“Of course. I’m still tired from that workout you put me through last night.”
He laughed out, either succumbing to ego or simply amused by her phrasing. “Anyway, how’s your friend?”
“Don’t change the subject when I’m beaming about sex,” she chastised him playfully.
“Is this where I’m supposed to ask you what you’re wearing?”
This time it was she who laughed out. “Nah, breathing hard into a telephone is not my thing. Is that how you get off when you’re not viewing Internet porn for your cases?”
They were both laughing now.
“So,” she said when their laughter had died down, “did you sleep well?”
“I passed out the moment my head hit the pillow.”
“How come you’re up so early?”
“Oh, one of my police buddies called me. Last night, I asked him to keep me in the loop about your friend’s case.”
“Did he have any news?”
“Nothing really—only that they found the knife she used to cut her wrists. It was in the kitchen, which was a little odd.”
“Why is that odd?”
“When someone slits her wrists, the knife is usually lying nearby. Why would she cut her wrists, walk to the kitchen, wash it off, and then walk back to the bedroom? In fact, that could never have happened, because there would be a huge blood trail from the bedroom to the kitchen. We didn’t find a single drop.”
“Maybe someone wiped the blood away?”
“No, that’s the thing. There are forensic techniques you can use: special lights that can tell you if something has come in contact with blood, even if you wash the blood off. That’s how they found the knife in the kitchen. It was washed off and placed with the other knives.”
Vera realized that she was holding her breath. She breathed out slowly: “So, you don’t think it was a suicide attempt?”
“No, do you?”
“No. Like I told you, it doesn’t fit with Stacy’s personality. It never fit.”
There was a slight pause. The detective was direct: “Do you think the boyfriend did it?”
“I don’t know,” Vera said with a groan, not wanting to implicate the boyfriend. “…Let’s drop it. What’s done is done.” She changed the subject as quickly as she could: “When am I going to see you again?”
The detective laughed out. “I think your friend will kill me if I show up there again. She’s very protective of you.”
“Don’t start that,” she said with a laugh.
“Are you the mother she never had or something like that?”
“Maybe,” Vera said, stunning herself by the simplicity of the statement. Presently, she heard the bedroom door squeak; when she looked up, she saw Stacy emerging from the room. “I gotta go,” Vera said into the phone. “Thanks again for everything. Let’s have lunch or something this week.” Even before the detective could answer her, she put the phone down and stood up.
“Who was that?” Stacy said with a wry smile, “—your boyfriend?”
Vera grinned, but ignored her taunt. “You want breakfast?” She walked over to Stacy.
“What do you have?”
“I didn’t say I had anything. I just asked you if you wanted breakfast. Let’s order something.”
“You order out too much, Vera,” Stacy whined. “Whatever happened to wholesome home cooking?”
Vera smiled and walked over to the phone: “It died when they invented free delivery.”
Breakfast arrived about half an hour later—along with the Sunday newspaper. Vera had to spoon feed Stacy, because her bandaged wrists made it difficult to hold anything. Luckily, the wounds were not deep enough to have severed tendons or caused nerve damage. Vera told her everything the doctor had said to her, while Stacy stared into the distance, looking bored. After they ate, Vera helped her bathe. She ran a bath for Stacy, and then scrubbed her back and shoulders with a washcloth. She reneged at scrubbing anything else. Afterwards, the bandages were changed and redressed. It was about midday now, and they were sitting in front of the TV. A show was on, but they were not really following it. They were just staring at the passing scenes.
“Maybe I should call my boyfriend,” Stacy announced.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t called already.”
“You think something happened to him?”
Vera sighed. “God, I hope not. I couldn’t spend another day chasing after him. …Here,” Vera went on, picking up her cell phone from the coffee table, “you’d better find out how he’s doing.”
Stacy dialed her home number and said an enthusiastic, “Hey, you!” as soon as the boyfriend answered. When, thirty seconds later, she began talking in baby talk, telling the boyfriend how much she missed him, Vera decided to take a walk. She went to the bathroom and showered. When she emerged from the shower fifteen minutes later, Stacy was still talking on the phone. Vera smiled. She went to her bedroom and dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Five minutes later, when she emerged from the bedroom, she saw that Stacy was finally finished talking. Stacy was lying back on the couch, basking in a kind of conversational afterglow. Vera laughed at her.
“I assume he’s well.”
“Yeah, I woke him up.”
“It’s good that he got some sleep.”
“Yeah. …You still think he tried to kill me?”
Vera hedged. “I don’t know what I think. I have a feeling you’ll be safer if you’re not around him for a while. And we both know he’ll be safer if you’re not around him,” she said, winking.
Stacy had a sarcastic smile on her face. “He could probably use a good killing about now. Killing is like sex: once you have it done to you, you need to have it done regularly.”
“Humph,” Vera said mockingly. “In your case, once you kill, you need to do that regularly as well.”
“No doubt,” Stacy said with a wry smile.
“So, you want something to eat?”
“God,” Stacy whined, “tell me you’re not going to order out again!”
