SERIAL UNCUT (3 page)

The convention didn't technically begin
until tomorrow morning, so none of them wore name badges. But she
felt sure her eyes were passing over famous mystery writers,
perhaps even people she'd read. The man she'd come to see, Andrew
Z. Thomas, the convention's guest of honor, for whom she'd stolen
her mother's car and driven six hundred miles on a learner's
permit, had yet to make his appearance. Just the thought of him
being in the same building made her knees feel weak.

"
Hi there."

Lucy turned and met eyes with a waitress now
standing at her table, a pretty girl, probably in college, her
dirty blond hair drawn back into a ponytail.

Lucy said, "Could I just get a water,
please?"

"
I'm afraid you can't sit here,
sweetie."

"
Why not?"

"
How old are you?"

"
Twenty-two."

The waitress laughed. "I'm twenty-three,
sister. You ain't twenty-two."

"
Please don't make me leave. I
don't--"

"
I'll get in trouble if the manager
sees you sitting in my section. I'm sorry."

Lucy stared at the waitress, then lifted her
handbag off the table and climbed down from the chair. They'd
already refused her a room because of her age. Now this. What a
mean hotel.

She was two inches shy of five feet, and she
felt even smaller threading her way through the groups of
conversing adults in the lobby.

"--
got a two-book deal for mid-six
figures, which just strikes me as a crime considering his last
didn't even hit--"

"--
switched agents--"

"--
not sure if my editor's coming or
not. She was supposed to have finished my manuscript by
now--"

"--
and every time I turn around,
Darling's right there, like he's stalking me or--"

The smell of cologne, perfume, wine breath,
and cigarette smoke overpowering.

She broke out of the crowd and found a
cluster of unoccupied chairs and plopped down in one. From this
distance, the din of conversations mixed together like the static
of a waterfall. She leaned back in the leather chair and stared up
the full height of the twenty-one story atrium, the uncomfortable
pang in her gut not all that dissimilar to what she experienced
every day in the high school cafeteria. Invisibility. The people
around her untouchable, unreachable, as characters in a movie while
she watched them onscreen from the darkness of an empty theater.
This sense, that had been with her for as long as she could
remember, even before her father had died, that she wasn't a
participant in any of this. In anything really. Only an
observer.

When Lucy straightened in her chair, she saw
that a man now sat across from her. He looked old to her, though he
wasn't even thirty. Sports jacket. Khacki slacks. Sending out big
wafts of cologne which she thought smelled pretty. He seemed either
angry or nervous, and he kept looking at his watch like he was
waiting for someone, but if he was, they never came.

She watched him, and the third time their
eyes met, the man gave a thin smile and nodded.

He didn't have a name badge either, but Lucy
took a stab anyway. "Are you a writer?"

"
I'm sorry?"

"
Are you a writer?"

"
Yeah."

"
Cool." The man looked at his watch
again. "Are you here for the convention?" she asked.

"
Yep."

"
What books have you
written?"

"
Well, my first one just came out two
months ago."

"
What's it called?"

"
A Death in the
Family
."

"
I've never heard of it. What's it
about?"

"
Um, it's...well, it's like, it's about
this big family in Portland who has this reunion and one of the
older brothers is killed. Or rather he's found dead, and the police
come and make everyone stay while they investigate. What you'd call
a locked-room mystery, I guess."

"
Is it good?"

"
I like to think so."

"
Will they have it in the book
room?"

"
I don't know. I hope so."

"
Do you have a copy with
you?"

"
Not on me. Look, it was very nice
meeting you, but I have a, um...something to get to."

"
I'm Lucy."

"
Mark."

Lucy watched Mark wander back toward the
hotel bar where he stood on the perimeter of the crowd. He looked
around and kept glancing at his watch. After awhile, he turned away
and started back through the lobby to the elevators.

Lucy stood up and grabbed her handbag and
followed.

The middle elevator in a row of three lifted
out of the lobby, and through its glass, she could see Mark leaning
against the railing inside, looking out across the hotel.

She watched it climb. Counted the stories
until it stopped and then followed Mark's progress onto the
fourteenth floor, counting doors to the room he disappeared
inside.

Lucy rode alone, watching the lobby fall
away beneath her as the elevator car soared up the back wall of the
atrium.

She walked the exposed hallway, the noise
from the lobby faint up here and no one else about. From the door
beside 1428, she grabbed a "Do Not Disturb" sign and hooked it on
the door to Mark's room.

Then she put her ear to the door, couldn't
hear anything. Knocked.

In a minute, it swung open, and Mark, now
wearing only a white oxford shirt and khaki pants, stood staring
down at her, looking both confused and vaguely annoyed.

He said, "Yes?"

"
It's Lucy."

"
I'm sorry, what do you
want?"

"
I just wanted to see your book. The
one you told me about."

"
You followed me to my room to see my
book?"

"
Yeah. It sounded good."

"
Look, maybe I'll see you downstairs
tomorrow, and if you buy one of my books, I'll even sign it for
you. How would that be?"

Lucy furrowed her brow and made what she
hoped resembled a wounded expression. "Why don't you like me,
Mark?"

"
I don't...dislike you, I don't
even..."

She put her face into her hands and
pretended to cry.

"
Jesus."

"
You're the first real author I've
ever met. I don't know anyone here."

"
Where are your parents?"

"
My mom's in our room watching 'Dr.
Quinn, Medicine Woman.'"

He sighed. "If I invite you in--and only for
a minute--will you stop crying?"

"
Yes."

