by Joy Fielding
And so one day she created Catherine, and in the days after that, Veronica, Clementine, Joanne.
By far and away, her favorite so far was Nikki. Nikki, with two k‘s.
It was Nikki who had the most fun.
“Call me Nikki,” she’d instructed that silly woman at the cottage on the edge of Shadow Creek. Stupid woman, she thought now. Selfish, too. Wouldn’t even let me use her hair dryer when there was one right under her bathroom sink. She’d stumbled on it when she went to take a shower. The thought turned her smile into a frown. It had taken the better part of thirty minutes to wash away that stupid woman’s blood. It had gotten on everything—her clothes, her hair, even her teeth.
“Did you get any in your mouth?” Kenny had asked with obvious worry. He’d been calling himself Kenny for several weeks now. The name was good luck, he’d said, although he couldn’t say why. “Wouldn’t want you picking up any strange viruses.”
“I didn’t get any in my mouth,” she told him, so touched by his concern for her welfare that she could barely breathe. Nobody had ever worried about her like that before. Nobody had ever been so protective. Nobody had ever made her feel so special, so loved. She would do anything not to disappoint him.
Anything.
They’d made themselves dinner with the leftovers in the fridge, helped themselves to two bottles of wine, then had sex repeatedly in their victims’ too-soft bed, listening as the still-torrential rain pummeled the roof over their heads.
“That’s one hell of a storm,” Kenny said.
“Good thing we’re inside,” she agreed.
“Safe and snug as two bugs in a rug.”
“I can’t believe they don’t have a TV.”
“Cheap bastards,” Kenny said.
“You should have seen their faces when I told them you’d cut the wires.” She laughed. “When they realized something wasn’t right, that they were going to die … That was the best part.”
“Sorry I missed it.”
“Next time you’ll be there,” she said. “So you won’t miss anything.”
“Thinking about what’s best for me, are you?”
“Always,” she said.
And it was true. Ever since they’d been introduced—“Call me Jason,” he’d said—she’d thought of little else.
“Honestly,” her mother had remarked. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. It’s like you’re on another planet.”
It wasn’t even that he was all that good-looking. Rather, he was what her grandmother used to describe as “interesting.” His features were somewhat coarse—his nose wide, his lips full, his eyes an unremarkable shade of brown. Still, there was something about him that commanded attention. Maybe it was the way he stood, the insolent tilt of his shoulders, the subtle forward thrust of his slender hips, the manner in which his thumbs hooked into the side pockets of his too-tight jeans, the way his eyes appeared paradoxically vacant and knowing at the same time.
The way he looked into her eyes, and then past them, as if he could see right through them into the furthest recesses of her soul, effortlessly settling into the darkest corner of all.
Her secret place.
“We don’t keep secrets,” he’d told her. “Not from each other.” Which was when he told her about his parents’ multiple marriages, how he’d taken a knife to stepmother number two after a particularly nasty argument and been placed in an adult psychiatric hospital for the better part of a year, how he’d slept in a ward with psychotics and schizophrenics, all much older than his eleven years, and how he’d been raped by one of the attendants, a middle-aged man with graying hair and a potbelly, whose breath smelled of black licorice, how even now the slightest whiff of black licorice made him retch.
He told her that while he was in the hospital, his mother had married some old guy from Texas and left New York without so much as a word of goodbye, and how he’d been released into the not-so-welcoming arms of stepmother number three, who had two children of her own and who was forever calling them by each other’s names. “That’s when I realized how unimportant such things were,” he told her. “Call me Daniel, call me Frank, call me Ishmael. It doesn’t matter what you call me. It’s not who I am.”
I love you, she’d thought, whoever you are.
“I am everyone,” he’d continued, unprompted. “I am everyone and I am no one. I am whoever I choose to be. Who are you?” he’d challenged, staring deep into her eyes, his hand reaching out to caress her cheek. His touch sent spasms of electricity throughout her body, causing her knees to wobble and her hands to shake.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, completely in his thrall. “I don’t know who I am.”
“You are whoever you choose to be,” he intoned solemnly.
“Whoever I choose to be,” she agreed.
Which was when she’d told him about her grandparents.
