In the end, he takes the money and leaves with a cheerful wave, after warning me to set the alarm after him. As if I need the warning. I may show hints of being crazy, but I’m not reckless. Surely that has to count for something.
Still, as I head back to my bathroom to finish cleaning up the mess, I get more and more upset. How can I not remember doing this? How could I have just blocked it out so completely? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not forgetful. I’m not absentminded. I’m not crazy, present circumstances not withstanding.
But here I am anyway, on my hands and knees scrubbing water off my bathroom floor. It makes absolutely no sense. And yet, as I use towels to mop from one side of the bathroom to the other, I get a glimpse of myself in the mirrors that line the back wall.
What I see chills me to the bone.
It’s all so familiar. Too familiar, if I’m being honest. Because I’ve been here before, right here, before. Acting out this very scene at least once in the not-so-distant past.
I was in a black silk robe then, too. I was on my knees on another bathroom floor. My face was this pale, my hands this cold, my hair falling down around my cheeks just like this.
The only difference is that this time it’s water I’m wiping up. Then it was blood. Gallons of the stuff that had poured out of my victim, Stephanie Jayne, when I dismembered her. When I chopped her into pieces.
No, not me. The Belladonna. She did that. She killed Stephanie. She desecrated her body. She scrubbed her bathroom clean. I only pretended to.
All the blood I cleaned up in that scene was fake. Man-made. Pretend.
Just like me.
God.
I take a deep breath, lower my head. Force myself to turn away from the too-familiar image in the mirror. But just because I don’t look at it again doesn’t mean it’s not still there—in the mirror and in my memories.
By the time I finish cleaning up the water, I’m shaking. Even after I climb to my feet, after I deposit the sodden towels in my washing machine and turn it on, after I get dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a tank top, I can’t get the shivering to stop.
I walk from room to room, trying to quiet my mind. Trying to settle into my normal evening rhythm. But I can’t do it. My mind is whirling, my stomach churning and this house…this house that has always been my sanctuary suddenly feels a lot more like a prison.
It’s that thought that tips me over the edge, that has me grabbing my cellphone and slamming my feet into a pair of running shoes. If I can’t shake it off, maybe I can run it off.
Chapter 11
She isn’t coming.
The thought circles my brain, beats in my blood, pours through me like battery acid as I glance at the clock for the tenth time in as many minutes.
Veronica isn’t coming.
It’s ten-thirty and I told her to be here at eight. Not that I thought for one second that she would actually follow my directions and show up on time. She’s way too rebellious for that. But I did think she’d show—if for no other reason than to tell me to go to hell.
Shows how little I know…
I cross to the bar in the corner, pour myself a tequila. I drain it in a couple of long swallows, then pour myself another one. If I don’t have an interview to do tonight, I might as well drink. Maybe it will distract me from how totally disgusted I am. With the situation. With the way I handled the situation. With myself in general.
I’m supposed to be good at this. I’ve interviewed serial killers, for Christ’s sake. Interviewed victims and family members, police and district attorneys, people wrongly accused and people who literally got away with murder. Very few of them actually wanted to talk to me. Nearly all of them had something to hide. And still I got inside their heads. Still I got every single one of them to talk, got every single one of them to tell me something they’d never told anyone else.
Compared to that, interviewing a Hollywood actress on her accomplishments should be a piece of cake—even with my less than forthright agenda. And yet here I am, alone and totally fucked because I sent the woman I want to talk to more than anyone else—the woman I want more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else—running for the fucking hills.
Shit. Just…shit.
I think about texting her, about calling her. But what am I supposed to say? I already blew my wad telling her to be here tonight. And while I’m not normally one to give up when I want answers, I’m afraid that’s exactly what I’m going to have to do here. Maybe if I hadn’t slept with her, I’d be able to pursue this. I’d be able to push.
But I did sleep with her. I did blur the lines. And now everything is so fucked that I don’t think there’s any way to fix it. Not with the way she looked at me in her trailer today, lost and confused and vulnerable. Even when she was spitting at me, even when she was telling me to get out, she looked vulnerable.