by Evelyn Glass
Get a grip! Get a goddamn grip! I yell at myself.
I place the glass on the counter.
“Uh-oh, time for business,” she grins. Her cheeks are flushed from the wine.
“Afraid so,” I say.
“I don’t even know your name,” she comments.
“It’s Samson. Samson Black.”
“And you already know mine.”
“I do.”
“Okay, Samson Black, what exactly do you want from me?”
That’s a complicated question, isn’t it, Samson? You had one reason for coming over here, didn’t you? Get information and see if Anna is in danger. She doesn’t seem to be in danger, so all you need to do is get the information. Scout the area. And leave if everything is clear. But when she asks me what I want from her, I can’t help but imagine her on her back, that t-shirt torn away, her breasts bare and bouncing. And maybe I’m mad but it looks to me like she has the same feeling in her eyes. She knows I’m staring at her breasts, but she doesn’t excuse herself, change her clothes.
I shake my head.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks.
“Fine,” I grunt. “Okay, Anna, what I’m about to ask is going to seem damn strange coming from a man you never met before. But it’s important that you tell me the truth. I know this sounds dramatic, but it’s the truth. It could mean the difference between life or death.”
“Whose?” she says, her voice sharp. “Yours?”
I gulp. This is the part I’ve dreaded ever since I left my apartment. “Both of ours,” I say.
She takes a step back, dropping her glass of wine. It shatters in a shower of crimson and sparkling glass on the floor, the shards spreading all over the kitchen.
“What? What do you mean?” The words are drawn-out. I imagine that it’s a big effort just for her to speak them. “Why would I be in danger?”
“Don’t step in the glass,” I warn.
“I won’t,” she says. “Just . . . tell me.”
“First, you need to tell me. Did you see who put Eric’s body in your car?”
“You can’t come in here and ask me questions and not expect me to ask what the hell is going on!” She looks down at the shattered glass and then up at me. “What the hell am I doing, letting you in like this?” she mutters, more to herself than to me. “You could be anyone, you could be a . . .”
Her face twists and behind her eyes I see the pieces slotting together: this strange man at the game, her ex’s sudden appearance, his death. Her mouth falls open slowly. “You’re Eric’s killer,” she says.
“I’m Eric’s killer,” I agree.
Her expression, so easy for me to read moments before, clouds over. She turns inward and I can’t see what she’s feeling. Her face is passive, almost empty. Is she judging me? Is she calculating the distance between where she stands and her cellphone? Is she going to turn me in? These are considerations I would normally make coldly. If they run, end them. If they scream, end them. If they fight, end them. But I know before searching myself that I could not harm this woman. I don’t know why that is, it just is.
“I know all about your marriage,” I say, trying to get through to her. “He beat you, didn’t he, Anna? Over and over. And he stopped you from following your dreams. How many times did he beat you? Can you remember?”
“Too many,” she whispers. “Way too many.”
“But that’s not all.”
“What do you mean?” She speaks mechanically, not even the barest hint of emotion behind her words.
“The reason I was hired is because Eric planned to kill you tonight, Anna. My client—” your father, Anna, your messed-up man of a father “—has contacts in prison. All Eric has talked about since he was locked up is killing you. All day, all night, to whoever will listen. He talked about it in detail. I won’t tell you what he said—”
“No,” she says. “No, I want to know.”
“There’s no need,” I mutter. “It’s just talk.”
“I want to know.” She stares at me defiantly.
“Fine,” I sigh. “He said that he would lock you in a dungeon and train you to be the good whore you should’ve been before he slits your throat. That was a lie, though. At least, it wasn’t his final plan. He was going to kill you when you left the arena, on the way to your car. I got to him first.”
“How did you do it?” she asks.
“Poison,” I say. “Why do you want to know?”
“And did it hurt?” Her voice trembles. “Tell me it hurt.”
The poison isn’t painful. At least, not for long. It induces a heart attack and kills in under a minute most times.
“Yes,” I say, and she nods with grim satisfaction. “I won’t apologize for killing him, Anna. Truth is, I’m a killer.”
Her forehead creases. “A serial killer?”
“No, I kill for money.”
“A hitman?”
“I guess that’s the term for it, yeah. But I just use killer.”
She should run now, or at least take a step back, or scream at me. But she does none of these things. She just stands there, forehead creasing more and more, thinking. I wait, and after around a minute she offers me a shaky smile. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she says. “I know I shouldn’t say that, but I am. Is that wrong?”
“No,” I tell her. “It’s not wrong. Men like Eric don’t deserve to breathe. Woman-beaters . . . I hate them. Hate them with a passion. I remember when one of my friends—” I remember when one of my friends hit his wife in front of me and he wasn’t my friend anymore and I killed the bastard right there with a wine opener not much different to the one you offered me tonight.
