The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

icy grin. “No.”
    “No? You’ve had forty people between your legs and you don’t feel bad about any of them?”
    “I can’t allow myself to. I see them all the time.”
    Give me a fucking spring break.
    “You’re still seeing them? Forty guys?”
    “Not ‘seeing’ them. I just, you know, meet them in the street and stuff. It’s a small town. They come into the café all the time.”
    “OK. So, that’s why they hired you?”
    She switches from Lewinsky to Britney.
    “Hey. Shut the fuck up, will you! We’re talking about dead people here, and yet you make ME look like the guilty one. As if you can compare killing people to making love with them?”
    “Love and death. Equally important in life.”
    “Love and death? It’s not about love. It’s only about sex!”
    “Even more serious.”
    She jumps up from the sofa, screaming at me: “OH! Fuck you!” before leaving the room. But she’s back in no time, looking like she just realized that this is her place and not mine. “I don’t know why the hell I’m keeping you here! I really should call the police or Torture or something, but…Argh! Get up! Go upstairs! Get away from me! And shut the fuck up!”
    “Sorry. I’m really sorry.”
    “Fuck you!”
    “Yes, I’ll…I’ll do it later. Please, sit down.”
    She goes into the kitchen and stays there for a cigarette’s worth of time. I use those minutes for spanking my green-eyed monkey.
    Jealousy is the old and ever-caring aunt that never forgets to show up at my dates. It has long been the driving force in my life, ever since my Hanover girlfriend, the optician’s daughter, dumped me Prussian style. Hildegaard was a Day 8 Girl (as a freshly landed foreigner who spoke little German my chances were limited) who wore turtlenecks half the time, played the violin with an angel’s face, and never used a dirty word, but told me, at the moment of her parting, that she had cheated on me with seventeen men. Seventeen fucking Germans. Ponytail, mustache, and all. It was supposed to make me feel better, she said.
    “You should only be happy to get rid of a…”
    “…slut like you?”
    It took me seven years to bury the bastards in the hard soil of my soul. They’ve hardly bothered me since, but they did turn my mind into a suspicious one forever. As God only knows too well, I’ve a hard time enjoying relationships. I’m always like some fucking secret agent trying to prove that my partner is a counterspy. And when it comes to love I’m like the referee at a soccer match, totally unable to enjoy the game, but always ready with the yellow card.
    And here I go again. Aunt Jealousy has ordered Gunholder out in the kitchen. So the old hatch did make it all the way up to Iceland. Still, this should hardly qualify as a date. It’s more like a crash course in the business of shooting people. Killing 101. We’re at the end of our first lesson. The teacher waits for the student to return from her smoking break. In a while she does. Gunholder reappears in the doorway, with red eyes and angry cheeks. She crawls back onto the sofa and lights another cigarette. I watch her inhale and exhale for a while. She makes a small windy sound each time the smoke leaves her mouth.
    “How did your parents react when the police came and Father Friendly was gone?” I finally ask her.
    “They were in big shock, of course. I mean, they totally believed in you,” she says with a modest laugh.
    “Was he angry, your dad?”
    “I would say more shocked than angry. And then he started reassuring the police, putting his hand on their shoulders and telling them: ‘God will find him. He will not escape the waking eye of the Lord.’”
    She laughs some more. I try to laugh with her. Then all of a sudden we hear the downstairs door open and her smile disappears. She kills her cigarette, stands up, grabs my dish and brings it to the kitchen. I run up the primitive staircase and then pull it up behind me. It comes with a hatch that closes behind it, once the staircase is all up in the attic. I crawl across the splintered floor and get inside my noisy North Face hide. I listen to Truster trot inside the apartment, the poor horse. He’s home early. I hear them exchange the smallest hellos followed by some toilet sounds. He then says something that my wild guess would have as: “Some food left?” She says nay. That’s Icelandic for “no.” She has taught me some phrases already. Tugthúslimur is “good morning” and