Maybe that’s what people like her and Walt radiated: It doesn’t matter.
She took some clothes into the dressing room and changed into them, feeling immediately better. She knew someone could try and stop her on the way out, but she wouldn’t stop. And then, what? For the person who tried to do the stopping it would have just been a potentially embarrassing waste of time. She thought they could probably call someone else to look for her but would come up blank when inevitably asked for a description.
She’d opted for simple black skinny jeans and a white v-neck t-shirt. She squinted at the mirror, pretty sure she could make out the darker skin of her nipples and thought she probably should have worn her old bra regardless of how dirty it was. But it didn’t matter. She would probably go to a lingerie store and pick one up. If she chose not to, it wasn’t a big deal. Even if people were looking, they weren’t observing.
She folded the old woman running suit and left it on one of the benches.
She left the store and went to the food court to get a soda and some soft pretzel sticks.
There was a line at Pretzel Face and she could either choose to wait or go behind the counter and get it herself. She thought she could figure it out. A guy with aggressive acne manned the register and a girl who moved so slowly she had to be super stoned went about filling the paper containers with various pretzel concoctions. Erica grabbed one of the containers and filled it with random things from beneath the warming lights.
“Hey, you can’t be back here,” the girl said. She didn’t really look at Erica, just noticed there was some foreign object taking up space.
“I’ll be out of your hair in a sec.”
The girl huffed something but seemed to forget about it once Erica moved out of the way.
Success, Erica thought.
She grabbed a really big plastic cup, dumped a bunch of ice in it, and hit the button for Cherry Coke. She couldn’t figure out how to turn the flow of soda off so she just took her cup away once it was mostly full and walked out from behind the counter. She waited for either the employees or customers to mention her presence but no one did. She sat in the food court to eat and drink. She stood up when she was full, not bothering to throw anything away, and went to a large department store. She grabbed some huge shopping bags from the counter and went around the store to fill them up. An announcement said the mall would be closing in a half hour and she was pretty tired of shopping anyway. She wanted to be on the road, headed to their destination, curious about what would happen once they got there.
About ready to leave the mall, she realized she’d forgotten makeup. A Halloween store was to her immediate right, despite the holiday being months away, and she thought that would work.
She walked out of the mall, greeted by an angry orchestra of blaring car alarms, and Walt pulled up in a bright yellow VW Bug, the classic kind.
House Hunting
They tore out of the parking lot even though they didn’t really have to.
“Fruitful?” Walt asked once they were on the highway.
“Very.”
“This car smells less like ass.”
“I noticed. Good work.”
“Thanks.”
“Where in Dayton are we going?”
“Not sure. I was going to head downtown. I’ll know the place when we come to it.”
“Somewhere specific?”
“I don’t traffic in specifics.”
Erica pulled the sun visor down, happy to see it had a mirror clipped to it. It wasn’t original to the car and Erica enjoyed knowing there was a whole market out there for people who could not go a few minutes without looking at themselves in a mirror. Or the thought of someone being so self-conscious she couldn’t step out of a car without first inspecting herself. Until her latest grim realization, she’d been one of those people. And, even now, here she was using it. She grabbed the bag from the Halloween supply store and pulled out the various packages and tubes.
Walt glanced over at her.
“Don’t look. I’ll let you know when I’m finished.”
He returned his focus to the road.
She began covering her face. There was something nostalgic about the smell of the cheap Halloween makeup but she didn’t really attach any specific memories to the feeling. Surely she must have gone trick-or-treating at least once, but she couldn’t think of a single costume she’d ever worn, a single character she’d ever been.
On the highway there was enough street light to see what she was doing. They must have been close to the city. On their trip, she had noticed that cities meant brightness. Otherwise, the highway had been dark dark dark.
Walt took an exit off the highway and said, “Are you about done? We’re almost there.”
“A couple more minutes.” She kept her lips mashed together so she didn’t fuck anything up.
She capped everything, put it back in the bag, and said, “Okay. What do you think?”
Walt glanced over at her. A look crossed his face. She couldn’t tell if it was confusion or excitement. “Ghoulish,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“You know you don’t really need a disguise, right? People are less likely to remember you without any of that shit.”
“I know. It’s what I wanted to do.”
“Good then. But I have to tell you . . . I’m not a fan.”
“Of what?”
“All that artificial shit.”
“It reflects me more than the skin I was born with. Look at it that way.”
“Just . . . you know . . . if I ever ask you to wash it off . . .”
“I’ll think about it when and if that happens.”
She saw the muscles clench in his jaw and expected him to say something else but he remained silent.
Downtown Dayton turned out to be not nearly as large as Erica thought it would be. Walt pulled onto 2nd Street. The car moved slowly. To their left was a parking lot for what looked like bars or dance clubs or something. A huge LCD screen flickered a rainbow-colored smiley face and the phrase: HAVE A GAY DAY. To the right was a rundown apartment building with square glass pods attached to it. Balconies, Erica guessed. Two people dressed in black sat on one of them. It looked like they were drinking and smoking. A fat naked man stood in another one, clearly masturbating. Drunk people in club clothes milled about the street and sidewalks, many of them shouting, “Whooo!” Erica didn’t think she’d ever had the urge to shout an expression of joy out loud.
