Well then. I guess I did. I am pretty sure I did, anyway. I do know that at some point I went to the refrigerator for a lite beer and discovered they were all gone. And at some later point I was sitting on the couch again. The television was on and I was trying to figure out what the actors were saying and why an invisible crowd thought it was the most hilarious dialogue of all time.
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Rita slid onto the couch next to me. “The kids are in bed,”
she said. “How do you feel?”
“I feel wonderful,” I said. “If only I could figure out what’s so funny.”
Rita put a hand on my shoulder. “It really bothers you, doesn’t it? Letting the bad guy go. Children . . .” She moved closer and put her arm all the way around me, laying her head on my shoulder. “You’re such a good guy, Dexter.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, wondering why she would say something so very strange.
Rita sat up and looked from my left eye to my right eye and back again. “But you are, you KNOW you are.” She smiled and nestled her head back down on my shoulder. “I think it’s . . . nice that you came here. To see me. When you were feeling bad.”
I started to tell her that wasn’t quite right, but then it occurred to me: I had come here when I felt bad. True, it was only to bore Doakes into going away, after the terrible frustration of losing my playdate with Reiker. But it had turned out to be a pretty good idea after all, hadn’t it? Good old Rita. She was very warm and she smelled nice. “Good old Rita,” I said.
I pulled her against me as tight as I could and leaned my cheek against the top of her head.
We sat that way for a few minutes, and then Rita wiggled to her feet and pulled me up by the hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you to bed.”
Which we did, and when I had flopped down under the top sheet and she crawled in beside me, she was just so nice and smelled so good and felt so warm and comfortable that—
Well. Beer really is amazing stuff, isn’t it?
C H A P T E R 6
Iwoke up with a headache, a feeling of tremen-dous self-loathing, and a sense of disorientation. There was a rose-colored sheet against my cheek. My sheets—the sheets I woke up to every day in my little bed—were not rose-colored, and they did not smell like this. The mattress seemed too spacious to be my modest trundle bed, and really—I was quite sure this was not my headache either.
“Good morning, handsome,” said a voice somewhere over my feet. I turned my head and saw Rita standing at the foot of the bed, looking down at me with a happy little smile.
“Ung,” I said in a voice that sounded like a toad’s croak and hurt my head even more. But apparently it was an amusing kind of pain, because Rita’s smile widened.
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “I’ll get you some aspirin.” She leaned over and rubbed my leg. “Mmm,” she said, and then turned and went into the bathroom.
I sat up. This may have been a strategic mistake, as it made D E A R LY D E V O T E D D E X T E R
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my head pound a great deal more. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and waited for my aspirin.
This normal life was going to take a little getting used to.
But oddly enough it didn’t, not really. I found that if I limited myself to one or two beers, I could relax just enough to blend in with the slipcover on the couch. And so several nights a week, with ever-faithful Sergeant Doakes in my rearview mirror, I would stop over at Rita’s house after work, play with Cody and Astor, and sit with Rita after the kids were in bed.
Around ten I would head for the door. Rita seemed to expect to be kissed when I left, so I generally arranged to kiss her standing in the open front door where Doakes could see me.
I used all the technique I could muster from the many movies I have seen, and Rita responded happily.
I do like routine, and I settled into this new one to a point where I almost began to believe in it myself. It was so boring that I was putting my real self to sleep. From far away in the backseat of the deepest darkest corner of Dexterland I could even hear the Dark Passenger starting to snore gently, which was a little scary and made me feel a tiny bit lonesome for the first time. But I stayed the course, making a small game of my visits to Rita to see how far I could push it, knowing that Doakes was watching and, hopefully, beginning to wonder just a little bit. I brought flowers, candy, and pizza. I kissed Rita ever more outlandishly, framed in the open front door to give Doakes the best possible picture. I knew it was a ridiculous display, but it was the only weapon I had.
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J E F F L I N D S A Y