The Kitchen
Catch’s Confession, Episode One
“Since you haven’t killed me yet,” I told the little girl with the empty eyes, “I assume we are operating under some form of delay.”
I pulled my pocket watch out, looked at it, and closed it. More out of habit, I guess, because I didn’t even notice the time. This small child had thrown me off my game. It may have been after midnight, I supposed. “That’s fine,” I continued, “I’ve always preferred delay to spectacle.”
The little girl, Imogene Lamarck, wore an expression that seemed sad to me. Even ancient, but eerie. Yes, her eyes were empty—but not void. They cared without caring. I wanted to look away but couldn’t. An icy chill did a Bojangles tap dance up and down my spine. Her silence was unnerving. Maybe if I screamed. No. Control. Keep it together, man. I took a deep breath, and after a few seconds of that horrid silence, I spoke again.
“I know I told you to call me Mr. One. Just call me Catch. Everyone else does. The first name is ornamental and rarely survives introduction. You may dispense with it.” Did I… was that… The corners of her mouth seemed to curl up. Almost a smile but not quite. Perhaps names were important to her.
I never liked my given names. The surname was no problem. I rather liked it, quite actually. It was my grandfather’s name, dammit, and my father should have left it with him: Jasper Percival Catch. The name suited him. Old Granddad Catch shook Lucky Lindy’s hand at a gala dinner in 1932. The event took place a few weeks before the infamous kidnapping of Lindy’s son, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. My pocket watch was once granddad’s too. Call it kismet.
“You’re studying me, aren’t you?”
She blinked. At least I thought she did. Maybe she didn’t. But if she did, her eyes were just as empty as before.
We sat at the kitchen table downstairs. The staircase that led upstairs was visible through the kitchen door. Imogene sat in the chair across from me, but on the same side of the table. She held her doll with the long blonde hair. My eye caught a glimpse of the icebox. What I wouldn’t do for a cold brew.
I nodded, believing she was studying me. “That’s interesting. Men usually look at me to measure advantage. You look as though you’re measuring something else. Depth, perhaps. Or weight.”
I must have been fidgeting. At least one of my hands stayed busy. My thumb traced the shape of grandad’s pocket watch in my vestment. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” I don’t know why I thought of that. I had read it so many times that I had the damn thing memorized. I clipped the blasted book for crying out loud. Why? Because I must. The doctor at the Veteran’s Administration called it kleptomania. Made that damn alienist write that mouthful down. He said I had “an impulsive inability to refrain from stealing.” Possibly, triggered by an occurrence during the war, he said. Eggheads.
“If this is judgment, you’re doing it quietly. I appreciate that,” I confessed.
She blinked again. Just once. Was this a nod of sorts? Was she sitting in judgment? Yes. I think the blink was an affirmation or acknowledgement.
“I should begin somewhere respectable. War, I suppose. That’s where most stories pretend to begin when they’d rather not begin at the actual fault line.”
The girl shifted in her chair. Seemed like—to get more comfortable—like settling in.
I cleared my throat. “War rearranges a man. It simplifies him. Strips the unnecessary flourishes and leaves behind something efficient.”
She wanted to hear it, I think. She needed to hear it. Imogene, monster that she was, could not know the content of my thoughts. My motivations couldn’t be seen from the skin. Hell, I didn’t even know them. Not really. But I needed to tell her. The hellish allure of her empty, caring-uncaring eyes beckoned me to speak. No. Forced me. But I was glad to tell her my story. At least… I’m in control.
“Efficient men survive,” I continued. “Sentimental men do not. That isn’t philosophy. It’s arithmetic.”
She tilted her head.
“Did that bother you? Arithmetic?”
Her head straightened slowly, but she didn’t blink.
I shrugged and continued. “Arithmetic troubles people. It suggests outcomes without emotion attached. Numbers don’t care if the sum displeases you. In North Africa, we counted water by the ounce and bullets by the handful. We counted men, too. You learn quickly that hesitation costs more than ammunition. If someone twitches and you’re holding a rifle, you don’t compose a moral essay. You move.”
My words came back to my hearing ear as soon as they left my mouth. I never had to articulate these things before, but the weight of its truth began to hit me. My truth. The war didn’t corrupt me. It clarified me. I took the book, dammit, because it was ripe for the picking. If the storekeeper couldn’t keep an eye on his inventory, it was his loss. Simple arithmetic.
“Later, in France, we moved faster. And I was good at it. Da—er, darned good. That isn’t arrogance. It’s documentary.
“Um, you’re still watching. You don’t blink often. I noticed that earlier.”
I waited a moment, thinking that she might speak. Silence.
“I thought you might speak by now,” I said. “Most children do. They ask questions. They fill silence with noise. You don’t seem inclined toward noise.” I shifted in my chair to get a little more comfortable. Or as comfortable as I could get in this most uncomfortable situation. At least she wasn’t some chatterbox. “That makes this easier.
“I suppose you want to know how we arrived here—in this house, with my associates scattered through the house, either dead or pretending bravery. Well, it wasn’t random.
“The blueprints arrived by mistake. That’s the official version. A simple delivery fiasco. An envelope placed in the wrong slot. When I rolled them out on my kitchen table and saw the layout of your father’s home, I didn’t feel guilt or fear reprisals. I felt… validation.
It was subtle, but she leaned into my words. Just a little. Perhaps that interested her.
“You see, Imogene, opportunity has a signature. Some men call that coincidence. Some call it providence. I prefer kismet. It’s a useful word. Soft. Foreign. It implies inevitability without requiring evidence. My friend in France used it often. His grandfather was Turkish. He said it meant ‘portion’ What’s allotted. What’s assigned.
