Kill Me (7 page)

“Oh, shit! He’s choking,” I shouted as I circled the man, trying to figure out how to get my arms around his massive torso to do the Heimlich maneuver. As my fingers touched the stiff suit fabric on his back, an arc of white static leapt from my fingertips. And just like that, Domino slumped over, breathing normally though obviously shaken.

I didn’t understand what had just happened, so I looked to Bette. She mirrored my gaze, but for the first time since meeting her, I saw something new behind her carefully controlled expression.

I saw fear.

At the moment, I had a healthy dose of fear pumping through my veins as well. “What the hell just happened?”

“That… that was you, Clara.” Bette’s words sounded strained.

“Me? What? That little spark?” I said, approaching Domino who was curled up on the concrete in a fetal position, sobbing.

Bette remained quiet.

“That was just static electricity. It happens to me all the time. At least a half-dozen times a day.” I reasoned.

Bette looked away, like she didn’t agree but was in no mood to explain further. I dropped to a knee beside Domino, putting a hand on his shoulder to turn him towards me.

“Are you alright? What were you choking on, gum, candy?”

Domino didn’t respond at first. It wasn’t until his tiny eyes made contact with mine, that he spoke. Or rather, he screamed.

“Get away from me, you crazy bee-tch! You try to kill me!” He said, backing away from me, like a crab scurrying for cover in the marsh grass.

“Domino, enough.” Bette said. “Take yourself back to the hotel and rest. I’ll call you when we are ready to depart.”

Bette joined Domino by the front of the limo, speaking in hushed tones. She seemed to be soothing him, and his body language relaxed visibly.

I was thankful that Bette had silenced our driver, but his brief accusation still ricocheted in my head. I hadn’t caused his attack, right?

It was absurd, the very idea that I’d managed to attack someone just by thinking—like with
my mind
. But then again, most of the past twenty-four hours hadn’t made much sense to me either.

I’m a logical person and as much as the recent events didn’t make sense individually, maybe together they somehow fit a larger picture? I thought back, plucked out the most important details, and made a mental list.

First, I lost IQ points every time Bette came near me and it got worse when she touched me. But, I already had suspicions that Bette was the source, not me, so I filed that away to think about later.

I had to focus on me. What was the first strange thing? I had played the violin without any prior experience. What had Bette said about the violin, that it was haunted? And that it had called to me, deemed me worthy. The question was, worthy of what?

I saw the limo pull away and Bette motioned for me to follow her. I quickly caught up, and together we waited for the service elevator to arrive.

“Bette, can I ask you something?” I said.

She sighed and hesitated for several beats. “Now is the time for business. We work now; tonight we talk.”

“But...” I started to say as the elevator chimed and opened.

“Come now, we both have work to do.” she said.

I followed her into the elevator, miffed that she was blowing me off. I wanted answers and if Bette wasn’t going to help me until later, then I would just analyze everything myself until then.

Moving on, what else had triggered the
that’s-not-right
vibe? Right, the shocks. I’d suffered daily battles with static for a very long time, at least since I was a teenager. I had no idea if they always came with a blast of white light, like when I’d touched Domino. Bette seemed intrigued by them, so maybe I should be too?

Also, there was the whole disappearing-Bette moment in the bathroom. She denied being there, and it would have been impossible for her to leave without me noticing, yet I know what I saw. Bette had been standing in the bathroom.

The elevator jarred to a stop and the doors clanged open. We seemed to be in a subsidiary hall used by staff, but Bette headed to the left like she’d done this before, so I followed her.

I felt like I was forgetting something, a very big something. Oh, yeah. There was the whole forgetting-thing. How was it possible that I had no memory of an entire evening? Granted, I’d had a lot to drink but without the typical hangover the next day I couldn’t use that as an excuse.

I wondered if Bette touching me turned my brain to pudding, had she done something worse that amplified the affect? That only made the tiniest bit of sense, so I added that to the list of things Bette and I had to discuss later.

We stopped right in front of a set of metal doors. I looked to Bette, who seemed to have something to say.

