Killing Kate (3 page)

“I don’t like it without you,” I
tell her.  Pleasuring myself is a ritual, but one where the pleasure is forced
without Kate.  The tips of her fingers feel good and warm against me.  She
begins to move them around without me guiding her, tracing the edge of my
panties, gently touching me through them, pressing slightly, and then skimming
the sensitive spot that joins my thighs to my sex.  I can tell I’m already wet,
and I need Kate to make me come the way I haven’t in far too long.  I feel like
I might explode.

“Tell me you still need me,” she
pleads.  I look at her hovering over me.  She looks fierce and fiery.  Then I
cry out as her fingers tear away my panties and plunge inside of me.  “Tell
me!”

“I need you Kate,” I say, sobbing. 
“I need you.  I can’t feel without you.”  She smiles softly and licks her lips
and looks down at me.  I am writhing.  I want to be fucked by her.  It’s so hot
in the room, and I think all of the heat is coming from where Kate’s hand is. 
I feel two fingers push up onto that spot that only she seems to be able to
locate.  Her thumb is on my clit and rubbing gently.  She is pushing out from
inside of me and in from outside of me and I feel the heat building down
there.  Within seconds, I come, feeling my blocked energy and build up gushing
out of me.  I am sticky and warm everywhere and I don’t care.  She is good for
me.  She is my life, and I’m so happy to have her back.  I pull her toward me
until she is within me and kissing me everywhere, from my face to my thighs and
down to my toes.  I feel like I am glowing from the inside with her energy, and
I feel complete.  She makes me taste myself off of her fingers.  “I love you,”
I tell her before I drift off to sleep.

I am ready.  It is the morning of
my father’s funeral and I am well rested for the first time in a long time.  I
dress accordingly in a conservative black wrap dress that goes just above the
knee and isn’t too low cut or anything.  I am slightly tan from the sun and
choose not to wear any makeup, but I pull my hair away from my face into a high
ballerina bun because it’s scorching outside.  Luckily I am handy with a pair
of scissors and turn elbow length sleeves into sleeveless.  Jack isn’t worth
the extra step, though, and I don’t bother trying to hem or anything.  I
probably won’t be able to find sewing materials in my apartment anyway, though
I’m sure there’s a stolen sewing kit somewhere around from Appleseed.  Alicia
keeps them around for wardrobe malfunctions, which you wouldn’t think would
happen with nothing but a silver bikini inside of a cage but customers can get
creative and rough.  I wouldn’t put it past some horny drunk guy to try
something with a wire hanger.

I need to take the El downtown,
walk to Union Station and then catch a Metra train to Oakdale.  I refuse
Devin’s offer to catch a ride with him on his motorcycle because I need to be
alone in my thoughts with Kate for as long as I can before I show up to the
funeral and also because Devin’s seat isn’t padded well enough to be
comfortable enough for a long ride.  I only tell him my second reason because I
know he wouldn’t really understand the first.

Oakdale is near where I grew up and
it’s a quaint little Irish neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.  The
train station at Oakdale is quaintly decorated for Memorial Day with red white
and blue bows and lights and it’s a short four block walk down 95
^th
Street to the funeral home.  I pass by my reflection in the windows of bridal
shops, flower stores and ice cream parlors and notice that my ballerina bun
hasn’t held up very well in the heat.  Loose tendrils are sticking to my neck,
which is already wet with my own perspiration.  The digital clock at the bank
tells me it’s 86 degrees.

Devin is outside waiting for me,
looking very handsome in a suit and tie.  I know he wants to smoke and so I
open my purse and hand him my pack and we are outside silently smoking and
sitting on a bench while we watch people file inside.  We don’t know them, but we
gather from the sign outside that our father’s funeral is not the only funeral
going on.  I brought a flask, and offer it to Devin.  He gives me a look but
takes it without comment, cringing from the harsh taste of whiskey.  “How can
you drink this shit?” he asks me.  I shrug and take the flask from him and take
a long chug.  Kate is looking on at us, amused that we are getting drunk outside
of our father’s funeral and being very “classy” about it.  I can hear her
disdain in my head but she is quiet near Devin.  Devin finally puts out his
cigarette and looks at his phone.  “It’s 2:00,” he tells me.  “I guess we
should go in.”  We walk inside and suddenly I am freezing from the blast of air
conditioning.  I swear I smell embalming fluid but I’m not really sure what
that smells like.

