Read Online Call Me Killer by Linda Barlow - Free Book Online

couldn’t create order out of the confusion of people’s inner lives, but you could brighten up the outward appearance.
    When his game ended, I randomly started flipping the channels. As usual, there wasn’t much on. I was about to switch it off when I came upon a scene from one of my all-time favorite movies. I curled up on his comfy sofa and started to watch.
     
     
     
    Griff
     
    Rory was in front of the TV when I finally returned to the house. She had cleaned up. The dishes we'd used must be in the dishwasher, since I could hear it running. The kitchen table and counters were spotless.
    The exercise had boiled off my head of steam. As I considered how neat the place was, I started thinking again that maybe it wasn't so bad to have a woman around. If I could only get her interested in something other than solving the mystery of Hadley's disappearance. Like how it would be to go down on her knees on my spotless kitchen floor and slide her wet tongue all over my cock.
    “Hey,” I said, walking into the living room and throwing myself down beside her on the sofa. I glared at the screen. “Where’s my game?”
    “It’s over.”
    She barely looked at me. She was deep into some old black and white movie. It didn’t take long for me to recognize which one. Humphrey Bogart was standing on the tarmac telling Ingrid Bergman to get her ass on that plane because their silly romantic problems didn’t amount to a hill of beans in this fucked up world.
    Or words to that effect.
    Rory, amazingly, was sniffling. Just a little bit. I was sure I’d heard a sniffle.
    “I wanna see the game wrap-up,” I said, still feeling dickish. I reached for the remote to change back to the sports channel. She was clutching it, holding it away from me.
    “Just a couple more minutes. It’s Casablanca .”
    “I know what it is,” I growled. “Damn chick flick.”
    She ignored me while the big goodbye scene ran its course. I rolled my eyes. I sure as hell wasn’t gonna admit that I thought it was a pretty good movie or that I’d seen it more than once and knew the plot cold. I could even recite some of the dialogue.
    Ilsa had boarded the plane with her husband. Bogart and the French police dude strolled off together, talking about their beautiful friendship as the film faded out. Rory turned to face me.
    “It’s not a chick flick. It’s got all this male honor crap and stuff. No happy ending because the usually-cynical Rick has to do the right thing. The noble thing.” She put a disdainful emphasis on the word “noble.” She seemed to be getting steamed for some reason. “If it were a chick flick, it’d have a happy ending. She doesn’t love her husband. They were hardly ever together. She loves Rick and he loves her. But he lets her leave. It can’t have a romantic ending because the script was probably written by a man!”
    “Whoa, I’m amazed you care about shit like that.” Seriously, I was learning new stuff about Ms. Hotshit Hacker all the time. I removed the remote from her tight-clenched fist and clicked back to the sports channel, but both my game and the wrap-up segment had ended.
    I shut the TV down.
    “Are you crying?” I taunted her.
    “Shut up. I’m not crying.”
    “These wet patches,” I poked the traces her cheek, “are known as tears, Smarty-Pants.”
    She twisted away from me. “I have a cold. Allergies. Haven’t you ever seen allergic tears before?”
    I laughed at her. “Not as big of a hard-ass as you pretend to be, are you?”
    “You’re such a jerk.” She got up and marched off to the bathroom. But just before shutting the door, she looked back at me over her shoulder. Her tears had stopped and she was kinda smiling now. Then she winked at me before shutting the bathroom door.
    She winked? What the fuck was that? Maybe she hadn’t winked…maybe one of her eyes was just messed up from crying over a sappy movie.
    But what if she had?
    I wondered if she was gonna sulk in there for hours