Kissing Corpses (2 page)

I consider myself to be pretty pale; I have fair skin with a lot of random freckles and moles. Add dark eyes and dark hair and the contrast makes me look like a sheet of copy paper. Add blood and dirt, and I look like a corpse.

The shower made me feel human again, washing away the drippy mascara and flecks of dried blood from the night before. I stood under the hot water, letting it pound on my neck and loosen up the muscles, which were bound-up from stress and the recoil of being struck with a heavy metal object.

When I came out of the bathroom, Geneva had fixed me a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup.

“You need real food, not just coffee.”

“I had cereal.”

“Yeah, like eight hours ago. Eat this.” She handed me the food and marched off to her room to get ready. She must have been going out again.

“Are you sure you don't need me to stay?” she asked, thirty minutes later when my meal was gone and she was all dolled up for a date. Her fashion sense was shaped by years of going to renaissance fairs; she was overweight, so she shoved it all in a corset and pushed it up towards her breasts. It seemed to work.

“I'm sure. I'm fine. Go. Have fun with... Jamie?”

“Jeremy. Jamie was his friend. Oh!” she exclaimed, “I can set you up. Double date!”

“No, really, that's fine.”

“Still hung up on Cody?”

“No!” I snapped. “Just... go have fun. I don't want to be set up with some bro.”

“Alright. Because, you know, you dumped him. I bet if you called, he'd come running right now.”

“I don't want to talk about Cody, Geneva.”

“Fair enough.” Geneva pulled a tube of lip gloss out of her purse and applied it liberally. “How's your head?”

“Better. Not great.”

A horn beeped outside.

“That's Jeremy!”

“He doesn't come knock?” I asked.

“No need; he knows I'm waiting.” She gave me a big, smothering hug and then ran out the front door, slamming it behind her. I got up to lock the deadbolt. Normally, we left our doors unlocked; it was downtown Cheyenne. The crime rate was pretty low compared to almost every other city in the world. The night before had taught me that even Cheyenne had desperation. I turned the deadbolt and then walked to the front window. The sun was setting, casting an orange filter over everything outside. Jeremy's white Mustang was parked under a streetlamp. Geneva's glossy brown hair bounced and swayed with her excitement as she practically skipped across the street.

I turned from the window and went back to the sofa. I had spent the day feeling sorry for myself, but now I was becoming bored.

I flipped through our Netflix queue for a while before settling on a documentary about Jack the Ripper. They showed photographs of the victims, some of the first crime scene photography in history, and debunked the rumor about a chest of bloody crevats kept by one of the Ripper suspects. The bell rang. I paused the movie.

“Did you forget your keys?” I called as I headed back to the door. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the front door. A man was standing on the front steps.

He was tall and thin with an angular face, blonde hair, and blue eyes. His face, pale as it was, was clean-shaven except for neatly trimmed sideburns. He wore thick, black glasses that would have been considered hipster glasses if anything else about him at all had suggested hipster. He was dressed in a perfectly-tailored suit. It was charcoal with a thin pinstripe and complete with a white pocket-square and a chain connecting the watch in his pocket to the loop on his vest. His tie was silver paisley. I imagined that underneath his vest there would be a pair of old-fashioned suspenders, the kind that didn't have clips and needed buttons on the trousers. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had pulled up his pant leg to show me garters for his socks. The whole ensemble was completed with a navy blue wool topcoat and leather gloves.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Hello,” he said. The British accent brought back memories of the night before and I clapped in excitement at my realization.

“It's you!”

“Yes, it's me,” he said with an almost imperceptable smirk. “I came to see how you were doing, Miss Harker. I had to take off rather early, had somewhere to be, but I wanted to make sure that you were recovering well from your injury last night. You weren't exactly.... lucid, the last I saw you.”

He knew my name. I must have told him, but I had no memory of it. I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, headache like nothing I've ever felt before, but I'm alive. No brain damage that I know of.”

“That's good to hear,” he said.

I stared at him for a moment, wondering what to say next. Geneva's voice echoed in my ears.
Was he cute?
Definitely. He probably would have been cuter without those enormous glasses. He stood there, politely, waiting for my reply. I remembered myself. “I don't remember your name.”

“Rawdon Hale.”

“Rawdon. Wow. That's British.”

“So am I.”

“So you are. Uh... well, Rawdon. Thank you,” I said. “You may have saved my life back there. At the very least you saved me having to cancel all my credit cards and file an insurance claim on my car.”

“Insurance adjusters are a nightmare,” he said with a nod.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“I don't drink alcohol. But thank you.”

“Oh.” Was he under twenty-one? I was having a hard time pegging how old he was. He looked my age, but then again, I had only been legal to drink for two years.

“You could take me to a movie,” he suggested, “That's about the same cost as a glass of decent whiskey, right?”

Was he asking me out? I suppose I had asked him out first. But a drink had the potential to be far more casual than a movie.

“You a fan of Zack Snyder films?” I asked.

“Is that the guy who does all the action films with the one-liners and high speed shots?”

I nodded. “
300
,
Superman: Man of Steel
,
Suckerpunch.
”

“I rather liked
300
.”

