Lawrence Block - Getting Off

“For what?”

“Laying it all on you. Held it all in so long, nobody to talk to. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Look, I’ll do it.”

“What?”

“What you asked. I’ll kill you.”

He stared at her.

“Not today,” she said. “Your sister’ll be back any minute. In fact I think I hear a car. I’ll come back tomorrow and we can send her shopping again, and once she’s out the door you can tell me if you really want to go through with it.”

“I already told you. You think I’ll change my mind?”

“You might. You told me because it was safe to tell me because you flat knew I wouldn’t do what you wanted. Well, you were wrong about that. I’ll do it. But you’ll have to tell me tomorrow that it’s still what you want. And that’s her car, she just cut the engine. I’ll get out of here in a minute, and I’ll be back tomorrow, and she’ll go shopping again and by the time she gets back I’ll be gone forever. And, if it’s still what you want, so will you.”

The only motel, a quarter-mile or so from the convenience store, was about what you’d expect. Hedgemont didn’t get much in the way of tourist traffic, so most of the units were rented by the week to the sort of people who could only dream of working their way up to a broken-down house trailer.

She paid cash in advance for a single night and tried to remember what name she’d told Kirkaby and his sister. Pam, of course, and not Hedgemont, because that was the name of this shithole town, but it started out that way before she caught herself, and what was it? Hedges? Hedgeworth?

Headley! Pam Headley, and it was nice she remembered, but it didn’t matter because the old drunk in the office didn’t give her anything to sign, just took her money and slapped a key on the counter.

Half an hour later she was sitting in front of the last black-and-white TV in America and eating food from the convenience store— Fritos, Hostess cupcakes, Slim Jims. She forced herself to use the shower, dried herself with the ratty little towel they provided. Stayed up late, woke up early.

Mid-morning, she was back at the trailer.

It was hard getting rid of Joanne. She didn’t have to do any more shopping, she told them. Had everything they needed. Why burn up gasoline driving around?

Alvin insisted. He wanted some time alone with Pam. She’d be leaving soon, he might never see her again, and he wanted time together, just the two of them.

The woman got a mulish look on her face. But what could she do? “Maybe I’ll visit my friend Aggie,” she said. “That’s all the way over in Timber Creek. Say an hour there and an hour back, and she wouldn’t let me leave without she gives me lunch. So four hours? That enough time for the two of you to do whatever it is you have in mind?”

Joanne grabbed her purse, got her car keys in hand, let the screen door slam behind her. Alvin was about to say something, but she made him wait until she heard the car start up and pull away. Then she asked him if he’d changed his mind.

“No. What got me through the night was knowing it was the last one I had to get through. And you?”

“Me?”

“Change your mind?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

“Yeah, what I realized about you. Last night, thinking. You’re steel inside.”

She let that go.

“Tried to spare you. Last night. Tried to swallow my tongue. Supposed to be a way to kill yourself, shuts off the air flow. Heard of it somewhere. Don’t know if it’s even possible, but I couldn’t do it.”

“I said I’d do it.”

“I know. There’s a pillow on the sofa. No? What’s wrong with that?”

“Pinpoint hemorrhages on the eyeballs. First thing anybody’d look for, and then they’d look at Joanne.”

“Sis? Anybody who knows her’d know she wouldn’t do it in a million years.”

“So then they’d come looking for me. They wouldn’t find me, but they’d come looking, and who needs it? I’m not gonna hold a pillow over your face, okay? It’s not that easy if the person’s conscious, anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve done this before, okay? And not as a fucking act of mercy, either. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Like a roadside bomb, comes from out of nowhere and takes you by surprise.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I put a pillow over a guy’s face once,” she said, “and then I sat on it, and I have to say it was H-O-T. But I don’t think he liked it much, and it took him a while to die. Which was fine with me, but I like you, and I want this to be easy, so why don’t you just let me do it my way?”

God, the look in his eye.

“I have some drugs with me. Should be quick and easy, and if you feel anything you won’t feel it for very long.”

“I can’t swallow pills.”

“This would be an injection. There’ll be a pinprick, but you won’t feel that, will you?”

“No.”

She’d prepared the syringe before she left the motel, filled it from one of the vials from the drugstore in Glens Falls. Now she retrieved it from her suitcase and showed it to him.

“All set,” she said. “Anything you’d like to do first?”

“Like what? Eat a sandwich? Take a quick jog around the block?”

“I thought you might want to have sex again.”

“No.”

“Or, I don’t know. Say a prayer?”

“Not much for praying.”

“Me neither. You figure there’s anything afterward?”

“After you die, you mean? ”

“Maybe you’ll have your body back again. You know, in another dimension. Your arms and legs, and everything healthy.”

“Not counting on it.”

“Or maybe it’s a kind of existence where there aren’t bodies.”

“Just souls floating around?”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe it’s nothing,” he said. “Maybe it just, you know, stops.”

“Maybe. This vein looks good. Are you ready?”

“More than ready.”

“I don’t suppose I need an alcohol swab. I guess infection’s not a consideration. Sorry, I’m all thumbs all of a sudden. Just as well you can’t feel anything. Okay, I think I’ve got it in the vein. Alvin?”

“What?”

“Look, if there is something afterward, and somebody up there wants a report, would you tell them I wasn’t bad all the time? That there was one time I did something good?”

Jesus, was that a tear in the corner of his eye?

She pressed the plunger, kept looking at his eye, watched the light fade from it.

One.

One.

A bus, a plane, another bus. A Rust Belt city in east-central Ohio, immune to economic cycles because it had been in its own permanent recession ever since the end of the Second World War. A dingy SRO hotel, her drab room so small that the initials might as easily have stood for Standing Room Only as Single Room Occupancy.

And a minimum-wage job two blocks away, in a shop that sold rolling papers and recycled jeans. She wore the same basic outfit every day, loose jeans and a bulky sweater, and she didn’t put on makeup or lipstick, or do anything with her hair. She kept herself as unattractive as possible short of putting on weight or breaking out in pimples, but a certain number of guys hit on her anyway. Some guys were like that; the mere possibility that you might be the possessor of a vagina was all it took to arouse their interest.

She deflected any attention that came her way, meeting their gaze with a slack-jawed, bovine stare, missing the point of their innuendo. Some of them probably thought she was retarded. One way or the other, they all lost what minimal interest she’d inspired.