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I was ready to kill for him.
This brand new awareness, this deep-rooted fucked-up belief she has kept a secret to herself for so long — even if, deep down, she has always known she would have done anything, anything for him — doesn’t startle her, nor upsets her, and for a second, as her weary blue eyes wander aimlessly into the night sky, hovering so still and empty over the ghost that has taken her place, she feels exactly the same way: still and empty, drained of every last of drop of humanity. As the car runs fast on the road that should take her home — if there can be a home where there’s been a murder — Kim Wexler can feel her emotions changing at an even quicker pace: she’s blank and hollow, then she’s worried out of her mind, then she wants to scream at the top of her lungs, but also feels like she will never be able to utter a single word ever again. Only one certainty, exactly seven words keep on ringing in her ears like the whistle of a train getting closer and closer — perhaps ready to hit her and put an end to all of this, whatever this is. Seven words.
He was ready to die for me.
This realization, however, makes her pulse accelerate and she can feel the cold sweat running through her back; Kim looks down at her palms resting on her lap, these stranger’s pale fingers she barely recognizes, and isn’t surprised to see them trembling — just like they were shaking as she was pointing the revolver at the black door… and, if she concentrates, she can still feel the weight of the gun in her hands.
The things we’d do for each other.
If she was really the upstanding woman she’s always claimed to be, right now she should have the memory of Howard’s body lying on their rug, his brains splattered all over their couch and wall, ingrained in her mind, a ghost haunting her behind her eyelids, tormenting her even inside her skull; and yet, every time she closes her eyes, yes, she does see him and the pool of blood spreading all over the floor and the candle flickering and the gun and Lalo and Lalo and Lalo… but none of this really matters when she’s reminded that Jimmy stayed, decided to stay in the apartment with Lalo. She closes her cerulean eyes and relives it all once again: “Send her”, he said, and Kim understood right away what he was up to. His greatest con, his masterpiece: fooling Lalo Salamanca himself in order to have her get the hell out of there. His big blue irises — those irises she’d fallen in love with all of those years back, as she had watched him naively licking stamps in the mailroom of HHM — were veiled with tears, but she’d never seen him so determined before. “You gotta go”, he whispered, almost smiling sadly: he was saying goodbye.
He was staying with Lalo and was letting her go.
He did it for me.
Kim starts to breathe loudly and unevenly, but she bites her lower lip — she doesn’t want the man from the desert to talk to her, she doesn’t want to hear his voice, she just couldn’t stand it right now: he was supposed to protect them, protect Jimmy. Hadn’t he been through enough? Walking through the desert for days, getting to know death so intimately that it had never really left him alone ever since — hadn’t that been enough? And now, Jimmy sacrificed himself for her, in spite of what she’d told him all those months back: she didn’t need saving, she didn’t want it. She’s furious, furious at the man who’s driving her for failing to defend them, furious at Jimmy because she knows, she just knows why he did it: because she loves her, yes, and would do anything for her, of course, but also because deep inside he believes he’s bad for her.
Maybe we’re just bad for each other.
Surprisingly enough, when this desolate, crude realization emerges from the depths of her darkened heart, it doesn’t feel in any way wrong or adverse to Kim: maybe they should have chosen to swim on their own all of those years back, and none of this would’ve happened. Howard would be alive, Chuck wouldn’t have gone the lengths he had gone to sabotage his little brother, Jimmy would be a solo practitioner, she would be working for some big law firm.
Howard would be alive. Howard would be alive. Howard would be alive.
Once again, she remembers his body hitting the floor with a loud thud, his deformed mouth forever opened, just like his eyes, now vacuous and still. And yet…
It is Jimmy who makes me happy.
So yes, they decided to sink together instead of swimming their separate ways, but, in spite of everything, Kim is not sure she’d want it any other way. As the car pulls over in the parking lot in front of the condo, she suppresses a sigh: a sigh of relief at the though of seeing Jimmy again, a sigh of sheer terror and shame and utter disgust at the thought of what she has become.
It’s another Albuquerque night… sticky, humid, hot, and not even a single, faint gust of wind cuts through the air and yet Kim is freezing, like she has a fever, or maybe something worse — something a couple days in the bed cannot mend. She watches herself from the outside as she crosses the parking lot, climbs the stairs and finds herself in front of the door — a door… flashes of a gun, her breath heavy, someone grabbing her from behind replay in her head. No, no, no, this is not that door… this is home.
Our home.
She reaches for the knob. She gets in. She turns the corner of the small hallway that leads to their bedroom… and he’s there. And for a second, just for a second, all of her doubts, all of her anger, all of her fears, the shame, the loathing, the repulsion… everything else disappears.
Jimmy. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.
As they embrace and Kim shuts her eyes, nuzzling the crook of his neck with her nose, pulling him close to remind herself he’s still alive — he’s alive he’s alive, he’s alive — and isn’t going anywhere, she inhales his sweet scent: he took a shower and familiarly smells like the cheap shampoo he always uses; she remembers of the first time they took a shower together, or when they did it after she had lied to Kevin at the country club. She sees clearly the time they went to visit that open house and she pranked him, much to the anger of the poor real estate agent. Everything feels exactly like the time he was about to depart from the desert, and, holding her tight, he promised her he was going to be alright — a promise he didn’t keep, despite all of his efforts.
Somehow, Kim feels like they’re running in circles, reliving the same moments again and again and again, spiraling down into an abyss where every brand new day gets darker and darker — just like their souls. They should do something about it, even if it’s too late… they should stop it, she thinks. They should stop it.
And yet she doesn’t let go.
She just can’t let go.