“Um, aren’t we going in?” I said.

“Yes, in one moment.” Bette looked me up and down. “How do you feel? Hungry?”

Why was she always trying to feed me? “No, I’m good.” I said, “I just have a lot to accomplish in a few hours.”

“Fine. You go do your work, but if you need anything I will be watching.” She said cryptically.

I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but my patience with Bette was wearing thin. It seemed as if she didn’t have much of an effect on me anymore.

Bette continued, “It is noon now. Meet me at my booth at say, three so that we can travel back to the hotel.”

“That’s not enough time. I need at least until the end of the day.” I whined, aware of how childish I sounded.

“Clara...” Bette grazed my cheek with her slender fingers.

A ripple of current spread from my face where she’d touch it, all the way down to my toes. It felt familiar and safe. I felt the tension in my body wane; she unfurled me.

It was a moment before she spoke again and in that time I had a reversal of opinions. Why had I been so suspicious of Bette, when she’d been nothing but helpful to me? And loving, I couldn’t forget that.

“I need...” Bette said, only this time I silenced her.

Pushing her back against the metal door, I kissed her, and I must admit that I wasn’t very gentle. Her shock faded quickly and her hunger began to mirror my own, or was it the other way around?

Bette clutched the back of my neck, her fingers cool against my skin. I snaked a hand around to the small of her back, looping my thumb over the top of her skirt. She sucked lightly at my bottom lip, I pressed her body with my own, the two of us being supported by the door. She pushed her leg so that the top of her thigh pressed on my crotch. I groaned, and shifted my stance to allow for better contact between us.

She bit my lip, drawing blood. The metallic taste had a familiar tang. I nipped her bottom lip in return and her blood tasted so much better than mine— full-bodied and complex like a fine wine. Pressure was building in my abdomen and it was almost more than I could take. With both my hands, I grabbed her by the butt, lifting and pulling and pushing, positioning her leg closer to where I needed it.

We kissed, our bodies grinding with such focus that anybody could have been standing right beside us, completely unnoticed. Compared to our earlier encounter, this was a whole new game. I wasn’t being passive at all and it felt fabulous.

A fresh flow of Bette’s blood filled my mouth and I swallowed it greedily. I shuddered, every muscle fiber in my body contracting violently. Every cell in my body was humming. I felt like a faulty light bulb, flickering on and off.

Dazed and panting, I looked to Bette, hoping to understand what had just happened. But she was still reeling from the encounter as I was and it took a minute for her to focus on me.

While I watched her inky eyes coming back into focus, I realized that as weird as my life had become, it didn’t worry me as much as before. Whatever was happening didn’t appear to be all bad, and I was hopeful that I’d be able to make some sense of things soon.

When Bette had recovered enough looked at me quizzically, I smoothed her mussed up hair and straightened her shirt. She returned the favor. When we both looked presentable and not like two grown women that had been groping in the service hall, I quickly kissed her and walked away.

Over my shoulder I called out, “See you at five!”

Chapter 8

Entering the main floor of the convention center, I squinted against the modest amount of light spilling in from the oblong skylights far above the main floor. No doubt the architect had thought that letting in a small amount of natural light would help combat the yellow-orange cast from the fluorescent fixtures, but they really didn’t help. Still, the light seemed brighter than it had the day before.

As if on cue, I felt a headache coming on. Was it possible to have a time-delayed hangover? Probably not, I decided.

I checked my phone, remembering that it had vibrated a few minutes earlier while I had been, uh, occupied in the hall with Bette. I blushed at the already fading memory, not quite sure what to make of the whole situation. I was, after all, a life-long man-fan. I’d loved, and made love to, a handful of men.

And not only had I enjoyed the opposite sex, but I’d never considered being anything more than friends with a woman. I’d never even had the obligatory drunken college experiment.

As I listened to the first voice-mail, from Pete, it occurred to me that I was being unfaithful. I still had no idea what had happened the night before, but that morning in my room and a few minutes ago in the hallway had been, mostly, under my own volition. I felt the shame wash over me. I didn’t want to be “that woman” who runs to the arms of another the minute that her marriage gets rocky.

