by Kris Ripper
“Yes, definitely.” She kissed me. “Come dance in a little bit, right?”
“I will,” I promised.
“I think she should have shut it down,” Jaq said, voice low. “Just for tonight. It feels too much like taunting this asshole, like dangling all these people right in front of them, daring them to strike again.”
I secretly agreed. “Do you think we’re sitting here with the person doing this? Like right now?”
“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.” She looked up at the guy approaching the table. “Oh good, Philpott, join us. Tell us interesting things about the world.”
“The world?” Philpott took Hannah’s seat and turned it so he had a line of sight on most of the room.
“Anything to keep me from looking around wondering who’s next.”
I didn’t know Philpott well, but he was funny, and he did seem to have a lot of stories. Josh and Keith pulled up chairs as the night went on, and the conversation inevitably turned back to its original theme.
Josh shook his head, looking exasperated. “Short of implementing a mandatory buddy system, I don’t know how we deal with this.”
“Triads,” Keith amended. “It would have to be triads so that the killer couldn’t just overpower their buddy.”
“Triads, good point. And we can’t implement a mandatory triad system.”
“So we sit here and hope for the best,” Philpott agreed. “But is that good enough.” He didn’t say it like it was a question. He said it like all of us knew none of this was good enough.
Jaq shook her head. “Of course it’s not, damn it. This is ridiculous.”
“But to play devil’s advocate, people are allowed to take risks,” Keith said. “Every time you get in a car, you accept a risk. Every time you get on an airplane. Right now being at Club Fred’s feels like a huge risk, but statistically, taking into account all of La Vista, it’s still more dangerous to get in your car.”
“I bet that changes if you only take into account attendance at theme nights,” Jaq argued. “And car accidents, if you’re talking about passive casualties, are random; this person, whomever they are, is specifically targeting us. Not straight people, not tourists, but queer people who come to this bar. And that—” She broke off. “It irritates me. I know that’s weak, but that’s how I feel. I’m so annoyed by this person. Aside from the tragedy and the grief, I’m just pissed off that they think they can get away with this.”
Nods all around.
“And they can,” I said. “At least so far, they are getting away with it.”
“The cops aren’t exactly stirring themselves on our behalf,” Josh said.
Philpott held up a hand and tilted it back and forth. “From what I’ve read, it looks like this person fits the most average profile of a serial killer there is. So do I, and Ed, and Keith’s a little young for it, but he’ll fit that profile too, in a couple of years. So does Tom, as we’ve already seen.”
I held up my hand. “Hey, keep me out of it. I’m trans and Latino. I’m nobody’s average anything.”
He smiled. “Okay, point. But to outside appearances, you could be. A lot of people in here could be. This is a person who doesn’t bring a weapon, but finds one where they kill, so there’s no connection. That also makes it harder to prove it’s the same killer.”
“Come on, man, it’s gotta be the same person.” Josh took a pull on his beer. “It has to be. Please don’t tell me we have more than one person running around beating people to death.”
“No, I agree. I’m positive it’s the same person.”
Alisha tapped my shoulder and leaned down to say, “I’ll take my dance now, kind sir.”
Hell. “Just give me a few more minutes. This is really interesting.”
“Really? Okay, I’ll be out there dancing all up on Zane, so if you want me to go home with you, you better finish up.”
I kissed her. “You’re definitely going home with me.”
When I tuned back in to the conversation, Jaq and Philpott were talking about serial killer history while Josh made occasional dark interjections about how the two of them were looking more and more like suspects all the time.
I didn’t mean to ignore my girlfriend all night. Neglectful boyfriends probably always said that, but it was true. It was just that after weeks of feeling like the only person who cared about Steven Costello, or Honey, or the other victims, I was sitting at a table with people who were paying attention. They’d all read Togg’s posts. They’d read Rodriguez’s article and follow-up about Honey, and the more recent article about Stephanie Hawkins.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t know all of them that well, or that we were all coming from different perspectives. In some sense we had a lot in common, and it made me feel less like I was making the whole thing up.
Alisha had tried to get my attention once or twice, but I was in the middle of a conversation, so I’d held her off. I didn’t realize she’d gone home until Jaq poked me from across a table crowded with empties.
“Hannah gave Alisha a ride home, by the way. So don’t worry when you realize she’s not here.”
“Alisha went home?”
“Oh damn,” Josh murmured. Keith hit him.
I focused on Jaq. “Alisha went home?”
“Um. Yeah. I think she was trying to tell you that the last time she came to the table.”
I’d told her to give me five more minutes. She had seemed a little put-out. “How . . . long ago was that? Do you know?”
“An hour or so,” Jaq said, somewhat apologetically.
“Oh my god. I’m a dick.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Josh told me. “Though now that I’m looking at the time, we should take off soon too.”
Keith patted his arm. “Let’s stay a little longer. I’m still getting used to not having the opening shift at the diner on Saturday mornings.”
“Ha.” Jaq leaned forward. “I forgot you had that job. You done completely?”
