Billy Summers

They sit together for a little bit. She’s breathing okay again, and now that the crisis has passed, Billy becomes aware that she’s wearing only her Black Keys T-shirt (which she somehow missed throwing up on) and he’s in his boxers. He gets up. ‘You’ll be okay now.’

‘Don’t go. Not yet.’

He sits down again. She moves over. Billy lies down beside her, tense at first, his arm behind him for a makeshift pillow.

‘Tell me why you killed that guy.’ A pause. ‘Please.’

‘It’s not exactly a bedtime story.’

‘I want to hear. To understand. Because you don’t seem like a bad guy.’

I’ve always told myself I’m not, Billy thinks, but recent events have certainly called that into question. He glances guiltily at the picture of Dave the Flamingo on the nightstand.

‘What gets said here stays here.’ She gives him a tentative smile.

It’s a fucked-up bedtime story but he tells it to her, starting with Frank Macintosh and Paul Logan coming to pick him up at the hotel. He thinks about changing the names (as he did at first in the story he’s been writing) and then decides there’s little point. She knows Ken Hoff’s from the news, ditto Giorgio’s. He makes one exception: Nick Majarian becomes Benjy Compson. Knowing his name might make life dangerous for her later on.

He thought saying everything out loud might clarify things in his own mind. That didn’t happen, but her breathing is easy again. She’s calm. The story did that much, anyway. After thinking it over she says, ‘This guy Benjy Compson hired you, but who hired him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And why get the other guy, Hoff, involved? Couldn’t one of these gangsters have found you a gun? And not get caught doing it?’

‘Because Hoff owns the building, I suppose. The one I took the shot from. Well, he did own it.’

‘The building where you had to wait for however long. Embedded, like.’

Embedded, he thinks. Yes. Like the reporters who came and went in Iraq, putting on armor and helmets and then taking them off when their stories were filed and they could go back home.

‘It wasn’t too long.’ It was though.

‘Still, it seems awfully complicated.’

It does to Billy, too.

‘I think I can go back to sleep now.’ Without looking at him she adds, ‘You can stay if you want.’

Billy, wary that his body might betray him again below the waist, says he thinks he better go back to the couch. Maybe Alice understands, because she gives him a look and a nod, then turns on her side and closes her eyes.

3

In the morning Alice tells him they’re almost out of milk and Cheerios are no good dry. Like I didn’t know that, Billy thinks. He suggests eggs and she says there’s only one left. ‘I don’t know why you only bought half a dozen.’

Because I wasn’t expecting company, Billy thinks.

‘I know you weren’t expecting to feed two,’ she says.

‘I’ll go down to Zoney’s. They’ll have milk and eggs.’

‘If you went to the Harps on Pine Plaza, you could get some pork chops or something. We could grill them on the barbecue out back if it ever stops raining. And some salad, the kind that comes in bags. It isn’t that far away.’

Billy’s first thought is that she’s trying to get rid of him so she can do a runner. Then he looks at the yellowing bruises on her cheek and forehead, her swollen nose just beginning to go down, and thinks no, just the opposite. She’s settling in. Means to stay. At least for the present.

It would seem crazy to someone on the outside, but in here it makes sense. She might have died in the gutter if not for him, and he’s showed no signs of wanting to re-rape her. On the contrary, he went out and got her the emergency pill in case one of those assholes impregnated her. Also, there’s the leased Ford Fusion to think about. It’s waiting for him on the other side of town. It’s time to bring it over here so he can leave for Nevada as soon as he feels it’s safe.

Besides, he likes Alice. He likes the way she’s coming back. She’s had a couple of panic attacks, sure, but who wouldn’t have panic attacks after being drugged and gang raped? She hasn’t talked about going back to school, she hasn’t mentioned friends or acquaintances who might be concerned about her, and she hasn’t fretted about calling her mother (or maybe her sister, the hairdresser). He thinks that Alice is in a space of hiatus. She has put her life on pause while she tries to figure out what should come next. Billy is no psychiatrist, but he has an idea that might actually be healthy.

Those fucks, Billy thinks, and not for the first time. Assholes who’d rape an unconscious girl. Who does that?

‘Okay, groceries. You’ll stay here, right?’

‘Right.’ As if it’s a foregone conclusion. ‘I’m going to have cereal with the last of the milk. You can have the egg.’ She gives him an uncertain look. ‘If that’s all right. We can do it the other way around if it’s not. They’re your supplies, after all.’

‘That’s fine. Will you help me with my stomach again after breakfast?’

That makes her laugh. It’s the first one.

4