I told her and she promised to be out of my hair during his visit. I insisted that it didn’t matter either way, even though I did want Addison to stay away while Eric was here. Along with immersing myself in my schoolwork at the institute, and exploring London’s bookstores and museums, I had been spending my time trying to figure out a way to kill Eric and get away with it. And I was pretty sure that I had figured it out.
The first part of my plan hinged on Eric’s competitive nature. I had spent enough time watching him play pool at St. Dun’s to know just how much he hated to lose. He tried to hide it, but when he lost, especially to someone he didn’t like, his eyes would go blank, and he would find a way to play that person again, and to win. And just this past summer, when Eric visited me at Monk’s, he’d asked me about the huge oak in the backyard. He’d spotted the two faded colored flags that had been nailed into its trunk, one at about the three-quarters mark, and one near the top. I explained that one summer my father’s best friend from childhood had come for a month, and how they had taken turns climbing the oak, each trying to get his flag higher than the other’s. It had gone on for weeks, only ending when my father, drunk, fell off the first branch one night and broke his wrist. After telling Eric this story I knew that he would have to try and climb the tree. And he did. It took him several tries but he made it higher than either my father or my father’s friend had.
“How do you think your father would feel if I put my own flag up there?”
I laughed. “I don’t think he’d care at all. He’d be amused.”
“I don’t need to, but if you thought he’d find it funny.”
“Have you always been this competitive?”
He frowned at me. “I don’t think I’m that competitive. You should see my brother.”
At the time, I chalked Eric’s denial up to a lack of self-knowledge, but now I saw it as part of his fraudulent nature. He genuinely did not want people to know about his driving desire to win at all costs. It gave away too much of himself. And it gave away a part of himself that was unchangeable. So, when I heard about the beer challenge at the Bottle and Glass, a dowdy pub at the end of my avenue, I knew that I could get Eric to attempt it. I didn’t need him to be drunk for what I had planned, but it would definitely help.
He arrived in London on a cold, wet Saturday. Addison, true to her word, packed a bag on Friday evening to spend a few days with Nolan. “Honey, you must be so excited,” she said.
“I am,” I said.
“Well, try and look it.”
“I’m just nervous,” I said. “I don’t really know why, but I am.”
“That’ll go away about five minutes after he gets here. You just both need to get laid.” She laughed, and covered her mouth with a hand.
Eric’s flight had left New York the previous night and was scheduled to land around eight in the morning. I’d e-mailed him directions on how to get to my flat. I hadn’t been lying to Addison when I said I was nervous, but I wasn’t nervous about what I planned on doing to Eric, I was nervous about the time we needed to spend together before I put my plan into action. I knew that he’d probably want to have sex as soon as he arrived, and I was steeling myself to go through with it. I told myself it was a test, a way to see how I really felt about him. I knew that being with Eric would never change my feelings about the way in which he had betrayed me, but I did wonder if it might change my plans to end his life. I doubted it, but it was a way to find out. And, if all went according to plan, Eric would only be around for another twelve hours. I could manage.
The buzzer sounded at nine thirty, and I walked up the brief flight of stairs to the chipped marble landing to let him in. He looked tired and wrinkled from the flight, his hair sticking out in the back. We hugged and kissed, and I led him down to the basement flat, showed him around. “You must be exhausted,” I said.
“I am, but I don’t want to sleep all day. Maybe I’ll take a nap, and then we can go somewhere.”
“There’s a good pub down the street. The Bottle and Glass.”
“Okay. Just let me sleep. One hour tops, and only if you join me.”