“I think you killed him,” Patricia hissed.

She had considered it dumb luck that she had found G-zee, or that she had recognized him, or that he hadn’t recognized her. She considered it good luck that he had been so easy to seduce or that she had been able to feel turned-on after all the enforced treatments. However, it was hands-down the worst luck that Linda had popped his head like the white part of a zit.

Linda dropped the gun beside the splattery pulp of G-zee’s head and toed his hand on top of it so that it looked like he might have gripped the thing.

“Suicide,” Linda announced gravely.

Patricia stood up, swiping at the remains and smearing it about her naked self. “Well, I guess true love really can’t last in this world.”

“Sorry,” Linda mumbled, carefully examining her dirty shoes rather than staring openly at Patricia’s nudity.

Patricia shrugged and turned on the facet. “S’okay, he wasn’t going to last much longer with me anyway. Mostly I was just glad— well. S’okay.”

Linda had not missed the way Patricia cut herself off. It was the first time in Linda’s memory that Patricia had ever done such a thing, and Linda had a very good memory. “I’m glad he hadn’t killed you either.”

“Killed me?” Patricia laughed. “He was so small, we all knew the only one at-risk for death was him!”

“He was a murder, proven on two counts.”

“How’d you find that out?” Patricia asked, pretending to have some sort of wide-eyed innocence about it.

She hadn’t been oblivious to Linda’s not-cell phone, and there were too many things about Linda that made perfect sense in a certain line of reasoning which was mostly unreasonable if there wasn’t a shred of doubt about Linda’s life as a bank teller.

“He killed my sister,” Linda half-lied. She had always considered Sandra a sister, at any rate.

Patricia was silent, washing off G-zee’s material and ruminating on whether or not to call Linda out on her bluff. She decided against it. Things would be more entertaining if she tested Linda’s ability to create a story and stick to the original plot-line.

“I’m so sorry, Linda,” Patricia said, wringing every bit of earnestness from her reserves and managing a few tears even. “It must have felt so good to finally bring him to justice—“

“That wasn’t justice,” Linda popped out before she could stop herself.

Patricia turned slowly from the sink, struggling against her self from letting loose a triumphant “aha!” at Linda’s obvious show. It was easier when she saw that Linda was once again staring at her shoes. “What’s that mean?”

“Clothes,’ Linda mumbled, deftly ignoring the real question.

Patricia went on with it. “Oh shit, I forgot. Must have slipped back to my nudist days, I used to be a nudist, remember?” Patricia moved about the kitchen, passing around Linda and brushing against her on purposeful accident. “Feels like it was a whole third lifetime ago, but I still do stuff like this, like forget that I’m not a nudist anymore, or that I’m just a bank teller. Maybe my life is actually just some giant circle where I keep doing the same stuff over and over again, but just maybe a little different. I mean, I hope I’ve changed a little in all this circling I do, like gotten wiser about it all or something.”

Linda looked over at G-zee, a little bit jealous that he didn’t have to hear Patricia right now. “We have to clean up.”

“Wouldn’t have had to if it weren’t for you and your trigger-happy,” Patricia grumbled looking down at the mess. “You really killed him.”

“I did,” Linda agreed.

Her voice was steady, steel-tight, and betrayed no swirl of the stomach or cold sweat threatening to burst out along her forehead. It wasn’t the first time she had killed, but it would be the first time she would show no sign of any weak emotion.

But her eyebrow twitched. Linda knew all of the shame, guilt, terror, and whatever the hell other emotions English had no name for, would crack into her and she would be utterly useless once again. Most likely when she would need to be the most useful, since Linda was a firm believer in Murphy’s law.

“You okay?” Patricia asked, staring intently at Linda.

Linda’s eyes had gone milky and she stared at the wall as though she were on LSD and staring at a psychedelic poster. Which, for all Patricia knew, Linda could be on LSD.

Linda shuddered, but then came back to herself. “Let’s get this done with. I want my bra back.”