The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

smile as he throws his cigarette out on the wet parking lot overlooking some drab industrial blocks and the rest of leafy Reykjavik.
    “You never shot anybody?” I ask him.
    “With a gun? No. Killing somebody with a gun is like making love with a mouse,” he says, picking up his slimy knife. “You know, computer mouse.”
    I better be impressed with my holy benefactors, the comedy duo known as Good ‘n Torture. They do have some interesting friends. Just the other day, Balatov told me the Good Knee already served in Norwegian prison for drug trafficking. He was caught fishing something fishy off the coast of Lofoten.
    If society were drawn as a circle, the PC-preaching, re- and bicycling majority would be on top (all those people who never cross the street on a red light but start licking the TV screen each time Tony fucking Soprano appears on it). To the right we’d have the gun-loving old-timers who prefer beating their wives to sleeping with them, and on the left we’d have the anti-global guys, the bitter bunch who’re against all the good things of this world, like meat, porn, and global warming. I would find myself at the bottom, where the extreme right meets the violent left. Where holy men and women sit next to murderers and art thieves.
    It’s here where the ring closes. In the kitchen for the needy. I can see how the two worlds meet in the sharp edge of Olie’s knife.
    It’s my first “honest” job since my short stint as a waiter back in bitte-schön days, and I find it more than OK. Not having to think is a welcome relief; washing the brown plastic trays is my form of meditation. First I clean off most of the food (the needy of Iceland are clearly not so needy), and then I rinse them with water before placing them in the big old dishwasher, about which Sammy asks me every time he drops by, as if it were his aging mother. “How’s she doing today?”
    Olie sometimes drives me “home,” speeding past the bus stop where le Chien waits along with the local loonies, and even his famous girlfriend once gave me a ride in her little white Polo. Harpa is an all-Icelandic butter-blonde with a fake tan and tribal tattoos up her sleeve, and she tells me her name means “harp.” Actually, “lute” would better fit her long neck and big ass. Yet, she’s kind of sexy. I’d probably start killing for her on Day 10 or 11.
    It feels kind of cool to come back from work every day without having killed anybody. My warehouse sleep may not be perfect, but at least I’ve stopped adding new bodies to the inventory.
    I’m usually back in the barracks by five or six, accompanied by the leftovers from the Samver lunch that I warm up in the prehistoric microwave and eat in the kitchen if Balatov’s not around. I have to watch my budget, plus Olie’s food is all right. Knowing that the chef’s a convicted killer, a man who relishes cutting meat, adds an extra flavor to the meal. After I started working for a living, I realized that Iceland is the most expensive country in the world. It costs a fridge’s worth to fill one. Half a kilo of cheese costs as much as half a kilo of weed. Many foreigners only eat expired food that the supermarkets leave at their back door every night, and Gun told me about a German tourist who suffered a mild heart attack after getting the check for a couple of cocktails in a trendy hotel downtown.
    I always tell her that “the best country in the world” has to be like the best night club: it must be the most expensive one.
    According to therapy rules, I’m not allowed out at night. Torture doesn’t even allow me any books apart from the holy one, and absolutely no DVD-gazing nor Internet browsing. So, apart from the short ebony poems recited by Balatov (“I think Oprah in shower. Is good.”), the Bible is my only form of entertainment. Reading was never my thing, though I did read two or three novels when Dikan had me touring the States, doing a hit in every town. Those long hotel days couldn’t be spent on call girls only.
    So I spend my long white nights with the big black book.
    Of course there is the small TV out in the kitchen, but it’s all Icelandic programming—some butter-blonde bimbos reading the small town news, followed by American dumbos eating live maggots—plus it’s monopolized by Balatov who, rather than watching it, has started guarding the TV set as if it was a safe. He curses every single subtitle that appears on the screen, while scratching his