“I miss Talia,” I say. “I never really cared about a marriage certificate, but she did, and I was fine with it. But yeah, I miss her.”

She looks up at me as we walk but doesn’t respond. That probably wasn’t a crowd-pleaser, but she asked.

“That was very honest of you,” she says.

I laugh. “Brutally so.”

“There’s nothing brutal about it. Would I be better off not asking and not knowing?”

“Maybe.”

“No.” She shakes her head firmly. “A girl needs to know what she’s getting into.”

Interesting choice of words. Am I hooking her in? Am I even trying to? Sometimes I feel like I’m just feeling through the dark, not knowing what I’ll touch and unsure of what I’m even reaching for.

“I had my heart broken once,” she says. “Not marriage, but I would’ve married him if he’d asked.”

“What happened?” There is a pause, longer than necessary. “Brutal honesty,” I add.

“It turned out he was already married.”

“Ah. That would be a complication.”

“Yeah . . .” Her voice trails off. She looks out over the lake. “Yeah, it pretty much sucked, I have to say.”

“How long ago did this happen?” I ask.

“A few weeks ago.”

I stop in my tracks. “A few weeks—”

She bursts into a laugh. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.” She faces me and puts her hand on my chest. That simple touch flips a switch on inside me: All systems go! “It was, like, three years ago,” she says. “He was a jerk. And I don’t miss him, to answer your next question.”

I move my face closer to hers. “That wasn’t my next question.”

“No?” Her mouth moves closer to mine, her head angling to the right. “What,” she whispers, “was your next question?”

I whisper back, “I wish I had something clever to say, but I just want to kiss you.”

“That’s clever enough for me.”

I don’t care how many times you’ve done it, you don’t forget a first kiss: the awkwardness and trepidation, each of you trying to find that fit, that rhythm. When it’s good, it’s like few things in this world. And this one is good. I taste red wine when we pull away.

She leans back and looks at me, her eyes searching me. As a rule, I don’t like being searched. I never know what someone might find.

“Well, gee, Jason Kolarich. This is pret-ty romantic. You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet.”

I don’t have the foggiest idea how to do that.

“I still don’t have anything clever to say,” I admit.

She rests her hands on my chest. “Then how about you take me home?” she says.

•   •   •

We walk along the beach until we hit Ash Street, the closest principal artery, and walk up the stairs, wipe off our feet, put on our shoes, and hail a cab. Alexa lives outside the city in a small suburb to the south and west, Overton Ridge, so the cab takes a while with the traffic. We talk about all sorts of things: last fall’s presidential election (she has opinions, I think the candidates are all full of shit); music (she can tolerate R.E.M., which is a relief because that could be a deal breaker); her childhood bouncing around from town to town while her father opened new Kmarts (I didn’t even know that was a specialty, opening new stores). But as we pull off the highway and turn left down Wadsworth, the conversation starts to dissipate, replaced with tension. It seems to be a given what’s going to happen next, and I sense it’s meaningful to her, that she isn’t casual about sex.

I don’t want to be, either. I want to care about it. I want somebody, or at least something, to matter to me again.

She lives in a small brick bungalow, three from the corner. It hardly looks like we’ve left the city; in a way this block, with its low rooflines and tiny plots, resembles the neighborhood in the city where I grew up, Leland Park.

She uses her key and opens the door. I follow her in as if there were never a doubt. She takes me by the hand and leads me past a small room, a combination living room–dining room that is well kept, spotless. Her bedroom is also small—the whole place is—and also immaculate. Hardwood floors, wall closet, a single window with flowery drapes, a queen-size bed with about a hundred pillows and a teddy bear. The teddy bear is interesting.

Silently, she positions me by the bed and then faces me, taking my face in her hands and kissing me differently than the first time, more assertive but still very soft. We remove each other’s clothes methodically, gently. No tearing or ripping. We are taking it slowly, which works for me, savoring the moment, treating it like it’s something unique and special. Finally, she backs up onto the bed, me hovering over her, and we touch each other everywhere, caressing surfaces, until her tongue is more urgent in my mouth, which I take as my cue, and then a switch is flipped and everything is more primitive, more aggressive, more needy, and we find a rhythm and I do better than I expected in terms of holding out, but when it happens I grunt so loudly I surprise myself.

We lie quietly panting, her hands drawing circles on my back, my face nestled in her hair, for a good ten minutes. I hear a car pass by outside. I hear a bunch of people, talking in that cheerful and familiar way, lubricated by alcohol and heading to their next destination, bed or another bar or late-night chow.

“Don’t hurt me,” Alexa whispers.

For a second, I’m sure I heard her wrong. I raise my head. “Did I—hurt you?”

She eases out from under me, my question unanswered, and heads to the bathroom. I ease off the condom, which was basically coming off anyway as my little man retreats into postcoital hibernation, and wrap it in a tissue. I put on my boxers and lie on the bed.

Nice night. As I stare at the ceiling, my mind drifts. To Talia, scrunching up her nose at one of my cornball jokes; to Emily Jane, our daughter, quietly breathing as she sleeps in the fold of my arm; to Shauna, watching over me while pretending she’s not; to a serial killer butchering young women on the north side.

I sit up on the bed and wait for Alexa. I think of calling out to her. It’s been, like, ten or fifteen minutes. But hey, maybe nature called, or it’s some feminine thing that I don’t understand.

It all comes back with a rush, the needle pricks inside my head and the stormy stomach, the bile in my throat, my mouth dry as sand. I steady myself and wait out the first wave.

Finally, Alexa walks back into the room. “Sorry about that,” she says, casual in her tone. She crawls onto the bed and nestles into my arms.

“Are you good?” I ask.

“Oh, I’m great.” She adjusts herself to look at me. “I’m great. That was—I really enjoyed that.”

That would be more believable had she not left the room for so long, but I see no reason to let my imagination run wild. It was great, and if there is sex a second time, it will be even better.

“Will you stay?” she asks.

I tell her I will. I suddenly realize how exhausted I am. We lie in silence, atop the covers, for how long I don’t know, all energy draining from my body, thoughts beginning to mangle themselves together in dreams. As I fade off to twilight, my defenses down, it comes to me as naturally as the sound of my voice, as obvious as day following night: James Drinker killed those women.

17.

Jason

Saturday, June 15

I wake with a start from a dream—dirt in my mouth, insects on my skin, my hands on the railing, trying to hold on but the gravitational pull is too strong—that quickly vaporizes into a mash of nonsense. I turn to Alexa, who has part of the bedspread pulled up over her. I am shivery, shaky, uneasy. I manage to make out the time on my watch: It’s past two in the morning.