The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 10} MOJA ŠTIKLA

The days go by. I slowly adapt to exile existence. It’s going OK. I’m getting used to the silence and the brightness, as well as the sterility of the house, but the cold is more difficult to handle. It’s the coldest May of my life. Still, everywhere they talk of the loveliest spring.

“We are happy if we get ten degrees here in Iceland,” Sickreader explains.

Poor guys. I’m happy if I only get ten more minutes up here.

In the morning Father Friendly visits various churches and volunteer organizations where they treat him like the pope on tour, fill him with coffee and cookies, and load him up with booklets and brochures that show off their good work. They’re building a kindergarten in Kenya, a primary school in India. The priests are all men, the volunteers all women. I make my objections to Goodmoondoor once we’re in the car.

“I’m worried to see all those women working outside their homes,” I say.

“It’s all right because they are not paid,” he answers and winks at me in the funniest way.

My afternoons are usually my own. I walk around the city LPP-style, moving slowly down Liquor Vicar, the main street, women-watching and window-shopping, forever seeking the gun of my dreams. I follow my weight all the way down the hill, to the main square, which looks more like an empty parking lot than a city plaza. In a warm bookstore near the square, you can buy Handgun Magazine, the hitman’s favorite. Seems Smith & Wesson has a new model out. “Easy on your hand, easy on your target.” Pretty close to the “guilt-free gun” that we hangmen have been dreaming about for six hundred years. I wrap my scarf around the collar before paying for the mag at the cash register. One more local wonder girl, a Day 3 type, hands me the receipt. It’s a well-known fact that Croatia has the most beautiful women in the world, but Iceland might be a close runner-up. They are very different, though, those butter-blondes from our dark-haired ljepotice. From a bench by the big pond behind the cathedral, I watch the ducks and swans sail about. It’s a beautiful setting, really, perfect for a cigarette. But I won’t break my five-year abstinence from tobacco, even though I guess I’ve got good excuses to do so. Have to take care of my health. Instead I read about this innovation called NSK (No Spill Kill) made possible by the new, revolutionary bullet from Eagle Eye “big enough to ice your victim instantly, but so small that it won’t spill any blood at all.” Only in the most God-fearing, Christian country on the planet would they allow such a publication. Who’s buying it up here, on Gun-Free Island? I throw it in the garbage before entering Café Paris. The butter-blonde is on duty. I suck in my stomach and pick one of her tables.

The priest is worried about her relationship with her dad and asks her if she dislikes him.

“I think my father is more interested in God than his own children,” Gunholder strikes back, unusually hostile, while she cleans the table with a wet rag, head wagging like a sistah.

“Well, we are all God’s children. Sons and daughters of the Holy Father,” I respond, all Friendly.

“Holy Father, holy shit. Where is the holy mother then? She’s a virgin. Wow. Great. The church is good only for stupid white men,” she spits out. She leaves with her cloth and tray. I have to say that I’m pretty impressed, but Father Friendly thinks otherwise. When she returns with his latte, he says, “Your parents are holy people and I think they deserve your respect.”

“They’re not holy. Not committing sins for some years doesn’t make you holy. An inactive alcoholic is just as much an alcoholic as the one who’s drinking.”

Wow, this one is way too deep for me. I concentrate on her lips instead. Behind the heavy church gates of my priestly exterior, I keep a crazy Croatian army dog. Sooner or later he will break out of this fucking dog collar and start licking those glistening strawberry lips.

I’m supposed to be back at the holy house by six. I usually travel by cab, even though I could fly from New York to Boston for the same amount. Igor can afford it. Money’s never an issue in our game, though Friendly’s American Express Gold card probably has a higher limit. But using his pious plastic would be like sending an invitation to the Feds.

At 6:30 PM we eat a modest meal prepared by Sickreader. Her food always makes me think of Jerry Seinfeld. The table setting is very tasteful, but the food has almost no taste at all. By 8.00 PM we’re at the studio. Sickreader lends some of her own makeup to the two gentlemen who start their broadcast at 8:30. The funny thing is that I’m getting into it. I’m starting to like it. I’m almost looking forward to it. I even bought a copy of the King James Bible. Preaching makes you powerful.

“For I am his Word! His Word is me! Word up!”

I almost regret that we take Saturday off. “It’s because Eurovision,” Goodmoondoor says. The annual European Song Contest will be on tonight, with Iceland taking part for the twentieth year, Croatia for the eleventh. Apparently this is the TV event of the year. “It has no purpose to be preaching tonight. Ninety-nine prósent of all the people are watching Eurovision. The streets are empty when it is. We will just have some old show in the air tonight.” And it’s also family reunion time; Gunholder and her brother Truster are both coming for dinner. Sounds like Thanksgiving.

Truster is quite different from his sister. If she’s a swan, he’s a sparrow: A shy-eyed, thick-breasted fellow who is small and round, though one would call him strong rather than fat. He’s got working man’s hands and his strong fingers dwarf the needle and thread. His face is smooth save for white down that covers his upper lip. Still, he must be around twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. He hardly says a word and never looks up from his meal, but still I find his mere presence strangely soothing. I realize I would have a hard time following orders if they told me to take him out.

“Truster is the name of a very nice Icelandic bird. He brings the spring,” says the woman of the house as she passes me the white, and very holy-looking, sauce.

