From the bustling excitement I felt leaving the bar, over the next day I fell into melancholy and inertia. As I lay in bed I listened to myself inside. It certainly wasn't guilt or even fear exactly; rather it was a dread of becoming who I now needed to be. Whatever it was, I wasn't going to let it stop me, and when I had taken this resistance apart I would be invested in the impending act with all my self. I kept reminding myself that without this upcoming burst of passionate will, all my pain would be meaningless.

For three days I was generally bedridden and did not leave the house. Two of those were weekdays and I called in sick. When Dom left, I went back to smoking a cigarette every now and then as I did in college, but now I would have several each day. I stayed up all night on the internet: true crime sites, criminal peculiarity news, some Wikipedia articles, like “list of famous massacres.” A lot to think about.

I realized that perhaps I had been a bit careless in the early stages, talking directly to my mark, letting on a bit to friends or acquaintances where my head was at. Now I saw that I had been reacting to the hesitation- I was pushing myself to a point of no return in case I might lose my resolve over time. No longer would I need to make big obvious motions to convince myself. And my previous errors wouldn't harm me in the long run. Of course I was aiming for perfection, but all I really needed was to be better than the police.

I made a checklist in a notebook that I added to whenever I thought of a new detail. It wasn't a special notebook. My checklist was wedged between shopping lists and to-do lists for work. Each entry was in code in case the list was ever discovered, SPG for GPS, for example. Another motion I gave myself for going through it in a timely manner; if I didn't I'd forget what all the code meant. Over the next week, I got things done and with each check-off I felt closer to the goal.

I bought a pistol. I wouldn't have it in my hands for ten days, but that was still early in this timeline of excellent revenge. When I had it, I planned to go to the range, where I would act clueless and giggle, and chivalrous gun-nuts would step up to teach me everything. Needless to say, I wasn't going to splatter pretty Kristen with a gun bought in my own name if I could help it. I would use poison (quick or agonizing I hadn't decided) or something truly original, but the gun would be good in case something went wrong. In the meantime I could just touch the steel each night and think: my how I've changed.

More importantly, I bought a GPS tracker with cash. Once I attached it to her car, I could track her whereabouts and learn every detail of her life. I would map her wretched existence on ... an old fashioned blackboard! I found one on Craigslist for five dollars. When the job was done, the evidence would disappear in a cloud of chalk dust.

I hadn't yet found out what her car looked like and where it was parked. Procrastination! But that was okay, since the reason I had a list and a schedule was to make sure I kept taking steps until everything was done. So first I googled her. “Did you mean...” Okay, so she didn't tell me how to spell McCafferty. On the third page I found something that must be her, a really bad poem she had gotten onto the Internet. Okay, so if she wasn't shallow Dom wouldn't have taken off with her and I wouldn't be doing this.

This site revealed her Alma Mater and her graduation year. Next I called the Alumni office after drinking two espressos and three martinis. Of course they were willing to tell Kristen's cheerful, bubbly old friend how to find her! From the phone number, reverse directory on the Internet and voila!

An address.

To find her car and plant the GPS device, I would have to stake out her house. This would need to wait until Saturday, as I had already missed too much work. How could I stay busy until then? Alas, I could not resist the temptation to rest each evening, and perhaps I needed it as my co-workers kept asking me if something was wrong. So I lay before the TV thinking about my anger, about eight years of joyful memories turned to painful mush. How odd: even thought the murder was basically about liberation for me and oblivion for Kirsten, it also felt like oblivion for me and liberation for her.