Chapter I
You can never be killed in your dreams. No matter how horrible the dream, you always survive whatever has threatened you. Real life, well that’s different. There are myriad ways you can die, some caused by your own actions, others by the actions of someone else and still others by no action by anyone, just bad, dumb luck.
I am a mystery writer. In my case, that has a double-edged meaning: I write mystery books or I write books that few people read and so I remain a “mystery” to all but my family, friends and small coterie of readers.
In any event, I have become expert (thank you Google) in the many ways people can die. I kill them off frequently in my line of work. Not for real, of course. But no matter. If it’s not you or a loved one, death today is quite impersonal. It all seems like fiction because it bombards you from all directions, hour by hour, in a torrent of streaming internet and social media headlines. My name is Simon Crandell. I’m discussing this with my long-time best friend, Jeffrey Muss. We are sitting in the kitchen in his parents’ house in Brooklyn while his mother, Barbara, a surrogate mother to me, is making us sandwiches to eat (as if we’re still the little and then big children she once hovered over). Jeff is her only child and, in every good sense of the word, she is the prototype of the helicopter mom. She has three full-time jobs – wife, mother and social worker in the NYC Administration for Children’s Services – and, as far as I can tell, performs them all to perfection. Wish she were my real mom, but it is what it is.
It’s not unusual for Jeff and me to meet here, although more often, when we see each other, it’s in my house, his apartment or a bar or restaurant somewhere. Tonight Jeff is visiting his parents before we’re to meet up with his girlfriend, Kristina, so we’re back where we both spent many a happy day, in the warm embrace of his boyhood home.
We are discussing my books and I’ve been explaining to Jeff how hard it is to come up with different ways to kill off my victims. And to keep it interesting, since just about every means possible has already been written by others. “Fetanyl,” I say to Jeff, in the manner that “plastics” was suggested to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” “that will be my next method of murder.”
“I keep hearing about the opioid crisis and fentanyl. What the hell is fentanyl?” Jeff asks.
“I’ve researched it,” I respond. “It’s a synthetic drug 100 times stronger than morphine and way stronger than heroin. Even a dose the size of the head of a pin can kill you.”
“So who prescribes this shit, what type of crazy doctors?”
“The stuff killing people is not obtained through prescriptions but online from China or through cartel-related drug dealers. The ingredients to make it are readily available overseas and the fentanyl comes in many forms, mostly powder, patches or pills.”
“Enough,” interjects Barbara, as she places triple-tiered cold cut sandwiches in front of us. “You boys are about to eat. And I’m joining you. Let’s not spoil the food by continuing this morbid dissertation.”
“I don’t ‘dissertate.’ Just maybe pontificate,” I jokingly reply, smart-aleck that I am. “But I enthusiastically endorse the recommendation that we defer to the food.”
As we gobble down our sandwiches, chattering in between swallows, Jeff is “pinged.” Seems to me, we used to take great joy in fucking as much as possible. Now, we seem to take even greater pleasure in being constantly “pinged.” In fucking, most of us tend to be monogamous, or at least serially monogamous. But in “pinging,” we can be “pinged” by multiple people repeatedly with no sense of guilt. It’s amazing that the joy of fucking, a “hands on” interaction so to speak, is being superseded by “pinging,” an interaction that actually is insular in nature. But I digress.
“It’s Kristina. Time to go,” Jeff says to me as he abruptly rises from his chair at the kitchen table, still chomping on his last mouthful of food. He hugs his mom and hastily makes his exit. “Say goodbye to dad for me. I don’t have time. Kristina is waiting for us.”
And, on that note, we depart.
Chapter V
Charlotte’s sister, Donna, awakes with a start, popping up from her sleep like a jack in the box when the lid is lifted. She’d been on a date last night but has no clear memory of it.
In its place, is the very bad dream from which she has just awoken. The dream, she believes, must be connected to last evening, but she can’t imagine how. It’s so grotesque.
In the dream, a man and woman hold hands as they walk home from a movie. Not a typical date movie, but horror movies are back in vogue and the man has chosen it because it’s an appropriate touch for the evening he has in mind for the person he’s with. He’s thinking how free and liberated he feels, as his fingers touch the handle of the gravity knife in his pants pocket. As the couple strolls hand-in-hand along a side street, his grip tightens on the knife as he starts to slide it from his pocket. It’s waiting to be used and he’s eager to accommodate it.
