringing?

  I decided that the ringing noise was in front of me, not behind me. I stepped farther into Lizzie’s bedroom.

  I’d entered girl land.

  Dream time for Lizzie was a whimsical palace in the French country. Not subtle French country, but biting-into-a-lemon French country, or being-buried-in-lavender French country. There was enough Provençal fabric and toile in front of me to upholster a fleet of Citroëns.

  Thea hadn’t decorated that room. Not at all. No way.

  Don’t get distracted, I told myself. Don’t get distracted.

  The phone was still ringing.

  Where is it? Where?

  I followed the sound to a small walk-in closet. One side of the space was hung with clothes. Plenty of gaps, which told me that Lizzie had packed enough of her things to last her for a while. When she decided to leave, she knew she might not be making only a brief exit. The other side of the closet was lined with two floor-to-ceiling built-in storage units, one that was all adjustable shelves, and another that was a tall stack of drawers topped by more shelves.

  Is the phone in one of the drawers?

  It sounded that way.

  The first drawer I tried was the one that held her panties. It wasn’t luck or happenstance that I opened that one first; it was simply my nature to make that kind of discovery. My peculiar radar. There, right on top of a perfectly folded, tantalizingly delicate pair of pink and purple lace—

  Focus!

  The caller ID on the mobile phone in Lizzie’s underwear drawer read, “Pay Phone.”

  Before I could make the necessary mental and motor connections to reach for it, the phone stopped ringing.

  I said, “Whew.”

  Perhaps for the first time in my life, I actually said the word “Whew.”

  Instantly, I convinced myself that the fact that the phone had stopped ringing meant that I didn’t really have to immediately leave Lizzie’s flat, that I could use my last—what?—minute to finish looking around.

  One minute? Shit, shit, shit. I only have one more minute in here. I haven’t found a thing.

  I left the phone where I spotted it and opened and shut the other closet drawers quickly. Nothing. I patted down the folded and hanging clothes and opened a couple of purses.

  Nothing.

  Then I heard some scratching. Or clicking. Some metal-on-metal sound from the other side of the apartment.

  I stepped out of the closet, padded across the bedroom, and stood at the entrance to the hall.

  Where are her magazines? I wondered again.

  Huh? What’s that noise?

  It took me about three seconds to recognize the sound that was so compelling to me: Someone was fiddling with the locks on the front door to Lizzie’s apartment. Someone who didn’t have experience, someone who didn’t know the secrets, someone who didn’t have the touch. Someone who didn’t even know which key went in which lock.

  Someone who wasn’t Lizzie.

  Behind me, the damn phone started ringing again.

  Shit.

  FORTY-FIVE

  I was on the sixteenth floor. If I rejected the option of taking a flying leap off the balcony that faced the Hudson, the apartment had one exit.

  Given those limitations, I couldn’t see any margin in advancing.

  So I retreated.

  Back into the master bedroom, back to the closet, back to the phone. Why? I had to quiet the damn thing before whoever was on the other side of the door finally finessed Lizzie’s locks, made it inside, and heard the phone ringing.

  I allowed myself the luxury of believing that the intruder was Gaston, the doorman, coming to warn me. The thought calmed me just a little, until I realized that if Gaston had hustled up to the sixteenth floor to warn me, the situation had already seriously deteriorated.

  I opened the phone to kill the call and was about to shut it again when I heard my name from the tiny speaker. Twice.

  I moved the open phone to my ear.

  “Are they there yet?” she asked.

  Lizzie.

  They?

  At worst, I’d been hoping for a “he.”

  Shit.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “At the front door. Someone’s trying to get in.”

  “The locks stick. It’ll take them a minute to figure it out. You’re in the closet? My bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not good at listening, but I need you to listen to me now. Do you understand?”

  Was I tempted to argue? Of course. Instead, I said, “Yes.” I was all ears.

  “Reach behind the stack of drawers that’s directly in front of you with your right hand. Feel for a small handhold toward the back. A slot where you can stick your fingers.”

  I switched the phone to my left hand and felt behind the drawer unit with my right.

  Nothing.

  “Got it?” she said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Go lower. Pretend you’re my height. Five-seven.”

  Five-seven? I thought you were taller.

  Focus!

  I slid my hand lower.

  “Now?”

  “Yes. I have it.”

  “Pull. Hard! Jerk it.”

  I heard the distant clunk of the dead bolt releasing in the front door.

  “They’re almost in,” I whispered.

  “Pull,” she said. “Do it.”

  I yanked. The entire shelving unit rolled forward about ten inches. It was on some kind of track system.

  “It moved.”

  “Squeeze in behind it. There’s room back there, I promise; you’ll fit. Go! Don’t trip, there’s something on the floor inside.”

  I felt for the opening and squeezed in, my shoes banging hard into whatever it was t
hat was on the floor.

  “Stand facing toward the closet. Now grab in front of you—straight in front of you. Get a grip on one of the shelves and pull—gently this time—the whole unit toward you. It will slide.”

  I did. It did; the drawer unit clicked back into its original position.

  “There’s room for you to step behind you a couple of feet or so. Back up slowly until you feel the wall. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then feel to the side with your right hand, waist high. My waist, remember? You’ll find a light switch. Flip it. Yes? Now you can see where you are. Don’t worry, no light will escape.”

  I followed her direction, found the back wall, and the light switch, and flicked it.

  I saw where I was.

  I didn’t process what I was seeing right away. At first, I managed nothing more than a stammered “Oh my God.” Then further recognition descended and the pieces began falling into place. I stammered, “Are you—Do you—”

  She said, “Shhhh. Later. It’s not soundproof. Put on the headphones you see on the shelf.”

  “Is all this for—”

  “Shhhh,” she said. “Don’t let them find you. You won’t like what happens.”

  She hung up.

  I whispered, “Lizzie?”

  One of three small color monitors right in front of my eyes showed the front door of her apartment opening and two men that I’d never seen before entering Lizzie’s apartment. “Young and buff. Don’t-fuck-with-’em types.” That’s how the newsstand man had described them from the night before.

  I quickly decided that I didn’t disagree with his assessment.

  I added them to the roster of Death Angels in my head and thought, And then there were six .

  As directed, I pulled on the headphones that were resting on the shelf in front of me at eye level. Instantly, I was listening to the array of sounds emanating from the rest of the apartment.

  The two men separated in the living room. The huskier of the two started marching through the apartment and began doing a quick but thorough surveillance of the space. He was looking for someone.

  For me, I worried.