Tell Me More

In the wanted ads of the newspaper, a local LA rag, I'm just known as W. I don't say much – I never need to say much. They flock to me, it seems, with very little provocation. Looking for reassurance, and company, and sometimes money. We meet in odd little diners and restaurants, never fine dining unless specified. I order a bottle of white wine, if the venue allows, or a glass of lemonade.

Some might call it dating. It's not, so I don't. I never look for true companionship in these people – and they never offer it. I'm just a talking friend. In some cases, maybe I help them feel better about themselves, because they never come back for more, and they always give me a mocking smile when they walk away at the end. Which angers me – oh, does it anger me. But I never let that anger get away from me, or I would be like the very people I disdain: these fragile, heartless slivers of the LA sun.

Tonight, it's one of my favorite hole-in-the-wall Italian places, Luciano's, and my company is late. I'm used to it, and the waiter is as well; he pours me a glass of wine while I wait. I smile, nod, and look at the three other customers on a rainy Tuesday night. All of them I recognize. The burly, unshaven gentleman in gym clothes lives just a block away, and this is his eating spot; the woman in the tiny black dress, with wildly non-matching lipstick, comes here for dates and lives only five or six blocks away; and the final gentleman, wearing an Italian suit and smoking a cigar, is an anomaly who lives close by and has dubious connections. None of them I've talked to, but I know them better than they know themselves.

And then, tearing my mind off of them, my company arrives. She could not be here for anything else. Her clothes are small and trendy, and her hair is freshly cut and styled. Blond. Blue or gray eyes. Tiny little gray gloves cover hands that look a bit scarred. She smiles when she sees me, after scanning the room.

“You must be W...?” she pauses, letting me fill in the blank.

After an answering smile, I decide on my name for the evening. “Walter,” I tell her, “and it's a pleasure to meet you, Diane. Some wine?”

“Please,” she says, with an exaggerative sigh, and sits down opposite me. She smells overwhelmingly of passionfruit – a perfume. “I'm sorry,” she adds, “my day was pretty rough, but I'm all right now.”

I pour wine into the glass that the waiter left. “Don't worry about it,” I assure her. “In fact, if you'd like to talk to me and get it off you, I'm all ears.”

I can tell, from the way the weight is carried in her body, and her hastily stuffed purse, that the problem was at work, and she barely got here even late. But I don't tell her that. I, after all, am here to listen to the life stories of others, which is all they ever share with me.

“No, I'd rather forget it,” she says, surprising me a little. “But thank you. You look very nice, by the way.”

“You as well.” I don't tell her that I know the designer of her dress, gloves, and shoes. I even know when, approximately, she bought them. I keep that information to myself. “The gloves were a good choice. Did you find the restaurant all right?”

Diane pauses here, and I know why. I complimented her on her gloves and not her dress. Any other man would probably be fixed on her presented cleavage, and I'm sure she's gotten compliments about her body all of the time. She's wondering why I haven't even glanced at her cleavage yet, and if her feminine wiles are slipping.

“Yes,” she finally decides, “I found it all right. I was a little surprised, though. Do you come here often?”

“All of the time. I know it looks a bit”--I struggle for the term--“ghetto, but the food is great, and not too expensive.”

My confident words and smile are enough to put her back on firm ground, and she nods. “All right, then.”

The waiter returns, with menus, and then leaves. He doesn't even look at Diane. For a moment, I pause, because she's an attractive woman and, as previously stated, some of her best physical aspects are out for the evening. Perhaps he's busy, although five customers is not exactly pushing it, even for this tiny place. Or has a lot on his mind – yes, that seems far more likely, especially in this city.

“Any recommendations?” she asks me, tearing me out of this mental tangent. I pull a hand back through my short, dark hair and consider the menu.

“Are you a vegetarian?”

She shakes her head, a little too quickly – an odd, jerky motion on an otherwise graceful creature. “No, not in the slightest. Do you meet a lot of women who are?”

“Yes,” I chuckle. “In that case, I recommend the lasagna. It's sort of a signature dish, here. There's something in it – the spices, or the cheese – that makes it exquisite.”

Again, Diane's attention snaps to me, and then she looks away. I used the word exquisite and she's confused. There's a high probability that she's never heard another human being say that word, or that she doesn't know what it means. An even more likely route is that she now thinks I'm homosexual. Which, in this case, I don't mind.

“I'll get that, then,” she decides, putting the menu down. I decide on my own favorite, the seafood ravioli, and fold up my menu on top of hers. “So, Walter, what is it that you do?”