Just then, a voice calls out from the shadows. The man jerks involuntarily, staring at the figure six feet away stepping towards them. “Do you have money for some food?” the disheveled stranger asks as he approaches, a beggar’s hand turned palm upward. “I lost my job and am living on the streets. Anything you can spare to help tide me over is appreciated.”
An inadvertent, growling sound catches in the man’s throat. His moment has been interrupted, his opportunity not seized. He quickens his pace as he walks away from the homeless person without responding. His date can barely keep up.
“Slow down. There’s no danger,” his date says. He does not respond. He’s too angry, too frustrated, he has to get control of himself. He’s come too close to revealing himself without result. He takes a deep breath and slows down, smoothing his hair as he forces a smile to his lips. “You’re right. I don’t know why I got so upset. There’s no reason to spoil our evening.” He has caged himself for the moment, but the lock no longer needs a key and he can come and go as he pleases. He can wait for tomorrow to come.
Donna is unsettled. Yes, by the dream, which lingers in her mind, leaving her off balance, feeling both threatened and protected at the same time. For some reason, she identifies with the man in her dream, almost thinks he’s supposed to be her. But how can that be? It makes no sense.
Even more troubling is that last night is almost completely blacked out from her memory. She remembers who she went out with, of course, and a movie, but that’s all. Did she drink too much or do drugs? For a variety of reasons, she isn’t about to call her boyfriend to ask what they did.
She doesn’t even know why she went out with him again. Their relationship has deteriorated beyond any possibility of salvage. He’s become increasingly abusive, verbally and physically, as his alcohol consumption has gone out of control, swelling his gut and clouding his judgment. She had vowed to end things, to not see him anymore. So why did she agree to go out with him again last night? Is she that needy? It’s a six-month relationship whose time is up. # Time’s Up Donna.
For reasons known only to the gods (or God, depending on one’s beliefs), Donna is the polar opposite of Charlotte. She’s not beautiful, far from it: she has a horse-shaped face with a prominent nose, narrow lips, close-set eyes and a noticeable chin. Her figure is pear-shaped, somewhat large at the hips and small in the chest. Donna is bookish, shy, kind and caring. All her life, Charlotte’s beauty has cast a dark shadow over Donna, causing her to be barely seen by her parents and those around her.
The Houghton family wealth has had a different effect on Donna than it has had on Charlotte. Not wanting for anything money can buy, instead of a series of boyfriends, Donna has had a series of causes: protect the environment, end all wars, feed the homeless, educate the poor. After graduating Harvard with honors, she became and is a teacher in a public school in the Bronx (although living in a three-bedroom, mortgage-free upper west side condo).
Like Charlotte, Donna goes to a therapist, but only recently and for a different reason. She blacks out from time to time and wakes up with only partial recollection of an evening or a day. These blackouts have increased in frequency and a spate of medical tests have found nothing that is physically wrong. In desperation, Donna has even undergone hypnosis, the result of which is the possibility that someone might have physically abused her when she was very young. Much more probing (medical and psychological) needs to be done before the cause of Donna’s blackouts can be identified with certainty and the problem can begin to be resolved.
Donna has always been resentful of the attention heaped on Charlotte and that resentment, coupled with Charlotte’s narcissism and sense of entitlement, has prevented Donna and Charlotte from establishing a close relationship. As kind and caring as Donna is, those qualities do not extend towards her dealings with Charlotte, who, meaning to or not, has always made Donna feel inferior and unloved.
Her present course of psychotherapy doesn’t seem to be helping eliminate, or even abate, her memory lapses. She’s frightened. But paradoxically, at the same time, she has an inner sense that her blackouts are not all bad, that something is happening during that time that might actually be beneficial for her, if she could only come to understand what that is and why she’s losing memory. And why she so strongly identifies with the man in her dream, shares his feelings, not just empathetically, but as if she were he, shares his urge to kill someone, not just anyone, but someone close to him. There’s something tenaciously gnawing inside her unconscious that she senses has made its way close to the surface. She’s confident that when whatever it is bursts free, into her consciousness, she will be the better for it, and that that will be very soon. One thing Donna does understand: if she were the type of person who could kill someone, it would be Charlotte.