SAMMIE
Corbin said she had a week to write another article, and it’s done, but she hasn’t emailed it over yet. Instead, she’s tinkering with it, moving around words, deleting, and then adding back in again, second-guessing herself, worrying that it might not be good enough, that it needs another tweak. She’s never felt this way, but she’s also never had to compete with anyone before, she’s only ever had to worry about keeping her own head above water. She’s on her lunch break, sitting in the food court with her laptop open, trying to ignore the crowds swarming all around her and pecking at the keyboard and wishing something bad would happen to Chris Weber. Not that she really wishes for anything to happen to him, it’s more like when she’s driving and gets cut off, and hopes that the other driver will get pulled over and have to pay a big ticket while she lays on the horn and waves her middle finger around—that’s what she wishes for Chris Weber. That he’d suddenly take ill—nothing fatal, of course—or decide to give up writing altogether, and then her life would suddenly be easy, and Corbin would have to accept her work, no questions asked, and she could stop worrying.
“You don’t look very happy,” Ethan says, pulling back the chair across from her and sitting down. He’s carrying a tray with his own lunch, it looks like he means to stick around, so she shuts her laptop and pushes it to one side. “How’s the writing going?”
She crinkles up her nose.
“It’s okay.”
“What’s your next article going to be about?”
She sighs, traces a finger on her laptop’s apple icon.
“I visited Seever in prison,” she says.
“You visited Seever?” Ethan says, impressed. “Like, sat down and actually talked to him?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. What did you talk about?” Ethan’s leaning so far over his food that his collar is nearly dipping into his bowl of clam chowder, his face is rapt, she’s definitely got his attention. It’s silly but it makes her feel good, because when was the last time she had anyone interested in what she had to say, so fascinated that it’s like they’re wearing blinders, like the rest of the world no longer exists? The last time anyone had listened to her the way Ethan is now was when she’d read her work out loud at the Tattered Cover, when the room had been so quiet except for the sound of her own voice and she could almost feel the audience straining to hear her words, to catch every inflection, every breath she took. No one is all that interested in hearing her talk about her work these days, even Dean is uninterested, he’s a little hostile about it, because he’s been through this before, he ended that period of his life with the knowledge that his wife had been unfaithful, so that’s to be expected. “Has he heard about the Secondhand Killer? What does he think?”
“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” she says, teasing, and Ethan doesn’t like this, not at all, but she hardly notices because she’s looking over his shoulder, searching; it feels like someone is staring at her, hard, and her eyes skip right over him before snapping back, because Jacky Seever blends right in, he always has, that’s how he got away with killing for so long.
But it’s not Seever, it’s Loren, in a nice suit with his hair all slicked back, he’s already played this trick before, she should know better, but it’s not something a person can get used to, having him all dressed up like a man she’d once known, a man who she’d once held in her body, a man who’d killed so many. It would be an unpleasant shock if she’d caught only a glimpse of Loren dressed like this, making his way through the swelling crowd, shopping or eating, but this is worse because he’s staring right at her, he’s watching her, waiting for her to notice him. Loren winks when their eyes meet, slow and flirty, the way Seever always did it, and her arm jerks in surprise and knocks into Ethan’s tray of food, upends his bowl of soup, and there’s a moment of chaos while they clean, Ethan inhaling irritably as he mops up the mess, and when Sammie looks up again, searching, Loren is gone.
GLORIA
They’re married for a few years when Jacky gives her a credit card, a rectangle of plastic to use instead of cash out of the bank account. She can use the checkbook too, if she needs it, but he prefers her to use credit, because it makes things easier.
For accounting reasons, he tells her. You don’t have to write anything down. I’ll look it over when the statement comes.
How much can I spend? she asks.
Jacky shrugs.