I smile, recognizing the old date standby. “I write,” I tell her. “For a few magazines and newspapers.”

It's a fantastical lie, like my name, but it doesn't matter. She won't want to see me after tonight anyway. She'll go back to her mother, Lois, and her sister, Kyla, will try to get her with another guy who doesn't fit her, as usual -

“Oh, that's so cool!” she enthuses. “Any I'd recognize?”

The names I say are well-ingrained into the heads of LA citizens. Fashion and celebrity magazines and tabloids. One of which I slip on – its headquarters is in New York, not LA – but she doesn't notice at all, and I didn't really expect her to catch the mistake. I pick them because they're always on Diane's doorstep, when I drive by.

“What about you?” I ask her. “What do you do?”

“I'm a model wannabe,” she laughs, and I smile, because now she's playing the lying game, too. It makes it really feel like a game. “Trying to get into those magazines, actually.”

“Well, if I hear of an opening, I'll let you know.”

“You're sweet.” She's smiling back, now. Her expression is one of confused affection. She doesn't know what to make of me but, clearly, she likes at least some of me. “What do you do besides writing? Hobbies?”

For a moment, I reflect that maybe the game is up. Perhaps her lying meant that she picked up on my lies, too. But she seems genuinely confused, and maybe a bit bashful to admit her real profession, which I can't really blame her for...

“Oh, I prowl,” I tell her offhand, shrugging. “I like to explore and discover new places.”

“That sounds fascinating. Is that how you found Luciano's?”

I chuckle and nod, and she seems quite happy with that, glancing around the dimly lit restaurant with a new, unexpected appreciation. I doubt she'd like it in the sunlight – seeing the damp, slightly stained carpets and the faded foliage of the plastic plants. But at night, with only a few lights on, it seems downright classical.

“My own hobbies,” she says, with a self-deprecating downturn of her lips, “are far less productive.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

Before she can, the waiter arrives again, and this time he takes a good, long look at Diane. In fact, she seems rather irritated by it, which I can't blame her for. He takes our orders, with sloppy handwriting that the chef could easily get wrong, and then goes to the lone woman's table and refills her ice water. She gives us a resentful look that I ignore – as if we're to blame for her date standing her up.

I refill Diane's glass of wine and she continues. “I narrate myself out loud, sometimes,” she admits, looking away. I can tell that people usually make fun of her for this statement and I decide to be a friend – to not even smile. This encourages her. “Like I'm in a movie,” she adds.

“How interesting,” I say, playing the role of the writer. “Any old situation, or frustrating ones?”

“Any old. But I narrate myself like I'm in a horror movie,” she notes, and then her confidence drops off a bit, and I can see her search my face for any hint of malicious amusement. I give her none.

“Fun,” is my reply. “I do love horror movies. So much. Do you have any big favorites?”

Diane's face lights up, as if I've turned a switch on, and she sits up straighter in her seat. “Any of the Jason movies, or Saw, or Japanese horror movies – they're good too.”

“Have you ever seen Silence of the Lambs?” I ask her.

“That's another good one,” she grins, and takes a long sip of white wine.

“It's my favorite.” I considered her: enthused, alive. There's no trace of the tired and bedraggled woman who slunk in, late to what she perceived as a blind date. “What role are you playing in your narrations, if I may ask?”

Her answer is important, though she has no idea.

“The killer, always,” she laughs quietly. “People give me weird looks. But it's how I get through the day. It's, well, fun.”

I nod, smiling back. “It's a unique road to happiness, but if it works, it works, right?”

She's about to reply – agree, from her expression – when the waiter returns with a tray, and our food, which smells heavenly by now. It's been seven hours since I let myself eat anything. We're silent for a few minutes as we start into the ravioli and lasagna, and during that time the lone woman walks out – her eyes red and cheeks puffy – and the gentleman in gym clothes leaves. Our sole company now is the shifty-looking man, who has started a new cigar; he continues to ignore us completely.

“I tried out for a film last week,” Diane notes, a quarter of the way into her dinner. “It was a romantic comedy. I usually try to stick to horror, but I thought, well, why not?”

“And?”

“Escorted out, as usual,” she grumbles, her face darkening a little. “I don't really understand Hollywood. How can you possibly try out for these people? They never give you a chance. It's always 'leave now' or 'you really don't fit the part at all.'”

