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Meat Cute

Dolores

Today of all days. A kiss on a roof, a truce with a gloved strangler, an introduction to his family to announce our pending nuptials, and now, finally, a first date.

I’m just that level of drunk, the level that feels euphoric and consequence-free, the level where I completely forget everything else, where all I want is to get naked and bite a man’s shoulder and make terrible choices. It’s incredible, because it’s been years— years —since I felt this way. He brushes my lips with his gloved thumb, and it all comes roaring back like a half-dead ember bursting to flame on a bit of dry tinder. Real life recedes. It’s just this moment. I angle my face to his for another kiss.

And he abruptly turns and walks away. I stare after him stupidly.

The shit-heel.

I shiver and wobble a little in my heels. I’m going to walk away too. Fucker. But before I do, Jake walks into a storefront without looking back. OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT , says a sign in the window of an old-fashioned mom-and-pop hardware store.

I smile. Even serial killers get their meet-cute.

Inside I trail after him, up and down the aisles under the sickly green fluorescents. We must look like two night insects caught in the beam of a flashlight. We’re not meant to be seen in such bright light. We’re meant to be heard scuttling around in the dark.

I watch the handsome stranger fill his basket slowly. A hunting knife. Rope. Duct tape. A saw. Bleach. A tarp. Extra large, extra sturdy, reinforced garbage bags. This is a man who takes initiative to plan date night. No weaponized incompetence here. Don’t forget protection , I think. He tosses a pair of safety goggles in the basket.

I have my own shopping to do. I take a basket from the stack.

At checkout I run into the handsome stranger again. Literally.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a prim voice, and he turns to see who knocked his elbow with her basket.

“No worries,” the stranger says.

“Christmas shopping?” I ask. “What’s Santa giving everyone?”

“Homemade gifts, this year. Everyone wants their pound of flesh.”

I suppress a smile. “Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. At least it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg.”

His lips don’t even twitch. He peers in my basket. I have a wrapping paper four-pack, scissors, and tape. “Now that’s something I’m not good at,” he says. “The presentation.”

“Presentation is everything. I’m a very handy wrapper. I get my head right into it.” I bite my lip. “I know we’ve only just met…”

“Has it really only been thirty seconds?” he says.

“…but if you needed help wrapping—”

“As a matter of fact—”

“Because it would be no trouble…”

“If you’re sure…”

“It would have to be your place. I have carpet, and my landlord is very tetchy about security deposits.”

“Understood.”

The doughy teenager behind the register watches, mystified, as I pick up this handsome monster and invite myself to his place. Jake pays up and leads us out. He stops by a shabby Toyota, and I walk around to the passenger side and grip the door handle, waiting. A bobble head stuck to the dash, two empty coffee cups in the console. I’m going to snoop through the glove compartment as soon as he lets me in. The real Jake Ripper waits inside. The lethally funny loner with the dysfunctional family, dead-end job, and—if it’s me he’s taking home—hopeless dating prospects.

Jake fishes a fob out of his pocket, and the car adjacent purrs to life. The Aston Martin from basement parking. I manage to keep my mouth from falling open, but it’s touch and go.

I stare at him, his glasses lit eerily by the headlights of passing cars, concealing his eyes. There’s the jingle in my ear.

But then a car pulls up behind us and sits there with its lights on, and in that beam of light, he’s just Jake again. I can see his eyes. Behind that perfect mask, he’s as uncertain and pleased by this turn of events as I.

“It is your car.”

He hesitates. “I’m borrowing it. I would never move a body in my own car.”

I step closer and peer inside. No bobble heads. No cups.

“Not losing your nerve, are you?” he asks.

There it is again: the uncertainty. I could devour his uncertainty and nervous pleasure crumb by crumb. I could huff them out of a bag for a high.

I shrug nonchalantly. “The entire premise of dating as a straight woman is being alone with men who are potential murderers.”

“That’s very insulting,” he says. “Potential?”

He opens the door for me and there’s a tug in my brain, a reason not to get in—real life, waiting at home for me—but I flick it away and duck inside.

We cruise uptown, the city light spilling into the darkened interior and lighting up Jake’s gloved hands on the wheel. He parks in a reserved spot in the basement of a tall new building, pulls the goods from the trunk, and leads me to the elevator.