“Hello,” says a man who is as tall
as Lurch from the Addams Family and has a soft honey voice, wearing a dark suit. 
I assume he is the funeral director.  “Who are you here to see?”

“Jack Parker,” Devin tells him. 
The man nods and leads us down a hallway to a room.  Oh, wonderful, it’s open
casket.  There are less than ten people inside the room, strewn about and
drinking coffee.  It makes me wish I’d brought some Bailey’s Irish Cream, but
in Oakdale, someone is bound to have a flask with some.

I don’t recognize anyone until a
man who is close to Devin’s and my age walks toward us.  “Hi Devin, hi Jenna,”
he says.  He looks vaguely familiar.

“Justin!” Devin exclaims and they
do the masculine thing and shake hands and simultaneously pat each other on the
back in a way that would probably make me start coughing.  Devin turns to me. 
“Jenna, do you remember Justin at all?”  He gives me a look that indicates that
I probably should remember.  “Justin Fiero?”

The name rings a bell, and suddenly
I am reminded of a moment in history.  I am probably nine or ten years old, and
we are playing street hockey, and everyone’s mom calls their children inside to
come for dinner, except ours, of course.  My memory is full of empty holes but
little triggers sometimes help.   Kate holds all of the missing pieces of the
puzzle, but she knows what is safe for me to know and what isn’t.  “Of course I
do,” I say, smiling and accepting his handshake.  He is a couple of inches
taller than Devin with about twenty more pounds of muscle.  His hair is dark
brown and spiked in front and he has an earring with a green stone in it.  The
stone matches his eyes.  I’m trying to remember what he used to look like.  “It’s
been a really long time.”

“I guess it’s been, what, fifteen
years?” Justin asks me.  “I’ve seen Devin since then but not you.  What have
you been up to, Jenna?”

“Um, not very much,” I confess. 
“In what context have you seen Devin?”  It sounds like a strange question and I
don’t really know another way to phrase it.   Thankfully, Justin laughs at my
question.

“Justin is an artist,” Devin
explains.  “He and I showed at the same gallery a year ago.”

“Oh,” I say, suddenly getting it. 
“You both probably used to deface property together with spray paint.”  They
both look sheepish which means I’m right.  We all chuckle and then somber up,
remembering where we are and how strange it seems to be laughing at a funeral. 
No one is looking our way, though, which is a good sign.  I wonder who these
people are, and decide I don’t care.  A more relevant question is why Justin is
here, but I assume he came for Devin and not Jack and I relax a bit in his
presence.  We take a seat in one of the chairs, all three of us in a row.  I
pull out my flask and offer it up to Devin and Justin but they refuse and so I
finish the contents in one long gulp, even though it’s more than half full.  I
wish I could feel drunk but I’m just numb.  I look at my dad who looks
strangely orange and waxy.  His hair is grayer than when I last saw him, which
was just over five years ago.  He had asked Devin and me if we could visit him in
prison, and I didn’t say a word to him.  Devin sat and talked to him at a table
while I just stood and looked at my shoes.  I recall Kate was there with me,
just holding on to me tightly and it felt good to have her protecting me.  “So,
what do we do?  Just sit here?”

“This is the viewing,” Justin tells
me.  “Then we drive over to Oak Hill cemetery for the actual burial.”  I look
at him quizzically and he shrugs.  “It’s on the program.”  I suddenly realize
that there’s a funeral with a process and schedule going on around me.  I must
be drunk, I think.  My head is spinning a bit.  I look back at Jack and wonder
if it could be possible that it wasn’t actually him and he was still alive
somewhere.  Probably in a bar, sitting at the end getting drunk, just like I
wanted to do.  I could walk into that same bar and sit on the other end and we
probably could just go on drinking and not even see each other but be in the
same place at the same time.  The thought gives me a chill.

“I need to go outside,” I say,
standing up.  “Excuse me.”  Both Devin and Justin stand and look concerned. 
I’m tired of people feeling sorry for me.  “Just leave me alone,” I say to
Devin.

