“They don’t. It’s just someone being ugly. I’m surprised this is the first of this type of thing you’ve gotten. Harry keeps a file of mine.”

That shocked nearly as much as the poem.

“Threats? You have a file of threats?”

Lina reached for a towel. She’d been choreographing a new routine when Adrian burst into the gym.

“Threats, equally ugly sexual suggestions, garden-variety bitchiness.” She handed the letter back to Adrian. “Put it in the envelope. We’ll report it, make a copy. The police will take the original. But I can tell you, it won’t go anywhere. So we put it in a file, you put it away and forget it.”

“Forget somebody said I should die? Why would anybody want that?”

“Adrian.” Lina tossed the towel over one shoulder, reached for her water bottle. “A lot of people are just screwed up. They’re jealous, obsessed, angry, unhappy. You’re young, pretty, successful. You’ve been on TV, you were on the covers of Seventeen and Shape.”

“But … You never told me you’d gotten threats.”

“No point in it. And no point in you worrying about this. We’ll give it to Harry, and he’ll take care of it.”

“So you’re saying death threats are just part of the rest?”

Lina hung up the towel, set the bottle aside. “I’m saying this won’t be your last, and you’ll get used to it. Call Harry. He knows what to do.”

Adrian glanced back as she left, saw her mother facing the mirrored wall again as she restarted a series of burpees.

She’d call Harry, Adrian thought. But she’d never, never get used to it.

CHAPTER SIX

To make up for missing Christmas, Adrian spent two weeks over the summer with her grandparents. She reconnected with Maya, spent time with the aging Tom and Jerry, spent time in the garden, in the kitchen with her grandparents.

They welcomed her three New York friends for a week so they could shoot another video.

She’d carry with her, always, the memories of her grandparents sitting on the big porch watching her set up an outdoor yoga segment. Of coming downstairs in the morning to see her grandmother and Teesha chatting away over coffee in the kitchen.

Then fall brought school and the color-washed leaves. Though Harry wanted to screen her mail, she insisted on looking through it herself. She found some of the ugly, some of the obscene, but the good far outweighed it.

She didn’t forget it, but she set it aside.

FOGGY BOT TOM, DC

But the poet didn’t. Thoughts of her lived in that angry and patient brain. But there was time, so much time yet. And there were others. Many others who would come before.

She, a crescendo, a culmination. But before the crescendo, one needed to begin.

From a list, a name was chosen to be the first. Adrian Rizzo would be the last, and Margaret West, the first.

It began with the stalking, the hunting, the watching, the recording. Such a thrill! Who knew there could be such a thrill in planning?

Well planned, with a simple, straightforward termination seemed best all around. Easy strolls by the quiet house, hours at the computer. Just another diner in a trendy restaurant enjoying a meal while the prey ate and laughed and drank.

See how she moves, with no idea her time is ticking, ticking away. How she samples a spoonful of dessert and rolls her eyes in pleasure and laughs with the man she’d be lucky to spread her legs for later.

Divorced and on the prowl, that was Maggie!

And when the plans fell into place, how the heart beat in the blood. All the time, the skill, the practice merging together. Cut the alarm on that quiet, now sleeping house. Pick the lock on the back door, safe in those shadows.

Another thrill, walking through the house, all but gliding up the stairs. Make the turn toward the room where the lights went out last at night.

Bedroom.

Sleeping. Sleeping so peacefully. Hard, so hard to resist the urge to wake her, show her the gun, tell her why.

Two hands to hold the gun steady. Not trembling with nerves, but excitement. Pure excitement.

The gun barely popped the first time with the silencer. The second, a bit louder and the third, louder yet. Still a fourth, just for the delight of it.

How her body had jumped. How that small sound she’d made echoed in the dark room.

How terrible, they’d say. Murdered in her own bed! Such a fine neighborhood. Such a lovely woman!

But they didn’t really know the bitch, did they?

To throw the police off—idiots—steal a few things.

Souvenirs.

The thought of taking a photo of the work came too late, blocks from the quiet house.

Next time. Next time there would be photos to look back on.

Adrian released the second video in January, but since she’d insisted on learning to drive, she drove to Maryland in the car she’d bought with her profits to spend Christmas at the house on the hill.

She’d agreed to do some remotes, some phoners, but she would spend Christmas in Traveler’s Creek.

Lina spent most of the month, including the holidays, in Aruba shooting.

The second poem arrived, like the first, in February, though this one carried a postmark from Memphis.

You think you’re special and so elite,

But you’re a fraud and incomplete.

One day you’ll pay for living a lie.

That’s the day I help you die.

 

She didn’t bother to tell Lina this time—as Lina had said, what was the point? She made a copy for her own file and gave the original to Harry.

She concentrated on school, on a concept for her next video.

And tried not to obsess about admittance to Columbia after Teesha got her letter, after Loren got into Harvard and Hector into UCLA.

She had backup colleges, of course. She wasn’t stupid. But she wanted Columbia. And she wanted to room with Teesha.

She wanted.

When she opened the acceptance packet from Columbia, she danced on all three floors of the triplex.

She called her grandparents, texted her friends, texted Harry. Since her mother was doing an event in Las Vegas, Adrian copied the acceptance letter and put it on her mother’s desk.

She said goodbye to high school with no regrets, and began what she thought of as the next leg of her path.

Adrian attacked college strategically, selecting electives she felt enhanced her goals, pumping her energies into learning and earning solid grades, and earmarking summers for video shoots and long visits to Maryland.

She had plans, lots of plans, and by her senior year at Columbia, many had fallen neatly into place. She and Teesha shared an apartment in easy walking distance to campus—paying the rent with the profits from Adrian’s annual DVDs.

She’d begun working with another student, a fashion design major, on developing her own line of fitness and athletic wear.

While Teesha fell in and out of love, or at least lust, with careless ease, Adrian kept her dating life casual.

She didn’t have time for love. Lust she considered not only a simpler matter, but the satisfaction and release of it a part of good health—when approached safely and without demands.

Her business relationship with her mother, while complex, boosted both their brands. Their personal relationship remained as Adrian felt it had always stood: distant but amicable.

As long as neither crossed the other.