He can only stare at the familiar fluorescent lights and pipes on the white ceiling, vaguely aware of her movements as she washes her hands, prepares an instrument tray, shaves the hair off his abdomen. He feels the cold iodine on his skin and then she presses the scalpel into his flesh. It opens easily under the sharp blade in her hands, a slice and then a pop as it pulls through the muscle. He tries to distance himself from it; to talk himself out of the pain. For a moment, he thinks he’s going to be all right. That he can stand this. That it’s no worse than the nails. And then she inserts the clamp and pries open the hole she had made in him. It is a wrenching, ripping, nausea-inducing pain that makes Archie scream, only he cannot speak, cannot move his mouth, cannot lift his head. He still manages to cry out in his mind, a strangled howl that he carries with him into unconsciousness.
She lets him sleep. It feels like days, because when he wakes up, his mind has constructed a tunnel of clarity. He turns his head and she is right beside him, face propped up on two stacked fists set on his bed. They are inches apart, nose-to-nose. The tube is gone from his throat, but his throat aches from it. She has not slept. He can tell. He can see the fine veins underneath the pale skin of her forehead. He knows her expressions. He is starting to know her face as well as Debbie’s.
“What were you dreaming about?” she asks him.
Color images flash through his mind. “I was in a car in a city, looking for my house,” he says. His voice is hoarse, a cracked whisper. “I couldn’t find it. I’d forgotten the address. So I just kept circling.” He smirks mirthlessly, feeling his chapped lips crack. A hard nut of pain sits in his chest. “I wonder what it means.”
Gretchen doesn’t move. “You’ll never see them again, you know.”
“I know.” He glances down at the bandage on his abdomen. The pain pales compared to the ache of his ribs. His entire torso is bruised, the skin the color of rotten fruit. His body feels like wet sand. He hardly notices the smell of decomposing flesh anymore. It is a strange thing to be alive. He is getting less and less attached to the idea. “They get it?”
“I sent it to Henry,” she says. “They haven’t released it to the media.”
“No, they wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“They’ll want to confirm it’s mine,” he explains.
She’s perplexed. “I sent your wallet with it.”
“They’ll match the DNA,” he reassures her. “It will take a few days.”
She lowers her perfect face next to his again. “They’ll know I took it out of you while you were alive. And they’ll find traces of the drugs I’ve given you.”
“It’s important to you, isn’t it?” he asks. “That they know what you’re doing to me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I want them to know that I’m hurting you. I want them to know that and not be able to find you. And then I want to kill you.” She places a hand on his forehead and holds it there like a mother checking a child for fever. “But I don’t think I’ll give you back, darling. I think I’ll let them wonder. I like to let them wonder sometimes. Life shouldn’t always be so cut-and-dried.”
He had squatted in the rain next to so many corpses, seen so much death. He had always wondered how many more she killed. Serial killers often killed for years before the police caught on to a pattern. He wanted to know. He had spent ten years living for the answer to two questions: “Who was the Beauty Killer?” and “How many had been murdered?” He knows the answer to the first question. Now some part of him felt that if he knew the second, some door on the person he had been might close. It was as if the more she confided in him, the more he belonged to her.
Gretchen grows impatient. “Just ask me how many people I’ve killed. I want to tell you.”
He sighs. The effort hurts his ribs and he winces. She is still waiting, her anticipation palpable. She is like an insistent child who must be indulged. It is the only way to make her go away. “How many people have you killed, Gretchen?”
“You will be number two hundred.”
He swallows hard. Jesus Christ, he thinks. Jesus fucking Christ. “That’s a lot of people,” he says.
“I had my lovers kill for me sometimes. But I always chose whom it would be. It was always at my bidding. So I think I should get to count it, don’t you?”
“I think you can count it.”
“Are you in pain?” Her face is shining.
He nods.
“Tell me,” she says.
He does. He tells her because he knows it will satisfy her, and if she is satisfied, she might give him some peace. She might let him rest. And when she lets him rest, he gets the pills. “I can’t breathe. I can’t take a full breath without a searing pain in my ribs.”
“What’s it like?” Her eyes gleam.
He searches for the right words. “It’s like razor wire. Like someone wrapped razor wire around my lungs, and when I breathe, it cuts deep into the tissue.”
“What about the incision?”
“It’s starting to throb. It’s a different kind of pain. More of a burning. It’s okay if I don’t move. My head hurts. Especially behind the eyes. The wound, where you stabbed me, it feels like it’s getting infected. And my skin itches. All over. I think my hands are asleep. I can’t feel them.”
“Do you want your medicine?”
He smiles, imagining the tingling wave of fog that follows the pills. His mouth waters for it. “Yes.”
“All of it?”
“No,” he tells her. “I don’t want the hallucinations. I just see my life. I see them looking for me. I see Debbie.”
“Just the amphetamine and the codeine?”
“Yes.”
“Extra codeine?”
“Yes,” he says, choking.
“Ask me for it.”
“Can I have some extra codeine?”