I nod, slicing a ravioli in half with my fork. “Hollywood is full of it,” I agree – pretend to agree – and take a sip of wine. Diane's had two glasses. I'm still on my first, and she hasn't noticed yet. “Tell you what,” I continue, “I never thought I'd meet someone else as into horror movies as I am, but I'm meeting some people pretty late this evening. We're doing a mock-up of a horror picture – you know, someone pretends to be the killer, and there are victims, and we just have fun.”

Her face is disbelieving at first. I'd like to think that it's because I'm a man, approaching middle age, who still does roleplaying and craziness late at night. But I know she's a night owl, and I know she couldn't possibly pass this up.

“Would you be interested?” I ask her.

“Um, I guess,” she says, cautious. “What's it like?”

“Well – we have this vague script, and my friend, Ben, gave me his key.” I pull a key out of my front pocket to show her that I'm not full of it. “So we let ourselves in, and I have some wet rags in my car that we pretend to chloroform them with, and then one of them wakes up and screams and we chase her. It's all in good fun. I bet it sounds pretty weird and silly, though, right?”

Since I was so accepting of her quirky habits, I can tell she wants to be equally as accepting to mine, and she clearly struggles for a minute. And then she says, “No. Not at all. I've just never heard of people doing that before.”

“Oh, yeah. Well the neighbors hate us, but I say, who cares? It's fun.”

Now it's her third glass of wine, and she's finished her food, and she looks pretty happy. “Okay. I totally want to be in on this,” she laughs. “What's the address? Although – I've had so much to drink, I'll have to walk or something.”

I know she lives within walking distance, too. “It's just up the street here. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes on foot.” I show her the address, and then she nods, recognizing the cross-streets.

“Oh! Sure. Cool.” She giggles. “Who gets to be the killer?”

“Well, I figure that we are. We can be a team. You up for it?”

Her face clouds for a moment, as she digests what I just said, and then she sighs. “I work alone,” she notes, shaking her head. She then quirks one side of her lips up, awkwardly attempting to make it a joke.

“Maybe I can be the guy who stumbles in on you, and then you can knife me to silence me?” I suggest, smiling, and she nods enthusiastically.

“That sounds brilliant.”

“It's a date, then.”

“Definitely.” Diane looks at me, grinning, and the affection is still there. “You're pretty cool, Walter. How is it that you're still single?”

I shrug. “I don't settle down easily. And then there's my quirks. Most women don't take the whole 'murder party' thing very well. I thought you were going to run screaming out the restaurant when I told you.”

She giggles again. “And I thought you were going to do that, when I said that I narrate myself.”

Our plates are taken away, and then I offer to pay for dinner, and she accepts. I know that it's because she has no money, can't hold a job, and lives off of date food, but I keep that information to myself. There's no need for her to know. When she's distracted, I take a look at her wallet, which is still open from when she pretended to have enough money to pay. Her license says DIANE ROWLEY KRUGER, she's thirty-one, and the license is from Maine.

“You know what, Walter?” she asks, when the waiter leaves after he's taken my credit card. I smile and look at her.

“Mmhm?”

“I think all those women who ran away screaming should be shot.”

For anyone else, her statement would be either endearing or vaguely alarming, and my reaction teeters on the edge of both before it finds something else—smug satisfaction. “Well, thank you, Diane.”

We stroll through the streets, an unlikely pair. I'm no looker, you see, and Diane is exceptionally pretty – and dressed to the nines. She hangs on my arm like I'm her husband or lover, occasionally looking up at me with a narrow smile. I have to admit to myself, I enjoy the leisurely walk to Ben's apartment. Since we have an hour to kill, we stop in the nearby park on the way, even though it's very late and probably not entirely safe.

The park is barely lit, and only on its sidewalks. It looks like a graveyard. Even the old play equipment, in the shadows, looks like mausoleum statues.

“It's a pretty night,” Diane remarks offhandedly, disengaging from me to root through her purse. She pulls out her cell phone and inspects the screen, which displays a text message. I only see the first part (WHERE ARE Y) before she puts it back in her purse.

“Very,” I agree, and she puts herself back on my arm. We continue up the street, to the apartment, when the park looks too creepy even for us. Old city parks in LA have that effect, especially in an area which should have more people around. But everything is ghostly quiet and, hence, surreal.

Ben's apartment is 3A. I turn to Diane as we approach, keeping a grin on my face and pulling the damp rags out of my pockets. I hand them to her, and she sniffs them, then looks at me in oddly honest surprise.

“That's real chloroform,” she says.