"
All right, come on in,
Lucy."

Lucy wiped her face and followed Mark into
the hotel room. His suitcase lay on the bed, open but not yet
unpacked, and Mark was bending over a cardboard box and trying to
tear open the top.

"
I brought twenty copies of
A Death in the Family
." He pulled a
trade paperback out of the box and handed it to her. Lucy thumbed
through the pages, skimmed the flap copy on the back.

The cover was of a gravestone, the book's
title engraved into the stone above the author's name: Mark
Darling.

"
Is anybody else sharing the room with
you?" Lucy asked.

He tilted his head slightly, like he
couldn't comprehend the question. "No, just me."

"
I need to use the
bathroom."

"
Right through that door."

"
Would you sign this for me while I
pee?"

"
Um, sure."

She gave back the book and walked into the
bathroom and closed the door.

"
Write something good!" she called out
from inside.

She did have to pee actually, and when she'd
finished, she flushed the toilet and washed her hands and took all
of her clothes off. She folded them and stacked them on top of her
black Chuck Taylors on the toilet basin under a towel, then turned
her attention to her handbag.

The marble of the sink was cold against the
soles of her bare feet. She walked down to the end and crouched
down beside the door.

She'd been in the bathroom more than five
minutes already, and she crouched there another five, her legs
beginning to cramp, before Mark's voice passed finally through the
door.

"
Lucy?" he said.

She brought her hand to her mouth to
suppress the giggle. She'd imagined this a hundred times, and
something about the moment finally being here struck her as funny
and surreal. It was the strangest thing. Her body felt all tingly,
like whenever she had been around Bobby Cockrell, the first boy in
high school she'd had a major crush on.

"
You've been in there awhile," Mark
said. "Everything okay?"

She didn't answer.

"
Lucy, I need to get back down to the
lobby."

Silence, Lucy smiling.

"
I'm opening the door, all right? Are
you um...are you decent?"

She watched the doorknob turn and the door
ease open.

Mark's head appeared.

"
Lucy?"

She was right beside him, well within reach,
but he didn't see her. Kept looking at the toilet, and then the
shower, as if trying to piece together how this girl had vanished
through the walls.

Lucy reached out and pulled the blade of her
dead father's Zwilling J.A. Henckels straight razor through his
windpipe in a quick, delicate swipe and the blood from his carotid
artery sprayed her face and she squealed with delight as Mark
clutched his throat and stared wild-eyed at her.

He staggered over to the sink and looked at
himself in the bathroom mirror and all of that blood pouring out of
his throat down the front of his white Oxford with a kind of
disbelief, Lucy giggling as Mark tried to physically squeeze the
opening in his neck back together but the blood kept coming and he
gave up and started toward Lucy with a madness in his eyes but the
floor was slicked with his blood and his feet shot out from under
him.

He slammed flat on his back and his head
cracked against the tile.

Lucy slid off the sink and stepped carefully
across the floor, dodging the bigger pools of blood and watching a
puddle widen around Mark's head, his eyes already beginning to
glaze and his hands at his side.

She stood there watching him bleed out and
when he finally stopped twitching and blinking, she set the
straight razor on the sink. Lucy weighed eighty-three pounds at her
last physical, and she figured Mark had at least a hundred on her,
but the shower wasn't far. She only had to drag him over a two-inch
lip and the blood on the floor provided decent lubrication for the
job.

When she'd crammed him into the shower, she
closed the glass door and looked at the bathroom.

Blood everywhere. Spots and spatters and
streaks on the mirror, the walls, even the ceiling.

What a mess.

What a beautiful mess.

She got down on her knees and flattened
herself across the tile and rolled through the pools of blood which
were sticky and cool and gave off a dank metallic smell like a
thunderstorm coming.

Lucy stood for a long time watching herself
in the mirror, kept thinking it looked like she had the most lovely
body art imaginable, how she wanted to walk naked through the lobby
just like this and soak in the stares. What would Andrew Thomas
think to see her like this? She suspected he might love her.

The blood was growing cold and beginning to
congeal on her skin when she slid open the shower door and stepped
inside. Bending down, she pushed Mark up against the wall and
curled up to him, her spine against his chest. She draped his arm
around her and closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Woke in the middle of the night, cold and
shivering. Turned the shower on full blast and let the hot water
pound the blood out of her hair and her face. She collected her
clothes from under the towel atop the basin--not a drop of blood on
them--and grabbed the robe off the back of the door and slipped out
of the bathroom.

Mark's wallet sat on top of the television,
and she went through it and pocketed two key cards and two hundred
in cash. She dressed and left the room. Rode down to the lobby
which was mostly empty now save for a handful of die-hards who'd
persevered beyond last call to sing drunken show tunes on a leather
couch.

Outside, the autumn air was cool and scented
with the spice of a city she did not know.

Wind blew between the skyscrapers.

The sidewalks were empty.

The streets were empty.

It felt strange to be out here alone, no
sound but her footsteps on the pavement. Impossible that her
father's funeral had happened today. She wondered if there were
people still at her house comforting her mother and brother, or if
they had all gone home.

The glow of a payphone caught her attention
on the other side of the street.

She ran across to it and dug some change out
of her wallet, dialed the number.

Her mother answered on the fifth ring in a
tired voice gone hoarse from crying.

"
Hello?"

Lucy said nothing, just listening, her eyes
filling up.

"
Hello? Lucy, is that you?"

"
Hey, Mom."

"
Oh my God, where are you? Are you
okay?"