The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 16} LOVE IS IN THE FRIDGE

I’ve finished my first week in exile. Even though I’ve not killed anyone for the past seven days, except one small dog, this has to count as one of the most interesting weeks of my life. For seven days and seven nights the sun has not set. I’ve had five different nationalities and held down two jobs. I’ve appeared on live television. I watched the European Song Contest for the first time in six years. I broke into two apartments, stole one car, three beers, some bread and bacon and six eggs. I also find myself in love with two different girls. One Icelandic and one Indian-Peruvian.

To avoid further police visits, I have the blonde buy me a new phone, equipped with a virgin number. I then call the dark one. I call her all morning, all afternoon. I call her cell, I call her at work, I call her at home. I send messages. I leave messages. And massages.

I finally decide to call the doorman of my building in SoHo, the one with the freaky hairdo. Just hearing his deep voice gives me a warm feeling mixed with a dash of homesickness. But it mixes badly in my stomach.

He says Munita came by a few days ago, accompanied by a Talian looking stud. They went upstairs. She told the doorman she had keys to my apartment. This is a lie. I never gave her any keys. But the doorman had to believe her, he saw her enter the building with me all the time. The Talian guy came downstairs a few fucking hours later, but she has not left the building since. The bitch.

I thank him and speedily finish the phone call before dialing my own apartment. There’s no answer. Of course not. The horny bitch. Fucking Talians all over my bathroom tiles! I should call Interflora and order a bouquet of poisonous lilies to be delivered to my door in NYC. Why couldn’t she just have done it at her place? Why did she have to smear my white leather couch with Talian sweat?

I call the doorman again—suddenly getting the feeling that he’s the only person I know in the Big Apple. (I know I killed most of my New York contacts, but still, this fact is pretty sad. Six years have been erased from my life.) I ask him to call my apartment and if there is no answer, call the police or something. Someone has to enter the goddamn door and bring the fucking woman to the fist-fucking phone.

“You have the key to my apartment, right?”

“Yes, of course I have your key,” the doorman says.

He tells me to call him back in an hour.

In an hour… Well, fuck my fuck. In a fucking hour the fucking Truster is back home and I can’t possibly talk on the phone now. I have to remain completely still and silent up here in the cold, cold attic. In the cold, cold Atlantic. Poor me. I shouldn’t have taken #66 to the dumpsite. I should have finished him in his car. Then his friends never would have gotten near me with their zoom lenses. It was just that his car was so fucking great. It looked so expensive. (I sometimes inflated my fee by giving the victim’s car to Radovan’s guy out in Jackson Heights, a much used used-cars salesman named Ivo.)

Fucking Radovan. The fountain of all my troubles.

I listen to Truster and Gunholder watch the evening news. Lilliput Island seems to have enough of political scandals and fucked-up celebrities to fill a daily news-hour. Or they’re just saying that nothing happened today. No murders, no war, no nothing. Aw, fuck it. I call anyway. I can’t possibly wait until morning. Gently I turn my body around, dive into the sleeping bag head first, butt upwards, and whisper to my good old doorman:

“It’s Tod again. Did you call her?”

“Yes.”

“And what?”

“There was no answer. So, I went upstairs.”

“And…? Was she there?”

“The apartment was empty.”

“Empty?”

“Yeah. But there was this strange smell. A very strong smell.”

“What kind of a smell? Body-smell? Sweat?”

“A kind of like, body-smell, yes.”

“Well, fuck her,” I try not to shout into my brand new Icelandic phone, shaking with wrath inside the loud sleeping bag.

“So I checked all the rooms, sir,” he continues.

“Ah ha?”

“I checked all the rooms, sir… The bathroom, the kitchen…”

“Uh-huh?”

“All the windows were closed. I checked all the windows. They were all closed.”

“OK.”

“Finally… I don’t know why really… I opened the fridge.”

“The fridge?”

“Yes. I opened the fridge, and…”

“Some food gone bad? I left some food?”

“I’m sorry sir, but I don’t really know how to tell you this.”

His deep baritone voice turns even more serious than normal.

“What?” I ask, trembling with excitement.

“Her head was there, sir.”

“Her head? In the fridge?”

“Yes, sir. Her head stood there, on a plate. The… the face was all swollen, yellow, and blue. But…”

“But?”

“But it was her. I recognized her. It was your friend.”

“On a plate?”

“Yes, sir. In the fridge. It was rather…”

“Only her head?”

As I say this, it dawns upon me that Munita is dead.

“Yes, sir. Only her head. I couldn’t find her body.”

“But you could smell it?”

“Yes, I guess so. It might be there somewhere.”

“What kind of a body-smell was it?”

“What kind?”

“Yes. Was it pussy? Pussy-smell?”

What the hell am I saying? My sick old Croatian mind. I deserve to die. Oh, Munita. Why did you have to cheat on me with a mobster? I cheated on you with a nice little ice-mouse. I guess I should cry now. Your head in the fridge! Those lovely lips turned cold. Those eyes with a frozen glaze. Your hair like cold noodles. What about your body? They ate that already? And now your soul, your beheaded soul, is hugging its limbless parents in heaven. Oh, Bonita…

“Yes. I guess you can say that, sir. Pussy… but very strong,” my doorman says into my right ear.