Killing Kate(4)

“Do you ever sleep?” I ask. She sits up and rolls her eyes. My phone is sitting next to her on the sofa and I pick it up and see that it’s already 7:09 pm. I contemplate eating but I’m not hungry. Instead, I sit down next to Kate. I look to the wall where the mirror in my front room is and note that I look terrible. I slept in my makeup and it has smeared around my eyes making me appear as though I fought with someone who clearly won. My hair is dirty and uncombed and tousled around my shoulders. Next to me, Kate is perfection, with her auburn hair combed and braided and pulled to one side, which is different from how she showed up at my door. She’s also wearing jeans and a red halter top, and her lips are a dark blood red and look wet. Her large brown eyes are perfectly made up, and she appears to be ready to go someplace.

“Get dressed,” she says, reading my mind. “Tonight we are going to go out and eat and get drunk, and then tomorrow we will go to Jake’s funeral and see Devin.”

“I have to work tomorrow night,” I tell her. She shrugs.

“You can do both.”

“Getting drunk outside of my apartment costs money,” I point out.

She scowls. “You have no air conditioning.” I doubt that actually bothers her.

“Suffer,” I tell her.

“You need to mentally prepare yourself for Jack’s funeral with alcohol and some potential casual sex,” she says. “Devin needs you there.” I nod. I didn’t feel bad when I hung up the phone but I suddenly feel horrible now. I accept that I am a bad daughter and have no tears for a man who didn’t deserve to be a part of my life but Devin has never hurt me.

Kate found her way into my world when I was a kid living with Devin in Jack’s house. She would hold me at night while I cried myself to sleep. She would continue to come to my rescue all the way up until Jack went to jail for possession of narcotics and I had to go live with my mother and my stepfather, Frank. As far as stepfathers went, Frank was actually okay, despite the shit show he married into. When he met my mom, she was “unattached”, so to speak, which is a nice way of saying that she walked out on her husband and two young kids that she didn’t want in the first place. Kate was gone for a few years while things were good and Frank was alive, but when Frank died from a heart attack and it was just my mom, Kate eventually came back to me. Jack was a shitty dad, but our mom wasn’t much better. She would pretend to care but checked out after Frank died. He really was the love of her life and held her together. Some people can’t survive without another person in this world and Frank was that person to my mom, just as Kate seems to be with me. Like everyone else in our family, my mom took to drinking away her life while collecting her welfare check from the state. Devin checked out at that point too, shooting up heroin and not spending much time helping me get through school. He found a girlfriend and spent most of his time between her, his junkie friends and his artwork. Instead of being alone, I had Kate to keep me company. Devin and I are close now. We weren’t always. As kids we were forced to be close, mostly for survival. Devin hit a point where he couldn’t spend all of his time devoted to taking care of me, and as much as that hurt me, I think it hurt him more. Along came Kate to the rescue. Kate and I shared everything, from a room to our clothes to friends and even a boy or two. She took my tests for me in the subjects I didn’t like and she went on dates for me with boys that I wasn’t interested in. Where I was shy and would rather be someplace else, Kate was in the backseat of a car in the mall parking lot at three am, letting some horny kid put their fingers in her panties. She tended to take the douchebags and assholes and I saved one or two nice boys for myself. Every now and then we’d share, though never at the same time. When I moved out of my mom’s house, she came with for a while, and then after I got my act together and got a job, an apartment, some clothes, some furniture, and started getting groceries somewhat regularly for me, she eventually left. I never ask where she’s been. I don’t want to know.

“Call Devin,” she tells me, breaking my trance. “Ask him to meet us. Then we’ll get you showered and dressed.” Before I can object, she shoots me a look. “He does need you, you know.” I do know, but I’m afraid to see how Devin is right now, particularly with the news.

My hands are shaking a little, and the pit of my stomach feels empty and fluttery, but I call. “Hey,” he answers.

“Meet us for dinner?” I ask him.

“Us?”

“Me and Kate,” I say. He is silent.