Getting Off

THIRTEEN

“Graham? It’s Kim. Please don’t hang up.”

A silence. Then, “All right.”

“First of all, I want to apologize. I don’t know what got into me yesterday.”

“That’s all right.”

“No,” she said, “it’s not all right. It was completely inappropriate and wholly unwarranted. I was disrespectful to you and made a fool of myself in the process.”

“I’ve had plenty of apologies to make,” he said. “So it’s not hard for me to accept yours, Kim.”

“Thank you.” She drew a breath. “Those apologies,” she said. “Would they be in connection with those meetings you’ve been going to?”

“It’s a 12-Step program,” he said, “and yes, making amends is very much a part of the program.”

“You told me the name of it, but I—”

“Sexual Compulsives Anonymous.”

“Right, SCA. Funny how I can’t seem to remember the name. Or maybe it’s not so funny after all.”

He waited, and she let the silence stretch.

Then she said, “My life’s not working so well these days.”

“I see.”

“Not just these days. For quite a while now. What was the term you used? ‘Acting out’? It seems like all I’m ever doing is acting out, or trying to, or thinking about it.”

“I understand, Kim. I’ve been there.”

“Can anyone go to these meetings? Or do you have to be a member?”

“Would you like to come to a meeting?”

“Would I like to? Probably about as much as I’d like to have root canal. But it’s that or lose the tooth. Graham, it’s not a question of would I like to. I think it’s something I have to do.”

“Hold on a minute. Okay, let’s see. There’s a meeting in downtown Seattle this afternoon, but I’ll be busy. If you don’t mind going by yourself—”

“I think I’d be more comfortable if you went with me.”

“Well, let me see. How’s lunch time tomorrow? There’s a 12:30 meeting I sometimes go to in downtown Redmond near Marymoor Park. I could meet you there and we could walk in together.”

“I’m not sure I could find it. And on a bike—”

“No, that’s too far by bicycle. Maybe—”

“Graham? Suppose I come to where you work? I could meet you in the parking lot. At twelve? Or maybe a little earlier, so you can tell me a little about it before we actually walk in?”

She stayed out all day, ate dinner by herself at an Indian restaurant that served bland food dumbed down for the Western palate. She got the waiter to bring her hot sauce, and that helped, but she’d have been happier if the heat had been cooked into the food, not spooned on top of it.

It was almost eight when she got home, and she steeled herself to walk in to the smell of a home-cooked meal, and a housemate who wanted a reprise of the previous evening. But she encountered neither; there’d been no cooking since last night’s dinner, and no car in the garage.

There was leftover coffee and she reheated a cup and drank it at the kitchen table while she read that month’s Vanity Fair. She’d almost finished the coffee when she heard the garage door ascend, and she stayed where she was until she heard Rita and a man in conversation. She rose quickly, scooped up her cup and the magazine, and was in her room with the door closed before the two of them had cleared the threshold.

“Kimmie? Are you awake?”

No one, not even a devout Crystal Methodist, could have been more thoroughly awake. But did she have to admit it? If she just kept silent—

“Kimmie?”

If she kept silent, Rita would walk right in.

“I’m awake,” she said. “But kind of drifty.”

“He’s gone. I sent him home.”

Oh? Were you with someone? I never would have guessed.

“I suppose you heard us.”

“Just barely.”

“He was a guy who hit on me a couple of times. I was never interested. But after last night — well, let’s just say I was in the mood.”

No kidding.

“Kimmie, you’re half asleep. We’ll talk at breakfast.”

Footsteps receded. Rita’s door opened and closed.

And she lay in bed, waiting for daybreak.

A toasted English muffin and a cup of coffee. And Rita, wearing a belted housecoat, with her own English muffin and her own cup of coffee, and a full report.

“We fucked on the couch,” she said. “He’s going bald, and he could stand to lose a few pounds, but he was okay otherwise. Nice circumcised dick, medium in size. We didn’t do anything you couldn’t find in the Kama Sutra, but it was interesting enough. I mean, I came a lot.”

“I know.”

“That was on purpose. The noise, I mean. I knew you could hear, and the idea of you hearing made it a lot more exciting. You know what I was wishing?”

“What?”

“That you could sneak in and watch.”

“Would you have liked that?”

“Are you kidding? I’d have loved it.”

“It never even occurred to me.”

“I didn’t think it would. Or that you’d do it, even if you thought of it. You know what was going on in my head the whole time? Absolutely the whole time? How hot it would be when I told you all about it.”

“Really.”

“How’s that for weird? I mean, it’s like normal to think about fucking while you masturbate, but having fantasies of masturbating while somebody’s got his dick in you?”

“But I can see how it could happen.”

“So you don’t think I’m weird?”

“Oh, you’re plenty weird, Rita. But not in a bad way.”

“I’ll settle for that. And I could probably say the same about you.”

