Chapter 9

It was raining the day that the response came, and I wasn't thinking about William. Men had a way of doing that. It was like they knew when I was finally focused on myself, eating right and exercising, and they squirmed their way back into my life.

The cold of winter had broken, bringing with it showers that mixed with the remaining snow and covered the streets in a brown slush. I'd forgotten to bring an umbrella with me to work and struggled to find a parking spot close to my apartment building, arriving home soaking wet. I had planned to eat a salad for dinner and even already had all the necessary ingredients in my fridge, but the rain created a misery inside of me that called for pizza delivery.

I was in such a hurry to get into dry clothes that I didn't check the mail until the delivery driver buzzed my apartment to let me know that my pizza had arrived. The box was warm and smelled good and I might not have checked my mail at all if I hadn't spotted a letter through the glass slot.

Most mail, as a rule, was disappointing. It was so rare to receive anything other than spam from credit card companies or other nonprofits trying to get me to donate my meager salary to them that when I saw a real-looking envelope I stopped to retrieve it.

"William," I said out loud to no one when I saw the return address.

Though I wanted to rip the envelope open right then and there in the foyer, I made myself wait. I was always doing that, denying myself immediate pleasure for the sake of setting a scene. I liked to watch cooking competition shows—a kind of company in the loneliness of my studio apartment—and there was a term they used, "mise en place," that described the act of lining up ingredients before starting a recipe. To prepare myself to read a letter from an accused serial killer, I put on my biggest, coziest sweatshirt, set a piece of pizza on a plate, and poured a Diet Coke over ice. It was the same thing I did before starting a binge watch of a new season of one of my favorite shows.

William's handwriting was small and neat, the type of handwriting that belonged to a killer. Of course, I would've said that no matter what his writing looked like. I read people as I wanted them to be.

I took a picture of the envelope and the letter with my phone, the way that two people might pose for a photo together. I had a desire for proof before I even knew what I was proving.

I thought that the letter would be the rantings of a psychopath, perhaps a manifesto of his guilt. I was already picking out my outfit for the inevitable docuseries about William's crimes. What I got instead was almost more disturbing: he wanted to know about me.

Dear Hannah,

Thank you for your thoughtful letter. I can't blame you for how you feel. Women are most certainly treated abhorrently in our society. I'm sorry for the ways in which I have failed to be an ally. I don't know you, but I'm sure that you deserve better.

I bit my tongue when I read the end of that paragraph. A stupid thing that happened because suddenly I no longer knew how to chew, a basic human function that I'd been doing for nearly the entirety of my life. It was painful that an accused serial killer wanted better for me than most of the people I knew.

I can tell from your letter that you already know all about me. Considering that I'm not especially interesting at the best of times, I want to hear more about you. What are your hobbies? Your passions? Your likes and dislikes? What is your favorite thing to eat, your favorite candle scent? Which Taylor Swift song have you listened to the most?

Something that you might not know from the media is that I always have a maple bourbon candle in my apartment and my favorite Taylor Swift song is "exile" with Bon Iver. I pretend that I like the song because Bon Iver is on it. Really, I like the song because I like Taylor. It's tricky being a man, isn't it? Liking things is always a confession.

I stopped reading to get another piece of pizza. My heart was pounding like I was in spin class. I chastised myself for drinking caffeine so close to bedtime. I was always defying suggestions that helped people sleep at night.

You seem like a person who reads. I would love a good book recommendation. I used to be really into self-help stuff like How to Fix Your Life in Ten Easy Steps. Now that my life is beyond repair, I'm finding new enjoyment in fiction. They don't have a good selection here. A lot of trash, a lot of classics, and almost nothing in between. I recently read The Scarlet Letter, a book that I last read in high school. I thought it was so stupid then. I knew nothing about being marked.

I understand if you don't want to write me back. You seem like someone whose priorities are in the right place. I don't expect anyone to feel bad for me for being lonely. Loneliness is the least of what I deserve. If you have time though, I would truly love to hear from you.

Sincerely,

William

After finishing the letter, the air in my apartment was the kind of silent that became noisy again. I put on music, Taylor Swift, not because of William's mention of her, but because that was what I listened to when I got ready for work in the morning and it was easy to press Play. My apartment walls seemed closer together than usual, like they were inching ever nearer until they would suffocate me completely. I reminded myself to continue scrolling listings for new rental units when I got to work in the morning.

I stood up to get a third piece of pizza and ate it while standing at the counter, staring at the letter in my hand. I lamented my sloppiness as grease smeared across the page.

William hadn't confessed his guilt, but neither had he protested his innocence. Instead, he lingered in a place of vague self-deprecation that I recognized as a similar impulse within myself. It was hard, even for those of us who hadn't been accused of killing anyone, to love ourselves. Oftentimes, I found it easier to accept the bad things that happened to me than the good, if only because I struggled to find myself worthy of anything rewarding.

My neighbor, an eternally crabby man, banged on the door.

"Turn down the music," he said.