I cut short, stopping before telling her the story. What is the matter with me? Business, business.
I rush on before she can ask me what I meant. “Whoever put Eric in the car put him there as a message to me, an open declaration. There was perhaps thirty seconds between when Eric died and when people appeared in the parking lot. Which means I was being watched, probably for days, maybe even for weeks. And to watch me for weeks you have to be slick. I’m not easily tailed. Whoever did this is well-trained, or at the least determined beyond any normal person’s capabilities. Just imagine the steel nerve it must’ve taken to move that body, all the while you can hear footsteps approaching.”
“Yeah,” Anna says, with the air of someone who’s not really there. “Sorry, I just . . . this is a lot to take in, Samson. I’m trying to work out why I haven’t asked you to leave. My life hasn’t been calm, by any means, but this—talking to a hitman in my kitchen—this is strange.”
I walk toward her, glass crunching under my boots. Standing close to her, I can feel the heat emanating from her body, a welcoming heat, a heat like home.
“Let’s sit down, eh?” I say. “We can talk this thing through.”
She nods shortly. “Okay.”
Chapter Five
Anna
He’s looking at me and I’m looking at him, but not just looking. Looking into each other, looking at each other in that way that leads to other things. I’m aware of how my t-shirt barely covers my breasts, drawing attention to them, and yet I do not even think of going into the bedroom and throwing on a hoodie. No, the truth is, I like the way he is looking at me. It’s odd, and it shouldn’t be the case. He’s a hitman. A killer. I should scream, run, fight, cry. Not sit here oddly calm and excited.
After he cleaned up the broken glass and spilled wine, we moved to the living room, sitting on the couch. The man who killed my tormentor is sitting across from me. A fact, but it seems strange. Eric was a hurricane, a nightmare, a husband from the dark burning depths of hell, and this man stopped him from hurting me again. Perhaps that’s why I don’t even try and stamp on my lust. I let it spread through my chest and down into my crotch and down my legs right to the tips of my toes until my entire body is humming with it.
“So?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I didn’t see
anybody, Samson,” I say. “I was in the locker room the entire time. I only found out about Eric when I left after the game, and then the parking lot was filled with people. I didn’t see a thing.”
Samson nods shortly. “Ah,” he says.
He sits in a relaxed posture, one hand holding his glass of wine, the other draped over the side of the couch, his legs stretched out under the coffee table. But beneath that relaxation is something. It takes me a second to realize what it is, and then I see. It’s waiting power. He reminds me of an alligator I once saw at the zoo. Amazing creatures, alligators, old as dinosaurs and just as fascinatingly inhuman. Alligators sit there, waiting, waiting, and then, sometimes too quick to watch, those waiting muscles snap into action. It’s the same with Samson, I sense. He’s relaxed now, but at any moment he could rise for a fight. Or for something else, I think, and a tingle moves up my spine.
We’re silent for a time, and then I make to stand up.
“Where are you going?” Samson asks.
“To get another glass,” I tell him. “I can’t believe I dropped mine.”
“You were shocked.”
“I still am—but what’s shock without alcohol?”
Samson smiles. “True,” he says. “But wait here. I’ll get it.”
Time seems to expand in the apartment. I feel as though we’ve covered the space of five dates in half an hour. I feel bonded to this man in an inexorable and yet inexplicable way. Why should I be bonded to this man? What is there to bond me to him? He’s a stranger. Worse than that, he’s a killer. I should run, I think to myself. And yet I find myself watching him as he strolls to the kitchen and takes a glass from the cupboard. “There’s another bottle of wine in the cupboard to your left,” I tell him. He takes it down.
We sit on the couch, two bottles of wine, a glass each, and we drink.
###
I’m not a heavy drinker, but tonight I don’t stop myself. Foolish, perhaps, but I feel safe in Samson’s company. I feel as though I can drink as much as I like, because nothing will happen to me with Samson in the apartment. I have to remind myself, you don’t know this man! And yet he killed Eric. If I can’t trust the man who killed Eric, who can I trust? I try to apply logic to the notion and fail. It’s without logic, I think. Without logic but with more force behind it than anything logic-bound.
“So, you’re sticking around?” I say, taking a long sip of my wine. The first bottle is nearly conquered. My head swims. And soon it will be swimming even more with bottle number two.
Samson inclines his head. “If you don’t mind,” he says. “I don’t think leaving you alone tonight is such a good idea.”
His eyes look my body up and down without shame now; he’s not even trying to hide it. He traces my breasts and my folded legs. I don’t stop him, don’t even try to stop him. Wherever his eyes move, tingles follow. I’m warm and comfortable and flushed and horny and no matter how many times I tell myself I shouldn’t be this way, I can’t stop it. This man killed Eric! This man killed my would-be murderer!
