Sociopaths In Love (3 page)

"Actually, it's more
like
not
having a
certain something. You have to have a certain invisible quality.
That's the first thing. The second thing is that you have to have
the desire and the will power to do whatever it is you want to
do."

"I just don't think there's anything special
about me at all." She didn't, but she did often wonder why it
seemed like so many people had so many things she didn't.

"Well . . . you wouldn't if that
something special was the ability to not be noticed."

"I guess . . ."

"When you go out in public, do you have to
speak up to be heard?"

"Usually." If she spoke at all.

"Do people get in front of you when you're
standing in line?"

"Yeah."

"Do they practically merge into you on the
highway?"

"More than a few times."

"Do you not get waited on in restaurants? Do
you not get calls from friends? Maybe you don't even have any
friends. Do people bump into you and say they didn't see you or
jump a million feet in the air if you clear your throat or when you
come up from behind them do they say they didn't hear you even
though you make as much noise walking as anyone?"

"Yeah. To all of it. All the time. But I had
a lot of boyfriends and friends in high school so something must
have happened."

"Or they were just noticing all that shit on
your face."

"I don't leave the house without it."

"What I mean is, they become friends with
your clothes and makeup, how you do your hair. But it takes time to
notice it. Same as it does with people. But then as soon as it's
not there in front of their faces anymore . . . If they
haven't identified or noticed the person beneath it all
. . . They just forget about it."

"Like a ghost."

"Only you can do things a ghost could never
do."

"Yeah, you can't fuck a ghost."

He put the gun on the table and looked at
her for the first time since she'd left the bathroom.

"What's that shit all over your face?"

"It's lipstick."

"But why is it on your face, your
cheeks?"

"Because I put it there."

He leaned back on the couch and looked up at
the ceiling in an effort of singular exhaustion. "Why did you put
it there?"

"Because I wanted to."

His lips drew away from his teeth. She
thought about a snake striking its prey but, for some reason, she
took away a sense of happiness and satisfaction from this.

"You can learn," he said. "You will
learn."

She moved over him, straddling him, feeling
him harden beneath her.

"Do you want me?" she whispered into his
ear.

He didn't say anything but, instead, showed
her how much he wanted her.

Two Of A Kind

They finished in her bed and dozed off and
when she woke up in the early evening, the sun still out but the
shadows grown long, Walt wasn't in the bed with her. Slowly, she
got out of bed and gathered her clothes. Her legs were shaky and
her neck felt like she'd been in a car accident. The muscles in her
ass and stomach were sore.

After putting on her clothes, she walked out
to the living room to find him standing in the doorway, smoking and
looking outside.

"Should have a porch on the other side of
the house. The sunset's a far more interesting thing to watch.
Besides, who gets up early enough to watch the sunrise?"

Erica lit a cigarette. "Most people sit on
the porch at the end of the day. Who wants to sit there with the
sun blinding you? It would get unbearable in the summer."

"A matter of perspective, I guess. You ready
to go?"

"What are we going to do about Granny?"

"I already took care of it."

Erica ashed her cigarette on the floor and
took another drag while walking barefoot to Granny's room. The door
was closed. She opened it, at least expecting to see the blood from
earlier. It was like Granny had never even been in there. Stepping
into the room did not make her think of descending into a dark
cave. She thought about a clothesline in the summer, flapping with
starched white sheets. Even Granny's dentures and the cup she kept
them in were gone from the nightstand.

She left the door open and turned back to
Walt, went to him and put an arm around his waist.

"What –" she began.

He laughed and said, "I cut her up and ate
her."

"That's not funny."

"Do you really want to know?"

She felt like she needed to
know. Felt like it was somehow her responsibility to know. Did she
really
want
to
know? Probably not. Much in the same way she didn't really want to
know if Granny had been alive or dead when Walt shot her. The only
scenarios she could think of were depressing, gross, and probably
illegal. Unless he'd called someone to collect her body, in which
case Erica felt like she would probably have a lot of questions to
answer.

"No," she said finally.

He tossed his cigarette out
in the yard and turned to face her, placing a hand on either side
of her head, his big thumbs in front of each ear. "Tell yourself
this," he said. "You woke up this morning without a past. You were
a girl who came from nothing and the world was open wide before
you. There is something alive deep within you that you are trying
to find. Some strange and beautiful power. Fear has been eliminated
from your spectrum of feelings. The word 'no' has been eliminated
from your vocabulary. Because every time you feel fear and every
time you say no, you keep that power, that little spark inside you,
from growing. People like us, we've been given this power of
invisibility so we can let whatever it is that is inside of us grow
unimpeded. So that we can realize our full potential. So that we
can discover who it is we are truly destined to become. Without
this power of invisibility, this unnoticeability, who knows how
long it would take us to achieve this. I've only been aware of it
for a few years and already I've accomplished
so much
. I even managed to find you
and I think we might just be soul mates. We might just be able to
spend the rest of our lives together. Now, can you think of too
many people who have as much potential as us, who were also lucky
enough to find each other?"

Erica heard his voice and looked into his
eyes and thought about hallowed marble hallways in some place like
ancient Greece. She shook her head.

"That's because I asked
myself what it was I really wanted to do and the answer was finding
someone like you. And now that I've found you, I know there are
things we
both
want to do and I know that, together, we are capable of doing
so much more than either one of us could do on our own. So, Erica
Monroe, what is it you want to do?"

"I want to follow you." Her cigarette had
burned down to the filter.

