June 8, 2006
Nine
Right then I hear footsteps behind me. They’re as slow as mine were a couple seconds ago. I expect my life to flash before me any minute now. The footsteps come closer. I can’t turn around. I can’t look at Marcia either, so I shut my eyes. The freezing pain in my knee keeps me from doing anything. With my eyes shut I feel the footsteps almost on top of me. My eyes are shut and my lungs seem to be frozen. The footsteps stop right behind me. I hear someone breathe behind me. The hand touches me on the shoulder and jerks me backwards. I can’t scream, I can’t move.
“Joe?”
Kathryn stares at me with a shocked look on her face. Her lips look almost blue under this light and this cold. She looks around me at Marcia and lets out a deafening scream. Her legs give and she’s suddenly in my arms, half conscious.
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Kathryn leans on the hood of my car as she lights another cigarrette. She takes a long, thoughtfull drag and blows the smoke out staring at the police cars that have gathered around the studio doors. She’s wearing dark glasses. She seems to be enjoying her cigarrette, so much I’m forced to light one myself.
I wonder what she’s thinking, “What are you thinking?”
She tilts her head down a bit and looks at me from above her dark glasses, “You have breakfast, yet?”
She seems amazingly calm considering we just found a dead body a couple minutes ago. I didn’t have any breakfast, nor do I want any. I guess she can see all that in my face, she says, “Yeah, you’re right.” Pause. “So, what do you think happened?”
I don’t know what I think. I don’t tell Kathryn about the call I received. I choose to catalog it as a freaky coincidence. A prank.
Kathryn seems to think someone broke into the studio and killed Marcia when she surprised him sneaking about.
I think I think she was brought here dead. For someone (or us, or me) to find. I don’t tell Kathryn this.
Of course, we get the day off, so where I am now is my living room and staring at the ceiling. My eyes follow the pale string of smoke up until it dissapears above me. When someone you know but don’t care much for dies, you’re not really sure how you’re supposed to feel.
42 Towels 