Page 32 of Serial Killer Games

She leans in close, and now Iknowwe’re going to kiss…but I’m an idiot who still wants reassurance. A different sort of reassurance this time. She notices a change in my face, because she stops an inch from me.

I unglue my tongue. “It’s just…it must be difficult, being a Black Widow. Breaking your heart on the job every day. What if you develop feelings?”

She pulls back, annoyed. “Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t get attached to my victims.” She frowns at me, like she’s seeing me afresh. “Forget I asked. I haven’t restocked on lye since my last date, anyway.”

She scrabbles with the ridiculous door handle, and before I can stop her, she’s slipped out into the night. I watch Dolores—Dodi—speed-walk to her apartment, her coat flapping like a cape, Verity’s head cradled in her arms. She doesn’t look back.

I stay there for a while, the car silent, the street silent, as the inside of the car gets colder and colder.

There was something about the stillness of night, the closeness of her face to mine, the strangeness of our conversation. I felt like we’d unlocked a moment in which I could say anything. I almost told her, then, about the thoughts that go bump in the night. I almost asked her about her offer to do away with me, on the roof. Is she really capable of something like that?

But I didn’t ask her. Because there’ssomethingthere.

I’ve been casing her out, taking her measure, and here we’ve run aground on something hidden underneath. Her own buried bodies. Something I don’t understand yet, a secret she still doesn’t trust me with.

And to think I almost told hermysecret.

13

Solitaire

Dodi

He’s the first person I’vetold my secret—in so many words.

I drop my new shoes by the door and the bag containing my red dress slithers to the floor. The apartment is silent as a tomb.Here lies the sex life of Dolores dela Cruz.In the darkened living room the TV casts a flickering light, like the votive flames of a funerary altar. I hadn’t realized I’d left the TV on. I turn it off, but I’m not ready for sleep. I feel twitchy and edgy. I feel alive.

I could walk down the hall and rap on my neighbor’s door. Have a drink. Spill the tea about the date with the wrong man. She wants to be friends, I think. I estimate that I have about two more months of her goodwill before she finally takes offense and stops trying. My estimates are fairly accurate after all these years of the same scenario playing out over and over. But it’s too risky, having friends. They clasp their hands around their coffee mugs in their warm, clean kitchens and tilt their heads to one side, eyes dilated wide with concern, and say,How did he…pass?andWhat do you do for a living?andDolores dela Cruz…that sounds familiar.I can’t tolerate any of that. Everything has been so neatly buried.

I chuck Verity’s head into my freezer. In the bathroom I reach into the medicine cabinet for my toothbrush, the back of my hand knocking against the men’s safety razor that’s been sitting, unused, since that last morning when I kissed his smooth cheek good-bye, and he waltzed off to meet destiny.

I feel the phantom of Jake’s stubble prickling the pads of my fingers, and I shut the cabinet.

I look different in the bathroom mirror. My hair is piled on top of my head, my makeup is smudged, my lips stained with wine. My cheeks burn pink, and my eyes are glittery and strange. This is what he was looking at when he almost kissed me just now. I wish I’d kissed him. I wish he was here right now, on top of me. I’m so glad he isn’t. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to let him keep his glasses on.

He had his glasses on tonight, though. I peel off the bandage dress and leave it crumpled on the floor like a deflated potato skin and stare at my reflection in the mirror, sobriety and self-consciousness creeping in. He was stone-cold sober tonight, while I minced around drunkenly in my panties and bra, confidence fueled by the miracle of table wine. I touch my belly, a part of my body I haven’t loved in a long while. How much younger than meishe?

He…rejected me. In the car, just now, didn’t he? He didn’t want to come up.

I won’t be able to meet his eye tomorrow.

And yet, he knows my secret, he knows who I am, and doesn’t flinch from meetingmyeye.

A distraction. Spider, or Pyramid. Maybe a nice game of Yukon. Solitaire is the perfect game for someone like me. I know two dozen ways to play by myself, two dozen differentways to arrive at the same conclusion: hearts to hearts, spades to spades, clubs to clubs, and diamonds to diamonds. Everyone with their own kind. The soft, tender, bleeding ones in one pile, the cold, unfeeling rocks in another. The murder weapons over here, and the shovels for burying the evidence over there. I sit cross-legged in the middle of my bed and take the decks from my bedside table, the ones with the holes punched through the middle, the luck snuffed out of them, and shuffle. Caesar’s Palace.Thwick.I’ve always had a knack for shuffling. But as I lay the cards out, they fall into a familiar pattern all on their own. I’m dealing blackjack for someone who isn’t there, again.

I wonder if Jake knows how to play. He has the best poker face I ever saw. That perfect deadpan just now as he teased me in his car about allergies. The way he’s always talked about my cat has been a coded acknowledgment—cheeky, but respectful in its own way. He’s aware of what my life is outside of this fantasy world we’ve built to contain our flirtation, and he knows we have to keep reality and fantasy separate. This isn’t real life.

That’s why he didn’t come up.

I smooth a crinkle in the bedspread and uncover a decapitated head with dark hair and glasses. She’s claimed the dismembered Ken doll as one of her own toys, and the pieces turn up in the strangest places. I carry it down the hallway to where the little musical jewelry box sits on a shelf in the living room. I nestle it in between the severed limbs, and the music tinkles sweetly in the dark for a moment before I shut the lid.

14

Escape to Las Vegas

Jake

The next morning the elevatordoors groan apart and I step in to find Dolores coming up from the basement: black coat, black bag, black dress,pinklipstick. Pale, poisonous, the color of salmonella in your chicken breast. And nude heels with red soles.

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