I smiled. “Good. I'll get my coat.”

“Will your head permit it?” he asked. “If you don't feel well, I can take a rain check.”

“I've had 800 milligrams of Tylenol. I'll be alright.”

He stayed on the doorstep as I went to fetch my coat. I found specks of blood, evidence of the night before, on my favorite coat and had to dig in the closet for a warm-enough backup. When I came back, he offered his arm and walked me to his car. It was a frigid night. The top layer of snow outside had melted slightly in the afternoon light before freezing again at sunset, leaving a coarse layer of ice crystals that glittered under the street lights.

Rawdon's car made me realize just how wealthy he was. It was a Bentley Continental with diamond black paint and dark tinted windows. He opened the passenger-side door for me and waited until I was seated to close the door and head around to his side of the car. The interior was beige leather with red accent panels, and when he started the car, it purred quietly. I could hardly feel the engine humming below me.

“Nice car,” I said.

“There's a heater for the seat, if you'd like.” The leather interior was pretty chilly. I nodded. Within seconds my seat started to warm up.

I hardly knew him, but I figured that I was safe with Mr. Rawdon Hale. If he had any intention of robbing or raping me, he would have done it last night when I was concussed.

“Miss Harker,” he said, coming to a complete stop at a red light. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Are you from this area?”

“I'm from Denver, but we moved to Cheyenne-- Mom, Dad, Noah-- about six years ago. I went to college here.”

“Is Noah your brother?”

“Yes. He's still at UW. Sophomore.”

“So your family is close.”

I shrugged. “I'm close with Noah. I see my Mom and Dad maybe once a week. Sometimes less. I get busy.” It was quiet. The car was nearly silent when compared to my boxy, old Volvo. “You're from England,” I said, “Where in England.”

“London.”

“Oh, so you're really English.”

“Not any more than you are American.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

Rawdon pulled up to the movie theater and came around to let me out. He was really playing up the proper gentleman thing. I liked it.

The next show time was only fifteen minutes away, so I paid for the tickets and we headed in to the theater. We didn't stop for popcorn or sodas because I didn't want to miss the previews. I love movie trailers.

When the movie was over, we walked to the car, talking about our favorite scenes and most memorable visuals. Rawdon opened my door, shaking his head as he marveled at the graphics. “And to think, a hundred years ago it was torture to sit for a photograph. Now they can make a movie camera zip around you as you stab a life-like dragon in the eye. Literally anything you can imagine can be put on film. Fifty years ago the cinema had so many more limitations. Books were the only place to find real fantasy!”

I stopped without getting into the car. The past two hours with him had made me forget all about my smashed-up face and my pulsing headache. He was intelligent, cultured, well-dressed and handsome. He was everything I could ask for. It didn't seem real.

Lady Gaga started belting from my purse. I groaned. “It's my room-mate,” I explained as I pulled out my phone.

“Is that who was calling last night when you were struck?”

I nodded.

“Is that a song she likes or are you just fed up with her ringing you?”

“Oh,” I laughed. “It's her favorite song. But last night it was fitting, right?”

He smiled. “Yes. It was rather appropriate.”

I hit the accept button. Immediately my ears were assaulted by loud sobbing.

“Gen, calm down, what's wrong?”

“He's a total asshole, Kendall. He expected me to sleep with him on the second date and when I didn't he kicked me out of the house. It's freezing out here.”

“Where are you?”

Geneva gave me the nearest crossroads. I put the phone to my chest to consult with Rawdon. “My friend, Geneva, some jerk guy ditched her on a date and she's stranded.”

“Well, where is she?”

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“He might be an uncouth coward, but I was raised properly. Where are we going?”

Geneva was standing on the sidewalk with her coat pulled tight, rubbing her arms when we got there. The house across the street was dark except for the flicker of the television in one of the upstairs windows. The white mustang was parked in the drive. What kind of creep drove a girl on a date and refused to drive her home?

I got out and ran to Geneva, giving her a warm hug. It was my turn to repay the friendship. Her mascara was streaking her face and her cheeks were scarlet with cold. “Assholes die alone,” I said. “Just remember that. Come on. Get in the car.”

“Whose car is that?”

Rawdon got out and came around to open the back door for her. “Hullo,” he said, offering a gloved hand to shake. “I'm Rawdon.”

“British...” Geneva thought out loud. “Oh, you're Kendall's hunky hero!”

“I'm... excuse me?” he laughed.

“You said he was alright. He's gorgeous, Kendall. You big fat liar!”

“I'm right here.”

Geneva hopped in the back seat. Rawdon turned to me and cocked an eyebrow.

“She's got a big personality,” I explained. I was just glad that she had moved on to meddling in my love life for once. She could invent a romance for me if it stopped her from crying about that jerk Jimmy or whatever his name was.

“Oh, shit!” she said as I got into the passenger's seat. “My keys are inside.”

“I'll get them,” Rawdon said. He had just sat down behind the wheel, but he opened the door and stepped out. Rawdon took off the topcoat and the dinner jacket, stripping down to the extremely well-tailored vest and revealing a red damask panel on the back.