Page 11 of Deja Who
“Agreed. It’s so sad,” Leah said, looking into her sack. “I pack my own lunch, but I keep hoping to be surprised. But no. It’s exactly what I packed for myself. I don’t evenlikecarrots.”
“Not even a love note,” Cat teased.
“No.” Leah unfolded the note she’d left for herself:don’t forget to get more milk and keep a sharp eye out for your killer and also your ass looks huge in those shorts.She looked down at herself. “I’m right. It does.”
“Does not.”
“No boobs, too much ass.”
“Nope.” Cat had shamelessly read over her shoulder, and not for the first time. Cat was ten years older, twenty pounds heavier, and almost a foot taller. “You don’thavean ass to look bad. You’ve got nothin’ going on back there.”
“Plaid. What was I thinking? Rodney Dangerfield and circus clowns, they can pull off plaid Bermudas. Sometimes I wish my mystery man would hurry up and kill me again already.”
“Yeah. Speaking of.” Cat peeked into the lunch bag, smiled at Leah, and pulled out a chocolate pudding cup. Then, horribly, she helped herself to Leah’s abandoned carrots and began dipping and eating. “You’ve had that guy sniffin’ around you for a few days now.”
“Mmmm.” She couldn’t look at the other woman. Carrots on their own were dreadful enough. She didn’t think it was possible to ruin a Jell-O pudding cup.Wrong again, dolt.“He is definitely taking his time this life.” The quickest he’d ever killed her was when she was nineteen. The longest was this life—she had just turned twenty-six, and was thus far unperforated.
“Can’t believe you just wanna let it happen. Whad’ya take all the classes for? Huh?”
“The confrontation,” she corrected her. “That’s what I want to have happen. I’m tired of feeling him get close but not knowing if today’s the day. And he might not kill me this time. I’m supposed to keep learning, yes? Maybe in this life I have learned enough. Maybe I’ll killhimthis time.” Wait. That didn’t sound like the lesson karma was trying to teach her...
“Mmm, yeah, that’ll teach him.”
“Well. It might.”
“You couldn’t kill a tick.”
“Could, too.” Lie. Leah always set them free, to the fury of whoever observed the behavior. Her mother used toburnthem in ashtrays. Her mother burned everything but cigarettes in ashtrays.Ugh. Even a parasite did not deserve to be burned alive.“They are serving their function. They suck away at the lifeblood of various mammals which is what God made them for. Insert witty commentary on politicians and/or Hollywood agents here.”
“Will not. Heard all the ‘all politicians are dirty har-har-har’ cracks I need. And you! Gettin’ too lazy to come up with your own jokes, hell with ya, you’re getting wicked lazy in your old age.”
“I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed our lunch today, Cat, but duty calls.”
“You liar, you’ve got half an hour left. Listen, call the cops on that guy.”
“To tell them that I have never actually caught him doing anything illegal but he might be killing me soon, so could they take a break from actual criminals and please arrest him on no charges?”
“Cops do it all the time for Insighters.”
“Cops do it sometimes for Insighters when they have more on the arrestee in question than I do.” For example: #6116. The cops had her on attempted assault. They could search her car now, her home, and her person based on what Leah had found out and what had happened in her office, legally taped and documented. Thanks to the Twenty-Eighth Amendment, and the waiver all her clients signed as a matter of course, Leah was not bound by confidentiality issues as a doctor or lawyer was. If anything, she was closer to a mandated reporter like a teacher or social worker: it was her duty to inform the state of potential homicidal shenanigans. Thus, anything they found in #6116’s car or home was now considered fruit of the poisoned tree. Beyond that, the police and the DA were on their own.
You couldn’t arrest for murder someone who had killed in his last life. You couldn’t bring a civil suit against such people, either. They could only be legally penalized for what they did this time around—and what a dark circus the legal system hadbeen before that legislation passed! (It was still a dark circus, but perhaps notasdark.) But you could spot them, and watch them. You could set traps for them. Sometimes, with people like #6116, it was easy. Sometimes, as in the case of Leah’s many-time murderer, it was impossible.
“If he would just kill me already, they could arrest him. Whatcanhe be waiting for?”
“There’s something wrong with you,” Cat said without a trace of judgment, which was one of many reasons Leah ate lunch with her.
“I’m an Insighter who hates Insight,” she agreed. She didn’t know what to do with that; she’d never known. She didn’t know whom to ask, either: every one of her colleagues felt the same. “It’s such a silly trope, too: starry-eyed newbie ready to change the world slowly turns into jaded jerk. Boring-boring-boring.”
“In plaid, even,” Cat added around a mouthful of chicken tender. “You look like Rodney Dangerfield with boobs.”
“Yikes.” So: disillusioned,andtrapped in a lame trope. In plaid.Ugh.
“Can’t you ever just... you know... turn it off?”
Leah shrugged. There was no use telling Cat that every time they ate lunch together, she saw another sliver of Cat’s past lives. Enough lunches and the sliver eventually formed the full stake. Over the weeks and months she saw Cat’s father beat her mother until the police came again, and did nothing again. She saw Cat in an earlier life, as a child trying to claw his way past a locked door until his fingers were red to the wrists. Went back further and saw Cat as a grown man crying over two fresh cemetery graves; the vision was so clear she could make out the years:1867–1875. Twins? Dead sons, daughters? Went back further and saw Cat alone, alone, alone.
Can I turn off being five-foot-five? With no ass and no chest and (almost) no friends? Can I turn off having brown hair? Wait, bad example... Garnier alone has eighty shades.“No,” she said after a while. “I can’t just turn it off. I can’t turn off being right-handed and deeply distrustful of mothers, either.”
