Page 4 of Serial Killer Games

“You’re always in black and covered up like a sister wife, except your legs.”

She looks thrown for a moment, like she doesn’t know whether she likes that I’ve made an observation about her. “I told you. I’m going for a Black Widow aesthetic.”

I want to know who she is.

“I’m Jake Ripper.”

She snorts contemptuously. “That’s definitely not your name.”

“It is. What’s yours?”

She doesn’t give me her name. She doesn’t say a thing. She is a wall. A stone. A—

The doors slide open, and my clinically stupid supervisor, Doug, enters at the ninth floor. In the jocular voice he uses todisguise the fact he has no idea what’s going on, he says, “Jack! And if it isn’t the lovely Dolly.”

She startles and shoots him a venomous look, but my stomach pinches pleasantly, and I file away my first little bit of data. Her name. I visualize it being typed across the blank screen in my head, the cursor blinking patiently, waiting for a surname.

“That’s not my name,” she says, and her tone makes it clear this idiot is taking his life into his hands calling her “Dolly.”

Backspace, backspace, backspace…

“Haha, yes. Yes. Dolores dela Cruz.”

Bingo. Entered and saved. I never forget a name. Here, her eyes dart toward me. The game is up.

Doug continues obliviously. “Haha, ¿cómo Esteban?”

She stares at him in disbelief. “ ‘¿Cómo Esteban?’ ”

His grin slips. “You don’t speak Spanish?”

She says, “I’m Filipina.”

It’s not going well for Doug. He still has no idea what’s going on, and his HR-mandated sensitivity training only got far enough into his skull to create a generalized impression that the conversation is turning dangerous. He scurries off at the third floor when the doors open to let someone in. The third floor isn’t even leased by our company.

I watch Dolores dela Cruz’s profile for the remaining two floors down to Ground, where I get off.

“Good night,” I say in my boring human voice.

“Buenos nachos,” she says flatly without looking up from her phone.

—

The next morning, I wakeat 4:53 a.m. and stare at the dim gray square that is my ceiling and think about Dolores dela Cruz. I drink five cups of coffee in the dark, and I don’t even feel annoyedabout Verity anymore. I have a name. Now I need to find out where she works. I need to know her department.

At work, after serving two weeks as photocopy bitch, Doug finally gives me some data entry to do.

“How long did this job usually take the last person?” I ask him.

Doug sweats and fidgets. “A week?”

I nod mournfully. “It will take me longer because I’m learning.”

Then I request permission to relocate to the empty annex so that I can take advantage of the quiet toreally focus, i.e., write a script that will automate the entire process, completing one week’s work in five minutes, allowing me to spend the rest of the day working on my list. Or staring into space and imagining shoving every person I ever knew off a tall building. Or thinking about a slight figure in a black trench coat.

Permission is granted, and off I gambol to claim a cubicle in the annex, a deserted corporate postapocalypse frozen in time after the chaotic bloodbath of the last round of layoffs two years ago. The conspicuous absence of the warm bodies that left pens and papers scattered about and chairs half turned from their desks pleases me. The fluorescents hum at the edge of hearing, the dry air tickles the throat, and the sensory pleasures of greasy melamine surfaces and polyester upholstery beckon.

I plug in my computer, line up my pens, square my Post-its, purposefully press the power button…and as my computer makes the sound of an angel chorus sighing, I look up, and there’s Dolores dela Cruz herself.

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