“Lola,” she whispers. I leave my left hand up, so that when she looks at me again she can see all the fingers hanging backwards off my hand.
“Don’t worry, Liz, it’ll heal. Fast too,” I say. She looks back at me and sees the broken fingers. She shudders visibly and closes her eyes again. For the first time she looks like she wishes she were anywhere but here. And for the first time I’m feeling quite comfortable here.
“How did you kill your mother?” she whispers.
“I poisoned her and drove her off a cliff. When she hit the ground there was an explosion, maybe, I didn’t really pay attention. I knew when she was dead because I felt her power pour into me as she died.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud like that. It sounds both badass and sad. Liz opens her eyes and I can see that she’s really seeing me for the first time. I lay my hand on my lap, waiting patiently for the fingers to rebuild themselves.
“And,” she clears her throat. “How many other people have you killed?” I calculate in my head.
“Fourteen,” I say. She clears her throat again. When her voice comes out it is a pale imitation of its former self, squeaky and unsure.
“Fourteen?” She closes her eyes for a long moment and the squeaky voice continues, “Who?”
“Well after my mother – she was the first – I killed this guy Melvin and most of a crew I was working with in Vegas.”
“Why did you kill them?”
“He and the whole crew, including my then-boyfriend Adrian, betrayed me and left me for dead on a job, and then when I didn’t die.” I hold up my still broken but healing fingers, as if to illustrate my point. “I showed up and they tried to kill me themselves…even dumped me in the desert and left me there. But I got all better and so I went back and killed them all.”
“How many?”
“Melvin, Enrico, and Felice. Melvin actually killed Albert and Jorge himself sorta by accident.”
“What about your boyfriend…Adrian…? You didn’t mention him.” I pause, realizing I’ve left him out and I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not.
“No. I didn’t kill him. I shot him in the leg.” She sits up a little straighter.
“Why didn’t you kill Adrian?”
“I don’t know. I was going to. I was,” I say and I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince her, or me.
“But what happened?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot…I’m not sure. I mean, I loved him, but I thought I’d be able to do it…but when the time came, I don’t know…at the last second I pulled the gun, hit him in the leg.”
“Well, I think that probably…means something.”
“Yeah? I’d love for you to tell me what.”
“Well I don’t…I don’t know. Did you feel remorse for any of these other killings? Your mother?”
“No. Most of them deserved it as far as I’m concerned.”
“Who didn’t deserve it?” I don’t expect this question and it throws me a bit. She latches on and pushes harder. “Who didn’t deserve it, Lola?”
“I mean, I don’t know, they could have been really crappy people in life, so I can’t say if they deserved it or not…” I trail off and look around almost guiltily.
“Did they do anything specific to you?”
“No, some of them did nothing to me.”
“Who were they?
“Well there were a bunch of men I killed recently, but then there was also this woman called Lena and another woman called Joan.”
“And who were the men…do you know their names?”
“Stan, Ed, Allen, Randall, Jim, Theo, and Darius,” I say. Liz scratches some notes on her pad.
“You said this was recent, did these men live around here?”
“Los Angeles? I guess, I found them all here.”
“How long has this been happening?”
“Over the past couple weeks.”
“A couple wee-” she’s shocked but regains her composure. “When was the last one?”
“Last night.” There’s a long silence while Liz tries to think of a question whose answer will horrify her less. Her eyes drift over to the newspaper on her desk, the headline below the fold says FOURTH MALE VICTIM FOUND, NO SUSPECTS. I smile sweetly as her eyes return to my face.
“Did you know these men?”
“No. I picked them out and…” I trail off. I don’t want to admit that I didn’t manage to have sex with any of them, it makes me feel like a failure, like an inexperienced failure. “…And I killed them.”