Sociopaths In Love (18 page)

They were back on the road and she didn't
realize she was crying until Walt said, "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," she answered.

After a little more than an hour, they
crossed the Indiana state line. About another hour later Walt
pulled into a Walmart parking lot in a small farm town, one of the
abundant small towns she had seen since meeting Walt.

"What now?" she asked, trying to sound
enthused.

"We wait."

"For what?"

"The right one."

She had wondered how this process worked.
Lately, she had assumed he had been scouting high schools or
something, the girls had gotten so young. She stepped out of the
truck to smoke. She left the window down so she could talk to him
through it but he rolled it up once she was outside and made a
flapping gesture with his hand like, even if it came from outside,
he just couldn't take the smoke.

She tossed her cigarette butt onto the
asphalt and got back in the truck. The radio was tuned to some
right wing talk station and Walt scanned everyone going into and
coming out of the massive store. The man on the radio said he
wouldn't be happy until everyone without a criminal record owned a
gun. She didn't know if she agreed with this or not. She wondered
if a gun would protect anyone against someone like Walt. She
doubted it. Maybe if someone kept a gun in her hand at all times.
The man on the radio said he'd considered getting a third arm
installed just so he could keep a gun in it at all times. Erica
thought maybe that would be weirdstream. Someone called in and said
he'd had a bayonet installed in his forehead last week. Erica was
about ready to give up on the world around her and take a nap when
Walt leaned forward and narrowed his eyes.

Must have found him
one
, Erica thought.

A girl who couldn't have been older than
nineteen crossed the parking lot toward them. She wore a sweater,
black leggings, a loose skirt hanging down to her knees, and a pair
of stupid knee-high boots. She unlocked the door to her Chevy
Cobalt, opened it, and tossed her large purse into the passenger
seat. Before stopping to really think about what was going to
happen to this girl, Erica kind of envied her. It seemed like just
. . . being. Just being a normal person or whatever came
easily to most people and probably came easily to this girl. Maybe
it had for Erica when she was little. She doubted there was one
single thing that triggered her derailment. She couldn't even
specifically pinpoint how she had derailed. Maybe it was Granny
getting sick. Maybe it was having to stay in that lonesome little
house and take care of her. But people performed altruistic acts
like that all the time. Not everyone emerged feeling like she had
to do something above and beyond the norm. Erica didn't even think
she felt that way. She simply went along. Walt had been in the
right place at the right time. He was probably there to kill her
but . . . but he'd seen something in her. That was what
she thought that day and that's what she was almost sure of now. He
had seen the emptiness. Their twin emptinesses had mingled. For
her, being empty felt like a problem. That is she felt like she was
aware of the emptiness and would find some way to fill it if she
knew how. She didn't think Walt was aware of his emptiness. Or, if
he was, it certainly didn't bother him at all. And if he tried to
fill that emptiness by doing the things he did, she didn't see how
that did anything but make the chasm even deeper.

She imagined Walt's insides as the cave,
dark and inescapable.

Was that what she'd fallen into?

The girl pulled out of her parking spot.
Walt pulled after her.

"Do you do it the same way every time?"

"No. This will be exciting though. I thought
you'd like it."

If she could think, for a second, that he
was doing this for her, that he had ever done anything for her, she
probably wouldn't feel the way she had felt for the past several
weeks. Yesterday had been good, definitely, but she now felt as
though it hadn't even existed. It took on the air of what it
probably was – a dying couple performing one last ditch effort to
try and prove to each other they still cared.

Walt stayed close to the girl's car, making
sure another car couldn't come in between them. Erica felt like
being followed was probably the furthest thing from the girl's mind
but, even if she was concerned, it probably didn't matter anyway.
There wasn't really much of a reason for Walt to be discrete since
the girl wasn't going to live long enough to give anyone a
description of him or his truck.

By him saying it was going to be exciting,
she expected more. She was thinking Walt would follow this girl out
to one of the wide open country roads, follow her until she knew
she was being followed and started speeding up. Walt would move in
close to her and then back off, to make her unsure, to give it more
of a cat and mouse effect. Eventually, he would overtake her and,
his truck being so large and her car being so small, the impending
crash would be in their favor and they would have felt like they'd
won something before Walt got out to claim his prize.

Instead he followed her into the downtown
section of whatever shithole town this was. She stopped at a red
light and he rear-ended her. Not incredibly hard but enough to send
a jolt through Erica and, she was sure, a jolt through the girl in
the tiny car. Walt waited in the truck until the girl stepped out
of the car. The light turned green and a car behind them drove
around the fender bender, uninterested and probably only slightly
annoyed. Walt slid down out of the truck's cab and walked toward
the girl. He punched her in the stomach and she dropped to the
pavement. Erica saw the look of surprise cross the girl's face and
wondered if this was one of the thrills Walt got from doing what he
did. She imagined everyone's expression was just different enough
to make it interesting. Erica couldn't remember the last time she'd
seen a look of genuine surprise on someone's face.

Walt fell upon the girl on the asphalt,
straddling her and wrapping his hands around her throat. Erica
could no longer see the girl's face, just her legs kicking and
kicking, those stupid boots drumming against the asphalt. Cars
continued to pass. The light turned red again and Erica bent the
rearview mirror down to see if a car pulled up behind them. There
was a car stopped on the other side of the intersection and Erica
wondered what the people in the car saw. Did they see what was
happening only feet in front of them? Did they not see it? Did they
see it and refuse to acknowledge it for what it was? Did they see
it, acknowledge it for what it was, and were just too lazy to do
anything about it? How could any of these things be a possibility?
Walt had claimed he had a gift, claimed she had a gift too, but she
had a hard time seeing him as some sort of supernatural creature.
She felt like their only gift was society's complete and total
apathy.

