Page 20 of Serial Killer Games

“I need you to get Verity out of here for me. Right now. I can’t stand to look at her.”

And here we are. The sordid, ungodly things I get up to with my roommate that Uncle Andrew would never guess. I look over at Dolores, across the room. I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Does it have to be tonight?”

When Grant says, “Jump,” my job is to say, “How high?” It’s the main condition of our arrangement. He’s taken aback enough to be rendered mute for a moment.

“Yes, it does have to be tonight,” he snaps. A pause, and his voice becomes tragic again. “Verity’s not right for me. These feelings aren’t real. None of it isreal. I’m solonely, Jake.”

He gasps, close to a sob. He’s always like this when the honeymoon phase is over.

“They never stop me from feelinglonely. It’s like—an ache in a part of my body I can’t even identify. Maybe if she wasn’t sofake. It makes me feel like all of it’s fake. Is that all I deserve? A fake relationship? Because it doesn’t matter what I feel if she can’t love me back—”

“You deserve something real,” I say placatingly.

“I do,” he agrees, his tone less dramatic by degrees. “I found one of her nails in my bed. It broke off. She’s cheap. What do you think of her hair?”

I try to think what color this one’s hair is.

“It looks…”

“I can always tell the difference between real hair and fake. I want to meet a real,naturalwoman, Jake. But I work too much. So instead I do this. It’s a cycle.”

It’s a cycle he’s repeated two dozen times since I moved in: infatuation, creeping disenchantment, and then finally disgust, self-pity, and despair.

It floats up in front of my eyes, the sight of Grant up all night at his computer, desperately clicking away at photos of brunettes, blondes, tall, short, curvy, thin—and then charging his desires to a credit card. The oversized Barbie of a woman shows up, stays a while, and then is shown out, leaving Grant’s wallet significantly lighter. The idiot could just hit up a club like a normal person. He has the clothes and the money and the car for it.

I’ve suggested a psychiatrist. He’s told me he’s already seen them all.

“I need you to get her out of the apartment for me.”

I watch Dolores, sitting there, and I wonder how long until she loses patience and leaves.

“Where is she?”

“She’s in the shower right now. Shit. Jake. I feel so disgusted with myself. I’m going to leave. I’m just going to walk out. I’ll be back tomorrow. Just…just make sure she’s gone when I get back. Please.”

In four years he’s never once asked me what I do with them. He leaves that up to me. It’s not like I can just open the door, bow like a butler, and show them out. They won’t leave on their own. I wonder if we have another rug we can spare. Shower curtain? Tablecloth? I suppress a sigh.

And that’s when I catch sight of my reflection in a mirror panel across the room. I look so normal. Dull, even. Nondescript suit. Boring haircut. Glasses. It’s all part of my carefully curated mask.Don’t notice me.I wonder what Dolores sees. Not much. I know what Grant sees—a chump. The possibility of an evening with Dolores floats away.

“She’ll be gone when you get back,” I tell Grant. I end the call.

When I go back to her, Dolores is still perched on the edge of the fountain, wearing her black trench coat now. I hold my hand out to her, and after a moment’s hesitation she takes it and I pull her to her feet. We spill out onto the dark street, where the rain has petered out to a few random drops. It’s a gleaming, water-slicked night, all inky blackness and sparkling traffic lights. A car’s sound system vibrates in the background like a big creature’s heartbeat. It’s the sort of night I could walk for hours in. It’s the sort of night I have walked for hours in, when I couldn’t sleep. Dolores stands six feet in front of me in her spindly little shoes, her hair flecked with a handful of glittering raindrops, her eyes wide and dark.

“I have to go,” she says, preempting me. But she says it in a way that wants to be convinced otherwise.

“Not yet.”

I take her by the elbow and swing her into the darkened doorway of a storefront boarded up for renovations. The memory of that rooftop kiss sits between us like a third presence. What I wouldn’t give for a rooftop right now.

“Why did you kiss me?” she whispers. “On the roof.”

I look at her lips, then her eyes again. She smells like red wine and perfume and herself.

“Youkissedme.”

“You grabbed me,” she says.

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