Vera laughed. “Okay, I’ll torture you by cooking something. Just remember that you asked for it. You can’t complain.”
“I won’t. You can tell a lot about someone from her cooking.”
“Yeah, in my case, you’ll learn that I can’t cook.” Vera got up to go to the kitchen.
“Don’t go yet—it’s too early to eat again anyway.”
“You want to watch a movie?”
“Nah. Tell me a story, Vera.”
Vera winced: “I haven’t made up one yet.”
“Then tell me something that really happened. How old were you when you saw your first dead body?”
“Damn, you’re a morbid bitch!” Vera exclaimed, but Stacy only smiled.
“Never mind that. When was it?”
Vera sighed, thinking back. “I was twelve.”
“Good.”
“Good? What’s so good about that?”
“Twelve is a good age to become aware of death.” Stacy was looking at her frankly; Vera was looking back at her with a bewildered frown. Stacy laughed at her expression. “Anyway,” Stacy said, breaking the stalemate, “just tell me the story.”
Vera stood thinking for a few seconds. She sat down heavily. “Okay. …I haven’t thought about it in years.”
“Did it traumatize you?” Stacy asked, but there was an odd smile on her face.
“Damn,” Vera said, eying her again, “you’re a weird chick.”
“Quit with the suspense. Just tell me the story,” Stacy said, looking on eagerly and settling herself comfortably on the couch.
Vera smiled and shook her head. “Okay, when I was twelve, my father drove my mother and me down to Georgia to spend summer vacation at my grandmother’s farm. It was about a sixteen-hour drive. About eight hours into the drive, we all began to get bored and tired. By then, we had played all the road games we could: …I Spy and the others. The conversation had dried up, and we just sat there in silenc
e, trying to hold on—”
“You were an only child?” Stacy asked.
“I was by then.”
“What does that mean?”
“I had an older brother, but he died in the Army. He was some kind of top secret commando. Rather, that’s how I’ve always thought about it.”
“So, he was the first dead person you saw?”
“No, I never saw my brother’s body. His funeral was a closed casket funeral. He died in an explosion. I don’t even think there was a body in the casket.”
“How old were you then?”
“About seven. For years afterward, I used to think that maybe he was out there somewhere—that he wasn’t really dead, but only out on another top secret mission. I guess that was easier than accepting that he had been blown into a million bits in a country we had no business being in.”
“Vietnam?”
“Nah, I think Vietnam was over by then—it was one of the dozens of other Cold War conflicts that America secretly insinuated itself into. The Army never gave the details of how he had died. They said he had ‘made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.’ I remember that line from the funeral.”
“Do you remember your brother?”
Vera groaned with mock exasperation: “Why do you keep interrupting me?”
“You’re not giving the right details.”
“Excuse me for not being skilled at talking about morbid shit.”
“Well, get it together, sister,” Stacy said with a smile. “You’re rolling with me now.”
Vera smiled, then shook her head again. “…Anyway, he went to the Army when I was four or five. I have memories of him, but I can’t really say I knew him. I remember that he would call me ‘Lady V.’ I used to make him have these tea parties with me, and I would hold up my pinky finger when I drank out of the little plastic teacups, and talk with a British accent, and babble on about crumpets and scones, even though all we were eating were Oreos and Kool-Aid.” She laughed suddenly. “It is because of him that my parents still call me Lady V to this day.”
Stacy smiled and nodded, satisfied.
“Anyway, back to the trip to Georgia,” Vera went on, “about eight hours into the drive, the boredom was beginning to set in. We were driving down a lonely highway. For most of the time, ours would be the only car around. We were all pretty silent by then. Some scratchy country song was playing on the radio. I remember that the day was bright. …But it was almost too bright somehow—like an overexposed picture. Everything seemed faded—or maybe that’s just how my mind remembers it. The passing cars and the scenery…everything seemed faded. I remember that a station wagon was passing by us, and that in the back seat there were two little boys. The one closest to the window stuck out his tongue at me and made a face. For whatever reason, I stuck out my tongue at him, too. He stuck out his tongue farther, and rubbed it against the window; he looked over at me cross-eyed, daring me to make an uglier face. I was getting ready to go all out when I noticed the expression on his face—shock, terror… He was looking up ahead; I turned my head in time to see a huge truck tire flying our way. Up ahead, a tractor-trailer was jackknifing—it had had a tire blowout. It seemed as if the entire axle had come off. I glanced back over at the kid in the car, just in time to see the flying tire explode into them like a missile. There wasn’t an explosion or anything, but it knocked them off the highway. …The sound was like a bomb going off. My father swerved the car, because another tire was coming. I looked ahead in time to see it. My father swerved off the road, into a ditch. The car rolled. I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and I found myself being tossed around—one moment, I was on the roof; the next moment I was being jammed against the back of my parents’ seats. …And then, at last, it stopped. I lay in the back, trembling. My father screamed out, asking if everyone was okay. I must not have talked loudly enough, because he screamed out my name, thinking that something had happened to me. He reached back and shook me, asking if I was okay. I was in shock, but I was fine. He had blood streaming down his face, from a gash above his hairline. My mother was trembling and crying….
