Page 56 of Serial Killer Games

She starts, yanked away from whatever thoughts she was immersed in. “My money?”

I jerk my chin at her bag, and her face goes slack for a moment before it tightens back into its neutral setting: bored with a touch ofFuck you very much. The snarky Black Widow is online again, stropping her straight razor. She’s exactly like that queen of diamonds she was dealt, and all I want to do is keep coming back to slice myself to ribbons on her hard, sharp edges.

“Wouldn’t you like to know. I’ve already spent it,” she says. With a thrill, I realize there’s another secret here. Another body buried closely to the others.

A dry desert breeze rises out of nowhere and lifts Dodi’s hair off her shoulders. She shivers, even though it’s warm.

“Why’d you bring me up here?” she asks.

I pass her the urn, and her face goes blank.

“You’re right. He would have loved this.” She looks out at the city again, glowing, pulsing, alive. She twists the lid off to rest it on the ledge and pulls apart the seal of the liner inside.

“Good-bye, Neil,” she whispers, and she sifts him slowly into the warm wind.

Neil.

I give a minute of silence to faceless, intrepid Neil—the statistician, the gambler, the dead man, who Dolores loved and still loves—burned to ash, billowing down the Las Vegas Strip on a desert wind, clinging to the hair and skin and clothes of a thousand strangers, following them back to their hotel rooms, being rinsed off in the shower, rubbed into the bedsheets, taken home on planes all across the continent—the world. That jar of stardust exploding in a supernova across the globe.

What a way to go.

26

Serial Killer Games

Dodi

Just before dawn I liftmy head and peel a piece of paper from my cheek. Benjamin Franklin, lips pursed in disapproval. There’s a vase of red roses next to the bed. I toss the flowers on the floor and chug the water.

The room is white. Plush white carpet, white sofa, white everything, and red rose petals everywhere. There are candles burned right down to the base and dripping wax all over the coffee table, where socks and shoes and cards lie in a heap from an abandoned game of strip poker. Condoms blown up into massive balloons roll like lazy tumbleweeds across the carpet under the draft of the AC.

I’m sprawled out on top of a pile of money on the nuptial bed of an extravagant honeymoon suite, an enormous rock sparkling on my left hand. Something else sparkles, too: the rhinestone-bedazzled Elvis romper I won in strip poker. I was serious about getting married by Elvis.

It was an unconventional proposal, perhaps. How many men get down on one knee with a slot machine token while acrowd of Las Vegas tourists cheer? But a few hours later, when I’d had time to think it over, I accepted all the same. Nothing fazes me. I’m a professional. I’ve seen it all. And this is very much my MO: a marriage of convenience to help a dying man retain his dignity. Sure, we should do the power of attorney stuff too, but this was the reckless, alcohol-fueled start.

He deserves my best work. I knew that, last night, when he explained everything to me. He’s given me his best work.

He’s dead asleep. Dark eyelashes fanned on his cheeks, stubble dotting his jaw. He lost most of his clothing in the small hours of the morning when I handed his and Elvis’s asses to them, and now I get my first look at his pale, lean body, lying next to me, still strong and healthy for now. I wonder how thin he’ll get. Neil turned into a bag of bones. It’s my last look, too—there won’t be any of that nonsense, now. This Black Widow doesn’t get attached to her clients.

Loss is the price of entry. Unlike those idiots thronging the casinos, I’ve always known there’s no winning. Just the temporary illusion of winning. The house always has an edge, and everyone loses eventually. Everyone dies eventually.

I watch him as the room slowly fills with light. I close my eyes and I listen to him. His slow, quiet breathing, and underneath, a heartbeat. Maybe it’s my own heartbeat, or maybe I’m imagining it. I wriggle closer and I breathe him in. Something warm-blooded and inviting that makes me want to bury my face in his shoulder. The way he looks and sounds and smells right now—and more than that, his kindness, his patience, his dark humor—these are my trophies. I’ll keep them in a box under my bed.

There are things Jake needs to do before he dies. A whole list of unfinished business, of loose ends to wrap up, of experiences to have. I’ve seen it before. But because of real life waitingat home, I can’t do them with him. I need to push him off gently. He can’t afford to waste any time. I’ll be here when he needs me—really needs me—and doesn’t just want me. Because it’s obvious to me now why he waited to crawl into bed with me, even though I’ve been scrabbling to get in his pants all along. For him it’s never been just a flirtation to stave off the boredom. Jake wants something truly special to happen to him before he dies.

Jake wants to fall in love.

I can’t help him with that.

—

Jake fumbles with the keycard, and as the lock finally blinks green, the door across the hall opens up. Cynthia grimly takes in his rumpled clothes, my Elvis romper, our bag with stray bills poking out of it. The look in her eyes sends chills down my spine, but she doesn’t say a thing. Her door clicks softly shut.

The plane leaves soon. We don’t have time to shower. We change our clothes, miserably, with matching hangovers. We check the bathroom, the bedding, the drawers, for things gone astray, just to be safe.Did we leave anything behind?Only a whole-ass husband.

Jake compulsively makes the bed and folds the towels, and I leave out a generous tip. We’re responsible grown-ups here, in case last night caused any confusion. He gives me the boarding passes and the passports, and he takes the bags. We’re so practical and prosaic and—married.

A married couple who still haven’t made eye contact since we woke up and Jake peered at the ring on his finger. A married couple who still haven’t discussed the crazy fact that we are a married couple.

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