He takes us directly to the top floor and leads me out. When the doors close behind me, I may as well be trapped in the impenetrable dark of a windowless basement, and I wonder if a gloved hand will reach out to guide my face to another kiss. Then the darkness parts. A door. Beyond that, a broad, sweeping view of the city and the ghostlike glow of city lights tracing the contours of furniture. A Christmas tree drawn in string lights blinks stupidly on the side of a high-rise in the distance. The lights come on, and I blink, frozen in the doorway.

White, modern, minimalist—but expensive. So expensive. Brushed steel, glass, white stone. Incomprehensible modern art on the walls. Above the sofa, a big white canvas with a streak of red, rivulets dripping down.

“I forgot vampires need to be invited in,” Jake says from inside.

I step into Bluebeard’s chamber and spin around. “You can afford this place on a temp salary?”

Jake turns to look, as if it’s been a while since he’s taken it all in.

“No. This place belongs to my roommate.”

“Is your roommate Patrick Bateman?”

“It would explain some things. He’s filthy rich. Family money.”

I stroll into the center of the living room without taking off my shoes or coat. I touch the soft leather of a chair. I half expect to leave fingerprints. I feel like a dirty black ink smudge in this pristine snow cave. When I turn, Jake stares at me like he’s examining a Rorschach test.

What do you see, Jake? A ghost? A vampire? A lonely Black Widow?

It’s what my problem with Jake has been all along. He sees me. He notices me. I’m fascinating to him. It’s been years since I was fascinating to anyone. And maybe it’s the booze, or maybe it’s just the way his eyes track me, but even though I’m in strange territory and should feel on the back foot, I’ve never felt this completely in control of another human being in my entire life.

There’s something I need to know. “Is he just your roommate?”

Jake’s lips almost twitch. “He’s just my roommate.”

“Why would someone who can afford a place like this want a roommate?”

“He likes the company.”

“ Your company?”

“I’m like a live-in assistant,” he answers seriously. “I take care of anything he needs.”

“Dirty work?”

“Anything he has an aversion to doing himself. Cooking, shopping…” The power flickers on Jake’s serial killer simulation, and I see past the mask again. He’s just as curious about what I’m thinking as I am about him. He clutches that bag of gag purchases like he doesn’t know what comes next.

“Disposing of bodies for him,” I prod, and I see something I’ve never seen before. A pleased smile starts in his eyes and tugs his lips in a shy, asymmetrical twist. It’s got to be worth something to be able to make a psychopath smile like that. He’s exasperatingly handsome. A jury would let him walk free.

I slink over to him and take the bag from his hands. “Where’s the kill room?”

I follow him down a hallway and into a large room, where he turns on the lights, dim and golden and easy on the eyes. A California king bed in the middle. Invisible cabinetry concealing a wardrobe on one side. It’s barer than most hotel rooms but oozes luxury.

I place the bag of loot on the bed, and Jake watches me, unmoving. His uneasiness makes me feel enormous, powerful, so even though the crap from the hardware store was never part of my plan, I take the items out and toss them on the bed one by one. The rope, the duct tape, the tarp, the saw, the knife, the goggles, the garbage bags, the wrapping paper—finally they all lie on the expensive white linen coverlet, a twisted tableau. I turn to him to lap up his awkwardness—but it’s vanished. Or maybe it was never there.

This is getting fucking weird. It’s time to set some ground rules.

I step out of my heels and slink up to him, take his tie in my hand, twirl it once around my fist, and pull his head down, close to mine. I can taste his breath on my lips. “I take the lead. I call the shots. If I’m not having fun, I’m leaving.”

“We’ll follow your MO,” he says, and I relax. “How do you want to do this?”

“Hmm. I’m not so sure about the duct tape,” I say in a mock-serious voice. “I have sensitive skin.”

He considers this like a professional. “I guess that leaves the rope.”

“You can show off your Boy Scout knots,” I say.

There’s something I need to know before we go further. It’s been a while for me. “Do you do this often?”

“Maybe every few months. I change it up. Last time I wrapped her up in a rug and took her to the river.”

My mistake for thinking he’d break character. I suppress a smile. “Not my preferred approach. I think your bed will work just fine.”

Jake’s forehead puckers. “That’s my roommate’s bed.”

I freeze. “We’re doing this in your roommate’s room? Are you the roommate from hell?”

“No. He is.”

“Right.”

“We could do it in the bathroom,” he says, tipping his head in the direction of the en suite. “Easy cleanup.”