Kate is waiting on the same bench
Devin and I were sitting on before.  No one is around, and I feel everything
begin to bubble up inside of me and lean over and vomit everything that’s in my
stomach into the bushes.  I feel better, though strangely empty, and walk away
a few steps.  I sit down next to Kate and fish inside my purse for my
cigarettes and a pack of matches and light one with shaky hands.  “Justin lived
on the same block as you,” she told me.  “His mom used to cook Italian food by
the bucket and you and Devin would go there for dinner.  She was short and fat with
white hair and red cheeks and always wore green shoes.”

“Okay,” I say, remembering her from
Kate’s description.  We sit in silence and I smile.  “He used to walk me to my
classes in high school sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Kate agrees.  “He was
nice.  Kind of shy, but so were you.”

Justin walks out and sits next to
me.  “Are you okay?” he asks.  I nod, inhaling the smoke deeply.  “I decided to
come out and make sure.  Devin seemed to need some time to himself with your
dad.”  Although I have no idea why Devin would care, I nod.  “You shouldn’t
smoke.”

“I shouldn’t do a lot of things,” I
say.  I look at him and see he is likely teasing me with a slight smile on his
face.  “I definitely shouldn’t come to funerals of people who treated me like
shit.”  Justin nods and doesn’t say anything.  “I mean, he was a fucking
asshole to Devin, too.”  I don’t want to focus on myself right now; I’m feeling
too much.  “So what about you?” I ask.  “What have you been up to?”

“I’m a wedding photographer by day
and a starving artist by night,” Justin says.  “The photography pays my bills. 
The art is what keeps me getting up in the morning.”  He turns on the bench a
bit, shifting away from me but facing his body toward me.  It’s more
conversational than sitting side by side and staring straight ahead.  “What
about you?”

“I’m a cage dancer at the
Appleseed,” I blurt out.  “It’s a club over by Rush and Division, you know,
where all of the Trixies and Douchebags hang out.  I have no talent or skill to
speak of so it pays the bills and gives me someplace to be so I don’t just stay
home drunk in my shitty apartment.”

Justin gives a half smile that could
pass for a smirk.  “I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t like to see that. 
Clothing optional?”

“You can wear what you want,” I
tell him.  “I’m mostly unclothed.”

“I don’t even know how to respond
to that.”

“Most people don’t,” I say.  “You
could add it to your list of things to lecture me about.  Smoking and cage
dancing.  I’m also a heavy drinker.”

“Most south side Irish are,” Justin
says.  Devin walks outside, as well as some other people.  It seems the viewing
is over.  A man walks up to us in a crisp, dark grey pinstriped suit that looks
incredibly expensive and well-tailored.

“Jenna Parker?  My name is Drake
Carroll.  I’m so sorry about your father.”  He takes my hand and holds it
between his.  They are dry and rough and strangely cold in the heat.  His shirt
is dark crimson and he wears no tie, which makes me wonder if he’s a member of
the mafia or something.

“Er, thank you,” I stutter.  He is
probably in his mid-thirties and extremely handsome in a smooth and masculine
sense of the word.  I’ve heard Devin described as “pretty” by other girls
before, and I would say Justin could probably take holding on the word “cute”,
but I feel handsome is really reserved for men of Drake Carroll’s stature.  In
fact, the more I take him in, the more I would associate the word “gorgeous” or
“perfect”.  He has dark blonde hair and light brown eyes with heavy lashes that
remind me of the word “drapes”.  They are strangely much darker than his blonde
hair and I wonder if mascara is involved.  He has the most chiseled face I’ve
ever seen and is staring at me as though he can read my thoughts.  His chin is
strong and his jawline is square and perfectly shaved.  I wonder if he is one
of those people that go to the barber shop for a straight razor shave.  He
looks manicured from head to toe.

Drake Carroll glances at Devin. 
“My condolences for your loss,” he says to us.  “And a pleasure meeting you.” 
He puts a stress on the word “pleasure” that sounds out of place.  He puts some
dark Ray Ban sunglasses on and walks toward a black Mercedes Benz and gets in
and drives away.

“What the fuck just happened?” asks
Devin.