“Maybe two minutes passed that way, with us in the ditch. My father told us that we should get out. We had to clamber up the walls of the ditch. The tractor-trailer was lying on its side. The driver was standing outside, looking dazed. I remembered the family with the kids in the back. Their car was lying in the ditch on the other side of the road. For whatever reason, I went to them, and my father followed me. I looked down at the car from the road. The truck tire had caved in the entire front of the car. The kid who had made the face at me was dead—his neck was twisted and dangling out of the window. The entire family was dead. My father grabbed me and pulled me away, so that I wouldn’t see, but it was already branded on my mind. Up until I went to college, I would dream about that scene a few times a week.”
“When is the last time you dreamt about it?” Stacy asked her.
“It’s been years. I think about it every once in a while, but it’s been years since I’ve had a dream about it. I guess I got over it.”
“That’s a special memory, Vera, you should hold onto it. It was the first time you saw death as it was.”
“And how was that?” she said sarcastically, “—bloody and sickening?”
“Most people spend their lives trying to shield their minds from the reality of death. At a very early age, you saw death as it was—random, brutal… uncompromising.”
“You’re talking as though I saw something great. I saw a kid and his entire family die. It was horrible.”
“Sometimes seeing horror is exactly what we need. Either way, did you eventually make it down to Georgia?” Stacy asked.
“Eventually. We had to wait in the nearest town for a few days. My father had to get some car parts shipped in, in order to fix the car.”
“I guess you stayed in a motel?”
“Hardly,” she said with a laugh, remembering their accommodations. “It wasn’t that big of a town. We stayed in the sheriff’s ‘hunting lodge’—an old building in the middle of nowhere.”
“Anything else happen while you were there?”
“Nah. Nothing at all. We just waited around the house until the car was fixed. Then, we got the hell out of there. When we got to Georgia my grandmother babied us—wouldn’t let us out of her sight. She said that it was a miracle: that we had escaped death, and that this was our chance.”
“Your chance to do what?”
“I don’t know—our chance to be productive human beings, I guess.” She laughed here, and Stacy joined her.
Then, in her usual abrupt way, Stacy enquired, “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”
“You go from my first corpse to my first lover? You’re a strange conversationalist.”
“Never mind that,” she said, smiling. “How old were you?”
Vera groaned, feeling cornered. “I was fifteen.”
“Did you love him?”
“For someone who doesn’t believe in love, you sure ask that a lot.”
Stacy laughed. “Just answer the question.”
Vera smiled, feeling as though she had won that battle: “No—I didn’t love him.”
“I mean, at the time—did you think you loved him, as a fifteen-year-old?”
“Nah, it was some moron kid I met in the park one summer. We dated a couple of times; he felt me up, and then we did it at his place before his mother came home from work.”
“Good,” Stacy said with a smile. “Your first time should always be free of love and pretense.”
Vera chuckled at the comment. “…Were you in love with your first lover?” she asked Stacy now.
“Of course not.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“Goddamn! Was he twelve, too?”
“Of course not—he was seventeen.”
“Christ!”
Stacy laughed at her. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
&nbs
p; “What am I thinking?”
“That he took advantage of a young, impressionable girl.”
“What else could it be?”
“I seduced him.”
“A twelve-year-old can’t seduce a man. He abused you—raped you.” Stacy chortled at her, as if she had said something stupid. “You think seduction is only for adults?”
“He should have known better.”
“As I recall, he didn’t know shit. It was a total waste of time.”
“But you were twelve!”
“Why should I take pride in being some kind of clueless victim, Vera, when I was the one that was in charge? I wanted to have sex with him; I pursued him. It would be dishonest to say he took advantage of me.”
“But you can’t honestly say that twelve is a good age to lose your virginity,” Vera maintained.
“It was a good age for me—I got it out of the way.”
“But virginity isn’t something to ‘get out of the way.’”
Once again, Stacy laughed out. “You mean it’s some ‘sacred treasure’ that a woman bestows on a man on her wedding night?”
Vera ignored her baiting. “A twelve-year-old doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Don’t be preposterous, Vera. If dogs and rats and all the other animals of the earth—who don’t have the intelligence of a twelve-year-old human—can have sex, then why can’t a twelve-year-old girl have sex? It’s like I told you before: morality is a creation of human beings. It’s artificial—fake. Two hundred years ago, twelve-year-olds were getting married.”
“But we’ve advanced since then.”
“Have we? Maybe we’ve regressed. Maybe, after all these years of ‘civilization,’ we’ve lost sight of human needs?”
Vera eyed her skeptically: “You don’t believe in any moral standards at all?”
“Not at all.”
“You don’t believe that there are some things that are sacred?”
“I don’t think anything is sacred. I believe in needs and necessity. All you moralizers, who puff out your chests and talk about how moral you are, are the first ones to throw it all away when times get desperate. The Ten Commandments say ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ and yet we see our ultra-religious president telling us how great it is that we’re overseas killing people in wars.”
How to Kill Your Boyfriend (in 10 Easy Steps) Page 19