I nod, and then shrug when she continues to eye me. “It makes it more real,” I chuckle. “Anyway, it's just for pretend. Only put it in front of their faces for a few seconds, otherwise they could really pass out.”

“Sure.” She looks vaguely nervous by this and then, suddenly, her nerves vanish and she grins. “This is going to be fun.”

“Go in when it's exactly midnight,” I instruct, and she pulls out her cell phone for the time. “That way, they know everything is according to plan. Here.”

I hand her a wooden knife, which has silly fake blood all over it, and she giggles very quietly.

“Sweet,” is her only comment, and she puts it in her purse. And then she takes off her gloves, adding, “These aren't very serious, for my part.”

“In ten minutes after, or when I hear loud screaming, I'll come in. Got it?”

“Yeah. Walter?”

“Mmhm?”

“Thanks for including me,” she says, with that same affection again, and goes up onto her tip-toes and attempts to kiss me. I back away, one step, which throws her a little off-balance. She frowns. “Sorry, was that too forward?”

I hope that she can't see the sweat on my forehead, and hide my shaking hands in my coat's pockets. “A little,” I agree.

We watch her phone in awkward silence as the minutes tick away, and then midnight comes. She slips into the apartment. When she does, even though she turns her back to me, I can see that the wooden knife's pale handle is not what she withdraws. It's something black, and one of the rags.

The moon is intense overhead as I listen, but, for ten minutes, the house is quiet. And then – finally – comes the yelling, and the screaming of Ben's fiance, Juniper. I go in through the door. The apartment already smells strongly of chloroform.

The wooden knife is on the floor of the living room area, lit by the moon through the slatted window. I look at it, thinking about the play set that it was from – my daughter's kitchen set, so long ago. I drop something next to it, an envelope that has been in my pocket for nearly two years.

It's real blood that has spilled across one of the hallway walls; the pictures that hung on it are crumpled and crushed on the floor, as though someone knocked them off, and then someone else stepped on them. The yelling and the screaming stops.

I open the bedroom door all of the way, but not before withdrawing something crucial from my pocket: my handgun, the black tool of my authority tonight.

Ben is laying on the bed, Juniper on the floor, both of them already cut to ribbons, and standing next to them – shaking – is Diane.

She looks up at me, her eyes gleaming, and for a second I see triumph. And then she sees the gun in my hand, and her face is all confusion. Finally, as she puts things together, all I can see is resentment.

“You found me. How?”

“Well, Heather,” I begin, using her real name, “you weren't too easy to find, but I did find your mother and your sister. You still keep up with them – I was surprised. They knew you were in LA, and they'd received a letter recently that said you were dating through the newspaper. You wanted to be old-fashioned, they said. So I put together something that I thought you might like, though there were many people I found that weren't you. But tonight, it was all worth it. You found me.”

She takes a step towards me, and I assert the gun forward, and she stops. Then, abruptly, she starts to shake even more.

“That tells me nothing!” she shrieks. “You found me! How! How did you know it was me?”

“Please. You've been displaying your craziness to everyone you've been dating, and Hollywood casting directors, and you left your original Florida ID at your last crime scene. I got there before the police did.” I shake my head. “Heather, you've been a bad girl. And sloppy, too. Your trail ends here, before anyone else gets hurt.”

Heather's confusion returns as she looks down. “These... are your... friends?”

“No, I've never met them. I found Ben's key under the mat when I was scoping out a place to meet you. I read their mail, and listened through the window once when I was bored. That was two years ago now. I doubt they even remember the key that disappeared.” I shrug at her, to display my neutrality in the matter, and she laughs.

“You're just as bad as me. Leading lambs to the slaughter like this. I was going to kill you for being such a stupid man, giving me victims. What is this for? Feeding your own obsession? Is this why you wanted to team up?”

I bare a grin at her. She stops talking, and looks vaguely alarmed as I tighten my grip on the gun.

Justice bares a grin at her.

“This is for Allison Campimone,” I say, and then I shoot her – twice. Once in each leg. She screams, and I hear the neighbors downstairs, scrambling for the phone. “Rot in prison, and hopefully death row, Heather.”

I leave.

She screams at me, but I don't listen, and I go back down to the park and sit on one of the swings. These are swings that my daughter would have loved. But she's dead, now, just like Heather will be in maybe a year or so, and I feel peaceful and content as police cars lurch past the park. She will be in too much pain to escape, and the envelope in the living room has all of my research in it. There is nothing that she can do.

Content at last, I put the muzzle into my mouth, and think, Well done, Wally Campimone.

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