Trust

         “Trust in no one, for it will be your downfall.”

         She should have remembered that.

         It had practically been her life’s motto for years.  Living alone in small, ratty apartments, taking small, temporary jobs to replenish her cash flow.  She had a dozen different names, each complete with full phony identification.  She let no one get close.  She had boyfriends, of course, but they were short, desultory affairs, chiefly conducted in cheap bars and the cramped backs of pickup trucks and old, dusty sedans.  She always broke them off after a few weeks, gently but firmly, when they no longer held any interest beyond carnal for her.

         Except the last one.  Except him.  He had seemed different.  A tall, rangy man with shaggy blonde hair and kind gray eyes.  He was a telephone repairman.  He made her laugh, made her smile…something that no man had been able to do in quite a while.  He told her that he wasn’t just looking for a quick fuck—he wanted to stick around, get to know her.  Maybe even marry her.

         Like an idiot, she believed him.  She trusted him.

         She even told him her biggest secret.

         “Will?  I got somethin’ t’ tell ya, honey,” she had said one warm June evening, unconsciously lapsing into the dialect of her childhood in her anxiety.  Her fingers uneasily twisted in her hair.  It was a soft brown, straight from a Clairol bottle.

         He looked up, his expression mildly inquiring.  His hair was just starting to pull back from his forehead, like a hesitant tide.

         “What is it, darling?” he asked, setting aside his book.  He was reading his well-thumbed copy of The Lord of the Rings for the umpteenth time.  It was his favorite thing to do at night…aside from making love.

         She sat down nervously, cross-legged on the love seat.  Chipped pink polish winked from her toenails, her feet bare except for a gold ankle bracelet around her right ankle.

         “It’s about…my past,” she said, nearly inaudibly.  Will leaned forward, curiosity appearing in his face.  She had never told him anything about her life before him, really; never spilled any tales about college or high school; past boyfriends or childhood chums.  No wonder he was curious.

         “What, honey?” he asked, not pushing, something she was grateful for.

         She pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear.

         “I…” she swallowed, her mouth painfully dry.  Then it spilled out, like a flood of dirty gutter water, choked with mud and fallen leaves.

         Her secret life.  How she had killed a man, more than one, but gotten away with it—had never, in fact, even been suspected.  All the nasty, dirty secrets of her life she spilled out to him, in a low, impassioned rush, her fingers working in her lap, writhing like a nest of long, pale snakes.  The whole time she talked, she could see the flash of the ring he had given her a few weeks earlier, “to cement their relationship.”

         “Well?” she asked when she was done, and peeked up through her eyelashes at him.  His face held a look of horrified disgust and revulsion.  His eyes, though, held the beady rat’s-gleam of fear.

         “No, no, no, Will, don’t be afraid!” She rushed on to say, distress evident in her voice.  “I wouldn’t hurt you!  I won’t hurt anyone—not ever again, I promise.  Please, love…”  She held out a beseeching hand, her face pleading.  He looked at it coldly, as if it were a foreign object.

         “I’m calling the cops,” he said, his voice emotionless.  The words chilled her, seemed to freeze her very blood into globules of red ice.

         “What?” she said blankly, unable to believe she had heard him correctly.  Blue eyes widened, stared at him in shock.

         “You’re a murderer,” he said, still as lifeless as a robot.

         “But—but they were all accidents!” she protested, her lips numb, the words spilling forth in a horrified torrent.  “Self—self-defense, that’s all, I promise…please, Will, you have to believe me…I trusted you…I don’t know what to do…”

         He flinched, his expression wooden.  The look in his eyes suggested that he couldn’t bear even looking at her now.

         “I’m calling the police,” he said stubbornly.  He got up and walked over to the telephone, lifting the beige plastic receiver.

         She broke free of her paralysis with a convulsive, jerky movement and rushed forward, slamming the receiver down, panic fluttering dry wings in her mind.  When Will turned to look at her in surprise, she swung her other hand, clenched into a fist, at his skull, driving him forward.  He smacked his forehead on the wall with a meaty thwap, sagging to his knees.  Reproachful eyes glared at her before he slumped over on his side, slackly unconscious.

         “Sorry, I’m sorry, Will,” she choked out, tears swimming in her eyes, nearly dislodging the blue contacts.  She hadn’t meant it to end like this.

         There was no doubt in her mind that the cops wouldn’t be able to catch her.  She’d used a different name, had different-colored eyes, different hair.  She could easily take on a new incarnation, become a new girl.  Even if they found her fingerprints, she had never been arrested before—and she never intended to be.  All she had to do was move and disappear again into the seething mass of humanity.

         But she’d thought that for once—just once—she’d found someone that she could trust.  Could love.

         She hadn’t lied when she told Will her other murders had all been in self-defense.  She had trusted all of them, too, until they betrayed her.  Until she had to kill them.

         “I’m sorry, Will,” she whispered again, retrieving the .32 automatic equipped with silencer from her purse and shooting him twice in the head.  The shots sounded as puffs of air, barely noticeable even to her discerning ears.  Certainly, none of his neighbors would be able to hear them.

         Sighing, she waved a cushion in the air to dispel the cloud of wispy blue smoke and the smell of cordite.  Prolong the time until he was found, give her time to get away.  Then she fitted a long blonde wig over her head, tucking the brown strands under it neatly, and popping out the contacts to reveal light green irises.

         She gathered up all of her things, stuffing them in a large straw tote.  At the last minute, she remembered to stick her feet in a pair of cheap pink flip-flops.  They had pink foam stars glued on the top.

         “Goodbye,” she said, almost brightly, as she opened the door and stepped outside, tote and purse slung over her shoulder.

         Maybe she could trust the next guy to love her.