“Moi?”

“You and that guy who smelled.”

“Yeah, I can see where you could call me weird for that one.”

“I might have done it myself,” Rita said, “but I’d have wanted to kill him afterward.”

Oh, sweetie, if you only knew—

“Oops,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ve got an appointment I’ll be lucky to get to on time.”

“You want me to drive you?”

“No, I’ll be fine with the bike. But I was thinking maybe tonight—”

“We’re on the same page. But I’m not gonna bother cooking. You up for it if I order a pizza?

“Sure. And I don’t know when I’ll be home, so don’t order it until I get here.”

“And this time I’ll buy the wine. How do you say what we had, Nooey San George’s?”

“Close enough.”

“And don’t worry that this is going to make us lesbians. I mean, that was a guy I was on the couch with, you know?”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” she said. “the thing is, I still get a lot of pleasure out of it.”

“Acting out?”

“Right. I realize I’m compulsive about it, and it’s almost as if I don’t have any choice, but, you know, it feels good.”

“Of course it does,” he said. “And you may not be ready to stop. It always felt good to me, too.”

“It did?”

“But less so,” he said, “toward the end. That’s not why I stopped, I stopped because sexual compulsivity was making my life unmanageable, but the pleasure did drop off as time went on. Even at the moment of release I’d find myself thinking about the next time. And, of course, regretting everything that was regrettable about the present moment.”

She told him she guessed she could relate to that.

She’d met him in the parking lot at a quarter to twelve, wearing jeans and a modest top, with a capacious shoulder bag on her arm. She’d locked her bike to the cyclone fence and joined him in the front seat of the Subaru. And now they were on their way to the meeting in Redmond, and conversation was no problem, because all she had to do was get it started and he’d carry the ball, telling her chunks of his story of sin and redemption. It would have been more interesting if he’d gone into detail, but as she already knew, not going into detail was part of the SCA program, because God forbid any of them should get any pleasure out of anything for the rest of their miserable lives.

“Here we are,” he said, eventually, and waited to make a left turn into a church parking lot. There were a handful of cars all clustered at the front of the lot, and nothing but a van farther back.

She said, “Graham? Could we stop for a minute? There’s something I need to say.” He braked, and she said, “Maybe if you could pull up, oh, near that van? Like, away from all these cars?”

He drove to the rear of the lot, swung the Subaru around and pulled up next to the van. That vehicle’s side bore the name of the church, and the injunction to get right with God.

Now you tell me.

She unbuckled her seat belt, slipped her right hand into her shoulder bag. He kept his own seat belt fastened, she noted with approval, so he’d be safely buckled up during the hazardous five-mile-an-hour return trip to a parking spot with his SCA buddies.

“There’s this thing they do in AA,” she said. “According to what I’ve read. Like, sometimes when they’re taking a man to his first meeting, or to a rehab, they give him one final drink on the way. So he won’t go into withdrawal. So what I was wondering—”

Oh, the look on his face!

“I guess that’s a no, huh?”

“Kim—”

“Oh, c’mon,” she said. “That was a joke, for God’s sake! But what I really do need to do is I have to tell you why I came on so strong.”

“Believe me, Kim, I understand. I’ve been there myself. The idea of taking no for an answer—”

“That’s only part of it. See, I’ve got this list. There are only four names on it, and you’re one of them.”

“Well, I’m flattered, but as I said—”

“No, don’t be flattered. What I wanted to do, I wanted to be able to cross you off the list, and in order to do that I’d have to sleep with you first.”

There was a padded mailer in her bag. Her hand slipped into the open end, fastened on the handle of the knife. He was saying something but she paid no attention, concentrating instead on the move she’d make, visualizing it in her mind’s eye.

“And when you turned me down,” she went on, “I just couldn’t stand it, and I was so upset that it kept me from seeing what should have been obvious.”

“Sometimes the hardest thing to see is what’s right in front of our eyes.”

Gee, Graham, I’d better go write that down.

“What I didn’t let myself realize,” she said, “is that I’d already fucked you. I mean, that’s how you got on the list in the first place, right? So I didn’t have to fuck you again, much as I might want to. All I had to do to cross you off the list, was, well, this.”

Just as she’d visualized it: her right hand emerging from the shoulder bag, gripping the kitchen knife, bringing it in one graceful motion into the center of his chest.

Just like that.

“You fucking idiot,” she said. “You sanctimonious asshole. You could have died happy.”

Did he even hear the words? Hard to say. There was no blood to speak of, so she must have found the heart and stopped it. His eyes were wide, but the light was leaving them.

Three.

Now what? Her plan had worked perfectly, but it hadn’t included the aftermath.

Just leave him here? But she had to go back to the Barling lot for her bike, and how was she going to get there? Call a taxi?

