Page 68 of Serial Killer Games

Her lips press into a flat line. “I think you’re going to learnto love toadstools.” She glances to the left and then the right, like she’s searching the environs for inspiration. “Can you follow me?”

I open the car door to step out, but she stops me.

“I meant in the car. You can’t just leave the car here.”

“Why not?”

“You really don’t know a fucking thing about cars, do you?”

“No.”

She swears under her breath.

In the end, we leave my car where it is and take hers out toward the freeway. She cranks the heated seat for me and I nod off with the side of my head pressed against the icy glass of the window. The next thing I know, she’s shaking me awake. We’re in a parking lot surrounded by a familiar mushroom forest of squat apartment blocks. In the elevator, I notice she’s holding my bugout bag, and on the third floor she lets me into an apartment that couldn’t be more different from Grant’s penthouse. It’s small and cramped, and it smells like food and Dodi’s perfume. The lights are golden and warm, the furniture cheap and worn, and every surface is a petri dish for a living, growing colony of clutter. A special type of brightly colored, predominantly plastic clutter.

Toys. There are toys all over the place. Legos, art supplies, and Barbies—Barbieseverywhere.

“I know it’s a mess,” Dodi says defensively. “You try keeping up with a six-year-old.”

“Do you have allergy meds?” I ask.

“What? Why?”

“I’m allergic to cats.”

She glares at me and stalks off without saying anything. She rustles in the bathroom, knocking cabinet doors open andclosed, and I peer around the living room. I circle back to the front door and lean my head into the tiny kitchen. No scratching posts, no food dishes. No cat hair or cat toys.

Was there ever a cat? Did the cat turn into a human child? Because I still feel like we had actual conversations about a fuckingcat—

I step on something and discover the dismembered Ken doll in a little heap on the floor, his glasses bent out of shape now.

“Cat’s been playing Frankenstein with your doll,” Dodi says, standing in front of me with a folded towel.

Cat. A little girl named Cat.

Silence, silence yawning wide and deep and endless and…

“Her meeting you was never part of the plan, and I don’t want her feeling nervous about a strange man staying in our apartment. You can crash here for one night if you stay in my room. If you so much as step a toe outside, you’re dead.” She undermines this threat by gently pressing the towel into my arms and dropping an aspirin into my hand for my fever.

“Where is she?”

“I have to get her from dance class. You’re going to do whatever you need to do, and you better be locked up in that room by the time we get back. You can use the shower and wash your clothes. If there’s anything edible in the fridge, you can have it. I think there’s a nice bottle of mustard in there. Check the expiration date.”

She turns and leaves without looking at me, the door clicking softly shut behind her.

30

Bruce Wayne and Cat Girl

Jake

I sleep the sleep ofthe dead, and when I come to, I can’t remember where I am. I’m in a soft bed in a darkened room with bands of brilliant sunlight burning around the edges of the window blinds. As I roll over I get a whiff of a familiar perfume. I’m at Dodi’s.

There was no need to threaten my life if I left the room. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I open the door and squint against the sunlight. The clock in the kitchen reads ten, which means last night was the longest I’ve slept in years. I feel…light. Rested. I check my phone: five more missed phone calls from Andrew and several voicemails, which I delete. Nothing from Grant. On the kitchen table is a handwritten note with a key resting on top. Her hand is spiky and dark.

Do whatever you need to do, lock up, and give my key to the neighbor. Don’t be here when I get back.

I have no one to cook a healthy breakfast for, so I pour myself a bowl of sugary cereal. When I open the fridge I can see she wasn’t kidding about the state of affairs. There’s an empty milk carton and half a dozen condiments. I check the mustard out of curiosity: expired. I sit at the table in my boxers, blinking stupidly in the bright light, crunching my dry cereal. On the table in front of me is a pile of hair elastics and a hairbrush. A homework sheet with a teacher’s bouncy writing at the top that says,Please call me. Catriona is telling stories about Hades and Persephone again.A Barbie with her hair shorn off close to her scalp, draped across the chair to my right. On the fridge is a dry-erase calendar crammed full of reminders: Ballet on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Christmas concert this Friday. Pediatrician appointment next Wednesday. It’s fascinating. This is Dodi’s kitchen. This is Dodi’s life.

---