Kiss the Girls

CHAPTER 92.

AFTER THE GOOD SHIP Alex and Sampson left, Kate carefully checked and double-checked all the doors and windows to her apartment. They were securely locked. She had liked Sampson right away. He was huge and scary, nice and scary, sweet and scary. Alex had brought his closest friend to see her, and she liked that.

As she did her rounds, her safety check of home sweet home, she ruminated about a new life, far away from Chapel Hill, far away from everything terrifying and bad that had happened here. Hell, I'm living a Hitchcock movie, she thought, if Alfred Hitchcock had stayed alive long enough to see and react to the madness and horror of the 1990s.

Exhausted, she finally climbed into bed. Yuk. She felt stale bread or cake crumbs against her legs. She hadn't made the bed that morning.

She wasn't accomplishing much lately, and that made her angry, too.

She'd been on a proper schedule to complete her intern year this spring. Now she didn't know if she'd make it by the end of summer.

Kate pulled the covers up under her chin in early June. She was getting soooo buggy. Her anxiety wasn't going to stop while the monster Casanova was on the loose out there, she knew. She thought about killing him. Her first and only violent fantasy. She imagined going to Wick Sachs's house. An eye for an eye. She remembered the appropriate passage from the Book of Exodus. Eidetic memory, right.

She really wished that Alex had stayed, but she didn't want to embarrass him in front of Sampson. She wanted to talk to Alex the way they always did, and she wished he was with her now. She wanted to be in his arms tonight. Maybe more than just in Alex's arms. Maybe she was ready for more. One night at a time.

She wasn't sure what she believed in anymore, or if she believed in anything at all. She was praying lately, so maybe she did believe.

Rote prayers, but prayers all the same. Our Father who art ... Hail Mary full of ... She wondered if a lot of people did the same thing.

“I do love the idea of you, God,” she finally whispered. “Please love the idea of me back.” She couldn't stop obsessing about Casanova, about Dr. Wick Sachs, about the mysterious, disappearing house of horror, and the poor women still trapped there. But she was so used to the continuous, terrifying nightmares that she finally drifted off to sleep, anyway.

Kate never heard him come into the house.