Page 12 of The Death Row Club
His hands are slender, fingers long. For the first time in a long time, I find myself yearning for a pencil to draw them. When he pulls back, his warmth remains embossed on my skin. “Don’t feel too bad,” he says. “They came close to running me out of town before I learned how to handle them.”
“Yeah, they can be awful.” I don’t want to acknowledge whatthey’ve been saying about me, but at the same time, I’m worried about him believing any of it’s true. “For the record, I had no idea what my father was. All the terms experts use to describe… serial killers.” Even now, the word burns the inside of my mouth like bleach. “Antisocial, manipulative, controlling, whatever. None of those match my dad.”
“Mine neither. But you know what? I’ve had years to conduct research, and I’ve discovered that all serial killers have one thing in common.”
“What’s that?”
He leans forward, stares straight into my eyes. “They always choose drinks with those little plastic swords stuck through the cherry.”
“What?”
“Little plastic swords. I grew up in a bar, and my dad kept all these containers of garnish picks behind the counter. There were the little plastic swords and the ones with the frill tops and, of course, the umbrellas. I’m betting you’re an umbrella girl, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, even though I’ve never really stopped to consider garnish picks.
“Right, me too. Well, I would always pick the umbrella and use it as a shield, and he would skewer the shit out of that thing with his little plastic sword, and I’m like, oh my god, I should’ve known then that he would murder seven people in cold blood.”
He’s clearly joking, but I can’t help thinking back to the last time my dad and I drank together. Had he used a little plastic sword?
“Oh, and—” he says, as if just remembering another one, “serial killers all give their pets human names.”
“Human names?”
“Yeah, like Kevin or Linda. Who names their petLinda?” He jabs a finger against his tray table. “My dad, that’s who. Made our crestedgecko sound like a chain-smoking secretary from Toledo whose husband took everything in the divorce. Just what a third grader needs at show-and-tell.”
Holy shit, he’s right. “We had a dog named Robert when I was little.”
“See? And, let me guess, your dad didn’t want you to call him Bobby or Bobo or anything like that.”
He didn’t. Whenever I tried, he’d take Robert by the paws, and hold them up so he balanced on his hind legs. “Look at this face,” he’d say, and I would stare into Robert’s bewildered eyes. “Is this the face of a Bobby, or is this the face of aRobert?” He’d say the name with profound gravitas, even though Robert was a toy poodle with fluffy leg warmers and a pom-pom tail. Robert would yip, tongue lolling out of his mouth, and I could only assume that meant he did indeed want to be called Robert.
Grief rushes over me—not for Robert, but for my father. Most days, it’s like he’s dead. I’ll walk down the hallway, past his bedroom, and peer in at the rumpled sheets on his mattress. I don’t have the heart to change them because they’ll never be that way again: tangled up at the end, where his toes caught in the fabric, smelling like stale night sweat. It’s not just coming home to an empty house, though. All the little peculiarities that made himhimwere stripped away when he was rechristened the Ellicott Creek Ripper. In that moment, he was transformed from my father into something else, something inhuman.
But when Zach talks about our parents like this, it’s almost like he’s not gone at all.
I swallow the tightness in my throat. “Okay, favorite band. We’ll go together. Count of three. One… Two…”
“America,” we both say at the same time, and then we can’t help it; we burst out laughing. One of the passengers in the next row scowlsat us, and my levity fizzles out like a sparkler dunked into a plastic water bucket. I reach for the strings of my hoodie and yank them a little tighter. Zach, however, doesn’t seem to notice.
“What was his favorite song? Mine liked ‘Lonely People.’?”
“?‘Ventura Highway.’?”
“We’ll need to ask the others.” He checks the map on the back of the seat; our plane’s suspended over Montana. “I’ll bet Connor’s mom was a ‘Muskrat Love’ person.”
“His mom?”
His eyebrow lifts. “Wow, you just assumed everyone’s incarcerated parent was male? How’s that for internalized misogyny. I expected better from you, Nic. Can I call you Nic?”
“Sure.” My stomach flutters. Not because of any physical attraction but because he sees me as worthy of a nickname. Nicknames imply friendship, don’t they? Is that what’s happening here?
The refreshment cart rattles down the aisle, stopping next to our row. “Cranberry juice,” he orders, “for both of us.” As soon as the flight attendant disappears, he unzips his bag and removes two miniature bottles of vodka, dumping one into his cup and the other into mine. “I don’t have any plastic swords, but I don’t think we’re the kind of people who need them.” Instead, he produces two slightly smooshed umbrellas, opening the pink one and sticking it into my drink.
There was a time, right after Claire’s death, when I read and watched everything I could about serial killers. I mentally sort through their mug shots and, one by one, attempt to superimpose Zach’s features over theirs. Who’s his father? I’ve picked up on some clues already: owned a bar, high-profile enough to attract significant media attention, and if Zach’s on this connecting flight, maybe from the Midwest. But that’s not enough for me to determine his parentage. I consider asking him outright, but then realize that might be considered rude.
When I can’t match him to a mug shot, I start looking for something else in his face: a similarity to mine. It’s not that I think being related to a serial killer leaves you with a physical mark, a black dot or something; it’s more that I’m wondering if there’s a glint in the eyes, a hardness in the smile, a ghostlike battle scar that proves we’re the same. The way siblings, even ones who look nothing alike, sometimes catch sight of each other and feel like they’re gazing into a mirror.
“To new friends,” he says. He’s plopped a blue umbrella into his own drink, and the two crinkle together as the rims of our cups touch.
