The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 32} DETOXED

“How could you NOT know he was my boyfriend? I mean, we were living together, sleeping in the same bed.”

We’re on our way to Silence Grove. The son-in-law-thing has to be settled. I have to face the saviors of my soul and tell them that on top of everything else I’m taking their daughter as well. But I guess her father won’t mind. We’re “living the last days” anyway.

As always, she does the driving. Tommy has a passport but no driver’s license. We drive past the downtown domestic airport. Rain beats the windshield. Radio plays Shakira. “Hips Don’t Lie.” Me and Munita once saw her enter a fancy restaurant on Theatre Row at one of our many pre-foreplay dinners. We both had our eyes on her great Colombian butt, and once it was out of sight, Munita declared it too big. I didn’t want to tell my Bonita that it looked pretty tight compared to her Aztec Temple, so I quickly added the third Latin treasure to the conversation: J-Lo’s biggest asset, concluding that South America was big on behinds in every meaning of the word. It made her laugh all the way to my bed.

I need all my mental strength to lift the three great butts off my mind and register the fact I’m sitting next to my new blonde girlfriend in a car in Iceland.

“Sorry. What did you say?”

“How on earth could you think we were brother and sister?”

“I didn’t think he was your brother. I thought he was your dog.”

She drives for a while. It’s a rainy Reykjavik Sunday. Everybody’s on the move. In their car. Waving to each other with wind-screen wipers. We pass The Pearl, the rooftop restaurant. It’s a dome of glass and steel built on top of some volcano-water tanks. I’d take her there some day if my job involved some money.

“We’d been together for too long,” she says.

“How long?”

“Since high school. But with, you know, some good pauses.”

Very good indeed. Having slept with four football teams (goalies not included).

“OK. And when did you split up?”

“What do you mean?”

“When did you tell him about us?”

“Just, you know, when we started getting serious.”

“And when was that?”

“When you moved in, for example.”

She sounds pissed. I’m holy pissed.

“When I moved in? You only told him then?!”

“Yes, about that time.”

“So for a month he was like… All our nights in the furniture shop… He thought you were still together?!”

“Well, I guess he had his suspicions.”

“So you lied to him, and you lied to me?”

“I didn’t lie to you. You never asked.”

“I never asked? I mean, how could I? I thought we were together! I didn’t know you had a boyfriend!”

“I didn’t know you had A GIRLFRIEND!”

“But she was dead!”

“Not the first time we…”

“No, I know. That was not good. That’s why I left.”

“Bullshit. You left because you found out she was dead and you were in a state of shock.”

“Can you stop the car?”

“What?”

“I want to get out. It’s over.”

“It’s over? Why?”

“I have to be able to trust you completely.”

“But you can.”

“No. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie! You never asked!”

“You lied to him and you will lie to me. I’ll never be able to trust you.”

“Jesus, Tod. Why don’t you just shoot me and then you’ll have trust!”

Silence. She steps on the gas, I step on the gun. The one inside my shoe. We both look ahead. Through the foggy rain you can make out the red-lighted butt of a white Nissan Pathfinder driving ahead of us. The wipers work the windshield, going from my side to her side, from her side to my side.

“I’m pregnant.”

Obviously, that’s her talking. And I can only repeat after her, like the first imbecile member of mankind did, when he found out his wife was knocked up.

“Pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. When did you find out?”

“This morning.”

“And…?”

“And…?”

“Is it mine?”

“YES, OF COURSE IT’S YOURS! WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM! IT’S FUCKING YOURS! I’M HAVING YOUR FUCKING BABY!!!”

She starts crying. Tears outside, tears inside. Difficult driving conditions. She pulls over at the next gas station. I try to tell her how sorry I am. How wonderful it is that she’s having my child. MY CHILD! It must be the best news I’ve heard since Suker sacked the Germans in France ’98. I offer her my arms, and she unfastens her seatbelt before falling into my lap. She cries for a while. I guess half of it comes from the fact that she’s pregnant. Munita once told me pregnant women cry a lot. It’s something about water building up in the womb and adding to the water supply, causing overflow at times. I stare out the windshield. The brand new gas station also houses a fast food joint. I watch a young father pass under the bright red Kentucky Fried sign, holding the hand of his small son. She cries a bit longer. My crotch is getting wet. It’s precipitation returning to the source. Cycle of life.

Our emotional outbursts put steam on the windows, turning the car into some kind of a cocoon. She then finally rises with a tear-torn face. I repeat my sorries.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset. I’m very happy about it.”

“You are?”

“Yes. Of course. I’m thrilled.”

“So you think you can like, trust me?”

“Can you trust me?”

I feel the gun’s texture with my foot.

“Yes.”

“But you know who I am, Gunnhildur. You know what I’ve done. I don’t get it. How can you trust me? How can you start a family with someone like me?”

“I love you.”

“Me… me, too.”

It might not be grammatically perfect, but she gets the meaning and we kiss. I’ve come a pretty long way. I’ve come all the way from pulling a gun out of a guy’s rectum in a forty-fifth-floor hotel room in midtown Manhattan, to embracing a butter-blonde girl in a Red Cross–red Škoda at some shitty suburban gas station in Iceland and telling her I love her. And I’m not lying. I guess.

Feels fucking good.

To put things in the most absolute perspective, the radio DJ decides that this is the perfect moment to play Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” Quite incredible really. Back in NYC it used to be “my song” of course. The boys would tease me with it. I kind of liked it, actually, and even ended up buying the bloody CD and used to play it, loud, on my way to a gun-job. It made me powerful, got me into the mood for a good killing. Hearing it now can only appeal to the old self that the new one has swallowed up, the former small as a bullet, the latter big as love.

I’m detoxed.

Gunnhildur doesn’t notice the song, and after a prolonged moment of hardcore happiness, we drive on. The two-lane highway takes us through a tunnel, down a slope and up another, then under a flyover. Fancy SUVs speed past us, stirring up “dust” made of water. She makes the turn into Garðabær, the sleepy town where her parents live. Then, out of the blue, she says:

“So you want to live in Iceland, then?”

“Yeah. But only while you’re alive. As soon as you’re dead, I’m off.”

“So you’ll probably kill me?”

“Not if you marry me.”

“Is that a proposal?”

“No, it’s a threat.”

She looks at me with a grin I could kill for. Sorry, no. With a grin I could let myself be killed for.

We’re two happy hamsters expecting the third as we pull up in front of her parents’ house. I give her a quick and serious look, asking:

“Should we also tell them about the baby?”

Her face is almost back to normal, though her eyes are still a bit red.

“No, not now. I’m not sure if I want to keep it.”

“What? Gunnhildur? No!”

She looks at me for a while, cultivating a smile on her juicy lips. “Relax. It was just a test.”