I scoffed but did what he asked. I assumed that living by myself implied a certain kind of freedom until I found out it didn't, not really, at least not while I shared walls with neighbors who went to bed unreasonably early and had a preternatural aversion to all of my music tastes.

I turned off the music and let the silence enwrap me. My tongue still hurt from where I'd bitten it earlier. I pulled out my notebook and took a seat at the table.

If William were an ordinary man like Max, I would've waited to write him back. It was bad to be too eager, to admit that I was alone in my apartment with nothing to do and too much anxiety. No matter how long I waited to correspond with a man, it seemed that they were able to sense my eagerness within my sparse texts. I could only ever pretend at being withholding. With William, I didn't have to worry about any of that. We were corresponding through letters, which, like the deaths of the women that he mutilated and dumped, were impossible to pinpoint to an exact time. He was in jail, which meant that he was limited in the modes through which he could converse and the people he could contact. Most importantly, William was an accused killer. What was the worst thing that could happen if I was too overzealous in my communication? It wasn't like he could kill me. He was already behind bars.

Dear William,I wrote. There was the tiniest pause of hesitation where I stopped to wonder if I should say "dear." I thought of the way that Max would've recoiled if I ever admitted that he was dear to me. I kept writing.

I don't know that you have any right to ask me about myself. In fact, I could probably report you to the police for that kind of questioning. If you really lamented the things you've done, you would abstain from contacting women entirely. I wouldn't be surprised if this type of questioning was a trick. The bar is so low for men that all they have to do is show the barest respect for a woman's interests and suddenly they're regarded as a feminist icon. Listening to Taylor isn't enough to erase all your sins, though it does give you a leg up over the last guy I dated who called her a "talentless hack."

I will give you this much, though not because you deserve it. My favorite Taylor Swift song is "Cruel Summer," but my favorite album is 1989. I didn't listen to the whole thing until years after it came out. I used to pretend that I didn't like pop music. I can't remember why, like getting in a fight with someone and then forgetting what caused the original argument. I thought I was too cool for pop music or I wanted people to think that I was cool. I'm not sure anyone ever thought that though. I find that the older I get, the less I care about things like that. I used to be mortified to leave the house in anything other than a perfect outfit and now it's a struggle to put on real shoes. It's painful to think of all the things that I didn't let myself love when I wanted to love them.

You're the only man I've ever known to have a favorite candle scent. Every other man begins and ends their olfactory experience with Axe body spray. The last guy I dated didn't even wear deodorant. I told him that he didn't smell and it was a lie. I rotate my candle collection with the seasons. I can't carry a Christmas tree myself, but I can buy a balsam fir candle and it's almost the same thing. I spend more money on candles than I should. I can't help myself. I live in a studio apartment and it's difficult to keep the smells of the kitchen separate from those of the rest of the space. It's hard to deny yourself small luxuries when you're denied everything big.

I paused what I was writing and took a chocolate from the candy bowl that I kept on the counter. I couldn't write about my hobbies or passions because as I searched through my life, the only hobby I could think of was William himself.

Asking about other people's hobbies is something that doesn't even work on a dating app. Everyone always lies and says that they like to hike. Hiking is fine, I guess. What I really like, though, is sitting in front of the television and watching too many episodes of a TV show in a row or that feeling when you eat a really good meal. I like going to bars, drinking too much, and sleeping in too late. I'm not supposed to admit these things, but I can admit them to you because even the worst of my habits are nothing compared to yours.

I thought about recommending something to read, but I always found recommendations to be mortifying. It was like looking at my reflection in a car window, a mirror image that was warped in ways that I could never fully place my finger on. The question felt like a test, the way that boys in college used to ask what bands I listened to and I only ever felt confident naming Neutral Milk Hotel as something that would garner their approval. I appreciated that William liked to read though. It gave him a certain moral credit in the midst of all his unforgivable misdeeds. I too had read The Scarlet Letter in high school and remembered how the boy who sat behind me jokingly called her a slut.

I didn't know how to sign off. "Sincerely" or "Best" both seemed wrong. Finally, I settled on "—Hannah." It was better to have nothing attached to my name.

I ripped the letter out of my notebook and put it in an envelope. I liked the chemical taste of the glue as I ran my tongue over the lip and sealed the paper inside.

Before getting ready for bed, I pulled the forum up on my laptop. There were few developments as the trial was still a ways off and William was in jail. There were the usual arguments over whether he was actually guilty, new pieces of distantly relevant information, but nothing particularly noteworthy. I knew that if I posted "Guess who I got a letter from today?" I would generate a flurry of responses. Everyone would suddenly want to talk to me, regard me as an expert.

I held back. It was nice keeping William's letter to myself, a secret just for me. There was joy in knowing things that other people didn't, experiencing a closeness that could be admired only from a distance.

Before I went to sleep, I touched myself beneath the covers. It wasn't unusual for me to masturbate before bed. What was unusual was how much I enjoyed it. Normally, I found self-gratification to be subpar to that provided by other people. That night, I had an orgasm like an exploding galaxy. The kind of pleasure that seemed like it might be able to create new life.