Exactly how messy are we going to get? Not that I’m…opposed. I turn away from him and pull my hair to one side. “Zip.”

“What?”

I glance at him over my shoulder and his face is blank.

“I don’t want to get blood on my clothes,” I say. “Zip.”

It takes a long moment, but I watch from the corner of my eye as he removes his gloves and tosses them on the bed. His fingertips are like ice when they brush against the back of my neck. I shiver. My zipper parts, and then my dress forms a red puddle around my feet. I turn to face him in my bra and panties.

His face is red. He swallows, and says nothing, and doesn’t allow his eyes to travel lower than my shoulders. He doesn’t even breathe.

I’ve never had this effect on a man before. I could expire from the power trip.

“What do you think of my tattoos?”

He opens, closes, and opens his mouth again, and finally looks down. I feel warm everywhere his eyes touch me. “You’re going to make a very gaudy lampshade.”

Those are some valiant fighting words, but he’s lost this round of cat and mouse. He’d eat out of my hand. He will eat out of my hand. I win.

“There better be condoms in that bathroom,” I say, leading the way.

His expression turns alarmed. “Wait,” he says, and I stop. “Don’t…don’t go in there.”

“Why not? I was promised easy cleanup.”

His mouth swings open and shut again.

“I bet it’s one of those fancy waterfall showers,” I say, stepping into the doorway, but he remains frozen by the bed. A petrified, horny little mouse. I lean seductively against the jamb and drop into a throaty voice. “You could always slip on Mother’s clothes and bring that knife along if it helps you relax.”

He glances at the knife on the bed.

I enter the dark bathroom and rake the wall for a light switch. Suddenly there’s light, and now there’s Jake, inches from me—the fucking knife bared in his fucking hand—

Tinkle.

Fucking.

Tinkle.

I pluck the pepper spray from my bra, raise it to his face, and spray. He’s flattened in a second, coughing and wheezing and dribbling tears and spit and snot all over the bathroom tiles. His lesson is not to fuck with a fellow predator.

My lesson hits me a second later: pepper spray in small spaces fucks everyone.

I can’t breathe—I have an inferno in my windpipe, in my lungs, and my entire face is turned on like a faucet. I’m on all fours, coughing uncontrollably, fat black tears of runny eyeliner dripping onto the white tiles in front of me. I spot the knife and grab it.

The shower starts.

“Are you okay?” he hacks from the shower. “Get in here and rinse your face off.”

I wheeze, and snarl, “Fuck you, you fucking nutjob…fucking knife …What the fuck is wrong with you…”

“You told me to bring the knife, you kinky psycho !”

“You’re the fucking psycho!”

I bumble-crawl across the floor, hacking, coughing, raking the walls with my hands to find the door to the bedroom, but I’ve been spun around. The mist on my skin tells me I’ve wandered into the entry to the walk-in shower instead. I reach out and my hand collides with—

I freeze there, on all fours, my nails snagged in—

“What—”

My body convulses at the exact moment I recognize the texture of human hair. I topple sideways into the cold spray of the walk-in shower, I shriek, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, and force myself to keep them open long enough to take a look. A woman is slumped over, lifeless and naked, at an unnatural angle in the bottom of the shower. Her body is stiff and awkward, her blond hair tousled and wet, her face slack, her mouth forming an O, like she’s frozen in a moment of wonder or horror.

I slip backward onto my ass, knocking over Jake. I can’t keep my eyes open for more than a split second—I scrub my face madly on his shoulder, my red and black makeup coming off onto his shirt.

“What the fucking fuck !” I shriek between coughs. I swipe furiously at my face a few more times, peering at the sight in front of us in between swipes. I cough again, a brutal, never-ending cough.

“Is that—?”

I cough and cough, and my cough resolves into a laugh—a hoarse, cackling witch’s laugh. I grasp my shaking sides with my hands, and if I weren’t already crying, I’d start.

It’s the first time I’ve laughed in ages.

“It’s—Oh my god —”

I fall onto my side with my face buried in Jake’s chest, heaving and wheezing and laughing, and he brings his arms around me. He’s strong and warm, and in spite of my burning eyes, and the screaming cold of the water, and the tiles hard as concrete underneath us, it’s strangely nice in here.

I’m being rude, I realize. A man has just come bearing a romantic gift, and I’m leaving him hanging.

“It’s—it’s—” I lose it. “You shouldn’t have!”