same murder.
Once she accepted her own judgment, there was also the question of whether more sinning would make for still more murder. If she kept being a slut, would someone die again? It was foolish to think so, but after all, she thought, she was a fool. If any sin was murder, she might have to start behaving.
They did their best to ignore Christmas. Casey went to a movie in a mall somewhere, maybe the Westside Pavilion—with a guy, Susan assumed, though it was left unsaid. Jim the lawyer had gone to Tahoe to be with his wife’s relatives and everyone else she knew was occupied celebrating, so Susan rented a couple of videos and picked up Indian food.
On New Year’s she made a resolution to be different, though she was still unsure. She had murdered once, so she would always be guilty. But that didn’t mean she had to be a serial killer.
She decided to tell Jim.
“So listen,” she said, in bed.
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, we’re not breaking up.”
She propped herself up on an elbow, curious.
He’d grown on her. At first she’d thought he was average, and then, slipping sideways somehow, the fact arrived that she almost loved him. At any rate she liked him far too much. She saw him only once every few days, but she’d come to depend on it—the pleasant welcome of his face. She wondered in passing if it was all about his skin and its sweet smell: his skin that reminded her of Hal’s, smooth and flawless.
He lay on his back now, eyes closed. Curiously at ease. There was a crescent scar near one eyebrow, a shallow nick.
“And how is that your call, Jim?”
He shrugged lightly, his shoulders barely moving.
“We’re not, is all.”
Despite herself she was impressed.
“What if I said I don’t like you?”
“But you do.”
“What if I said it was—I mean, better late than never—the fact that you’re married?”
“I’d say that fact was none of your business.”
She turned and lay on her back beside him, gazing at the rings of light on the ceiling. One, two, three, the yellow circles intersecting with their invisible overlaps like a Venn diagram, the lamps on the nightstands, the floor lamp in the corner. They were on the ground floor for a change, in the small guest bedroom with the green Tiffany lamps. There were waterfowl around them. The waterfowl were an exception to her usual rule against sex with stuffed animals watching. The ducks, the geese, the pink flamingo on its single leg bothered no one. They had beady little eyes but clearly no interest in looking.
“Of course it’s my business. Motherfucker.”
“Come on, sweetie,” said Jim, and touched her briefly on the side of her leg with fingertips, not moving his arm. She liked how he expended no energy unless forced to. Male lions were like that, according to her uncle’s old encyclopedia. They slept all day in the sun and let the females do the hunting. “Let’s not argue.”
“I want to be better,” she said after a while.
“You’re good enough for me,” said Jim, and turned his head slightly to rest his face against her shoulder.
“Obviously you set the bar low.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he said quietly.
“There’s a third party,” she said. “My new plan is not to be selfish.”
“That part is my life. Let me worry.”
A car passed somewhere outside, light glancing. Of course it was his life, but if she let herself off this easy her resolution was meaningless.
“I don’t want those boundaries,” she said abruptly, and sat up. Her robe was puddled on the floor beside the bed—she was still damp from the shower beforehand, she realized—and she leaned down to get it. “You don’t want to tell me, fine. It’s your business, I agree. But then I get to say if you stay or go.”
She stood and threw the robe over her shoulders. She felt glad of its lightness, its shine in the lamplight. She could make a smooth exit.
But also her slippers were somewhere lost in the dark of the floor. In the big house she almost never went barefoot. Sharp things were lodged in the elaborate tilework of the hallways, old, permanent dirt blackened the soles of her feet even after the women came to clean. She widened her eyes, tried to look harder. There, on the mirror lake with the long yellow reeds like Easter-basket stuffing, a flip-flop lay between a duck’s feet, the other tumbled beside it.
He mumbled something. She couldn’t quite hear and turned back to him