Take his place behind the wheel? The key was right there in the ignition, and despite what she’d told Rita, she was perfectly capable of driving anything with wheels. All she had to do was dump his body and drive his car back to where she’d left the bike. His car could return to the slot where it belonged, and she could bike off into the sunset.

Dump his body where? Just leave him in the church parking lot? They’d find him soon enough, and connect him to the SCA meeting, and who was to say he hadn’t talked about her with some of his we-don’t-fuck-anymore buddies? It might not lead to her, but it would guarantee headlines.

How about the church van? It was dusty, so it probably didn’t get used much, and by the time anybody found a body in it there’d have been a dozen other 12-Step groups meeting there. Not a perfect idea, but—

Forget it. Fucking thing was locked up tighter than an SCA member’s asshole.

If the Subaru had a trunk, that would work. Probably be a struggle getting him into it, but she could reposition the car first so that it screened her actions from observers. But the thing was a squareback, the contents of its rear compartment glaringly visible, so scratch that.

So what did that leave?

Switching seats with him wasn’t the hardest part. It was a little complicated, she had to maneuver him from behind the wheel into the passenger seat, but it went smoothly enough. She fastened his seatbelt and tightened it so it would keep him in position, then took his place behind the wheel and drove out of there.

Now it got tricky. Not finding her way — that was easy, as the Subaru had a GPS device, complete with a woman’s voice to tell you when and where to turn, and Barling Industries was already available on his list of recent destinations, so all she had to do was select it and follow the prompts.

But there she was, driving through traffic with a dead man sitting up next to her. The premise, of course, was that his condition wouldn’t be evident to a casual onlooker, and no one would see blood, because she’d adjusted his necktie to cover the wound. But he still looked dead as a doornail to her, and every time she braked for a stoplight with another car alongside, she found herself holding her breath. At any moment she’d hear sirens and there’d be people screaming and cops yanking the doors open and—

And each time the light changed and she drove away.

“Approaching right turn,” the voice told her at length, and this final right turn brought her into the Barling lot. “You have arrived.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Did the GPS doohickey have a memory? Could it tell the police where it had been?

Well, they’d have to find it first. She unhooked it from its moorings and dropped it into her handbag. Something to get rid of down the line, along with the knife.

Did the SCA people know about the GPS? Like, were they okay with him having an authoritative female voice telling him where to go and what to do? Like, couldn’t he have a male voice, just to remove another possible occasion of sin?

Fucking moron.

She left him in his car, parked right where it had been when she joined him for the ride to Redmond. She took a moment to put him back behind the wheel; it would help keep him upright, and was a more natural spot for him, although it wouldn’t fool anyone who took a good look.

They’d think he’d had a heart attack. Got behind the wheel, stuck the key in the ignition, and the poor devil’s ticker quit on him. They’d know different soon enough, and it wouldn’t take a formal autopsy to spot the knife wound in his chest, but by then she’d be long gone.

She took a moment to wipe the surfaces she might have touched. And at the last minute she remembered to go through his wallet. He had just over three hundred dollars, mostly in twenties and tens, and something made her look in the compartment behind his State of Washington driver’s license, where he’d tucked away two fifties and a hundred for an emergency.

Well, this was an emergency, all right. The Nuits-Saint-Georges had left her alarmingly close to broke.

She locked the car on her way out, unlocked her bike, and left.

Now what? Back to Rita’s house?

For pizza and French wine and another session in the living room? This one, she knew, would go further than the last. Their hands wouldn’t be limited to their own flesh, and she could see how the evening might well end with one or both of them getting eaten out.

It wasn’t really a lesbian experience, Kimmie, because we’re not lesbians.

What would it be like, having another woman do that?

Or doing it herself?

She was getting hot thinking about it. But it wasn’t going to happen, and she was going to make sure it didn’t happen by skipping the pizza, skipping the wine, and skipping Rita’s house altogether. If she went there, what could possibly happen afterward? Either she’d want to stay with Rita and try to make some kind of a life together, or she’d feel the need to kill her before moving on. She didn’t want to kill Rita, not now, not in the least, and she couldn’t stay with her in a town where she’d just murdered a man. She wanted at a minimum to be on the other side of a state line, and ideally clear across the country.

And she’d looked ahead enough to tuck what she could into her handbag. Not all she’d have liked to take, the bag was really no more than an overgrown purse, but enough to hold her until she had a chance to buy something new.

More to the point, nothing she’d left in Rita’s spare bedroom could be traced back to her. Sooner or later she’d call Rita, and by then she’d have a story ready to explain her abrupt departure. But for now all she could do was disappear.

A pity she couldn’t return the bike. Park it someplace, tell Rita where to find it? No, keep it simple.

She left it unlocked a block from the bus station, propped it against a lamp post and walked away from it. Someone was sure to adopt it — before her bus left, and before anyone could begin to wonder who stuck a knife into Graham Weider.