Walt crossed the intersection, slowing down even more and eventually pulling the car to a stop at the curb. To the left was a very tall building that looked like some kind of ominous dark tower. To the right was a maybe ten-story apartment building. Erica thought it looked a lot more upscale than the other one. This was probably not filled with chain smoking alcoholics and chronic masturbators. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“This is the place,” Walt said.
“Have you ever been in there?”
“Nope. You can either grab your shit or we can come back out for it.”
Erica thought about grabbing it, but it seemed like work. Walt pulled his gun from his pants, ejected the clip to see how many rounds were left in it and, apparently judging it a satisfactory amount, reinserted the clip and said, “Let’s rock.”
A double glass door waited, full of clean, pure light, off the sidewalk. It had to be locked. No way a building like this wasn’t secure. A black man in a suit approached from the other side. He swiped a key fob and opened the door. Erica and Walt walked in after him.
“Thanks, buddy,” Walt said.
The man didn’t acknowledge them. They followed him into the elevator. He pressed ‘3’.
“Ten please,” Walt said.
The man mechanically pressed ‘10,’ the top floor.
Walt focused on the man and said, “Thanks, buddy,” repeatedly until he got off on floor 3. “Thanks buddy thanks buddy thanks buddy thanks buddy thanks buddy thanks buddy.”
“Don’t freak out,” he said to Erica. “Or do. I guess it doesn’t really matter.”
She took a deep breath.
Moving In
Erica didn’t think Walt used confusion as any kind of tool. It wasn’t like he went at this with any sort of coherent plan. The confusion just seemed like a natural outgrowth.
He knocked on the door and a man opened it without inquiry. There was a spyhole toward the top of the door. Maybe Walt looked like the type of person you would open a door for but there was the matter of the gun he made absolutely no effort to conceal. And Erica’s face was painted like a skull. It was unlikely the man in the apartment mistook them for someone he knew. Before the man could open his mouth, Walt shot him in the face. It wasn’t until this point that Erica believed him about Granny already being dead. She thought she’d seen blood when Walt shot Granny but, after seeing the sheer spray and volume of the blood erupting from this guy’s head, Erica began to think she had imagined the blood that came from Granny.
Just as Erica wondered how many people were in the apartment, a woman came out from either the bedroom or the bathroom.
She didn’t say anything. She screamed. Whatever veneer of normalcy this woman wore was quickly stripped away and she stood in the hallway, holding a cell phone in her right hand but not using it, looking down at the corpse of what was probably her husband. Before she did anything with the phone, she turned and charged back through the hallway.
Oh shit, Erica thought. That was the fight or flight instinct. Erica wondered if there was another door to exit through. She doubted it. There was probably a balcony but that was a long way down. So if it were the flight instinct, Erica thought the woman would have turned to run past them.
And if it was the fight instinct then she either had a gun hidden toward the back of the apartment or something she was protecting.
Please let it be flight. Maybe there was a fire escape or something. Maybe the woman was content to throw herself off the balcony.
Walt fired a shot at the woman and she dropped to the floor and went skidding across the birch.
Then Erica heard it.
The crying.
The woman had been exercising the fight instinct, protecting her child. The flight instinct would have come later, after she placed her hands on what it was she was protecting.
Walt heard it too and continued down the hall. Erica nearly sprinted after him.
“No, no, no, no,” she called.
She entered the nursery only a couple of seconds after him. He had his gun pointed down into a white wooden crib. The walls in this room were pink, in stark contrast to the severe white walls of the rooms she had been able to see.
“Stop, Walt.”
His hand trembled. The muscles in his forearm tensed.
“But I want to,” he said.
“I know I wasn’t supposed to say no but I’m using it this once. I’m saying ‘no’, Walt. If you do what you want to do then you’ll never see me again. I want to be with you. I love you. If you do what you want to do right now, I won’t let myself be with you. I just can’t. Tell yourself you want me to be happy more than you want this one thing.”
“How do you know? How can you possibly say what you can’t do? Think about it. This baby is going to grow up without parents. Its life is going to be horrible. She’ll probably be sexually abused in foster homes. She’ll probably continue the cycle of abuse. Five kids before she’s twenty. Neglect and abuse. A blight on society. She’s already damaged, baby. The best thing you could do is to let me do what I want. Right now, she’s just one big question mark. She doesn’t even know what fear is. She was crying at the big sounds but now she’s just smiling and drooling, looking at the shiny fun toy pointed at her. So if I shoot her, I’m putting an end to all of those questions. That’s liberating. That’s powerful. If I don’t do this, you’re responsible for her. Whether you know it or not, you’re responsible for everything that happens to her and everything she does to other people. Do you want that responsibility?”
“I just want her to live.”
Walt turned to face her. He raised the gun and scratched his temple. “If I give you this, are you going to do something for me?”