“My mother used to take me over to their house every Saturday night when I was a little girl,” she began, “so that they could babysit me while she and my father went out. My grandparents had these friends they used to play bridge with, the Farellis. Mr. Farelli was pretty good-looking for an old guy, but his wife was really overweight and unattractive. She had this big mole on her upper lip and there were always a couple of hairs sticking out of it. Not a pretty sight, let me tell you. Anyway,” she continued with a laugh, “one Saturday night when I was about five or six, I was at my grandparents’ house, in the guest room, in bed, trying to sleep, and listening to my grandparents and the Farellis hollering at each other, which they always did when they played bridge. I actually grew up thinking that screaming was part of the game.” She laughed again. “So Mrs. Farelli gets all upset at something my grandfather says, and she comes into the guest room to cool off. And she sits down on the side of the sofa bed—I’m not even sure she realized I was there—and she’s yakking away to herself, and I’m, like, captivated by that ugly mole on her upper lip, which is moving back and forth as she’s talking, with these hairs wagging at me like tails, and I suddenly reach up and grab one of them. Pulled the damn thing right out. Took half the mole with it. And Mrs. Farelli starts screeching and carrying on, like I’d deliberately tried to maim her or something. I mean, I’m a kid, right? What do I know? What’s she doing in my room anyway? And then suddenly everybody’s in the room, and what’s left of that damn mole starts bleeding like there’s no tomorrow, and I’m watching this blood dripping down her lips into her mouth, which is wide open because she’s still screaming, and I’m, like, fascinated by it. I can’t take my eyes off it. And now everybody’s yelling. ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you stupid? How could you do such a terrible thing?’ And I say, ‘But it looks better now. It was ugly.’ And my grandmother says, ‘Who do you think you are, dummy, to decide what’s ugly and what isn’t?’ And then she yanks me out of bed and turns me over her knee and spanks me, hard, right in front of everybody. And then she calls my parents and makes them come over and get me, says there’s something very wrong with me, and they were really mad because I ruined their evening, right? And that was the last time I ever stayed overnight at my grandparents’ house.”
“So, who do you think you are, dummy?” Kenny repeated with a laugh.
“Please don’t call me that,” she said, the word stinging even more than usual, coming from his lips. “I’m not stupid.”
“No, you’re not. What are you?” he challenged.
“I’m whatever I want to be.”
“What else?”
“I’m whoever I want to be,” she said with growing conviction.
“And who is that?”
She gave the question a moment’s consideration. “I’ve always liked the name Catherine.”
“Then Catherine you shall be.”
And then, the following week, “Call me Veronica.”
“As in Betty and …”
“I’m definitely not a Betty.”
“That’s for damn sure.”
And then soon after that, “I love the name Nikki. With two k’s.”
“Then Nikki, with two k’s, it is.”
“Call me Nikki,” she’d said to that stupid Ellen Laufer. Opening her door to a total stranger in the middle of the night. In the middle of a storm. How ridiculous was that?
No more ridiculous than living out in the middle of nowhere, she thought, answering her own question. No more ridiculous than not having a TV.
It was like her grandfather had once said: some people were just too stupid to live.
“What was it like when you tried to kill your stepmother?” she’d asked Kenny one day. They were sitting on the double bed in the sparsely furnished room he was renting. “I mean, did you actually get to cut her?”
“Nah. I was too little. She was too fast for me. I just chased her around the kitchen with a steak knife. Freaked her right out.”
“I bet.”
“It was fun.”
“I bet,” she said again. Then, “I used to cut myself.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Those scars on your legs.” He touched her thighs, his fingers tracing a series of thin lines on top of her jeans. “Do you still do it?”
She shook her head. “I stopped.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“Would you start again—if I asked you to?”
“Yes,” she said without missing a beat. Didn’t he know that she would do anything for him?
“I want you to do it now,” he said. “I want you to show me how you cut yourself.”
She quickly wriggled out of her jeans and kicked them to the floor. “I need a razor.”
Kenny pushed himself off the bed and walked purposefully into the bathroom, returning with a razor and a towel.
“Watch,” she said.
His eyes followed her hand as she lowered the razor blade to her bare skin, drawing a line along the flesh of her inner thigh, as easily as if she were taking a pen to paper. It took a second for the wound to open and the blood to appear, another second for the pain to register, then disappear into pleasure. Her lips parted; her jaw slackened; her head rolled back. She felt the familiar rush, as if someone had just stuck a needle full of heroin into her veins.
And suddenly his head was between her legs, and he was licking the blood from her thighs, and moaning along with her. “I want you to cut me,” he whispered.
“No. I can’t hurt you.”
“You won’t. Here,” he said, prying the razor from her fingers and removing his jeans, flinging them to the floor beside hers. “Show me. Guide my hands.” He’d placed the palm of her hand over the back of his and waited. And when she pressed the blade into his skin, when she ran it along his flesh, he’d shuddered, then pulled her to him and kissed her, deeply, tenderly.
She’d never felt so much love.
A few days later, he suggested they find someone else to cut.
“Stepmother number one has an old aunt and uncle who live in the outskirts of Plainfield,” he said, his enthusiasm increasing as his idea expanded. “Arlene and Frank Wall. They always had a soft spot for me.”
“Their name is Wall?”
“As in ‘brick.’ ”
She laughed, trying to remember if she’d ever been so happy. She would do anything to hold on to this man, to this feeling. Anything and everything. Anything he wanted. Everything he asked.
“Anyway, they have this cottage in the woods, almost as old as they are, and they’ve gotta be almost eighty by now. No kids. No neighbors. Just the two of them. Nobody’d even miss them.”
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“Yeah. Are you scared?”
“No. Are you?”
“Hell, no. I’m excited. A couple of old farts. They’ve been around long enough. We’d be doing the world a favor by getting rid of them.”
“We’re going to kill them?”
“Well, dummy, we can’t very well cut them up and just leave them there to tell everyone, can we?”
