office that’s got a loveseat for an office chair. But she’s very good at what she does.
And I can’t help but wonder and worry as the elevator climbs too slowly towards her office on the sixth floor, but what my mind lingered on most was why I always called her my agent, or Ms. Richardson, why I’d never called her Kati.
Then there’s a ding and I tell my brain to shut up for once. Half of the floor is taken up by her and a group of agents, the other half by a dental and orthodontic collective, and because of that there’s always an oddly sterile feeling (and sometimes smell) to the hallway.
The light was still on in Kati’s office, and when I tried the door it was ajar.
Kati was standing against the wall behind her desk. Her hair, usually pulled back in a tight bun, was mussed, and were it not for the terror on her face, would have made her prettier. A man, short and slight, with blonde hair and too-deep dimples, stood on the other side of her desk, holding her letter opener out to be threatening. I recognized him immediately as Ernie, from a book I’d written called Guy Love.
“The letter opener’s different,” I said. He looked at it in his hand, and it fell to the floor. He turned red.
“I, I didn’t know how else to get a hold of you.”
Kati slid back into her chair, and her fingers danced nervously along her desk, near the phone. “Don’t call the police,” I said. She stared two little holes in me, but after a moment, her composure returned, and she nodded.
Ernie walked over to a sliding window and sat down on the sill, hanging his feet out over the street. I knew the scene. The book was about male relationships, but the one with Ernie I’d largely adapted from a childhood friend and almost sweetheart; and this tilted the narrative too far. I sat down beside him, and in my mind I saw the water rushing between our feet instead of cars.
“I don’t know any other way to say it,” he said, “so I’ll just come out with it: I love you. And I don’t care if that queers our friendship, because a friendship based on lying ain’t one worth saving. I think you maybe feel a bit the same, but I know just one way to know.” He leaned in and kissed me, and I wasn’t sure if I was remembering that summer when Cassie kissed me, or the moment I’d written about with Ernie, but I didn’t pull away. “So say something, David, don’t just let me sit here like a fool,” he said, blushing again.
Using my character’s name brought me back out of my thoughts, and I said, “I’m sorry, Ernie. That friendship you aren’t worried about, means something to me. The kiss meant something, too, but not what you’d like it to mean. So, I’m sorry, truly.”
Ernie lunged, only this time I was ready, and rather than let him get his hands around my throat, hanging over the window’s edge, I pushed him, just enough that his momentum carried him forward, out away from the building. He smashed into a lamp post at street level, but it didn’t pierce him the way I might have thought, and instead crumpled under him.
I stared a moment at his body, sitting peaceful where it lay. I hoped he died quickly, and without much pain. And as I stood up, a large man burst through the door. Kati had been dialing the phone, but he put his fingers down to hang it up. “We ain’t calling no police.”
“You pushed that man out the window,” Kati said, ignoring Albert’s man and speaking directly to me.
“I need you to call the Modesto operator, ask after Cassie Bais. She’ll have been in an accident, a fall. I want to know she’s all right.”
“You pushed-”
“Call her. I need to know she’s okay.”
Kati didn’t pretend to understand, but in her mind she seemed to be adding up her commission based on my book sales and the sales of other authors I’d helped steer to her collective. Apparently I was worth enough for her to play along- at least for the moment, because she dialed. After a moment’s talk with an operator, and another moment speaking with someone else, she hung up the phone. It was a moment before she was able to speak. “She fell off the landing in her home. Broke her ankle. It just happened. How did you-”
“Ernie. Was a character based off of Cassie. Something like this happened, once before.”
“That break-in, at your apartment,” she mouthed, but there was almost no breath behind it. I nodded.
Albert’s man stepped between us. “I’ll take care of the body. He’s staying at your place tonight. Knockin’ boots is optional- but that’s your story and you’re sticking to it.” Kati looked embarrassed, almost to the point of interrupting. “You called him in, late at night. Bodies disappear, phone records don’t. He stayed at your place. So take him there.”
