The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

125. In the Midwest I used to drive through towns with a sign saying: POP. 125. I always stopped for gas, imagining this was my own personal ADV.
    “Yeah. On the whole. I killed about fifty or sixty as a soldier in the Croatian army defending the land of my father and mother. And since then I have killed exactly sixty-six motherfuckers from various countries in my work as a hitman for the national organization. Father Friendly was my first and only ‘amateur’ murder.”
    She is speechless and remains so, like the Catholic priest in his confession booth.
    “The national organization?” she finally asks.
    “Yeah, the Mafia.”
    “The Mafia? You’re in the Mafia?”
    “Yeah. The Croatian Mafia, that is. Not the Talian shit.”
    She stares at me for some good ten seconds, suddenly looking totally sober. The Mafia. In my early New York days I used to think this was my magic word. I thought every girl in Manhattan dreamt about a real and authentic Mob man with a foreign accent and expert humping style. I always dropped it on the first date, right after the main course. They all reacted in the same way; they politely excused themselves, went to the bathroom, and never came back. Oh, the girls of Manhattan, this whole dating army of mystic blondes and loud brunettes, with their moneytoring eyes, hair smelling of TV soap, and the fame-detector buried deep in their purses. Some even left their purses with me, and twice I went looking for them in the ladies room, but there was no trace of them. Yes, “the Mob” are magic words.
    I slowly learned not to discuss my profession with my bubbly dinner partners, feeling very much like the AIDS-infected dater. I kept that info like a secret weapon, saving it for dumping purposes only, or SOS situations. If I was, for example, stuck on a first date and the food was better than the girl (a Day 3 Girl who was turning into a Day 20 type in the middle of her lecture on the American voting system and how some Nader guy was “our only hope”), all I had to do then was to drop the magic word and bang! —I could reset my radar.
    The reaction is a bit different here. The ice-girl weighs her options until she asks:
    “You’re like a…mass murderer then?”
    “No.”
    “What do you mean, no?”
    “I’m not a murderer. I’m a killer.”
    “OK.”
    “There is a big difference between murder and killing.”
    “Oh?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.
    “Yes. It’s like the difference between a hobby and a job.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Murder is something you choose to do. It may be wrong. Killing is something you have to do, or you die yourself. That’s not wrong.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “Bullshit?”
    “Yeah. You think your victims will feel the difference? ‘Oh, I’m so happy I was killed and not murdered! It’s so much better!’ Fucking bullshit. One hundred people? What kind of a monster are you eiginlega ?”
    This last word must be Icelandic. She’s too agitated to have full control of her brain. I’m a bit worked up as well:
    “Hey. What do you know about war? You’ve never even HAD war in this…this cold and silent land. You’ve never had to live outside, in the mountains in the middle of winter, without any tents or any real food for days, and then you see your father dead and they tell you your brother was killed and then they have those people lined up in front of you and they tell you to shoot. And you shoot, and you don’t know how many you shoot, and you don’t want to know how many you shoot, but still you want to shoot as many as possible. Because…”
    I can feel that somewhere inside me tears are being manufactured for the first time in years.
    “Because war is shit and we’re all deep inside it. No one can say that this is right and this is wrong, because it’s either ALL WRONG or ALL RIGHT. And…”
    Tears have left the factory. The order has been placed. They’re on their way. But it’s a long haul.
    “And you still don’t know. You still don’t fucking know. Fucking fifteen years later you still don’t know if it was wrong or if it was right. It was just…”
    I pause before my speech dies out in a lone, soft, final word: “…shit.”
    We sit for a while. The bright night entering through the windows fills the room almost sarcastically. This should be a dark scene. Tears have yet to arrive.
    She looks at her hands. They’re resting on her knees. She has long nails, freaky long. They’re painted light pink. I remember