Page 18 of Kill Your Darlings

“I really am getting out of the water now. Maybe if I come back we can test your water-realm story, but no one knows I’ve

come here this morning. I’d like you to keep it that way, okay?”

“God, of course. I won’t tell a soul. I already know that you have secrets, Wendy, don’t forget it.”

The way he said those words caused a flare of hatred in Wendy, and she knew in an instant that she wasn’t just fantasizing

about murdering Alex.

“No one,” Wendy said one more time.

He mimed locking his lips then throwing the key away.

Wendy, satisfied, turned and swam quickly back toward her rock. After she’d clambered up and wrapped her large white beach

towel around her, she turned back to see Alex still holding on to the submerged log. Returning to the path, Wendy saw where

Alex had hung his towel, plus a long, thick robe. She kept walking, wondering how long he’d stay in the water.

Back at home she thought about how she’d do it.

Maybe she could somehow attach a lead pipe or something like it to the log and then she’d lure him back there, tell him she wanted to try and stand on top of it herself, then get hold of the lead pipe and bash him in the head.

Professor Alex Deighton, in the quarry, killed with a lead pipe.

A few years earlier Jason had gone through a brief obsession with the board game Clue.

She’d been excited at first, remembering it from her own childhood, until she realized what a dull game it truly was.

The only good parts were the descriptions of the suspects and the rooms and the murder weapons.

Where did one get a lead pipe, exactly? And she couldn’t imagine that it would be easy to bash Alex on the head while she was floating in water. She discarded the idea.

What if she simply took him in her arms in the middle of the quarry, wrapped her legs around him, and held him under the water.

He was a small man, not much bigger than Wendy, and quite a bit older. How hard could it be? Once upon a time, in another

life, Wendy’s father had drowned in their bathtub when Wendy was just a teenager. She’d never forgotten her mother, Rose,

telling her afterward that drowning was a pleasant way to die, almost like falling asleep. And if Alex somehow fought his

way out of her embrace, she could apologize and say she was overcome by passion. He might suspect her, but it wasn’t something

he would bring to the police. In that way, it was kind of a foolproof plan.

iii

She went back to the quarry two more times that summer, once in the second week of July, a Monday morning, no sign of Alex.

She decided to swim anyway. It was a warm dawn, the air still and the light soft.

She stripped down to her bathing suit and stepped gingerly out along the flat ledge of a mossy rock.

When she was ankle-deep, she realized the water was almost the exact temperature of the air.

On a whim she quickly shucked off her suit, throwing it so that it landed on her pile of clothes, then did a shallow dive into the perfect water.

She stayed in for close to thirty minutes, slowly making her way back and forth, happy that Alex hadn’t been at the quarry, although expecting to see him emerge from the woods at any moment.

When she returned home that morning, relaxed and dreamy, she felt certain that she really did want to kill Alex. He was a

loathsome man. Not just that, but a loathsome man who felt as though he had the upper hand on her. Plus, more and more these

days, Thom seemed to be beaten down by his position in life, his perceived failures. With Alex gone, the job of department

chair would be his for the taking. His life would open up in a way that her life had opened up years ago after her first husband

had died.

But there was something else as well, a feeling that was hard to put into words. Taking a life would allow her to cross that

boundary that her husband had crossed for her all those years ago. It was an experience she wanted for herself. She’d plotted

a murder before, of course, but part of her wondered how she’d fare at the actual moment of death. It was knowledge she didn’t

have. Very few people did, but Thom, her husband, was one of them. Maybe it would help her to understand him more. Years ago,

she felt she understood almost everything about him, that she could see him as clearly as she saw herself. They were bound

by their twinhood, after all. But these days Thom’s interior life was more and more of a mystery; she was aware that there

was a black hole inside him, eating away at his health, his confidence, his sobriety. Maybe killing Alex would give her some

insight into that black hole. At the very least it would equalize them.

Just over a week later, as she walked through the cool shadows of the woodland path to the quarry, she seemed to know for a certainty that Alex would be there.

It was cool and overcast, the air filled with a dusting of mist, as though she were moving through a cloud.

When she reached her rock she could hear him, the rhythmic disturbance of the water his sidestroke made, before she saw him, that dark head slicing out of the fog.

A calm came over her. She even gently folded the clothes she’d removed before diving into the water herself.

It had only been a week and a half since she’d been here, but the water now seemed warmer than the air.

She did a careful breaststroke out toward Alex, now waiting for her at the deepest point in the quarry.

“You’ve come back,” he said.

“Are you surprised?”

“I don’t know if I’m surprised or not, but I’m very pleased.”

“How pleased?” Wendy said.

“I’ve been thinking of nothing else.” He laughed as though he’d said something witty, the water sputtering where it touched

his lips.

She moved closer to him and said, “What was it you were saying last time about what happened under the water?”

“What happens under the water doesn’t count above water. That’s my theory. I’ll tell you about it sometime if you’d like.

It’s a real theory, not just some kind of joke.”

“A theory about water?”

“Well, no. It’s a theory about realms. We all exist in several realms throughout the course of our life. When a man goes to

war, that is another realm. When a woman has a baby, she enters the realm of motherhood. These realms have different rules

and yet we treat them, the young people do, anyway, as though the same rules should apply in different realms.”

Wendy had spent enough time talking with Alex at cocktail parties to sense that he was ramping up to a seriously long monologue, so she slid the last two feet to him, took his hands and wrapped them around the small of her back, putting her own arms above his shoulders.

He went to kiss her, but she moved her head.

“No,” she said, but pulled one of her hands back from his neck and slid one strap of her suit over her shoulder, then awkwardly freed her arm.

Her right breast was freed of the suit and all of Alex’s attention went to it.

He was breathing heavily, and she could feel along one thigh that he wasn’t wearing a bathing suit.

She directed his head down and he pressed his face against her breast, her arms locked around his back.

And then she simply stopped kicking and let the weight of her body pull him under the water.

Two minutes later she stood back on the rock, gathering her bundle of clothes and reentering the woods. It had been simpler

and harder than she could have imagined. At one point he seemed to have a surge of improbable strength, his arms thrashing,

and she wondered if she were going to drown with him. But she took a deep breath and leaned all her weight on top of him,

and he’d gone under again. One of his hands pulled at her suit and she could feel the water roiling below him as he kicked

to come back up to the surface. She simply pulled him closer. There was one last expulsion of air, and then he was still.

Just to make sure, she held him for another minute.

She dried herself off by the car, re-dressed, and got inside. The radio blared on, tuned to Emerson College’s radio station,

and Wendy turned it down a little, but not off. Halfway home she found herself singing along to Dylan’s lyrics. How does it feel? She didn’t know yet, not exactly. One thing she felt was cold and damp, and she looked forward to showering and getting her

clothes into the washer. But what did she feel about Alex? He’d died with her breast in his face, her legs around his waist.

Who knew what horrors of old age she’d saved him from? She smiled in the car, the song ending and another song she loved starting

up. She didn’t know the name of the song but the opening lyrics were familiar, something that Jason listened to: I want to live where soul meets body.

She pulled into the driveway of her sleeping house.

For a moment she wondered if she’d open the front door to find her husband and son, maybe even the local police, gathered in the living room to accuse her of what she’d just done.

But the living room was just as she’d left it, quiet, neat, filled with items she loved.

She went up the stairs and began a load of laundry, including her bathing suit and the towel she’d used at the quarry.

She heard a thunk, Samsa jumping down from the guest-room bed, where he liked to sleep.

He padded sleepily up to her and rubbed against her calf.

She started up the washer and made her way back downstairs to feed Samsa and start a pot of coffee.