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  “Oh, Sidney,” she said. “Sid, my darling. My beloved husband.”

  He looked uncertain what to say, so she spared him the need to say anything. “We have to consummate our marriage, my darling.” And when it looked as though he might hesitate, she said, “You’re Sidney now, you’re his proxy, you’re my husband in the sight of God. So it’s not only right for us to go to bed. It’s essential.”

  He nodded, swallowed, said he’d be back in a minute. He went into the bathroom, and she used his absence to get something from her purse. She tucked it between the mattress and the frame, where she could reach it easily.

  Then she shed her clothes. A white wedding gown would have been nice, but she’d exchanged vows in the skirt and sweater she’d worn to meet him at Dragon’s Keep, and she took them off now, took off everything, and when he emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped discreetly around his middle she met him wearing nothing but a smile.

  His eyes widened at the sight of her, and his mouth fell open. And did the towel suddenly protrude a little in front, or was that her imagination?

  Well, that was a question she could answer readily enough. She went to him, unhooked the towel, let it fall to the floor. He was tumescent but not fully erect, and she was pleased to note that his penis was large and nicely shaped. And circumcised, which was always a plus, but she’d known it would be. Mormons circumcised their male infants, it said so all over the Internet. They didn’t throw a party to celebrate it, the way the Jews did, but they got the job done.

  “Oh, Sid,” she said, sinking to her knees before him. “I know how much you like this.” And she took his dick in her mouth.

  He liked it, all right. He liked it so much that she thought he was going to consummate their marriage on the spot, and she herself was into it, and had to force herself to draw away before he could finish.

  “Oh, Sid, my darling,” she said, getting to her feet, holding him by his dick. “Now, my love, I want you to do what you love to do so much.”

  She led him to the bed, arranged herself upon it, and managed to indicate by gestures what she wanted him to do.

  It wasn’t what he had in mind.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Not until I’m married.”

  “But you are married, silly. What do you think we just did?”

  He shook his head, held up a hand as if to ward off Satan. “I’m engaged to be married,” he said, “and when my fiancée and I are man and wife in the eyes of the Church, then I will, uh, perform oral sex on her. But I’ve never done that with her, or with anyone else. I can’t, I won’t, I—”

  “That’s why you wouldn’t go down on Rita.”

  He gaped.

  “Yeah, she told me. ‘This gorgeous guy, he’s got a beautiful dick, plus he’s a really great kisser, but he wouldn’t kiss me where it counts.’ But you wanted to, didn’t you?”

  “If circumstances had been different—”

  “They are. Look, it’s fine for Kellen Kimball to save the tip of his tongue for the girl he going to marry. But that’s got nothing to do with you right now, because you’re not Kellen Kimball anymore. Right now you’re Sidney Teibel, and you’re married to me, so you get to have your cake and eat me, too.”

  “But—”

  She touched herself, dipped her fingers into her wetness, then held her hand to his face. “Can you smell how hot I am for you?”

  What was he going to do, hold his breath? He hesitated, then took hold of her wrist, brought her moist fingers to his nose, inhaled her essence.

  “That’s me,” she told him. “That’s me, that’s my love for you, Sidney. You breathe me in and part of me becomes a part of you. Open your mouth.”

  His lips parted. And it was his hand on her wrist that brought her fingers into his mouth. His lips closed around her fingertips, and he sucked on her fingers like a greedy infant.

  “Oh, Sidney,” she said, and arranged herself again on the bed, making room for him to kneel at her feet.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Take your time, Sidney. Eat me good. Make me crazy.”

  What he lacked in acquired skill he made up for in enthusiasm. He took hold of her buttocks in his hands and he glued his mouth to her crotch, and he went at her as if for sustenance. If he could have maintained an elementary tempo she’d have gone off in minutes, but he had the natural lack of rhythm of a white boy from Utah, and she kept getting thrown off stride.

