Leenie has gone out on some mystery errand. He tries to think of a way to take advantage of her absence, but his imagination fails him. If he could unbrake the wheels on the bed—but that would put him in danger, would it not? Once the wheels were unlocked, where would he go, how would he control it? Even if he could find a way to steer the bed, it’s too wide to allow him passage to the kitchen, where the nearest phone sits, and he would have to risk sliding past the chasm of the staircase.
And should he make it to the phone, whom would he call, what would he say? Help, I’m being held hostage in my own apartment by a woman who has killed two women, crimes in which I am an accessory after the fact. If only he had insisted on calling the police upon finding Margot’s body. But he had been so doped up and confused, and Leenie out-thought him. That day. Now that he continues to crush his drugs in the hardcover books he is allowed, he stays sharp, and Leenie doesn’t suspect a thing. It’s not like she’s ever going to look inside his books, or clean closely enough to see the residue on the table, in the sheets, on the carpet. God, the smells in his apartment. That’s one sense he wishes he could be deprived of, his sense of smell.
About an hour after she left, Leenie returns. He can hear voices; someone must be with her. Is today the day for the doctor’s visit? Has he screwed up the dates yet again?
But the person who enters the apartment with Leenie is a woman who appears to be about her age, wheeling a small carry-on suitcase. Blonde, with a familiar face, or maybe it’s simply a generic one. Conventionally pretty, what people used to call corn-fed.
“I guess you remember Kim Karpas,” Leenie says. “Normally, I’d let the two of you get reacquainted privately, but I don’t have the luxury of allowing you to have privacy. After all, I need to know how the story ends.”
The woman’s confusion is evident; she looks to Leenie, then to Gerry in the hospital bed, back to Leenie. “But he emailed me.” Turning back to Gerry. “Right? You said you wanted to do the right thing, that by buying me a plane ticket—first-class, yet—you hoped you could prove how honorable your intentions were. That you would come visit me if not for your injury, but if I wanted the money, I would have to travel to Baltimore and talk to you, figure out how that could be arranged.”
Kim Karpas. Kim Karpas. Does he know a Kim? The money. What money? Gerry closes his eyes and sees a cat staring at him, a cat from the cover of a book. The girl from the bar in Columbus that time. Why is she here? How did Leenie find her?
“I guess I have to reintroduce you in a sense,” Leenie says, almost chortling, she is that delighted with herself. “Kim, I have to confess, Gerry never got your letters. You sent them to his New York address, where an old girlfriend of his read them. I guess it was her plan to use them to make trouble for Gerry, but now they’re in my possession. Quite a tale you spun, I have to admit.”
“It’s not a tale,” says the woman. Kim. “It’s true.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt a word of it. He basically raped you in that hotel room, which would have been bad enough under any circumstances—”
“Rape!” Gerry yelps. “I invited you up to my room and you came. What followed was absolutely consensual. If I recall, you were the one who had the condom, you were the one who chose to have intercourse, you were—”
She is one of those pale blondes who flushes bright pink when emotional. “I tried to say no, but you ignored me. And, given the circumstances, I was so overwhelmed. You weren’t going to let me out of there unless I, um, reciprocated in some fashion, so I chose the easiest, fastest way.”
“The circumstances? You were, are, an adult woman who went to a man’s hotel room and didn’t seem to mind at all when things went the way they usually do in a man’s hotel room after a couple of drinks in a bar. In fact, it was my impression, in hindsight, that you were looking for me, you came to that hotel hoping to find me. I’m not going to have this turned into some sort of ‘Me, too’ moment.”
“Yes, I was hoping to meet you, but—not for that. I wanted to see you, to get some sense of you, but I used a fake name just in case. I had wanted to be a writer, too—”
God, was there anyone left in the world who didn’t want to be a writer?
“You had loomed so large in my life, ever since I was a teenager. I read everything you wrote. Granddad would say, ‘It’s right there on your DNA. If your uncle can do it, so can you.’”