Other things to consider, she supposed, were
that Walt had somehow brainwashed her into seeing something she
wasn't really seeing or that Walt was some projection of her self.
She dismissed both of these things, knowing that if they were true,
she would not even think of them as possibilities. One does not
become brainwashed or insane and then magically realize she is no
longer any of those things.

Walt picked up the limp girl and tossed her
over his shoulder. He walked her back to the truck and dumped her
in the bed. The girl was so slight the impact of her weight wasn't
even noticeable. Walt got into the girl's car and parked it against
the curb across the street. He came back and slammed the door of
the truck.

"I'm glad you told me about you and that
other guy. That was a really open thing to tell me about. Tonight
I'd like you to watch me fuck that girl back there."

Erica thought about arguing with him but
felt like she already knew how it worked. "And if I don't want to
watch you then I can leave, huh?"

He clicked a finger pistol at her and said,
"Bingo."

Erica felt like she would be leaving some
day, but not tonight. She would do what he asked her to do.

Halloween

Walt was apparently
planning on fucking the girl in their bed. Erica told him he
wouldn't do that if he ever wanted her to sleep in there again.
Surprisingly he didn't do it. She almost thought he would just to
spite her. She knew he didn't have any really deep feelings for her
and yet she knew she was going to stick around for a while. She
felt like that meant something. Maybe she was just waiting around
for something better to come along. More specifically,
some
one
better to
come along since, if she wanted to strike out on her own, there
wasn't really anything stopping her from doing that. So he ended up
throwing a blanket down in the hallway ("So my knees don't get all
banged up.") and fucking the girl there before dragging her into
the master bathroom and letting her rot for a day or two in the
bathtub. Erica slept on the couch anyway. She didn't really know
why. She actually hoped something didn't compel her to sleep on the
couch every night because it wasn't really that
comfortable.

The next day, sitting on the balcony in the
cool October air, Erica realized she began to view their
relationship as, well, just that. A relationship. There were things
she wanted and things he wanted and both of them were willing to
lash out at the other one to do those things. In other words, a
comparatively normal relationship. She didn't know if this made her
more comfortable with it or just bored. She still thought she would
like to convince him to leave. To get out of Dayton. Maybe even to
get out of the United States. It wasn't exactly paranoia and she
mostly believed him when he said he'd been doing this for so long
that if something were to happen it would have happened by now. But
there was still the possibility they could be caught. She would
have to be insane to think they could just go on forever with
nothing happening to them. What continually entered into her mind
was that there was some kind of super detective out there. Someone
who was exactly like they were. She imagined this guy, world weary
and haggard, going into some kind of FBI or CIA building every day
and practically having to shout to make people listen to him. No
one believing him. Maybe they don't even believe he works there and
ask to see his credentials every day. And this detective, he gets
really tired of this and it all makes him really mad but, just as
she and Walt were hellbent to fulfill their own personal desires,
so was this guy. And his one overriding personal desire was
justice. He was able to see them, able to see everyone like them,
and he waited. He waited in the shadows for their crimes to
accumulate or he waited for irrevocable proof. Like she and Walt,
he lived in the caves, somewhere deep in the earth, unseen. Unlike
she and Walt, he knew where to find the light any time he wanted
to.

She thought about the man on the top of the
parking garage. She hadn't seen him since that one night.

October passed with Erica remaining in this
numbed state. On Halloween, she put on her corpse paint, something
she hadn't done in a while, and went out walking around downtown.
Walt wasn't in the apartment when she left. If Halloween were
really a day when the dead could walk the earth then it seemed only
appropriate they were both out and about this night. While they
weren't technically dead – that would have been a far too simple
answer to what she had come to think of as her dilemma – they might
as well have been for all the impact they made. Maybe that was why
Walt chose to kill people. If they could do anything they wanted
and, after all, were only humans capable of performing single
human-type tasks, then the only thing they could really do that had
any sort of immediate and irreversible impact was to kill another
person. She stole, that was her thing, and she doubted this really
affected anyone. The stores she typically stole from were insured
against this kind of loss and, because she never stole from the
same place day after day after day, there probably weren't any
employees who got blamed for it. Not that she really cared. It
would actually make her feel slightly better if what she did had
even a negative impact.

The clubs across the street from the
building were full. Everyone was dressed in some sort of costume,
from really elaborate to really lazy. No one gave her a second
glance. Just like always. The only difference was that tonight was
a night where just about everyone was anonymous. Although she
guessed she really wasn't anonymous so much as invisible.
Obviously, people didn't dress up to become invisible. They dressed
up to stand out but, in doing so, they lost a certain part of
themselves. Some central identity. Like when Walt told her people
recognized her for the makeup and the clothes, that that was who
they were getting to know. That was the same with these people.
They no longer had names and identities. They were the vampire or
the super slutty vampire or the naughty nurse or the werewolf or
the zombie or Kirk Cameron. It made her feel comfortable. She
wished it were Halloween all the time.

She went to the Epoch and the bartender
actually took her order although he did not try and stop her two
hours later when she walked out on her tab.

People were still out and about, mostly in
groups, going from their cars to the clubs and from the clubs to
their cars and then after that where did they go? Probably to
parties or to split into smaller groups and finally couples before
doing whatever it was normal couples did.

Erica had planned to stay out longer but
being around all those people made her feel really lonely and she
decided to go back to the building.