  Maybe she couldn’t get off, but she could tell he wasn’t more than a few strokes away, just from thrusting against the bedsheet while he worked away at her. Her hand fastened on the knife she’d wedged beneath the mattress. It was a folding stiletto, and she’d tucked it away already opened and ready for use, and she looked down at the back of his head and rehearsed the movement in her mind: lean forward, the arm swinging in a great half-circle, the blade descending…

  No.

  This wasn’t a game, for God’s sake. The marriage had to be consummated.

  She put the knife out of sight, sat up, tugged at his upper arms. “Now!” she cried. “Sid, Sid, I want you inside me. Now!”

  He flung himself forward — on her, in her, and she locked her thighs around his hips and met his feverish pelvic thrusts with thrusts of her own. His mouth sought hers and she tasted her own juices. He was right on the brink, and she figured she’d fake an orgasm of her own, timing it to coincide with his, but her body surprised her with a genuine orgasm before she could create a bogus one.

  “Oh, Sidney,” she said, as he lay panting on top of her. “Oh, my darling husband. Oh, what could be better than this?”

  And almost without effort, and certainly without a second thought, she slipped the knife right between his ribs and into his heart.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Zero.

  The first thing she did was take a shower. He had one of those infinitely adjustable shower heads, and she fixed it so that hot water sprayed down on her with great force. His shampoo and conditioner were one of those overpriced signature brands they sold in hair salons, and she used them lavishly, because what good would they do anyone after she left?

  Zero.

  Nobody left on her list, because while there might be only a single body in the bedroom, slowly working its way from 98.6° to, say, 72° on the Fahrenheit scale, Kellen Kimball wasn’t the only man who’d just died. He’d also been Sid, the man she met on Race Street, the man who took her to bed in Philadelphia and never paid the price.

  Until now. Now he was dead, and she’d killed him.

  Oh, not literally. She wasn’t delusional, she knew what she’d done and to whom she’d done it. But she also knew that Kellen Kimball was a Mormon, that he’d participated in proxy baptisms, and if a proxy baptism could get some dead guy into heaven, why couldn’t a proxy marriage get Sid off her list? Yes, she’d killed Kellen — but the same thrust of the knife had killed Sid as well. And if there was a real living and breathing Sid out there, well, so what? Because in her own little world he was a dead man.

  She got out of the shower, finally, and used two of his towels to dry herself. There’d been a third towel, the one he’d wrapped himself in, the one that had hidden his hard-on-in-progress when he returned to her. His sport shirt and chinos were folded on top of the lidded toilet, along with his socks and underpants, and she carried them to the bedroom and arranged them on the chair next to the bed.

  She thought there ought to be another article of clothing, and she found it on a hook behind the bathroom door, a single white cotton affair with some marks on it that might have been Nordic runes, or perhaps Masonic symbols. This, she knew from her Internet research, was his Mormon garment, to be worn beneath his clothes at all times, for reasons the Internet had been unable to explain all that coherently.

  Should she put it on him? It was constructed like a jumpsuit, except without arms or legs. Sort of like a clumsy and loose-fitting leotard. No cinch to get a live person into it, and sure to be trickier still with a dead one.
/>   Never mind. He seemed a safe candidate for Mormon heaven, whatever sort of place that might prove to be, and she didn’t figure he needed to be wearing his garment to get in.

  She went through his wallet. His cash came to less than a hundred dollars, but she took it all the same. If there was any more money hidden in his apartment, she certainly couldn’t find it.

  She took the knife. She’d bought it in Provo, in a sporting goods store, and the clerk might remember the sale. Not that it mattered— plenty of people had seen her with Kellen, in Dragon’s Keep and the juice bar and on the streets of Provo, and they could describe her to the cops, and what good would that do them? A pretty young woman in a skirt and blouse. So?

  Still, she held the knife under running water for a few minutes, then closed it and stowed it in her purse. She added the ring from her finger and went back for the one she’d placed on Kellen’s. The rings and the knife could all go in a storm drain, or could as easily be abandoned in some public place where they’d be quickly scooped up and carried off by new owners.