“I’m reserve staff now to kind of keep a hand in—”
I gathered my stuff as they talked and excused myself with a wave. I’d been sitting at that table for almost four hours, and I hadn’t even noticed time passing. I waved again to Rodriguez’s son as I passed him chatting with a guy I didn’t know, and got the hell out of there.
Alisha let me in her apartment, but she was clearly not thrilled to see me.
“I’m so sorry. I completely lost track of time.”
“I noticed. It’s fine.”
“Is it fine? It doesn’t really sound fine, judging by your voice.”
She flopped onto the sofa and stared at me for a long moment. “You said you’d dance with me.”
“I know. I meant to. I got caught up talking with people.”
“That’s the part that’s fine. You wanted to talk about serial killers, and I wanted to dance, so that was okay for a while. But if that’s really what you wanted to do, I wish you’d told me so I didn’t keep waiting for you.”
“I didn’t mean to. I totally planned to dance, I just— I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Because if I’d known it was going to be like that, I would have enjoyed dancing with everyone out there, and when I was done, I would have left. But I thought we were there together, so I kept waiting for you, and when I felt like leaving, I didn’t. Still waiting for you.”
I sat down next to her and tried to think of something I could say that wouldn’t sound like a shoddy defense. “You’re right. It just felt like finally people were talking about this stuff that I thought I was the only one even noticing.”
She shook her head. “How can you think that? It’s all anyone’s talking about. People on the dance floor were talking about whether or not the cops are gonna catch this guy, you know? Since Tom got arrested it’s practically the only thing anyone’s discussing and it’s important, yeah, but when it’s the only thing we talk about I just feel like we’re missing the point.”
&n
bsp; “What’s the point?”
“Are we living our lives? Or are we just trying not to die? Because I don’t want to spend my whole life trying not to die. I want to be doing things, going places.” She paused, eyeing me. “What do you want, Ed?”
Shit. I sat back. “I want to go places too, but I can’t turn off the world when it’s unsettling. I’m part of it. It’s part of me.”
“Except, tonight? It was your whole life. There wasn’t room for me or anything else. What’s gonna happen when they catch this person? Will you get back all those hours and use them for other things, or will you just jump to the next big story you can’t stop thinking about? Because once in a while is okay, but if you can’t drag yourself away from work to dance with me, that’s a problem for us.”
“It was one time!” I could feel myself getting defensive and tried to make my voice even. “Jeez, Alisha, I got a little caught up one time and you’re acting like it’s some huge crime.”
“You’re constantly checking your phone for updates, and flipping through your notebooks, and talking theory. You do it all the time. Think about how often you have your phone in your hand, okay? Just think about it.”
“So when we spend time together I’m supposed to forget that everything else in the world exists? Seriously? Because that sounds a little bit crazy.”
“Fine. Then I’m crazy. But tonight we went out to a club and you sat in a chair. For hours. That sounds a little bit crazy to me.”
That hadn’t been how it was, damn it. “I was talking to people. And this isn’t— It’s not like I’m making this up! People have actually died. People I knew and cared about.”
Her face softened. “I know. I know you miss Honey, and I know you’re trying to find out who hurt her, but do you really think sitting at a table in Club Fred’s all night is getting you closer?”
“Nothing’s getting me closer!” I pushed up, pacing to the door and back. “No one’s getting anywhere, don’t you see that? They arrested Tom, couldn’t make a case against him, dropped the charges, and that was it! That was all they did!”
Unbidden, the sight of Honey’s body at the waterfront came to mind. She’d been so still, as if frozen in time, except for her veil. Her veil had blown all over the place, tying the moment to the wind, making it real.
I thought of Paloma Santiago Ortiz, a little girl with hair ribbons her brother would have known anywhere.
“These people don’t have anyone looking out for them! They don’t have a voice, they don’t have anyone to protect them, to help them. That’s me. It has to be me, if it isn’t anyone else, and I can’t give that up just because I have a girlfriend. This is my job.”
“So is that what you want? Your job, and nothing else?”
“No, no, that isn’t—” I shook my head, frustrated and angry. This was so fucking important, how could she not see that? “I love you. I love being with you. I love having that, outside everything else, this place where I don’t have to think about all the rest of that stuff.”
Alisha’s eyes narrowed again. “Really.”
“What?”
“You like having me—outside everything else. Like I’m your vacation. From everything you think is more important.”
“What? No. I didn’t say that.”
“You pretty much did, yeah. There’s”—she made a rough shape with both of her hands in the air—“your life, with your job, and all the dead people who have no one to rely on but you to bring their killers to justice, and then there’s this”—one hand, a circle made with thumb and forefinger—“our relationship, where you can relax and pretend nothing else exists.”
I frowned. “That’s not how it is.”
“Really? Did you ask your boss if you could get time off to go on a trip?”
“No.” Shit, now she looked really pissed. “Look, I almost got fired this week, it wasn’t a good idea to ask for time off.”
She pursed her lips and looked away.
