My friend Rina is a real estate agent. Her
retouched face stares at me from billboards at
several intersections in the city; next to her right
cheekbone is text that reads, “#1 Realtor in the
Metro Area and the Lakeshore!” followed by a
regal, cursive logo.
Today, though, I am seeing her face in person.
We have agreed to meet at a coffee shop at a strip
mall midway between our two houses. It’s been
a while: she is always busy posing in a pantsuit
next to a waterfall marble countertop.
I arrive at the cafe a few minutes before 10
and walk in the front door after parking my car.
Rina is nowhere in sight, so I sit in an armchair
by the window to keep lookout while scrolling
through content on my phone. A video of an
attractive man using a watermelon as percussion
finishes playing onscreen as I hear the muffler of
a motorcycle veer into the parking lot.
It’s Rina, adorned in a blue sweater and an ath-
leisure bottom, straddling the leather seat. She
parks, dismounts, pats her pockets and walks in
through the glass front doors while checking her
texts. Her low-heeled boots on the concrete floor
of the cafe are metronomic; after a few beats she
looks up from her phone.
Rina holds her arms out as she walks toward
me and rotates her wrists back and forth, jazzed.
“Sara! It’s so good to see you,” she says. I hold
out my arms and we embrace. With my nose
over her shoulder I expect to smell the min-
gling scents of a department store perfume sec-
tion, but instead I’m greeted by something more
focused and leafy: amplified salad.
“It’s really nice to see you, Rina. It’s been a
while,” I say. “What are you wearing? You smell
good.”
“Oh, that! It’s my new lemongrass serum,”
Rina says. “I’m all natural now. Well, my cosmet-
ics are.”
The last time I saw Rina, and all of the times
before that, natural was the antithesis of her
appearance. We met as new reporters for the
Gazette, but her posture, pasted smile and the
neutral sleeveless dresses she wore to the news-
room suggested she had higher ambitions. She
wanted the sense of celebrity that an endnote
reporting credit couldn’t deliver.
“What’s with the new look?” I ask, referring
to the lack of pantsuit. “You don’t look much like
your billboard.” It’s like someone turned her lip-
stick saturation down using a photo editor.
“Well, Sara. It’s all a part of my new motto:
simplify, simplify, simplify.” Rina sounds like the
author of a self-help book. “Have you heard of
Marie Kondo?”
I think about the digital culture article I wrote
on Kondo back when she became popular. I start
to say “yes,” but Rina cuts me off and teaches me
about how to tell if something sparks joy or not.
“Coffee would spark joy for me right now.” I
put on a flat smile.
“I see you’ve finally gotten good at segues.”
Rina’s words prick my ego. She leads us toward
the ordering counter; I look up at the long chalk-
board menus attached to the wall trying to deci-
pher drink names like “Raspberry Sunset” and
“Zebra Zappuccino.”
Rina orders quickly, and at first I think she’s
been here before. “Medium coffee, black.” She
hands the cashier her card.
“Rina Stone!” The clerk looks up from the reg-
ister. “I see your billboard on the way here every
morning!”
“Well, it’s quite nice to know I’m noticed.”
Rina stabilizes an elated smile she can’t quite
contain. “And you are,” she pauses to read, “Car-
son, hmm. One of my exes was named that, but
now I just refer to him as Carcinogen. What a
name. Ew.”
Content warning: Descriptions of animal
abuse, violence, blood, murder and suicide.
Sometimes she daydreamed so intensely
she would almost turn into a fog.
Margot was 15. She turned into a fog that
day, the day that it happened. A girl had
skipped class because her cat died. Margot got
to thinking about what would happen if her
dog died.
She could feel its soft black and white fur
underneath her hands as she twisted its neck,
could feel that snap, like the pop of a balloon as
you watched somebody squeeze it: terrifying,
but satisfying. She could feel the dog writhe, its
tail and legs slap against her thighs. She could
see its blue eyes staring up at her in fear. Fear
that would never fade.
And then she blinked, and she was in her
bathroom back at home, washing her hands of
something.
The cold water had been the thing to wake
her up, its cold touch seducing her back into
reality. She wiped her hands on a towel and
gazed into the sink. Was that dirt around the
rim of the drain?
Her mother cried into her father’s arms that
night — their dog had never come home.
The next day, the whole school was talk-
ing about the “animal serial killer” running
rampant through the town. First Madisyn’s
cat, next Margot’s dog. By the time the chatter
dissolved and people forgot about the whole
thing, three more beloved pets were dead, and
Margot had to buy one of those pill organizers
for her new meds.
***
“And what?” Nick said, chewing the crust
of his pizza, wiping his fingers of grease. “You
think you killed your dog?”
“I don’t know,” Margot said. “I daydreamed
about it. And then he was gone.”
“Yeah, but you daydream about everything,”
Nick said. “That doesn’t mean you actually did
something.”
She was 25 now and a crime reporter. Nick
hadn’t come out to lunch because he wanted
to. He came because Margot forgot her brief-
case. And as her fiancé, there was an expecta-
tion that he’d bring it to her.
Margot had only brought up the dog — what
was his name again? — because she was ter-
rified. Nick hated it when she brought up the
story and she knew he had stopped listening
at this point. But she was scared because there
was a serial killer on the loose in their town,
slaughtering victims meaninglessly and mer-
cilessly. Scared because she was wasting hours
of each day sunk in her daydreams.
Daydreams that had consumed her, just like
they had when she was 15.
“But I daydreamed about it the day that it
happened,” Margot said.
“Did you daydream about the other ani-
mals?” Nick said. His brows were furrowed at
the center of his forehead, creating lines across
his face that made him look older.
“Well, no—”
“Then it wasn’t you. Just a coincidence,”
Nick said. “You couldn’t hurt a fly.”
“That’s not very nice,” Margot said.
“What?” Nick laughed. “You can barely
make it to work. You think you could actually
carry out a murder?”
He seemed to think this was funny. Margot
felt like she had swallowed worms, and they
were writhing in her stomach.
“Nick.”
“What? You want me to believe you were
once some sort of bloodthirsty killer?”
“I want you to believe in something I have
to say.”
Nick didn’t go up to the office, just kissed
her cheek and left straight from the pizza par-
lor. Margot went into the lobby and got into the
elevator. Just as the doors were shutting, her
editor, Amy, slipped inside.
Red Water,
Clear Water
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
BY RILEY HODDER, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
BY OSCAR NOLLETTE-PATULSKI,
STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Design by Kate Shen
Design by Serena Shen
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 // The Statement — 3