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
“If you don’t . . . I’ll find this kid. Don’t think I won’t. And I’ll finish the job and, somehow, I’ll make sure she knows you’re the one responsible.”
Erica walked toward the crib.
“What are you going to do with it?” Walt asked.
“I’m going to get rid of it.”
“Where?”
“I’d rather not tell you.”
“You have to tell me where you’re taking her.”
“I’ll drop her at a hospital. I saw like six of them on the way in.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yeah, take her. Get rid of her.” Walt lowered the gun and looked dramatically at the floor. “That’s how much I love you.”
Erica reached into the crib and grabbed the baby. She didn’t know the first thing about babies. Didn’t even know if she was holding it correctly.
“Can I have the keys to the car?” she asked.
Walt shook his head. “No. That’s asking too much.”
Erica took this as a reasonable answer even though, since they’d started with her car and Walt had now traded on it a couple of times, it almost seemed like it should have been her car. At least as much her car as his. But it was okay. As she told him, she’d seen several hospitals on the way in. She was sure one of them was within walking distance and it was a warm night so she didn’t have to worry about the baby getting cold.
Outside on the sidewalk, walking around and looking for a blue hospital sign, she again thought she could just leave. But she knew she wouldn’t and thought maybe she should try and figure out why that was but it felt like the answer would terrify her more than everything that had happened up to this point.
The streets had seemed brighter from above. Now on their surface, walking along the sidewalk, they seemed dark. She passed alleys that were darker still and thought she could hear movement coming from within them. She felt scared and vulnerable. She walked for two or three blocks and wondered what she was doing. How long until she found a hospital? She hated hospitals and wasn’t even sure she could step inside one. And now the thought of just walking into one and plopping down a baby and being able to turn and walk out completely unmolested seemed ridiculous. Plus she’d have to walk all the way back and her feet already kind of hurt. She wondered how long before a cop came along and spotted the creepy girl in corpse paint carrying a baby and decided to stop and ask her some questions. It wasn’t her they would notice. It would be the bright pink bundle she carried. She hugged the baby closer to her chest. It was soft and warm. It smelled good.
She heard shuffling to her left and turned to see a bearded man in rags sitting at the bus stop.
“Scuse me,” he said.
She walked a little faster.
Another man shuffled across a crosswalk. He wore a puffy blue coat despite the heat. He stopped on a manhole cover, dipped his legs, and held both arms up to the sky.
Erica approached him and said, “Will you take this?” She proffered the baby to him.
The man tried to stare at her but his eyes jumped around in his head.
“To a hospital or something? I’m new here. I don’t know where they are.”
“To space?” the man said.
Erica didn’t know what he was talking about but when he held out his arms she put the baby in them and felt both a physical and emotional weight lifted from her. She wondered if it would be in the paper or on the news the next day. Maybe she would check and see. It would be interesting to read other people’s descriptions of how it happened. But she knew she wouldn’t check the paper. She probably wouldn’t want to look at a
paper for a very long time.
When she got back to the apartment, Walt was fucking the baby’s dead mother.
Erica wished she was surprised.
Part Two
Have
Home
“This is a real nice place,” Walt said.
The only things Erica could focus on were the naked woman with a gunshot wound between her shoulder blades, the man with the pulped head, and the countless splatters and splashes of blood on the white walls and light wood floor.
“We can get all that stuff cleaned up. This is our place now. We can start our life together.”
“Are you going to keep doing that?”
“What, baby?”
“What you were doing with that woman.”
“Would you rather her be alive? Hard to be jealous of a dead woman.”
“Jealousy is different than repulsion.”
“What’s there to be repulsed about? It’s just flesh. Same as if she was alive. Less repulsive, I’d say, since she’s not even conscious of it happening.”
Erica rolled her eyes. “I just don’t see why you needed to do that. You have me.”
He placed a hand over his forehead and used the thumb and middle finger to massage his temples. “I guess I couldn’t help myself. You were gone for a pretty long time. I wasn’t sure when you’d be back.”
“Did you think I wasn’t coming back at all?”
“I didn’t know. A girl like you out there alone . . . You don’t know what could have happened. Besides, I didn’t finish with her. We’ll be able to do something later. I mean I just fucked her a little bit, like, not until I came or anything.”
Erica thought about protesting but knew it wouldn’t do any good. She’d let him do whatever he wanted to anyway because it would be what she wanted too. The thought of entering the owners’ apartment, murdering them, and dropping their baby off with a homeless guy who was also possibly crazy should have made her depressed, but it didn’t. She would rather the owners not have been there but that was mostly just because it would have made it a lot easier. She took a deep breath. Tried to put things into perspective. Maybe it was the struggle, however slight, that would end up making this great apartment even more worthwhile. The thought of fucking Walt on the owners’ bed, possibly the very bed their baby had been conceived on, made her slightly wet. And, after all, they hadn’t killed the baby. If she’d let Walt do that, maybe she would have felt more sadness. But who knew?
Sociopaths In Love Page 8