She did. Though we didn’t. I think she was still a little unnerved by the whole situation, so I preemptively volunteered to sleep on her couch- or her floor, whatever made her more comfortable. She threw some blankets on the couch, whispered goodnight, then more forcefully said, “We’ll discuss this,” then closed and locked her bedroom door.
We did discuss it, over breakfast. She didn’t know what to believe- but then, neither did I, but she decided to trust me (after the lawyer in her gave a dissertation on the fact that by going along with me last night she had already de facto decided to trust me- or at least implicated herself so thoroughly that to turn me in was to turn herself in, too).
Then she blushed as she asked, “Have you ever written about me?” And I blushed a little, too.
“A little,” I said. “A few little quirks and mannerisms have made it into some characters. But the bulk of stories where you factored haven’t been published.”
She blushed even harder at that, but pressed on. “Do you think,” and stopped.
“I think you’re probably safe. Especially now, knowing what I know, I think I’ve got a handle on how to tackle this.” Still, I told her to take a little time off, go somewhere out of town and relax, “Expense a ticket somewhere sunny.”
Later that day, I got a message on my phone from Eugene, the matriarch of Kati’s agent group, saying that she’d gone out of town on a family emergency, that anything urgent should go through Eugene, for the moment.
Kati was gone a week before I got a post card. It was plain she’d gone out of her way to keep her location anonymous, and even the card itself seemed written in code. But basically she wanted to know what had happened, and if it was safe for her to come home.
And nothing had happened. I was beginning to think I’d been crazy all along, that all of those things were coincidental, and that I’d murdered two innocent if strange people. Then I received a call from Erika.
Erika Dulac was the love of my life. Unfortunately for me, I met her when I was still too stupid to recognize that. Every single love story I ever wrote started around her, and every single time I found myself stripping out every part of her, because it was too easy. Falling in love with Erika was effortless- and no conflict meant no story; of course, ruining my relationship with Erika had been effortless, too.
I tried to know as little about Erika as possible, because unlike Lucy, everything for her went well. With Lucy there were moments when I could feel like she would have been better off with me; with Erika I could never claim to be more than a speed bump in her life. So when she called me, my heart fluttered. I thought perhaps for a moment that the world wasn’t as cold and as cruel and as dark as I’d always believed, that perhaps second chances were possible.
She was staying at a dive motel on the north side of town, and I broke every major traffic law getting there as fast as I did. Her room was on the lower floor, and I ran around the building.
She was standing on a chair. She’d smashed a hole in the ceiling, and tied a rope around a support beam, and the other end around a neck I could almost taste. She was wearing her homecoming dress, and was every bit the girl she’d been in high school- she was the girl I’d known in high school.
“You came,” she said, almost surprised. I recognized the scene, a cruel little fiction I’d written only once, days after she left me. I hadn’t even bother
ed to hide her behind a pseudonym.
“Of course,” I said. Her foot landed on the back of the chair. “Don’t,” I whispered.
“Why?” She asked.
“Because,” I said finally, “your sadness is my fault. You weren’t angry, or bitter- I was. And,” I paused, not sure how far to tell, “you’re not the only one you’ll hurt. And I know you better than that.” She hesitated a moment, and even lost her balance, causing the chair to buckle and sway beneath her, but then she pulled her makeshift noose over her head, and stepped down. She collapsed on the edge of the bed, burying her head in her hands.
“Ernie I could believe. Mary Anne, even. But you- even when I tried to write you cruel, mean- by day’s end I’d retract it, because even at my most bitter, and angry, I knew better. You didn’t come here, or come to these conclusions, on your own. Someone’s pulling strings, aren’t they?” And immediately, the moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew the son of a bitch responsible: Malcolm Dane. I changed my question: “Where is he?”
He was three doors down. I didn’t bother knocking, but kicked the cheap motel door in. He was sitting at a small round table in the corner, sipping tea, with only the bed lamp illuminating the room. “I have to know,” he asked. “Did she do it? I regretted not convincing her to use a shotgun like Hemingway, because then I
Selected Short Stories Featuring New Corpse Smell Page 12