“Jesus, Alisha, what the hell do you want from me? Do you want me to get fired? I like my job. I don’t want to lose it.”
“I don’t want you to lose your job.”
“So you want to break up with me?”
I expected her to demur, immediately, forcefully, but she just stared for a long moment, until I thought she was going to say yes.
“I need to think about some things. I don’t want to be some private little oasis from your life, Ed. That’s— For me, that’s not what relationships are. If that’s what you want, you’ll have to do it with someone else.”
“That’s not fair. You— How many times have you said it was okay I talked about things with other people because you didn’t want to talk about them? Now it’s my fault I actually did that?”
She leaned over her knees, hands clenching in her skirt. “This isn’t you talking about sports with a friend who likes sports more than I do, so don’t you dare pretend I’m a shallow bitch for wanting more than the apparently minor role I play in your life. I don’t want to be your little bubble of happy, okay?”
“You aren’t. How can you say that?”
“Because you just did. Because you stood here, in my house, and told me you want to keep me apart from everything else in your life. Well, fuck that, Ed. I’m not interested.”
I hadn’t said that. I hadn’t meant that. Damn it, how the hell were we having a fight about things we hadn’t even said?
“If you didn’t want to go on a trip with me, you should have told me, instead of pretending you were going to ask your boss, making me think you were serious. Because I believed you. Like I believed you when you said you’d come dance with me.” She shook her head. “You should leave. I can’t keep talking to you right now.”
“I don’t— But— You’re kicking me out?”
“I’m telling you to go home, yeah. But here’s what you should think about, and it has nothing to do with me, nothing to do with us.” Alisha took a deep breath. “This is no way to live. This is no way to honor people. And if Honey were here, she’d sure as hell kick your ass for throwing away your life even if it meant finding out who killed her. Go home, Ed.”
I wanted to fight with her more. I wanted to keep arguing until she understood what I was saying, until she could see it from my point of view. I stood there, in her living room, staring down at her, trying to come up with the perfect words, the exact way to phrase what I wanted to tell her so she’d get it.
She wasn’t looking at me anymore. Since I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say, I left.
It was cold on the street. Last week’s rain storm had cleared out the mugginess lingering from summer, and the weather suddenly felt like fall. Or at least like fall was imminent. I’d parked a few blocks away (I would always rather walk a little than parallel park), and my hoodie wasn’t quite up to the chill.
I hadn’t noticed on the way in, probably because I was looking forward to spending the night with my girlfriend—I thought bitterly—but trudging toward the car was different.
A horn honked at the intersection and I jumped.
Shortly after 1 a.m. In other words: the time Honey was murdered. Was another murder happening as I unlocked my car, started it, turned on the heat full blast? And locked all the doors, just in case.
I drove through a burger place on the way home and treated myself to a bunch of food that would probably make me sick. I didn’t care. At least after I ate it my entire body would shut down and I could sleep.
Regret made a hardened lump in my gut when I got out of bed the next morning.
Or maybe that was the burger. And milkshake.
I groaned and made my way to the kitchen in search of coffee. Or possibly a time machine. What I found instead was Troy sleeping with his face in a book.
Coffee-making wasn’t the quietest activity. I tried to respect Troy’s nap, or whatever it was, but between running water into the carafe and the machine gurgling, he started picking his head up.
“Ummmm. Coffee?
”
“Brewing.”
“’Kay.” He sighed. “Man. I went out last night and . . . fuck.”
I nodded as if that was a complete thought.
“But like usually I go out with my boys, and last night I went out with these other people. Which I maybe should not have done. Because these people partied hard.”
“With text books?”
“Huh?”
I gestured to the table. “You partied hard reading?”
“Oh. Oh, no.” He shoved the book away. “So, like, I got home, but I was on . . . something? And I couldn’t sleep, but JP told me I couldn’t be in the room because I was bothering him, so I thought I’d come down here, but I got bored.”
“So you started reading—” I flipped the book so I could see the cover. “A cookbook?”
“It helped. I mean, I fell asleep, anyway.”
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d been born with the body Troy had. We talk a lot about how chromosomes don’t matter, how what gender you’re assigned by your family doesn’t dictate who you are, and I believe all that’s true. But it doesn’t mean I don’t . . . wonder. What being cis is like. What it’d be like to just not think about it all the time.
“You want coffee?” I asked.
“Man, yes. Please. Ugh. So, uh, how was your night?”
“My night.” I gave in to the very real need not to sit alone in my room, and leaned back against the counter. “I fucked up with my girlfriend.”
“Oh damn. Dude. What’d you do?”
“I hung out with some people at this club we go to instead of dancing with her.” That was a good summation, anyway. Sort of.
“Uh. Like I don’t mean to be objectifying or anything, but if she was my girlfriend, I would so not turn down dancing with her.”
Did he know he talked like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo?
“It wasn’t really like that. I was in the middle of a conversation.”
“Yeah, well, I think that whole ‘bros before hos’ thing is pretty overrated. Would you really want to be with a guy who picked his friends over dancing with you?”