“Tonight?” I say, my voice braver than it normally is with men. “You’re staying the whole night, are you?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Yes?” I laugh. “Maybe I don’t want you to.”
“Maybe, but you do.”
“Well,” I say. “The couch is comfortable enough.”
His forefinger glides across the rim of his glass; a whistle sounds. “I’m sure it is,” he says.
I wonder, idly, if it’s possible for me to stop what is inevitably going to happen between us: whether, if I really tried, it would be possible for me to prevent us from falling on each other like animals. But heat is rising around us and I know that, sooner or later, this strange man and I will collapse into each other. I’ve never understood the sex-with-stranger syndrome that some of my girlfriends are so fond of, mainly in clubs and bars. The wordless, entirely physical attraction that causes strangers to come together in passion that burns volcanic for a night and then sizzles out.
But now I do.
But is this man a stranger? I ask myself. He is, technically, yes. He’s a stranger but he’s more, too. I’m tied to him. He killed Eric. I keep telling myself that because it seems surreal. He killed Eric. Eric is dead and this man killed him.
Yes, I’m justifying. Pre-justifying. Gearing myself up for something I know my body wants to do.
“I’m sure the couch is very comfortable,” Samson says.
“I need to know about you,” I say. Then I drain the last of my wine and hold my glass out. Samson takes the new bottle, uncorks it, and pours me a tall glass of red. I place it on the coffee table and fold my hands in my lap. I need a break from drinking, but I know I’ll drink more tonight, more than I should. It’s been one of those days and it’s shaping up to be one of those nights.
“About me?” he says. “What do you mean?”
“You’re in my apartment. You’ve done something for me. And now we’re . . .” What? But it doesn’t need to be said. We both know what we’re doing, what we’re going to do. “Don’t you think it’s fair I know something about you?”
“What do you mean?” he repeats. He watches me easily, completely at ease with himself. It’s a welcoming change to the men who try too hard, who always seem on edge.
“Is it that complicated?” I say. “I want to know something about you, who you are, what you are.”
“That’s a strange question.”
“Is it?”
We pause, and I get the sense we’re dueling with words.
“Yes,” he says. “It is.”
“Tell me!” I giggle, the wine swilling in my mind.
He lets out a sigh, and then launches into a long speech. But it’s not about himself. He talks for around five minutes about NBA, about his favorite players and how he thinks the season is going to end. He’s a huge NBA fan, I can tell, but he goes into too much detail. He gives me the names of players who won matches before I was born, gives me the dates of interesting games. But I don’t care about that. I dance for the NBA; I don’t watch it. In truth, basketball isn’t so exciting to me. And it doesn’t tell me anything about him.
“You’re skirting my question,” I say, when he’s finished.
I’ve picked up the glass of wine, taken a sip, and I feel shakier than I did an hour ago. But shaky in a good way.
“I am,” he admits. “But I am an NBA fan. Aren’t you?”
I shake my head. “I read and care for animals and sometimes read about caring for animals.” I shrug. “I guess they’re my only hobbies, apart from reading, and sometimes dancing. For fun, not cheering.”
“There are worse hobbies to have.”
“You know a lot about me,” I say. “You know about my past with Eric and I’m assuming you know about the shelters and all that. Maybe you’ve even delved deeper and you know I went through a ‘wild stage’ in my teens: drinking, partying, all of that.”
“I did,” he says, without a hint of shame. “I had to know as much as I could.”
“See! But I know nothing about you.”
“But what do you want to know?” he sighs.
“Anything!” I exclaim, louder than I mean to. “A story from your childhood. Your favorite pastime. Anything.”
“A story from my childhood,” he mutters. “I don’t usually share stories from my childhood.”
“I can imagine it’s not really the sort of thing you talk about with your usual crowd,” I say softly, trying to guide him to me, steer him into the full fray of the conversation.
“You’re right,” he says. “It isn’t.”
I’m hungry to learn about this man. Not just eager, or curious, but hungry. The force of it startles me. I cannot remember a time when knowing about a man seemed so important, when learning about the soul of a person called out to me with such fury. A killer is sitting on my couch drinking wine, watching my legs and my breasts, and I am watching his muscles, his strong-jawed face, and
his sky-blue eyes. I want him, but I don’t want him when I know nothing of him. I don’t want us to just be two random people; I can’t be like my girlfriends in clubs and bars. I can’t cross the threshold until I know at least something about what makes him who he is.
“Then tell me,” I prompt. “If you can’t talk to anyone else, you can talk to me.”
“Women don’t usually care,” he mutters. “The women I’m with—”
“I don’t care about them,” I interrupt. “I only care about us, now, here.” That’s true. The circumstances and the wine have combined to enclose this night in something almost magical. A bubble traps us in this apartment, in this moment.