Page 43 of A Love Most Fatal
Reading glasses? Vanessa Morelli doesn’t have perfect vision?
She wears a hoodie I see her in sometimes, oversized and faded with BOSTON across the chest, and the tiniest pair of shorts that I avoid looking at. Vanessa pulls a blanket across her bare legs.
“Do you like this movie?” She nods at the TV.
“Of course.” The second movie is not the best of the franchise by any means, but it might be in my top four. “It’s pure fun. We meet Roman and Tej who are basically unrecognizable from their characters by number seven.”
She looks me over like it’s a surprise to hear that a 30 year old man would be interested in the most iconic racing and action franchise of the last two decades. I was seven when the first one came out, it was like my bible.
“It is,” she says, and looks back at the TV.
We watch for a while, me chewing bites of my cold pizza and her resting her head on her propped-up fist. It’s something to do, and it makes me feel less lonely even if it’s Vanessa I’m sitting with.
“Have you been comfortable here?” Vanessa asks after another twenty minutes of the movie quietly playing from the screen. Her voice startles me from the warm quiet that enveloped us.
“I’ve been comfortable,” I say, then shrug.
“What is it?”
“No, I mean, I am comfortable. You have a wonderful home.” The nicest house I’ve ever seen in person, with collectiblesdisplayed on shelves like I might display little Lego sets, and astaff. It’s not a house so much as it is an Architectural Digest home tour. The video would be called something like “Inside Vanessa Morelli’s Stunning Boston Estate” and Vanessa would lead the tour with aplomb and humble charisma.
“The bed is great,” I add.
Vanessa rolls her eyes. “But what?”
“But what, what? I said I like it.”
“No, you said you were comfortable. That’s not?—”
“I’m bored,” I say before she can pick apart my response more. Her pretty little mouth rounds into an O. “Out of my fuckingmindbored. I haven’t chilled this much since middle school and even then, my mom had me in summer basketball leagues.”
“You want to play basketball?”
“Well, maybe,” I say. “I’ve just been sitting around. All day. I haunt your house, eat your food, and bother your mom?—”
“You’ve been helping her in the garden,” she corrects. “She loves it.”
“There’s only so much gardening to be done. It’s not a farm, Vanessa.”
Vanessa crosses her arms over her chest, a gesture that’s becoming a familiar sign of her thinking. “What then? Do you want an XBOX? What’s a hobby you’ve been dying to get into but felt like you never had time for or couldn’t afford? Just say?—”
“No, like I’m thinking about applying for a job.” Though the offer of getting into a hobby free of charge is tempting.
“Isn’t it your summer break? Why do you want to work during your break?”
“It is, but I usually travel a little and go down to Connecticut and help my dad with his bookkeeping for two months.”
“You want to do my books?”
This is very much not what I meant—for one, I don’t want to be culpable of any of her money laundering schemes or whatever it is she does. “No, that was just an example; Icando books.”
“I have a team of accountants on my payroll, salaried with benefits. Plus, lest you forget that one week ago you were calling me a rotten criminal so, no, I’m not letting you near my books.”
In a cartoonish display of frustration, I throw my hands up and let them fall back to my lap. “I didn’t say I want to get near your books. It was just an example,” I say again. “I can do many jobs. I am exceptionally capable.”
Vanessa has the gall to look wary of this.
“I’m thinking about applying for a remote customer service gig. Or maybe getting some new certifications.”