Page 16 of Haven't Killed in Years
“It can be intoxicating,” she said. “How can I describe it so you’d understand?”
She thought about it, but I already understood. It was envy and obsession. To be obsessed over, to know something everyone else craved to understand, to hold it all inside while those around you salivated—it was our own special brand of celebrity.
“I get it,” I said so she could stop thinking.
“A dead family is the best currency you can have around here.” She smiled to prove it was a joke and that pity was unnecessary. “What about you? Where did you grow up?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Tell me about it.” She gazed at me. What did she want me to say? She either knew the truth and was my super-stalker, or maybe she didn’t and was hungry to digest my lies. She was hard to read.
“My parents died in a fire,” I recited, a story I’d told a million times.
“Holy shit,” she said. “I feel like an asshole now.”
“Why?” I laughed. “You just said that was the best currency you can have around here.”
“I’m used to being the most tragic one in the room, I guess.”
The curtain was pulled back and we both turned to see Dominic in the window. “You might want to take Porter home. The guys have him in the kitchen chugging rum right from the bottle.”
This was what I got for having a kid as a wingman. I rolled my eyes, but Porter was honestly doing me a favor. I needed time to process the reappearance of Elyse Abbington before I revealed too much.
“It was nice meeting you,” she said as I moved toward the window.
“Yeah” was all I managed before leaving her there, alone on the fire escape—a fire escape my fake parents really could have used.
- - - - -
I shoved Porter intothe back of an UberX. He fell on his face and I reached in to turn his head to the side to prevent him from asphyxiating on the upholstery.
“He’s not going to puke, is he?” asked the driver.
“No,” I said, having no idea if it was the truth.
Dominic held the door open for me while I rearranged Porter. “Thanks again for coming on the tour and, you know, the rest of the night.”
I wriggled the top half of my body back out of the car to bid him adieu. “It was fun.” I hesitated a second to consider what Elyse had said about him and the fact that we had barely scratched the surface on what he was doing with Abel. “If you want someone to talk to about your book, you can call me.”
“Really?” His eyes expanded. “What’s your number?”
“I’ll text it to you.” I lowered into the back seat. “I still have your business card.”
“Right, great. Okay, well, good night.” We closed the door together, me pulling from the inside, him pushing from the street. It was a pleasant simpatico moment at a time when a potential cuckoo-nuts murderer was out to ruin my life.
- - - - -
I dropped Porter offand got back to my apartment a little after eleven. Of course, he had ended up barfing, so after I helped the pissed-off Uber driver scrub the back seat, he agreed to still bring me home if I gave him an extra forty dollars in cash. The car reeked, even from the front passenger seat with all the windows open, and I was pretty sure the driver was going to absolutely destroy my rating.
I collapsed onto the couch. What a day. I had so many new acquaintances—new acquaintances who were maybe psychopaths and killers.
I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes. There was a part of me that wanted to spend every free moment thinking about life and death. Why did people put so much work into something that could be taken away in an instant by anyone? I could have walked downstairs right then and slit the throat of Mrs. Magnus. I wasn’t going to, but I could have.
I didn’t let myself think like that very often. My job was 90 percent talking to people about their futures—career trajectories, advancement opportunities, compensation structures. It wasn’t hard. I liked it. I was being paid to read people—see through the fake bullshit, find the best candidates, persuade them to take the job, and then let my boss take all the credit for hiring them.
Money, prestige, security—their wants were fundamental. I was under no illusion that I worked for Greenpeace or anything close to it. Still, it was my job to convince them I was invested in their futures and not that I could shove a letter opener into their jugular at any moment.
I had to numb those parts of my brain. I couldn’t come home every night and think about killing people if I hoped to be normal—a normal woman who worked in a high-rise downtown and went on occasional dates with guys like Brian.