The guilt subsided slightly upon hearing the voice-mail from Pete, and was replaced by quite a different set of emotions. Namely, anger and fury. A mood swing that fast usually calls for a hot bath and copious amounts of chocolate.

“Claire...uh, I’ve been seeing someone...a therapist. She’s really smart and I think you’d like her. Anyways, she says our relationship is toxic to me. That it’s not healthy for me.” Silence stretched out in the message, like Pete was trying to figure out what to say next. Or possibly find his place on a cue card.

I’m sure I looked like a mad woman, mouth agape, staring at my phone and standing in the middle of the aisle. Streams of people passed around me. I was just an obstacle in their path. Just like with Pete.

He continued, “A marriage is a partnership, not a dictatorship.”

God, he sounded so rehearsed that I immediately wondered where Pete had found his so-called therapist and if he was sleeping with her yet. If not, it was only a matter of time.

The irony of his last statement wasn’t lost on me either. If we were supposed to be partners, then how was it that I did all the cooking, the cleaning, and the bringing home of the bacon, while he contributed absolutely less-than nothing? If the person who worried over everything and tried to hold it all together was a dictator, then perhaps he was right. If I was the dictator though, he was just a dick.

“So, what I’m saying, Claire...” Pete faltered, coughing to clear his throat. “Is that I’m moving out. Saturday. When you come back.”

The voice-mail ended abruptly, like Pete had been afraid I’d respond so he’d hung up quickly. Yes, my husband was a coward and an ingrate. He was so hung up on himself that he completely failed to see how he’d made me the overbearing woman he was trying to escape from. Pete had created this monster, and for once, I was looking forward to showing him exactly what his creation could do.

I quickly listened through my other messages. The first was from my boss, letting me know that he’d already heard of the SheRawks! deal. He promised a bonus for all of my hard work, which lifted my mood a little. I always needed the money and I doubted Pete would be of any help once he moved out.

Which begged the question, where in the hell had he gotten money to rent a place? I made a mental note to check our online account statements the first chance that I got. So help me, if Pete thought I was going to finance his little bachelor pad, he was delusional.

The second message was from the head of the PTA at Quinn’s school. At some point, I’d signed up to help with a fundraiser and would I mind helping out on their upcoming project? Specifically, she wondered if I would help coordinate a blood drive to be held at the school, targeting parents and other family members of the children. Why couldn’t she have asked me to do something Bake Sale-ish?

I disconnected, locked the screen on my phone and slipped it into my bag. Scanning the booths in my immediate vicinity, I mapped a plan for the next hour or so and set to work. I moved through the motions as I won over vendor after vendor, but my heart, or rather my mind, wasn’t in it.

I wondered how I was going to break the news to Quinn. I wondered how life was going to be, day in and day out, as a single-parent. I thought of the man I married and wondered how he’d changed so much from the version of him I fell in love with, to the man he’d become—which led me to think of how much I’d changed from the girl of my youth, to the assertive woman in control of everything.

At least, that’s how I appeared to everyone. Inside I was still the sensitive, self-doubting woman that barely made it through high school. I’d gotten so used to maintaining the facade, that others rarely got a glimpse of the real me.

“Claire!” boomed a voice from behind me. I turned to see Vera ambling toward me with a zealous smile plastered on her face. “Ready for that lesson?”

I returned her smile, actually glad to see her.

“I guess now is as good a time as any,” I said.

She clapped me on the shoulder, steering me down the row towards the SheRawks! booth.

“Great! Now, the first thing you have to remember is to treat the guitar like your lover. Stroke her with passion, and she’ll sing like an angel for you.” Vera winked at me, like I wouldn’t get the double-entendre without her clue.

“Good to know.” I said.

As we approached the booth, I saw the rest of the ladies from the dinner except the sales manager, Maggie. That was a little bit of a relief. I wasn’t up to her appraising eyes at the moment.