The Weirdness(30)
Elisa watches him until finally he raises both palms, as if revealing the absence of more to tell.
“What did it feel like?” she asks, softly.
“It felt bad,” he says. “I don’t like making people cry.”
“No, before that.”
“Before what?”
“Before she started to cry. When you had her under the sheet and were poking her. What did that feel like?”
“I don’t know,” Billy says. “I thought I was being funny, I guess. I was just playing around.”
“The woman in the story. Are you bigger than her?” Elisa asks.
“Yes,” Billy says.
“Are you stronger than her?”
Billy doesn’t think of himself as strong, exactly, but is he stronger than Denver? “Yes.”
“And what did that feel like?”
“Being bigger and stronger, you mean?”
“Being bigger and stronger. Exerting power. Using it to scare someone.”
“I don’t think she was scared, exactly.”
“Let me tell you something,” Elisa says. “If you say stop it to someone who is bigger than you? And stronger than you? And they don’t stop whatever it is that they’re doing? It’s scary. Trust me.”
“Okay,” Billy says. “What are you trying to say here?”
“What I’m trying to say, Billy, is that you seem like a gentle, peaceful guy, a real nice guy, and I think you’ve worked hard to come across that way, but I think there’s a part of you, and maybe it’s a part that you don’t look at all that closely, that wants to be powerful and that doesn’t give a good goddamn about anything else.”
Something inside Billy twinges. A flinch moves through his face. Elisa’s eyes change character again, communicating some faint satisfaction, an approval, almost, at seeing Billy hit upon something inside himself that may be true.
Billy turns his empty shot glass with his fingers, tries to reflect upon the part of him that likes being bigger and stronger, that likes being powerful. Elisa is right: that part is there. It moves inside him like an animal, cloaked by shadows. He can kind of glimpse its outlines but it moves away from his inspection, not wanting to be fully perceived.
“Thoughts,” Elisa says.
“None,” Billy says, and he expends some willpower to ensure that that’s true.
“All right then.”
The third round of shots lands on the table. They raise them.
“To thoughtlessness,” Elisa says, and tosses hers back.
“To thoughtlessness,” Billy answers, and he does the same.
“You want to know the worst thing I ever did?” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Sure.”
“Don’t give me that sure. Either you want to know or you don’t. I’ll tell you if you want to know. But you have to understand that this isn’t some hipster game for me.”
“Okay,” Billy says. “I get it. I want to know.”
Elisa regards him suspiciously.
Billy puts on his most earnest face despite a sinking certainty that it actually makes him look totally goofy and insincere. “You can trust me,” he says.
“No, I can’t. But I’m going to tell you anyway, as a gesture of my good faith.”
“Okay,” Billy says.
“I killed a man,” Elisa says.
“What?”
“I killed a man,” she says again. “It was an accident.” She takes a deep breath. “I killed a man,” she repeats, like it’s something she has to say to herself regularly, “and I was never caught.”
Billy scans her face for some sign that she’s making a joke, or just fronting like a badass. But she’s wearing that same implacable calm. Wow, he thinks.
“What were—what were the circumstances?”
Elisa looks away sharply, glancing down at her watch, a heavy beveled thing that looks like you could crack open a nut with it. “It’s ten past six,” she says.
“Yeah, so?”
“So we should get back over there.”
“What? You’re gonna just—leave me hanging? You can’t do that.”
She gives him a look, one which adequately communicates Don’t think you can start telling me what I can and can’t do. “I’ll tell you what,” she says. “I’ll tell you the circumstances the next time we meet.”
“Oh,” Billy says. He grins. “You think there’s going to be a second time?”
“No,” Elisa says. “But one should always plan for the unexpected.”
A lesser species of disappointment emerges within him, but he says, “I accept these terms.”