  She left, and locked the door after herself. With any luck at all, she’d be long gone before anyone unlocked that door, or broke it down.

  Zero.

  THIRTY-TWO

  “The Sumatra Blue Batak Tarbarita Peaberry,” the man said. “Could you describe that for me?”

  It’s coffee, she thought. From Sumatra. What more do you need to know?

  “Well, it’s a sort of medium roast,” she said. “And it has a good deal of body. I would say that it’s assertive without being overbearing.”

  He nodded encouragement. He had a high forehead and an academic presence, the latter reinforced by his clothing — an olive-brown corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches, owlish glasses with heavy tortoiseshell frames, clean jeans, chukka boots. A strip of lighter skin on the appropriate finger showed he’d once worn a wedding ring. But the lighter skin was starting to blend in, so he’d stopped wearing it a while ago.

  “As for the taste,” she went on, “that’s always hard for me to describe.”

  “It’s so subjective. And yet I’ve a feeling you’ll get it right.”

  Getting ready to hit on her. Well, she’d seen that coming.

  “Hmmm. Well, how can I put it? I’d say it’s autumnal.”

  “Autumnal.”

  “And…dare I say plangent?”

  She caught a glimpse of Will, the shop’s co-owner, rolling his eyes.

  “Brilliant,” her customer said. “Let me have a pound, then. Who am I to pass up a beverage that’s at once plangent and autumnal? And that’ll be whole bean, please. It’s the sheer aroma of freshly ground beans that gets my heart started in the morning, even before I get the coffee brewing.”

  As she was ringing up the sale he asked her name, and she provided one. He said he’d remember it, and that his was Alden.

  When the door closed behind the man, Will said, “Cordelia, eh? When did your name become Cordelia?”

  Will was tall and thin; his lover and business partner, Billy, was short, with the muscularity of a relentless weightlifter. They’d both gone by Bill when they met, but found it confusing, so one became Will and the other Billy.

  Will — and Billy, for that matter — knew her as Lindsay. And she might have given that name to Alden, but there was an instant when she couldn’t think of it. Not Lynne, not Linda, now what the hell was it? And the result was Cordelia.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “For some reason I didn’t want to give him my name. And what came out was Cordelia.”

  “Better than Regan or Goneril, I suppose. This way you’re the good daughter.”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she often didn’t. Better than gonorrhea? What was that supposed to mean?

  “Anyway,” she said, “I figured it had a nice autumnal sound to it.”

  “Oh, that it does. Not to mention plangent. Where the hell did you come up with that one, sweetie?”

  She shrugged, but she knew exactly where she’d gotten it from. A few years ago, a very brief stint in a seafood restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. A customer had never had orange roughy before, and asked what it was like. A firm, white-fleshed fish, she’d told him, which was something you could say about almost everything but salmon and squid. And as for the taste, well, dare I say plangent? The line, she remembered, had gone over well enough. If it worked for a fish she’d never eaten, why wouldn’t it do for a beverage she’d never tasted?

  “Plangent. Do you even know the meaning of the word?”

  “It’s hard to define.”

  “Oh, really? Try plaintive. Think of a sort of lingering sadness.”

  “So? He’ll be having a cup of coffee on the porch, with his feet up on the railing, and he’ll find himself thinking about the woman he used to be married to, and wondering why he married her in the first place, and why the marriage failed, and why all his relationships seem to fail. But he won’t be heartbroken, because he’s got tenure at Willamette, and everybody says he looks good in corduroy, and he grinds his own coffee beans every morning, so it’s a good life, even if it is a sad one.”

  He stared at her. “You did all that on the spur of the moment,” he said, “just to cover the fact that you’d been caught using a word you couldn’t define. There’s a short story of Saki’s that you remind me of. ‘Romance at short notice was her specialty.’ That’s the last line, and doesn’t it just fit you to a tee? Aren’t you the plangent queen of romance at short notice? Now don’t go rolling your eyes, sweetie. That’s my trick. I’ll tell you this, Cordelia, or Lindsay, or whoever you are this afternoon. You’re the tiniest bit scary.”

