Page 67 of Kill Your Darlings

Since the last time they’d seen each other, over six months earlier in Cambridge, Wendy had rented the movieBody Heatat their local Blockbuster. She’d actually had Bryce rent the film—he’d brought it home withPoint Breakand they’d watched them as a double feature. He’d insisted on watching his movie first, which was fine, because he’d passed out during the opening credits ofBody Heat. Thom had recommended it. Well, he had mentioned it, because in Cambridge they had first brought up the idea of murdering Bryce, talking about it as a joke for a while before realizing that they weren’t exactly joking. “All I know about killing someone’s husband is fromDouble Indemnity, of course, andBody Heat.” And then he’d told her how it went spectacularly wrong in both those films.

“Why?”

“Because the woman is just using the man.”

“If we do it, that won’t be the case. I promise that.”

“I know. We’ll break the mold. We’ll kill the husband and live happily ever after.”

Wendy ended up watchingBody Heattwice before returning it. Some actor she recognized from the movieDinergave a great speech about how there were fifty ways to fuck up a crime and that only a genius could come up with twenty-five of them. And what turned out to be the big fuckup for the two murderers inBody Heat, besides the fact that Kathleen Turner was only ever using William Hurt, was that they’d been spotted together as a couple before they committed the murder. Wendy decided then and there that Thom and she needed to be virtual strangers until they met again at some undecided literary festival after Wendy was a widow. But for now, there should be no connection between them. That was why Thom wasn’t registered here at Tinhook.

Wendy skipped the cocktail reception but went to the dinner, sitting at a table with three other women who were, like herself, simply attendees. But Wendy wasn’t surprised to learn that they were all aspiring writers, and two of them had signed up for seminars on small-press publishing that came with a chance to submit work to the editor who was running it. Wendy kept relatively quiet during dinner. She wanted to be forgettable. And normal. That was another line inBody Heatthat she remembered. Kathleen Turner—or was it William Hurt?—said that nothing out of the ordinary could happen in their lives leading up to the murder.

After dinner she waited in her room, her copy ofPossessionby A. S. Byatt open on her lap, but she found she couldn’t concentrate on the words. Instead, she stared at the wallpaper, deep red and intertwined with roses, or maybe dahlias. She studied the pattern,trying to figure out at what point it began to repeat. And she listened to the sounds of the hotel. There was the faint echo of the music being played in the bar, but what she mostly heard were the creaks in the room above her, some guest pacing the floor. And she could hear voices talking but without understanding the words. Maybe they were in the next room, or two rooms down. She reminded herself that when Thom arrived they should be quiet.

At a little after eight o’clock there was a knock on her door and she leapt off the high bed to swing the door inward, Thom quickly entering.

“Anyone see you?” she said.

“Not on your hall. And probably not in the lobby. That was a wild crowd down there.”

She smiled. “I’m missing out.”

“You are. You could meet a minor poet with a goatee.”

“I could move with him to some college in North Dakota.”

“Do you think he has tenure?”

“Not yet, but he dreams of it. I will too. We can buy a starter home.”

“The real question is: Would he kill your husband for you?”

“Okay,” Wendy said. “We’re going straight there.”

“No, we’re going straight to the bed first.”

Later, buried under the sheets, the hotel now eerily quiet, Thom said, “I think we should do it. I think we should murder your husband.”

They were the words that Wendy had hoped to hear, but now that he’d said them, she felt suddenly reticent. “We don’t have to, you know. I could leave him, move to Connecticut to be with you, get a job. Our lives would be good.”

“Our lives would be normal.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, except that it doesn’t feel right for us. I feel like something began that first night we kissed, and maybe it was all leading up to this.”

“I feel the same way,” Wendy said, telling the truth. She had no interest in being normal, not really, although she certainly had interest in appearing normal, considering what they were planning on doing.

“I’ve thought a lot about this,” Thom said. “It’s all I think about. But I just keep coming back to this strange feeling that this is fate. We’re not supposed to scrimp and save and have uninspiring jobs. We were meant to kill to be together. We were meant to be special.”

“What I keep thinking about,” Wendy said, “is how, if we do this, and if we get away with it, I’ll be able to buy my mother a house for her to live in for the rest of her life. Right now I pay her rent, but if I divorced Bryce, then... And when I think about it that way, it’s not a hard decision at all. If I could press a button that wiped Bryce off the planet and provided protection for my mom, then I wouldn’t hesitate.”

“So, let’s do it. Let’s press that button.”

She placed a hand on the side of his neck. “You’d be doing it, of course. The act.”

“We’dbe doing it together, but yes, I know what you mean.”

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