The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

people. For example, we don’t know how to wait in line. We always wait in a triangle.”
    “Why?”
    “I think it’s because we’re so few. We don’t know how to wait because we never have to.”
    “But I don’t get it why you’re so impatient? I’ve never been to a more relaxing and quiet country.”
    “It’s also because we’re so few. Everybody’s trying to act as if they were three different persons. We’re trying our best to make Reykjavik look like New York.”
    “Well…you need to work a bit harder then.”
    “I’m doing my best. In the morning I’m a waitress, in the afternoon I’m in the office, and in the evenings I’m studying massage.”
    “You are? Massage?”
    “Yeah. I just started last week.”
    I’m on the brink of proposing. We talk about massage for a while. She explains to me the difference between the Swedish and Shiatsu techniques, and I explain to her the difference between regular and full-body massage. Then we lay silent for a bit, until I say:
    “Yes, I don’t think I’d like to be a hitman in Iceland.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you’re so few. I don’t think I could bring myself to shoot.”
    She laughs her husky tobacco laughter that evolves into a series of small coughs. They call for a cigarette.
    “But how come you’re so few? I mean, you never had any wars.”
    “No, but some say that the weather is our war. Ice can be just as deadly as fire.”
    The small size of the Icelandic nation is explained by the past, she says, while she fills my room with Gunsmoke. Volcanic eruptions, plagues, and freezing cold winters almost managed to rid the land of its people. The Easelanders didn’t really start flourishing until they got hold of electricity and central heating. In the last fifty years they’ve increased their numbers by 150,000. That’s about as many as got killed in our war. We could have solved the thing by sending them all to Iceland, a land that could easily carry a population of ten or twenty million people. But they would never have allowed them all inside the country, Gunnhildur says. The hitman bows to his fellow men, who would rather see people die than allow them to camp on their lawns.
    We talk about the war and Gun continues her cigarette. She asks me about by brother Dario.
    “How old was he when he died?”
    “He was three years older than me. Twenty-three.”
    “Wow. What was he like? Was he like you?”
    “No. He was our hero. The favorite son. He was much more fit, looked like a Greek god, was in sports and…He was on the national team in pole vault.”
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s jumping on a stick. You know Sergei Bubka?”
    “No.”
    “You don’t? The greatest athlete of all time. Ukrainian guy. He won the gold in Seoul. Dario trained with him for a while. He was his big hero. And it was kind of strange, really, for the same night that Dario was killed, Bubka set a world record. His twelfth or something world record. Six-point-oh-eight meters. In some Russian town. It was like my brother’s soul was helping him out, lifting him up a few more inches. Soul vaulting.”
    Fuck. I’m getting too sentimental for this frosty girl.
    “Wow. That’s amazing. Did your brother ever go to the Olympics?”
    “No. But he would have gone to Atlanta in ninety-six, if…”
    I open my eyes as much as I can. Hanging them out to dry, hoping she doesn’t notice. No. She only watches the smoke rise from her übermouth.
    “Wow. So he was like, a star?”
    “Well, maybe not. Pole vaulting is not that big in Croatia. He was like a shooting star or something.”
    I always sound like a lame old lady when I speak of my dead brother. Therefore I never do.
    “So it must have been hard for you, to…”
    “Actually, it was kind of strange. The death of my brother numbed the fact that I killed my father. Our father.”
    “Why? How?”
    “It’s like when you accidentally set fire to your house, it’s a bit soothing, or it kind of makes it less bad, to see your neighbor’s house go up in flames as well.”
    “But your own brother is more important to you than your neighbor’s ugly house?”
    “Of course. Or you can say that the thing with my father blocked me from the blow that the death of my brother would have been to me. You can’t have two MHMs in your life.”
    “MHM?”
    “Most Horrible Moment.”
    “Aha. So the murder of your girlfriend and your road accident was not as horrible?”
    “No. But when you rejected me