“I’m not your baby! Put your hands back on your head. What kind of moron gets turned on by a guy who’s there to kill her? I don’t exactly trust my instincts right now. I have such bad impulse control.” She sighs. “Which is not great for you.”
Here we have a girl who would tear my heart out with her bare hands if she could do it without giving up her weapon.
“I’m sorry.”
She just glares. “So what should I call you?”
“Asshat works.”
“I mean it! What’s your name? And when I look in your wallet, that better be your name.”
“Jack. It’s in the pocket of my rucksack. My license. The one that’s in my wallet says I’m twenty-one, and it says ‘Gerhard Rheingold.’?”
“Gerhard Rheingold?”
“My friend’s older brother is Gerhard, all right? My name is Jack.”
She’s resting her hands on a rock, aiming low. “J wasn’t very imaginative.”
“I’m not that good at this.” This isn’t what I’d intended to say, but once it’s out there, it sounds true. “I started to say ‘Jack,’ and I was stuck with the J sound. Remember in the park?”
She hisses, “I remember Every. Single. Second. I thought you were the one good thing in what you were trying to turn into my very short life.”
There’s a silence, and then in a flat voice she says, “How much was he paying you, anyway? What was I worth dead?”
“It wasn’t for money. I have a shit ton of money from the not-undead dad.”
“What did he pay you? Or is this your hobby? Hunting girls for fun because you’re so rich and macho?”
“My name is Jack Manx. My dad was Art Manx. Is this ringing any bells?”
“I don’t care who your dad is. I hate you!”
“Will you let me explain? I have a brother in prison in Nevada, okay? He’s been locked up off and on since he was fourteen. He’s a bad guy.”
“You’re the good guy?”
We’ve come a long way from her running her finger along the scar and getting me—me telling her things I’ve never told anybody else—to this. It occurs to me that I don’t want her to hate me, and not just because she has the gun. “My brother, he said…” How do I even say this to her? “He told me you cut somebody’s throat. And you knew some things this thug Karl Yeager didn’t want you walking around knowing.”
Her face keeps vacillating between skepticism and pure horror. “So you’re attracted to girls who kill people and know things about thugs? I’m so not buying this.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“You didn’t know that! Maybe I’m a really good actress and a total liar. Maybe I . . . you know . . . cut her throat, and now I’m going to cut your throat. Ha!”
Damn fucking Don.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My brother said you did, and some bad things were going to happen if I didn’t find you first.” Finally, her hand is shaking. “But I wasn’t going to do it! I was starting to tell you so we could fake it. People would think you were dead. You could get away.”
“There are no people.” She’s screaming and holding the gun out with rigid arms, waving it at me. “The only person I have to worry about is you.”
“Nicolette, listen to me. Two guys came to my apartment last night. Do you see the side of my neck? I’m going to pull down on my shirt, don’t freak—”
“Don’t patronize me!”
“That’s why it had to be tonight.”
“Save your story with your imaginary bad guys! How much am I worth to Steve dead?”
“Who’s Steve?”
“Steve! The guy who hired you. The guy I thought was my dad.” Her voice cracks on this final syllable.
I figure if I try to put my arm around her, she’ll misinterpret, and I’ll end up dead. I say, “Steve is Esteban Mendes?”
She nods, miserable and ferocious.
“You think Esteban Mendes wants you dead? That makes no sense.”
This is when she hits me on the head.
59
Nicolette
The second I hit him, I know I shouldn’t have.
I mean, I’m armed, and he’s already on the ground. A gash in his forehead. Blood on his face. I’m so freaking angry at him, I want to kill him.
So I bash him on the head?
Not hard enough to put him out of his misery, either.
Just enough force to pause the conversation.
Not that it was a totally irrational act, even if it had terrible impulse control written all over it. Every second he was woozy was a second I didn’t have to worry about him jumping up and tackling me.
He was a lot more manageable woozy.
I got him to fork over the car keys and walked him, half-staggering, to the car. I told him to climb, semiconscious, into the trunk. I left it all the way open. So if anyone says I wanted him dead, I didn’t. Or I would have let him asphyxiate in there like those poor pet dogs whose owners leave them in cars in shopping mall parking lots in the summer. Whose owners I actually do want dead.
I sit down under a tree so dried out that it barely provides shade, and I wait for him to come to.
I drink a can of warmed-over Coca-Cola I packed with the peanut butter sandwiches. I come close to pouring in the rum I brought that J or Gerhard or Jack or whoever he is carried back from South Dakota or wherever he really went.