Kill Me (34 page)

“Then drop us off and take the plane someplace close by to catch some z’s. Don’t stay in New Haven, okay?”

“Okay.” Mary looked once again at Lizzie, still asleep on the sofa. The hat was off Lizzie’s bald head. “You know, the whole time I was following her I didn’t know she was wearing a wig.”

“Me neither,” I said. “Good wig.”

“Breast cancer?”

I nodded.

She touched me on the face until I looked her in the eyes. “This is still about family, boss? Right?”

At that moment, I realized that Mary may have seen something while she was tailing Lizzie for me. What? I didn’t know.

“I’m looking for Adam, Mary; he’s still missing. She’s helping me. That’s what this is. And that’s all that this is about. I have some information that he might be in New Haven and that he may need me.”

“Gotcha,” she said.

She kissed me on the cheek and walked back toward the cockpit of the Lear. Before she got to the door, she tilted her head toward Lizzie and said, “What’s her name? What should I call her?”

I said, “Lizzie. Call her Lizzie.”

As Mary disappeared from the cabin, I realized I hadn’t heard from LaBelle about the results of her research into Lizzie’s true identity.

I pulled out my cell phone and checked to see if I’d received a text message.

I had one. The time stamp indicated that it had come in during the chaos of escaping the tunnel. I wasn’t surprised that I’d missed it.

“Your data’s in. Short list. LB,” was how it read.

I stared at the tiny screen for a long time before I picked up the cabin phone and dialed LaBelle’s home number.

SIXTY-SIX

It took LaBelle a minute or so to pretend to get over the fact that she was still so far out of the loop she couldn’t even detect the curvature of its arc. Why was I on Jimmy Lee’s company’s Lear? Where was my plane? Where was Mary? Where the hell was I going in such a hurry?

I didn’t tell her any of it. But I didn’t try to stop her from asking. Why? I loved hearing her talk. She comforted me in basic ways. I knew she’d eventually get around to telling me what I wanted to know: the names of any physicians in the U.S. who were board-certified in both neurology and oncology.

“Girl doctors or boy doctors?” she asked me with an exasperated sigh, finally accepting, or at least acknowledging, defeat.

“Girl doctors.”

“There’re three girls on your list. Only two boys, though. What do you make of that? Think about it. Number one among the clan of the overeducated is Antoinette Fleischer. She’s on the faculty at Northwestern. Numero dos is Priya Micezevski; she’s in Tallahassee in private practice. She just does neurology these days, no oncology.” After a pregnant pause, she tacked on, “I’m assuming that’s a married name. Priya Micezevski?”

I didn’t bite. “And three?”

“Jolie Borden. Med school, UCLA. Residency, Baylor. But I can’t find any current professional activity for her going back five years. She may be retired. Probably burned out from all that schooling.”

Jolie? Her parents had graced her with the French word for “pretty.”

“Age for her? You have it?”

“Dr. J? She’s, um … let’s see, thirty-eight. Yes, thirty-eight.”

I looked down at Lizzie.
Thirty-eight?
The medical records I found in her apartment were for female patients who were thirty-seven. Close enough.

The day at Papaya King? I would have bet she was no more than thirty-five.

“Last known address?”

“Highland Park. It’s a suburb of —”

“I know.”
Dallas.

“So is Miss Jolie your girl?”

“You’re my girl, LaBelle. Have I told you you’re terrific lately? Well, you’re terrific. One more thing, though. Please find out everything you can about number three. Spend some of my money if you need to. We’ll talk soon. I have to run.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear to hang up. But LaBelle continued talking, her distinctive voice easily bridging the space between the phone and my ears. “You notice there’re no sisters on that list. Antoinette? Priya? Jolie? Those aren’t sisters’ names. You notice that? I did. We may not go to school as much as some other girls do, but at least we know when to stop.”

I smiled as I placed the receiver into its cradle.

SIXTY-SEVEN

I watched Lizzie sleep for a while before I moved to the aft end of the sofa. In my mind, I was trying to transform her from a Lizzie to a Jolie. But before I succeeded I dozed off, too.

I awakened to find her straddling me, her lips only inches from mine. She was pinning each of my wrists with one of her hands.

Her strength surprised me, and it didn’t. I could’ve freed myself.

But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t even tempted.

“Hi,” I said after I’d taken a moment to assure myself that I wasn’t dreaming.

The “hi” I used was my charming “hi,” my seductive “hi,” a variation on the same tune that I’d played almost two decades before in the Buckhead McMansion with Bella on that pre-Halloween night outside Atlanta. And on a few score other occasions before that night, and since.

“This is important,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I mean it,” she said. “It’s important.”

“I said okay.”

“Have you wondered?”

What?
“About?” I asked.

But I thought I knew.

“You know,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I thought I knew.

“This whole time? Since that day I kidnapped you on Park Avenue? The ride in the back of the Town Car? Have you wondered about … me? About … us?” With that last word she shifted her weight so I felt pressure below my waist.

She had my attention. With the exception of the part of me that couldn’t stop thinking about my son, she had every last bit of my attention.

“About you?” I said, acting unfazed. Not feeling unfazed.

She moved her lips even closer to my face. “Have you wondered? What my skin feels like to touch. How I taste. Here” — she kissed me, tracing the tip of my tongue with the tip of hers — “and … there. How good … I am … at … what … I … do.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve wondered about those things. All those things. And a few others.” The words came out in staccato bursts. I was trying to sound cavalier. I was failing.

If flirting is about amusement and advantage, seduction is about … What? Was I being seduced?

Yes.

Why?