"Then let's go. I put your stuff in the
car."

He was already walking toward the car. Her
car. She didn't see his car. Not that he'd mentioned having one.
She just expected him to have one. And she followed behind him on
bare feet, not combing the house for items she didn't want to leave
behind or even bothering to shut the door, like she was under some
kind of spell.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"The end of the world," he said. "But first
we have to go see the boys."

Spat

Walt drove. Neither one of
them had said anything since they'd pulled away from the tiny
house. Erica had to force herself not to speak because anything
that would have come out would have been critical. When he'd said
all of her stuff was already in the car, she'd assumed he'd
meant
packed
not
thrown. Along with trying not to talk, she fought the urge to look
at all of her stuff littering the back seat and floorboard of the
Honda Civic. She'd seen enough just getting in the car. Tampons,
her toothbrush, toothpaste, makeup bags, a couple issues of
Glamor Face
, all the
clothes from her closet (still on the hangers), a few pairs of
shoes, half a carton of cigarettes – all looking like he'd opened
the back door and tossed them in. At least he'd thought enough to
bring them. That was the thought she used to calm
herself.

The air conditioner didn't work and neither
one of them had rolled down their windows. The car was steamy and
stifling. Erica lit a cigarette and rolled the window all the way
down. Walt did the same. At least now the deafening roar of the
wind as the car whined along back country roads made the silence
seem less awkward. Made it seem almost necessary.

Even the cigarette didn't help perk her up.
She felt exhausted. She didn't know if it was fear or if it was
because she'd done more, physically, in the last few hours than she
had in . . . a really long time. She tossed her cigarette
out and rolled her window all the way up. Walt still had a bit of
his cigarette left and kept his window down.

"Where are we going?" she said.

"Wherever we want . . . After we
see the boys." He had to almost shout to be heard. He seemed
excited.

"Who are the boys?"

"Just some guys I know from way back. You'll
get along with them. They're a lot like us. Besides, we won't be
there long."

"Do you need something from them?" Erica
didn't know why the thought of him taking her to see 'the boys'
irritated her. If he needed something from them like money or,
hell, even drugs or anything, she didn't think it would be as
frustrating. But if he was just going there to hang out almost
immediately after meeting her, then she found it worthy of her
anger.

"I'm going to see them because I want to see
them."

"How long's it been since you've seen
them?"

"Too long."

"Are you bored with me already?"

He tossed his cigarette out
the window, rolled it up and stared at her. Without the sound of
the rushing wind, the car might as well have been completely
stopped. "Stupid fucking question. Like I said, I'm going to see
them because I
want
to go see them. And I think you can benefit from meeting them,
too. It's time. There is a rationale behind most things we want.
Some desire. An evening with the boys will help satiate that desire
so, in a sense, yes, I am getting something from them. I met them
by chance about ten years ago. I believe there are certain people
and certain places that contain an almost indescribable amount of
magic and meaning to certain other people. Periodically I go to see
them and spend an evening with them. I leave feeling focused.
Feeling
changed
.
Maybe even evolved. I can almost chart my philosophical growth
based on my meetings with the boys. As you get older, the ability
to change becomes a very rare thing. You'll see.

"In short, no, I'm not bored with you."

"Feels nice to hear you say that." Already
she felt herself sweating, felt it squeezing out of all the pores
in her scalp, dampening her hair. "So how many of them are
there?"

"Not many. Usually three or four. Sometimes
they have some other folks with them. I don't want to go into too
much detail because I want you to meet them for the first time. Not
seen through my filter. No pre-judgments."

"How far away is it?"

"Just a couple of hours."

"Are we ever going back to Granny's?"

"No. Never."

"What if I want to? Someday. What if I
figure out it's one of those magical places like where we're
going?"

"It's not and you'll never want to go back
there. And if you do, you might find that it's not there
anymore."

She wondered if he was talking about having
someone burn it down. "What do you mean by that?"

"The earth just has a way of swallowing some
things up."

She thought about the cave again. Imagined
the house sitting on a shell, the shell breaking, the house
crumbling and turning to dust before ever reaching the bottom.

She rolled down her window and neither one
of them said hardly a word until they reached the outskirts of St.
Louis.

Men Are Pigs

Walt took an exit off the highway and asked
if she was hungry. "A little," she said.

He pulled into the parking lot of a place
called Mama Gravy and said, "This all right?"

"Fine."

Once they sat down in the greasy spoon she
realized how hungry she actually was. Her cheeks colored with
embarrassment. She put a hand to her forehead. "I don't have any
money . . . unless you remembered to throw my wallet in
back of the car."

"Didn't see it. No need to worry."

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me. I'm not paying for it
either."

"Well thank whoever then."

"We're both hungry. We both
want to eat. More than that, we both
need
to eat. So I guess thank the
restaurant if you really need to thank someone."

The waitress, a girl who was probably
younger than Erica, came by and they both ordered Cokes. She
watched Walt watch the waitress' ass as she moved away.

"Like that?" Erica said when his view of the
waitress was gone.

"Yeah," he said. "She's cute. Her ass is
nice. Round but not fat. By the way, the possessive jealousy thing
isn't going to work. Fuck me because you want to fuck me, not
because you think we're owned by one another."

She stripped the adhesive band surrounding
the napkin and silverware. "I don't know if that's what it is," she
said. "Jealousy, I mean. I think maybe I just think it's rude to
stare. You're objectifying her."