Richard had thought about that encounter multiple times since it had happened. Danny had been the kid that Richard had agreed to murder on the same day that James Pursall shot Madison Brown. Of course, Richard hadn’t done it—had never planned on doing it—but he could have, and Danny had zero fucking idea that his customer was an old member of his high school class, let alone someone who could have sprayed his brains all across the art room.
On a few occasions Richard had driven back to the dealership around closing time and watched Danny Eaton leave and get into his C6 Corvette parked out front. He followed him a few times, once when Danny went straight home to his town house condo, and once when he drove to a sports bar called Fair Ball in a strip mall off Route 23. Richard’s plan was to drive to the dealership before closing time and slide one of his bombs right below the passenger-side door of Danny’s Corvette. Then he’d park next door in front of the sushi place and activate the trigger just as Danny reached for his door handle. The only thing stopping him was the possibility of getting caught before he had a chance to do something truly momentous. Danny Eaton’s death, like his life, was small potatoes.
“Hi, Richard,” came a familiar woman’s voice, and Richard swam back up from his thoughts, found himself face to face with Karen Virgilio, her eyes wide and nervous.
“Hey, Karen,” Richard said, surprised that his voice sounded almost normal in his own head. He hadn’t seen Karen in over a year, and hadn’t expected to ever see her again, to be honest.
“Sorry to bother you at work, but I think your number changed, maybe.”
“Oh, yeah,” Richard said. He remembered that Karen used to call him on his landline, the one he’d disconnected.
“You can say no, if you want, Richard,” she said, and she was doing that thing with her earlobe, where she twisted it between her thumb and finger, “but I was hoping we could talk, maybe get a drink or a meal or something.”
“Um,” Richard said, not knowing what to say but sure that he didn’t want to talk with Karen, not now, not ever. He was briefly saved by George, waddling across the linoleum, spotting Karen and saying, “Oh, hey you,” clearly not remembering her name.
“Hi, Mr. Koestler,” she said.
“Look at your new hair color,” George said, too loudly. “Last time I saw you I think it was a hot pink.”
Karen touched her hair, and Richard realized that she had dyed it a different color, this time a kind of frosty blue. Richard also remembered that when Karen had been an employee at the hardware store, just over a year ago, George had mentioned her hair just about every time he spoke to her. Richard sometimes thought that the comments were the reason she quit abruptly after working at the store for less than six months, but he knew the real reason she’d quit was because of what had happened with him.
“Oh, yeah,” Karen said. “It used to be pink.”
George stood smiling for a moment, trying to think up something else to say, then wandered off, nodding to himself.
Karen turned back to Richard just as he started to say, “I just don’t think—”
But Karen was saying, “I know you don’t want to talk but maybe you’d do it as a favor to me. I promise I don’t expect anything from you, besides a conversation.”
They met that night at the Papa Gino’s that was only a half mile from the store, each getting a large soda, then sitting in one of the booths that still had one of those individual jukeboxes attached to the wall, although it was highly doubtful it worked.
“Thanks for meeting me,” Karen said. She was wearing the same outfit she’d worn when she’d ambushed him at the store, a baggy flannel shirt and a pair of high-waisted faded jeans. Her outfits stayed the same even if her hair didn’t. She’d been a cutter in high school and both of her forearms were lined with thin white scars, whiter even than her pale skin. He was picturing her naked now, that time, the only time, she’d come back to his place when they’d been dating. She was skinny, her body creased with red marks where her bra and underwear had been after she took them off. She’d shaved her pubic hair and it had left behind angry red spots, like a razor rash. She’d stretched out on his futon bed, and she must have seen something in the way he looked at her, because she said, “I don’t care what we do or anything, but it would be nice if you joined me on the bed.”
This was after three dates, all initiated by Karen. On the first they’d gone for dinner at the Papa Gino’s they were at now, but on their second and third dates they’d driven to the Fine Arts theater in Maynard to see The Shape of Water and then a film with Kristen Stewart called Personal Shopper. During the second film they’d held hands in the theater, Richard telling himself that Karen would be a good person to have sex with, since it was still something he’d never actually done.
He’d joined her on his bed that night, stripping down first, but not all the way, just to his boxer shorts. “I suck at this,” Karen said, and laughed.
Richard was about to tell her he hadn’t done it before but stopped himself. His heart felt strange, as though it had slipped out of place in his chest cavity, but he did have an erection, pressing up against the fabric of his boxers.
“You okay?” Karen asked.
“Sure,” Richard said. “It’s just been a while.”
Karen moved his hand down between her legs, and Richard closed his eyes while he touched her, trying not to think about all the sounds he used to hear coming from his mother’s bedroom after she’d married Don.
“Let’s put this over us, okay?” Karen said, and while they moved their bodies to get underneath the sheet—Richard trying to remember the last time he’d cleaned it—he wound up on top of her, and Karen took a hold of him and guided him inside of her. He immediately came, his head burrowed into her neck, keeping quiet so she wouldn’t know it just happened. She started to move and make noises and Richard froze, not knowing what to do. When she stopped and asked him if everything was okay, he told her he had finished, and she laughed and said she was happy.
They’d gone to one more movie after that night, something called Lady Macbeth, although it had nothing to do with the Shakespeare play, and afterward Richard told Karen that it wasn’t a good time for him to be in a relationship. A month later she’d quit the hardware store.
“Hey, Richard, I’m sorry if this is uncomfortable for you. Trust me, it’s uncomfortable for me, too.” Karen looked extra pale in the harsh light of the pizza restaurant. She had a nose ring that looked like it had been put in recently, the skin around the piercing bright red.
“It’s fine,” Richard said.
“Look, I’m going through a thing. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but I just need to know what happened with us. I know we just hung out for a short period of time, and that it was no big deal, but I keep going over it and over it in my mind, and I want to know why you didn’t want to see me anymore.”
Richard spun his coke on the tabletop and didn’t immediately say anything.
“There are absolutely no wrong answers, Richard. Like if you found me repulsive then please just tell me that. Or if you were bored, or you’re gay, or I was terrible at sex, or you hated the movies I made you go to. Just . . . I guess I want to know because it bothers me that I don’t. I want to know the truth.”