She felt her heart sink. Why had she asked him such a stupid question? She’d let him down. She’d disappointed him. If she wasn’t careful, he’d leave her, find someone smarter, someone who didn’t ask such dumb questions. And what would happen to her then? Who would she be without him? She’d be no one. Like she was before they met. “Please don’t call me that.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately, and her heart swelled with gratitude. “I won’t do it again. Promise.”
And so she’d told her mother she was going to be spending the weekend with a girlfriend, and she and Kenny had driven up to Plainfield and the cottage of Arlene and Frank Wall.
“Yes?” Arlene asked, squinting through the screen door at the smiling young couple on her doorstep.
“Auntie Arlene?” Kenny said. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“Matthew?” she asked. “My God, is that you? It’s been years. Look how big and tall you’ve grown. What are you doing here?” She opened the door. “Frank,” she called toward the living room, “you’ll never guess who’s here.” She looked from the young man she knew as Matthew to the girl standing beside him.
“This is my friend, Nikki.”
“Very nice to meet you, Nikki.”
It was the last thing she said before Kenny drove his large knife deep into her chest, Nikki quickly following his example with a knife of her own. Frank had proved harder to kill. It took three thrusts to bring him to his knees and a vicious stab to his neck to silence his moaning once and for all.
Afterward, they’d raided the refrigerator and made love in Frank and Arlene’s bed. “Smells like old people,” she’d said before drifting off to sleep.
The next morning, they ate breakfast, the butchered bodies of Frank and Arlene Wall lying at their feet, their blood covering the knotted pine floor like a layer of fresh paint. Then they took whatever money they could find, disconnected the new wide-screen TV, and carried it out to Kenny’s old Chevrolet.
“Do you need a hand with that?” someone asked suddenly, scaring them both, so that they almost dropped the TV to the ground. “Sorry,” the young man apologized immediately. He was about Kenny’s age, wearing a black baseball cap, a white T-shirt, black Spandex shorts, and white running shoes, all bearing the familiar Nike swoosh. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Name’s Brian.”
“Appreciate the help, Brian,” Kenny said, waiting to kill him until after the TV had been safely loaded into the backseat of his car. “Can’t leave any witnesses,” he said with a shrug.
They’d carried him back into the cottage and hacked off his arms and legs, then his head, because Kenny had seen someone do that on TV and thought it would be neat to try. “Off with his head!” she’d giggled, watching her lover with something approaching awe. It took hours, even with her help, and they were exhausted when they were done. So they showered and took a short nap before burying Brian’s torso in a shallow grave a few miles down the road, then scattering the rest of him in various locations along the route home. They also stopped at a flea market where Kenny purchased an old machete that had caught his eye. “You never know,” he’d said. “It could come in handy.”
It had indeed come in handy the following week in the Berkshires, where they’d made mincemeat out of William and Marie Carteris, although he’d used it sparingly. “Till I get the hang of it,” he’d said. Which he had by the time they paid a visit to the Adirondacks and the cottage of Ellen and Stuart Laufer.
Good times, she thought now, looking forward to their next adventure. To all their future adventures. Nothing mattered as long as they were together.
“I’m ready whenever you are,” he’d told her.
I’m ready, she thought now, opening her eyes.
SIX
WELL, YOU CERTAINLY HAD a good sleep,” Val was saying as Brianne sat up in her seat and looked around.
“Are we there yet?”
“We’re here.”
> “This is it?” Brianne stared toward the unassuming wood and stone structure in the middle of a hub of giant pine trees. “I thought you said this place was supposed to be so luxurious.”
When luxury beckons, Val thought, stealing a glance over her shoulder at Jennifer, and knowing by the expression on her face that the younger woman was thinking the same thing. “It’s quite lovely inside,” she assured her daughter as Brianne reached inside her purse for her BlackBerry. “Who on earth are you texting now?”
Brianne pushed open her car door and stepped onto the semicircular driveway in front of the lodge, ignoring her mother’s question as her fingers furiously worked the miniature keypad.
A young man approached. The name tag on his crisp white shirt identified him as Wesley. He was thin and somewhat gangly, his arms seemingly too long for the rest of him. “Welcome to the Lodge at Shadow Creek,” he said, his voice surprisingly robust, as the others began climbing from the car. Melissa and James exited together from either side of the SUV, Melissa’s short legs sliding toward the ground, the dark eyes behind her large black glasses casually absorbing her surroundings while James made an exaggerated show of stretching and then bending from the waist until his elbows touched his toes.
“I’m super flexible,” James told Wesley with a sly grin.
“Down, boy,” Val whispered, staring at her daughter, still texting away. “There are children present.”
“I’m not a child,” Brianne said without so much as a glance in their direction.
Jennifer was the last to leave the car, hanging back as if to underscore her trepidation, then pushing one bare leg out after the other, as if she were riding an invisible bicycle. This was followed by the firm breasts that impressively filled out her sunny yellow T-shirt and the formidable rush of thick blond hair that temporarily hid her face from view.
Wesley watched her exit, his mouth dropping open just enough to be noticeable, from the side of the car. “Check-in is right through those doors,” he managed, indicating the row of massive glass doors directly behind him. “Can I help you with your luggage?”