“It’s not Icelandic,” her daughter protests with heavy eyelids.

“What do you mean? Truster?” Sickreader says with a big surprise. “It’s one of the most Icelandic birds. We even have a poem about him.”

“Yeah, but Mom, it doesn’t mean it’s Icelandic. The bird’s only here for the summer. Most of the year it’s in France or Spain. Doesn’t that make it more Spanish than Icelandic?”

“Spanish? How can you say such a thing? Truster is the most Icelandic bird we have.”

“It spends more of its time in Spain.”

“But his… his kids are born in Iceland. They are Icelandic citizens, and he must also be. He was also born in Iceland!”

“Icelandic citizens? You speak like a racist, Mom,” Gunholder says.

It’s hard to tell whether her parents understand the word, but her mother closes her eyes and purses her lips. Goodmoondoor rises from the table and walks over to a bookshelf and pulls out a volume. Sickreader tries to smooth things over by turning to Father Friendly:

“I don’t know what you call this bird in English, but…”

“It is ‘redwing’,” her good husband calls out, looking up from a slim dictionary.

She thanks him and explains to me that the redwing is a “travel bird.” Gunholder rolls her eyes, but Truster just sits there, like a deaf sailor the family found on the beach this morning. His virgin cheeks are stained with a soft blush, as if they are trying to help me picture a redwing.

“Or is it traveling bird?” Sickreader continues. “What do you say? What do you call the bird that lives in two…”

“I don’t know. Migration bird?” is my wild guess.

Gunholder picks up on it with evil-eyed sarcasm: “Immigration bird.”

We eat in silence. Truster has finished his meal and our eyes meet. Poor guy. When his parents introduced him to me they had strangely added that he was in love, like he was a retard.

“Oh? And who’s the lucky one?” I asked.

“Yes. She’s very lucky. And we also,” came the answer.

I have to admit that all day long I’ve been looking forward to watching that stupid Eurovison Song Contest. It’s been six whole years since I’ve been able to see the program that saved my life. We gather on the big corner sofa, and Goodmoondoor turns on his flat screen. It’s live from Athens, Greece, and the atmosphere is not unlike that of a televangelist mega-mass: ten thousand people screaming with joy at the end of every song. Except after the Icelandic one. A trashy girl in a hooker’s outfit gets nothing but heavy booing. The song seemed OK, but her arrogance is definitely not going down with the Greeks. Actually, she reminds me a bit of Gunholder. I look at my hosts. Of all the secular acts, this one was probably the least godly, the singer wearing a devilish grin, as if she’d just slept with the producer of the show. Goodmoondoor looks at me with a complicated smile, as if he were a UN delegate and his prime minister had just peed at the podium.

“It’s just a joke,” Gunholder explains. “This singer… She’s just making fun of the whole fucking thing.”

The f-word quietly explodes in the room, like a silent but serious fart. Her father kindly reminds her that such a word is not accepted in his house, and even Toxic is thrown off guard, remembering how “the fucking thing” saved his life.

We go through ten or so more songs—most of them falling into the Slavic techno category, or Technoslavic as we say—until my dear Croatia appears. Good old Hrvatska. Tomo almost pees in his underpants as he watches the national goddess walk on stage. It’s Severina. Good old Severina. Severina Vuckovic. To the boys of Split she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She was four years older than me, and I didn’t even dare dreaming about her. I once saw her walking down Marmontova with her mom, and got those terrible heart-hiccups. Though I haven’t seen her in years—not since her sex tape went viral on the Internet and got every Croat peeing tears for a week—but she still looks like the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s wearing a long red dress, open at the front, showing off her perfect legs. She’s backed by some funked-up folk band. “Jer još trava nija nikla.” I get all homesick; I feel it in my stomach. Ah, this is terrible. “Tamo gdje je stala moja štikla.” Man, this is too much for me. I can’t help it, but watching her dance on the screen creates a deep feeling inside me. It’s like seeing your parents’ foreplay, the prelude to your conception, the very reason for your existence.

I get a very homesick hard-on.

And somewhere deep inside, I feel like crying. But my tears of stone won’t return to liquid form. They should make Viagra for crying. I hope they don’t notice my misty eyes, my sad mouth, or my heavy-duty hard-on saluting my homeland. It’s my language. The girl of my childhood dreams… It hits the lonely man in exile like a man being run over by a NYC truck full of tabloids (with Tony fucking Danza on the front page). Oh. Moja voljena domovina…

They look at me. I must look like a lone puppy longing for his mother. I have to say something.

“It’s the memories…,” I manage to stammer. “…of Yugoslavia.”

They turn their heads back to the screen, ignoring the heartbroken priest sitting on their sofa. Severina keeps on screaming: “Moja štikla! Moja štikla!” That would be “My high heel! My high heel!” Suddenly the doorbell rings. It has the sound of church bells. Goodmoondoor goes to the door, and I hear two men talking to him.

This is my cue.

I excuse myself and get up, pretending to go to the bathroom, but continue through the dining room, all the way to the back of the house. I open the door out on to the veranda and hesitate for a very brief moment. The icy spring air in my face, I face the fact that I’m not wearing any shoes, only my NYC socks. In the background, Severina howls on about her stilettos. I let them be my shoes as I step out on the cold veranda and quickly close the door behind me. Then I run like a crazy man out in the garden and through the next.