The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

down the street. And a lone raven that barks from the top of the small clock standing in the middle of the square. The whale mountain across the bay is buried in gray fog down to its fair blue ankles. I head in its direction.
    A small gray car is sitting at the next corner, waiting for the green light. It’s driven by a chubby blonde, a Day 16 type. Must be on her way to work. How often have I found myself in her position, waiting at a red light at four in the morning, deep in the heart of Nowhere City, the only car in sight, and Willie Nelson singing on every waveband to all the girls he’s loved before. I guess more than half of my sixty-six were laid out before noon. Morning is for murder. Nobody expects a bullet for breakfast.
    I walk along the shore. A protective wall made of huge stones runs along the shoreline, protecting you from the beast that rests beneath the ocean’s mirror-like surface. My crazy colleague. The paved walking path runs between the wall and an empty boulevard. Munita’s half blue head appears in front of me, floating in the air like a huge and hairy spider. I walk along the shore, talking to her and myself. I’m stuck on Fridge Island, with no one to talk to but all my sins and losses.
    Hit #42 was an unlucky business man from Winnipeg, Canada, who owed Dikan some money. I had to go up forty-five floors for this job and ghost myself into his small hotel room. As I entered, he was doing some crazy yoga shit on top of the double bed—legs in the air, ass in my face. He didn’t see death coming until I sent the bullet down his rectum. It was too fucking funny not to give it a try. But he didn’t die right away. I spent about forty seconds agonizing over my next move. I absolutely didn’t want to waste another bullet. I was only two bullets away from my triple six-pack. So I just stood there stroking my gun. Luckily he seemed to understand my situation. He was cooperative. I would totally mention him in my thank-you speech at the Mafia Oscars.
    With enormous effort he managed to turn back around and crawl across the bloody bed towards the table. The bullet seemed to have traveled up his colon, through stomach and lungs, making its exit on the border of chest and neck. Blood kept gushing out from under the chin. I rushed over, thinking he must keep a gun in the drawer. But he only reached for his wallet and spent his last breaths looking at photographs of his wife and three kids. Four Canadian faces frozen in fun. Then he drowned in his own blood dripping from his nose. Once the big one got him, I sat on the bed beside him. I sat there for half an hour and finally decided to throw myself out the window, down onto Sixth Avenue. But I couldn’t open the fucking window. Modern hotels.
    Then I figured out I could use my own piece, of course. But ambition ruled over depression.
    Soon after, on my next date with Munita, I mentioned the idea of us having kids, becoming a family. Mary Lou and Bobby Boksic. I wanted some happy faces in my wallet. But she said she wanted to wait until she had reached the twentieth floor at work. She had five to go. Five unmarried suckers.
    The walking path takes me away from the shoreline, following the boulevard into some Belarus neighborhood. Low-rises to my left, higher ones to the right. Reminds me of my week in Minsk. Me and Niko waiting in a hotel room for five days for that briefcase to arrive. Watching every single game of The World Women’s Handball Championship. The Norway girls were hot.
    There are some cars now. The morning traffic is picking up, most of it coming toward my face, heading downtown. I have no travel plan. I just follow Munita’s frozen head, appearing in front of me every seven minutes, while hoping for a police car to appear. I’ve reached the moment that arrives, sooner or later, in every killer’s career: When he gets noose-sick. When he starts shouting to his fellow citizens, Please, come get me!
    The walk takes me past a cinema (showing some Talian Mob shit) and the local IKEA painted in yellow and blue. The morning is well underway now. Cars come flying like rhymes from a rapper’s mouth. But I’m the only pedestrian around. No other passersby. No wonder the pavement then suddenly comes to an end. I carry on along the road, walking the dirty grass next to the asphalt. There is a concrete mess ahead, all hoops and loops, buzzing with traffic. The car people look at me as if I was Hannibal Lecter on his way to