The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 15} ICELANDIC ARMS

I should write a thank you letter to the Icelandic police force. How they managed not to find a six-foot, 240-pound frog on the roof of the house they searched is a big mystery to me. The FBI should do some deep thinking before signing another deal of collaboration with them. I did the frozen frog for a freezing hour or so before returning down through the attic. The hatch in the floor was open. I kneeled before it like a ballet dancer in front of an imaginary lake, center stage, and was about to put my head down into it when I was suddenly faced with another head, containing two lusty lips. She was equally surprised to see me, and after a short sigh of relief we kissed.

It was an unusually long kiss considering the fact that it was our first one. It was a kiss brought to us by the Feds. And their white-hatted assistants. Once it was over, I invited her up to my loft space, and in a matter of minutes we were making our first love atop the North Face sleeping bag, me thus becoming her #41. She turned out to be all the ice cream I had been longing for. Warm ice cream. She was incredible. My boner was steel-hard and she got very excited as well, screaming like an angry feminist protesting against a rapist being brought from car to justice. I even had to cover her mouth with my hand, fearing the police would show up again. She bit me. The arctic animal. I got a bit intimidated. Still she seemed to enjoy my shaky performance, her body shaking all over like an old man’s hand with Parkinson’s disease—or maybe it was just something she picked up in Slut Magazine. Afterwards we lay like two naked criminals at large, resting and talking.

“You’re so beautiful.”

That’s me talking, of course.

“And you’re so…..”

“Fat?”

“You’re so strange.”

“Strange?”

“Yes, you’re so strange. I’ve never… You come from another world. I’ve never….”

“You’ve never been with a killer before?”

“No. Yeah. Never,” she says with a short laugh. “A Mafia guy….”

I should maybe thank the Talians here. They’ve really done the image work for us mobsters. Though the girls of Manhattan may treat us like second-class citizens, we’re still king overseas.

“You didn’t like me when I was playing the priest.”

“No. That’s right.”

“Well. I’m a bad actor.”

“No, it was because you’re such a good actor, I guess.”

“You hate your dad?”

“No. I don’t hate him,” she says with a soft voice. “But it’s hard being brought up in a church. I wasn’t even allowed to dye my hair. ‘We have to respect God’s original design, blah, blah, blah…’ I mean, I just had enough. I had to break away. And that was pretty tough. Like coming out as a lesbian or something. When Dad found out about me smoking, he had his friend Torture come by the house to exorcise the evil spirits from my body. It was insane, really.”

“And he didn’t succeed?”

“Well, in a way. I went from Winstons to Winston Lights.”

I get pregnant with laughter.

“So you don’t have much contact with your parents then?”

“No. The least possible. I only go there two times a year. For Christmas and Eurovision.”

“What about Truster?”

“Truster?” she laughs. “You always call him Truster. It’s Þröstur. Like ‘thrush,’ you know, the bird. ‘Thrush’ and then T, U, R. It’s not that hard.”

“OK. Sorry. But what about your dad and him?”

“Oh? They’re OK. Dad likes him. He’s quiet, handy, and helpful. He’s done tons of work for him at the TV station. Without getting paid at all. ‘The Lord will pay him in heaven, blah, blah…’ You get it? My parents are just impossible people, really.”

Then she goes to fetch her post-orgasm cigarette. Because of the low ceiling, she’s forced to walk like a hunchback towards the open hatch. Her small breasts stay put (I mean, there is no flopping around) as she bows over the opening in the floor, but shake a bit as she descends the staircase. Moments later she’s back with her packet—polished pink nails tiptoeing across the rough floor—and lays herself beside me. Her butter-blonde hair is combed back in a small bun at the back of her head. I gently stroke it from forehead to bun. It feels kind of hard and sort of reminds me of the helmety hairdo of my black NY-doorman, though I’ve never dreamed of touching that wonder of nature. I let my eyes travel along her white, healthy body, from toes to cigarette, with short stopovers at her trimmed triangle and the pierced navel. She sucks on the slim stick of poison.

“How do you say ‘love,’ in Icelandic?”

“Kynlíf.”

“Queen Leaf?”

“No, kynlíf.”

She’s fucking playing with me. Those bloody Icelanders can never be honest, apart from the ones that God has ordered to. They always have to be cool. Must be the cold.

“What’s it in Croatian?” she asks.

“Ljubav.”

“That’s like ‘love’ with a B.”

“Yes, it’s love to be. Yours is with a Q or a K…”

“I was joking. Kynlíf means sex. Love is ást.”

“Wow. That’s harsh. How do you spell it?”

“A with hat, S, and T.”

“AST? That’s Ax and Saw Treatment in our language.”

“What does that mean?” she asks.

I don’t answer. Munita suddenly breaks into my brain and fills it like a balloon. Munita, my love. Sorry. I have slept with another woman behind your butt. But it’s not my fault, really. If there’s someone to blame it must be the local police. Had they found me, this would never have happened. Gunholder tells me it’s common knowledge that the White Hats are hopeless and that Iceland has its own SWAT team called The Viking Squad, but they’re not available all the time.

“There is only one squad. They must be busy now.”

I feel a bit offended, jealous even. How could they possibly have found a more serious assignment on Gun-Free Island than capturing the triple six-pack killer of an FBI agent and a world-famous priest?

“What could that be?”

“I don’t know. They do all kinds of things. Maybe some president’s in town, or they’re monitoring a high school dance up north.”

“A high school dance? The kids have guns?”

“No, but Icelandic kids, when they get drunk, they go nuts.”

So, guns against nuts. I count myself lucky to have stumbled upon Rev. Friendly at the JFK toilets. I could have killed someone with a ticket to Baghdad. Iceland is a Gangster’s Paradise. No army, no guns, no murders, and almost no police. Only gorgeous women with groovy names.

“It’s not Gunholder. It’s Gunnhildur,” she says.

“Goonhilda?”

“No. Gunn! You start with Gunn, and then hildur. Gunnhildur!”

“Gunhilda?”

“Æ, whatever. I’ll just call you Tott.”

“What does that mean?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“You never had a nickname?”

“When we lived in the States, the kids always called me Gunn and my dad still calls me that sometimes.”

“Gun?”

“No. Gunn!”

“You’re my Gun. The one I’ve been looking for ever since I came up here.”

Her lips vibrate with joyful irritation as she exhales her last draw of smoke.

“A smoking Gun,” I add while taking a good look at her.

She’s the total opposite of my Munita. The butter-blonde ice queen and my tandoori tarantula. I lean in for a kiss and fall into her Icelandic arms.