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “You’re safe.”

  She was in Salem, the capital of Oregon, working afternoons at the Bean Bag, and living in a rooming house near the Willamette University campus. When she left Provo she’d planned on heading back east, but the first bus available took her north to Salt Lake City, and from there she continued north and west to Boise, and she’d kept gradually drifting north and west, and here she was in Salem, and Google Maps had already informed her that she was less than two hundred fifty miles from Kirkland, Washington.

  Not hard to see a pattern here.

  When her shift ended she picked up a small pizza and a fruitflavored iced tea on her way home. She ate in her room, took a shower, and wrapped up in a towel. She picked up her phone, then decided she wanted to be dressed for this conversation. She put on clean underwear, jeans, a loose-fitting top, and was on her way to the mirror when she told herself she was being ridiculous. She sat down in the room’s one chair and made the call.

  “Kimmie, two calls in what, three days?”

  “I guess. Listen, if you don’t feel like talking—”

  “You’re kidding, right? There’s never been a time when I haven’t felt like talking to you.”

  It was the same for her. But she wasn’t ready to say it.

  There were things, though, that you had to say whether you were ready or not. If you waited until you were ready they would never get said.

  She said, “Rita, there’s a conversation we need to have.”

  “Should I put on a nightgown? And get my toys ready?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Kimmie, this sounds serious.”

  “Sort of, yeah. See, there’s things you don’t know about me. I was never a graduate student, I didn’t have a thesis to write.”

  “Well, duh.”

  “You figured that much, huh?”

  “Kimmie, every time I hear from you you’re someplace else and you’ve got a new phone number. It’s pretty obvious you’ve got a whole life that I don’t know anything about.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “It makes me wonder. And, you know, I can’t help having my own fantasies.”

  “Oh?”

  “Which I’m sure are miles from the truth.”

  “For instance?”


  “This is just crazy guessing, but—”

  “Go ahead, Rita.”

  “Well, what I decided is you’re sort of a spy. Like with some super-secret government agency? And you travel around on assignments, and when I don’t hear from you for a really long period of time, that’s because you’re out of the country.”

  “Wow.”

  “I told you it was crazy. And then I thought — now this is even crazier, and maybe I shouldn’t say it.”

  “No, say it.”

  “Well, I thought whatever it is that she does, you know, it’s for our government, so it’s okay. And next I thought, well, suppose it’s not our government. Suppose it’s some other government, suppose Kimmie’s on the other side. Though it’s sometimes hard to know what the different sides are, anyway.”

  “I guess.”

  “But what I realized was I don’t care. What side you’re on, I mean. I don’t care if you’re really an alien and you’re working for the flying saucer people. It doesn’t matter. You’re still my Kimmie, and I get tingly when I pick up the phone and it’s you, and I’d rather jill off to one of your stories than fuck Brad Pitt while I’m blowing George Clooney.”

  “Although that does sound like fun.”

  “Yeah, it sort of does, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t work for the government, Rita. Not ours or anybody else’s, either. I work in a pretentious coffee shop in Salem.”

  “Where they burn the witches?”

  “That was in Massachusetts, wasn’t it? Somewhere in New England, anyway. I’m in the one in Oregon, and all we burn is the French Roast coffee.”

  “You’re in Oregon?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s not so far, is it?”

  “It’d take a while on a bicycle,” she said. “Rita, it’s not far, not really, and anyway I wouldn’t have to take a bike. I know how to drive. But first there are things I have to tell you, and the only way this is going to work is if you just listen and don’t interrupt. And then when I’m through you can ask anything you want, or say anything you want. Or just tell me you don’t want to have anything to do with me, and hang up, and I’ll have to live with that.”