The Killing Game. J. Kerley A.

was the current problem.

      What happened next?

      “I’m here, Ema. What the hell’s wrong now?”

      A pause as his sister swallowed hard. She hated it when he cursed. “I’ve been … worried about you. We had breakfast scheduled for nine-thirty. I waited a half-hour and left.”

      “Why didn’t you call from the restaurant?”

      “I was afraid you might be ill. I didn’t want to wake you.”

      “I simply forgot to set my alarm, Ema. I’m fine.”

      “You never oversleep.”

      Gregory felt his guts cinch up. “I never tell you when I oversleep because you’ll fucking think I have sleeping sickness.”

      “I couldn’t eat at the restaurant,” she said. “I just had coffee. Why don’t you come over and I’ll fix us a healthy breakfast.”

      “I can’t, Ema. I have so much to do today and—”

      “Grigor, you have to eat. And you know you won’t unless I—”

      “It’s Gregory, Ema. G-r-e—”

      “It pops out when I get worried. I’m sorry, Gregory. I worry about my little brother too much; it’s stupid.”

      Christ, Gregory thought, Grigor. The fucking name was a dozen years gone, but poor addled Ema still used it several times a year.

      “You’re not stupid, Ema, you have a big heart,” Gregory said, wishing she had a brain to match. He did a high-speed inventory of his systems, finding hunger: if he didn’t eat he’d get a headache. And if he didn’t see Ema this morning, she’d want to make up the missed meal tomorrow at one of her goddamn restaurants. If he ran over now he’d be free of her for days.

      “Let me get dressed,” he said. “I don’t want a big breakfast, Ema. Toast and honey, right?”

      He went to the garage. His car stank of shit. And the brown stains were soaked into the fabric of his seat. He went back in the house and called a cab.

      Fifteen minutes later Gregory’s taxi was winding past brick and wood structures with large front windows and decorative plastic doors, Ema’s suburban housing complex.

      Ema lived but two miles distant from Gregory. When he had received his inheritance, she had tried to get him to buy a home on her street, but he had shot that idea down immediately, knowing Ema would be visiting every day, plates of cookies or stuffed cabbage rolls in hand.

      She was at the door as he arrived – probably watching for me since I hung up the phone – and he submitted to another crushing, smelly hug, her pendant pressing against his belly. But he endured, smiling through every second.

      “Why did you come in a cab?” she asked. “You weren’t in a wreck, were you?”

      “Just some mechanical problem.”

      Ema’s living room was a warehouse of girly-type things overlaying the simple Colonial furniture; rag dolls on the couch, a throw pillow on a rocking chair, the words LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING embroidered on its multicolored surface, a dozen kinds of cutesy magazines. There was a pink bookshelf of mysteries, biographies of Hollywood celebrities, and several running feet of true-life crime books. The television was on, though muted, Ema incapable of life without TV. She had a set in every room, an endless display of talent competitions, cop dramas, cooking programs and home-shopping options.

      “I’m so happy you’re all right,” Ema said. “I was worried when you didn’t show.”

      “You worry too much. I’m a grown-up.”

      “I know. But it’s like I always told Dr Szekely: Even when Gregory’s fifty, he’ll still be my baby brother.”

      Gregory fought to keep from rolling his eyes. Ema nodded toward the rear of the house. “Let’s eat in the kitchen as it’s so sunny.”

      “Just toast and honey for me,” Gregory said. He’d said it earlier, but telling Ema not to cook was like telling a fish not to swim.

      Gregory followed Ema to the kitchen, too bright for his eyes, sun streaming painfully through the window. He looked to the table and saw tomato slices, onion slices, link sausages, biscuits from a can, and a blue porcelain bowl full of thick yellow goo. He stared, feeling his stomach begin to foam.

      “Is that mamaliga?” he whispered. The pendant glistened between Ema’s fat breasts as she picked up the bowl and brought it near, as if offering Gregory a gift. He smelled fumes coming from the pile of cheap, filthy and inescapable Romanian porridge.

      He turned away. “Get rid of it. I can’t look at that shit.” Gregory’s hands clenched into fists and blood roared in his ears. He slapped the bowl from Ema’s hands. It spun to the floor and shattered, the thick cornmeal porridge breaking into pieces.

      “IF YOU WANT ME TO STAY YOU’LL GET THAT SHIT AWAY FROM ME!”

      “I’m s-sorry,” Ema said, her voice trembling. “S-so sorry, Grigor. I only wanted to make you happy. I only w-want—”

      “STOP WITH THE FUCKING GRIGOR!”

      Bawling as if her world had exploded, Ema turned and ran from the kitchen. Her toe caught in the rug and she stumbled to the floor and lay there crying.

      “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry …”

      Gregory ran his options. He had to tell her he was sorry. Ema had made the sickening slop, but now he was the one who would have to apologize. The Moron World went by rules that were inside-out.

      He walked to his sister and leaned to touch her back. “Are you all right, Ema?”

      A shiver ran through her body. “I’m so sorry I made you mad. I always do stupid things. I’m so ashamed.”

      “I’m the one that’s sorry, Ema,” Gregory said, his expression blank since Ema’s face was in the carpet. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry.”

      “Hold me, Gregory,” Ema wailed, trying to roll to sitting, the pendant flapping across her skin, into the folds of her breasts. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Please hold me, Gregory. No one ever holds me.”

      Gregory felt his skin crawl, but lowered himself to the rug and wrapped his arms around his sister as far as they would reach. Her body heaved with sobs and her odor rose to his nose and mingled with the smell of the mamaliga splattered across the kitchen floor. The smells turned to the stink of shit and Gregory fought the urge to retch.

      “I never want to hurt you,” Ema wailed in English, then the same in Romanian, the old native tongue rising unbidden through tears and fear. “Hold me, Grigor,” Ema bawled, clutching at Gregory’s surrounding arms and making him wish he could disappear into the air.

      What happened next?

      Gregory escaped after a depressing half-hour. The smell of Ema and the mamaliga and all the female odors of the house had fired up a shrieking pain that pounded his temples. He returned to his house to try again to clean his car, but grew livid with anger once more: the stains had set and the smell had gotten worse in the heat of the garage.

      There was no sign of the porn magazine the cops had found and brandished, as if it never existed except as a whip to flay him with. That seemed odd, and Gregory looked beneath the seats, in the glove box. The fucking thing was nowhere to be seen, nothing in the car but a stench as thick as cold mamaliga.

      He had to sell the car, his beautiful creamy Avalon. He could never get the stink out. A thirty-five-thousand-dollar car turned to dross by the morons. The two cops were subhumans from the robot caste and Gregory would grind them beneath his heel as if he was stepping on ants.

      Striving for calm in his writhing guts, he made himself walk to the utility sink in the corner to soak his hands in de-greasing