“Have you wondered if” — she stressed the “if” unnaturally — “we were going to do it? Did you wonder about that?”

“Do what?”

I knew, of course. But I was enjoying the game. I didn’t want it to end. And then, I did. I told myself to play along with her, that her game might bring me closer to Adam.

Amusement. Advantage.

Right.

“Fuck,” she said, at once answering my question and turning the word into something that didn’t even begin to resemble a profanity. “Did you wonder … if you and I were going to … fuck.” As a final punctuation, she stretched out her legs so that all her weight was on top of me. I felt the pressure of her groin focused against mine, and the supple weight of her upper body on my chest.

“Don’t you mean, ‘when’?” I said. “Not ‘if.’ ”

She sighed and backed away a fraction of an inch.

“This is important,” she said again. “ ’When’ means certainty. I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about the loveliness — the allure — of not quite knowing. The bounty of … anticipation. The optimism of … hope.”

“I thought —”

She put a finger to my lips. “Shhhh. Now, honestly, did you wonder?” she asked. I thought I detected a little frustration in her voice that time, as though she was disappointed at being forced to start all over from the beginning. She rotated her hips just the slightest bit, grinding herself onto me. One clockwise revolution. One counterclockwise revolution.

She repeated, “Did you wonder?”

Then she said it again, the pressure of her softly spiraling ass framing the repetition.

“Yes,” I said, trying to recover my focus. “I wondered.”

“Has it been good?”

“What? Has what been good?” I wasn’t playing any longer. The new question confused me.

“Has it been good? The wondering? The
if
.”

“Great. Beyond good. It’s been great.”

“Do you really mean that? Or has it all been prelude for you? Are you just hanging around with me waiting for the washing-machine moment?”

The reference to Bella and Buckhead was all tease. But her words stunned me from my trance. How could Lizzie know about that?

She locked her eyes onto mine and waited for my answer.

“You know about Buckhead?” I said. “How do you know about —?”

She shook her head, redirecting my attention. “Tell me about the wondering. About the ‘if.’ I want to know. All of it. Everything.”

“I love anticipation. I love the ‘if.’ ”

Her eyes told me she was skeptical.

“More than you love the ‘when’?” she asked.

I moved my hips to echo her grind. “I’ll be able to tell you that … in a few minutes.”

“You’re married,” she scolded.

More teasing? I wasn’t as sure as I had been.
What is going on here?

Suddenly — as though exhaustion had taken her hostage — she lowered her bald head onto my shoulder. One of her hands began to caress the muscles of my neck. The fingers of the other hand snaked into my hair, and settled there.

The one in my hair was her off hand.

I could feel her jawbone tracing lines on my chest as she began, again, to speak. “Have you ever noticed that life, like death, is mostly about the if, not about the when. When we —”

“They.”

I’d interrupted her because I sensed she’d changed direction and I guessed where she was going. She had stopped talking about sex and had started talking about the Death Angels.

I didn’t want her to be part of that team. Not right then.

“They,” she said. “When
they
fulfill a contract, when they provide end-of-life services, they take away the
if
. What they leave behind is only the when. And the window of when that they leave behind is minuscule. Days only. Sometimes weeks. But not long, never long.”

“Yes?”

I almost said “go on.” But I said “yes.”

“They don’t merely hasten death by what they do. What we —
they
— do is take away the most essential part of living.”

“Which is?”

“The part that we can’t know.”

“The if?”

“Yes. The if.”

“When we’ll die? That’s part of the if?”

It was a guess on my part.

“An essential part. But there are other ifs that fill us, that keep us yearning, that keep us putting one foot in front of the other. That get us out of bed in the morning.”

“Like?”

“Who we’ll love, for instance.”

“Adam?” I said, seeing the tracks in the sand.
Andrea and Zoe,
I thought. This is about Adam and Andrea and Zoe.

“Yes, yes. But for you? Berkeley, too. And Haven. They were once ifs. But the ifs go on and on. Once you love, how long will you get to love? And Thea. The wife.”

I said, “And how? How will I get to love?”

My hips were moving involuntarily by then. Less provocatively. More affectionately. The result? At that moment I was more focused on the how than the if.

“How?” she said. I felt a chuckle shudder through her body. She murmured, “Yes. How? That, too. That’s one of the ifs.”

Her hips had stopped moving. I suspected they’d been quiet a while, but that I’d just then noticed.

Her voice descended a couple of octaves into the gravelly range of a lounge singer after a night at the piano. “If I stripped off my pants, and pulled down your trousers, and I slid you inside me right now — right now — all of those things would fly away. All the wondering. All of it. A thousand ifs would become a single, fleeting when. Hope would die. Wonder … would die. All for a solitary when.”

“Maybe a terrific when,” I said, trying to hold on to the enticing mirage before it vanished.

“Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe a most pedestrian when. There are no guarantees in love. Or in life. The if doesn’t always become the when. And the when isn’t always worth the wait.”

“What are you saying, Lizzie?”

“I’m telling you about you. I’m telling you about me. About us. I’m telling you why I’m helping you. With Adam.”

“You are?”

Still prone on me like a spent lover, Lizzie said, again, “This is important. It is so, so important.”

“Okay.”

“Hold me,” she said. I did. Within a dozen heartbeats, she’d fallen asleep on my chest.

Her delightful, distracting little seduction had certainly left me wondering about the if. Which was, after all, where we’d started. And where it always should have ended.

My heart with Thea.

As her breathing leveled I realized I’d been outplayed. Any advantage from our mutual infatuation was now hers, not mine. What I didn’t know was why she felt she’d needed it.