she’s down on the floor, making the call to 911, at the same time trying to wipe blood off neale’s face, which is already starting to swell, particularly around her left eye. she notices her own hands, the right in particular. the side of it along the thumb is caked with blood. the skin looks rusted. her palms are shiny and raw with a web of small cuts. half of one of her fingernails is torn off; she can’t look at that. she goes very still, listening for the possibility that the woman is still somewhere in the house. she gets up and pulls a knife out of the block on the counter, then crouches next to neale, waiting for whatever comes next.

She pulls out of this, but can’t lose its oily, metallic aftertaste. She calls the one person with whom she still (ludicrously) feels an open connection.

“Let me go back to the storeroom. We’ve only got one customer. A gentleman who has mistaken my restaurant for Starbucks. He’s been on his laptop for an hour now. One cup of coffee.” Then a few footsteps and the squeaky hinge of the swinging door to the kitchen, then its rubber flaps thwacking behind her, and she’s back. “So, black thoughts again?”

“You think I only feel powerful. But I also feel smeared by the contact with him. Like now I’m soiled.”

“I think it’s probably hard on a person, being a killer. If you’re a regular human, it pushes you out of any space you’re used to. And probably into a space the people around you are uncomfortable with.” She stops to take a drink from a bottle of water; Cate can see this exactly, the way, when she’s finished, the bottle drags away, tugging at her lower lip. Then, “Honestly, I think all this drift will eventually go away. But in the meantime you should definitely keep talking with me about it. You really can’t call me too much.”

martinis

Cate backs up to get a distance perspective on the overstuffed bookcase flat. Looking good. She pulls on her down jacket. She goes out by the stage door, leaving only the ghost light on. The ghost light is never shut off, an old, old tradition, to give the ghosts who inhabit the theater light to put on their own shows.