Chapter 1
From: Murder Bimbo

To: Justice Bimbo

October 18 at 6:25AM

Dear Justice Bimbo,

I saw you yesterday. We were on the same block in SoHo. I was walking uptown. You were passing a poster of your own enlarged face in the window of a public radio building. I probably wouldn’t have recognized you if I hadn’t seen your face two ways: big and flat, then small and in real life. There was something funny about the combination. I looked away then back, away then back.

“Justice for Bimbos” the poster said in big pink script across your headshot. The name of your podcast.

I had to be in Midtown in an hour and had decided to walk to burn off nervous energy, and because I don’t know the subways and was a little afraid of getting lost or having to dive off the train at my stop in an embarrassing way. I didn’t stop walking, but I slowed down enough to see you drop your phone in your back pocket and open the door. Then I googled you.

I was glad to have something to do while I walked. I found your podcast. I skimmed the episode titles and realized I knew your work. Or, not knew, but it seemed familiar. I had seen articles about you. Friends, people I trust, had selected episodes to convince me of your brilliance: JonBenét Ramsey, Monica Lewinsky, Aileen Wuornos. The truth is, I had never managed to click play. It’s not personal. I’m just not into podcasts.

I read the short bio on your site, I found the headshot from your poster. I read a list of all your work then I read the list of your awards. I read the controversy section of your Wikipedia page which described the series you did on ultra-right-wing political candidate Meat Neck’s mistress, and how the media hated her for the wrong reasons. I downloaded the first episode of the series for later.

Sorry. This probably isn’t very alluring, is it: a fan letter from someone who doesn’t know your work. I wish I had time to listen or at least to do a better job at lying, but I don’t. And maybe that would seem creepy anyway. I can’t risk creeping you out. I should get to the point.

I’m in trouble. In the fifteen hours since I passed you on the street, I’ve become one of your endangered women. Like with all of them, it would be hard to step back and look at me without thinking that I brought the danger on myself. I am not entirely innocent. At least I should have known better. That’s the world we live in, right? You can either make every effort to be and appear innocent, if you’re a woman, and usually still get fucked and blamed for it. Or you can live your life, hope the happiness outweighs the danger, and sort the rest out when you have to.

I guess now I have to.

I’m not in the city anymore. I’m in a shabby little cabin that used to be part of a kids’ camp and is now used in the summer for very bare-bones corporate retreats. But it’s the offseason. The water is off. The electricity is off. There are six cots pushed against the wall and I’m at the one the farthest from the door, hoping the sun will come up soon, so that the light of my computer screen doesn’t act like a spotlight on my face for anyone who could be looking in the window.

Someone is coming for me.

Do you believe in fate? I definitely don’t—except for when it happens to me, and then I believe in it silently, so as not to scare it away.

I saw you, I saw your photo, I looked you up. I kept walking. I thought we were just two women on our way to work. I thought your work probably included a microphone and being smart. I thought the only difference between us is that you are famous and I am not.

Then I remembered that I was about to be famous, too, in a way. Do famous people just write to each other like this?

I’m stalling. I’m nervous. There’s a lot riding on this and there’s no way to explain except by explaining. It’s actually because of the fame that I need your help. Here goes nothing.

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the assassination of Meat Neck?

I killed him.

Sincerely,

Murder Bimbo