“The Lamarck house, your house, was assigned to me—by kismet. The article in the paper that same morning—your father’s philanthropic gala, his charitable gestures, his smiling photograph beside that ridiculous red automobile—that was… confirmation. Do you…”
I didn’t realize I had closed my eyes when I told of Wallace Lamarck and his riches—because, when I opened my eyes, Imogene’s face was more expressionless than it had been, if such a thing was possible. My balls felt like they crawled from my groin, through my chest, and into my throat. I almost puked. I managed to swallow hard and take a deep breath.
Imogene remained unmoved.
“You see how neatly it fits? Blueprints. Wealth. Routine. Isolation. I didn’t have to hunt you down. Kismet placed you within reach.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You don’t agree? But consider the alternative: that I conjured the plan from nothing. That I engineered every detail without invitation. That I chose to do this.” I laughed.
Imogene continued to stare at me. Unamused.
I choked off my levity as best as I could and continued. “Choice is a heavy word. Fate is lighter. I prefer lighter words.”
Imogene looked down at her doll.
“You’re thinking of the nanny—er, Nana Jo, aren’t you?”
I waited for some kind of response. Nothing. She kept looking at her doll.
“Joanne Haldane,” I said, “if we’re being precise. We didn’t intend harm beyond what was necessary. A weighted blackjack ends argument with speedy efficiency. She was collateral damage. A casualty of war. Arithmetic.”
Imogene stroked the doll’s long blonde hair, the same way she had when we abducted her. That was disturbing.
“I’m curious. If you were simply prey, there would have been a struggle. If you were merely child, you would have been afraid. You displayed neither. When I told you Nana Jo was sick, you didn’t hesitate. You just took my hand. Easy as you please. You do remember that. Don’t you?”
Imogene stopped stroking the doll’s hair and held the little missy to her chest. The same way she had done when I entered her bedroom.
“Of course you do.”
I didn’t think about it then, but her skin was cold to the touch, colder than you’d expect. Not corpse-cold, mind you. Just… temperate, but below normal. As if... that was how she always felt. I nodded at the thought.
“You didn’t squeeze my hand the way children do. You rested it there.” Again, I didn’t think of it then—too many other things on my mind—but it was if she were… testing pressure. Or checking temperature. Like a mother laying the back of her hand upon a fevered child.
“You didn’t ask where we were going. You didn’t ask why your father hadn’t come himself. You simply went along with us. I don’t have a lot of experience with four-year-olds, but that just doesn’t seem normal behavior.” What’s normal? “But then again, normality is a flexible term,” I told her with a shrug.
I don’t think anyone could call my crew normal. A more motley bunch of hooligans never assembled under creation’s blue sky. But we came together. It had to be. Kismet.
“Lyell thinks you’re eerie,” I told her. “The kid, Anderson, thinks you’re quiet because you’re frightened. Huxley avoided looking at you altogether. And Dawkins—he watched you the way a man watches a locked safe—curious but unwilling to test it. And me? I’m speaking to you as though this were a negotiation… Because it is.”
The little girl didn’t stir an inch. Her eyes remained empty, vacant, measuring.
“You’ve killed at least two men tonight.”
Imogene cocked her head and her expression changed.
“Don’t look surprised,” I said. “I heard two screams as I got to the door. The scream cuts off differently when a man loses blood than when he loses air. I’ve heard both. It’s something you never forget.
“You may have killed my entire crew. I only heard two screams when I entered. And I only saw two dead men before we came downstairs. If you killed them, you simplified the problem. Again—arithmetic.”
From what I guessed was a look of surprise, her face returned to the same expressionless gaze. It was penetrating.
“I should be afraid,” I said. “I’m not.” That was true. I wasn’t afraid of death. I wasn’t afraid of this predicament.
“It’s not because I’m brave,” I confessed. “Because it fits. Men like Dawkins multiply harm. Men like Lyell leak it. Men like Huxley bury it and call that mercy. Remove them and the ledger balances slightly. You see? Arithmetic.”
I shifted in my chair to get some circulation going. My foot had fallen asleep.
“You watch me as if waiting for a correction,” I said. “You won’t get one. I didn’t invite you. That’s the part you’re waiting for, isn’t it? Invitation implies consent. Consent implies responsibility. Responsibility implies choice. And I have already told you—this was kismet. Blueprints delivered. Routine predictable. Opportunity aligned. You didn’t appear in my life because I summoned you. You appeared because the numbers added up.”
I waited a long moment to see if she would respond. She didn’t so much as bat an eyelash.
“If you intend to correct me, you may do so,” I told her. I maintained an even, indifferent tone with her. “If you intend to kill me, you may do that as well. But until you decide, I will continue.”
Again, I waited for some kind of response or reaction. Nothing. Perhaps five seconds ticked by. I continued.
“There was a man in North Africa I haven’t yet mentioned. We took him prisoner near Kasserine Pass. The winter of ’43—February. He was young. Sand in his hair. Spoke some English. Hands raised before we reached him. He moved. I fired. That’s the arithmetic of war.”
Imogene leaned forward slightly.
“That interest you? It shouldn’t. It was simple. Necessary. It was fate. Unless—No. We’ll return to that later.”
She settled back in her chair and began to stroke her doll’s hair.
“You haven’t killed me yet. So, I suspect you’re listening for something more precise. Very well. I’ll give you precision. But you’ll have to wait for it. After all, arithmetic requires patience. Unless, of course, you intend to correct my math.”
And she smiled. Just barely.
