The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

because you thought I was a priest…that was pretty horrible.”
    She smiles, before saying:
    “But then I found out that you were a serial killer and fell in love with you.”
    She laughs. I keep the word “love” between my ears, letting my brain fondle it like a newborn puppy.
    “You’re sick,” I say.
    “Yes. Lovesick,” she says and then puts out her cigarette in the half empty Gatorade bottle standing on the floor beside the futon and grabs my face. I smile my broken smile. She puts her index finger up to my mouth and replaces the missing tooth with its tip. Eye for an eye, finger for a tooth. She holds it there for a while, smiling, before removing it for a kiss.
    She kisses me like an island girl who finds an ugly ship-wrecker on the shore. He’s all bruised and battered, trout-red in the face from a salty sunburn, stiff like a huge piece of meat, and can barely move his tongue. She helps him out.
    Between my ears, John Lennon screams out an old Beatles’ number. The one about the warm gun.

CHAPTER 28
BED OF ROSES, BED OF MOSS
    06.25.2006 – 08.05.2006
    According to local wisdom, the Icelandic summer only lasts six weeks. From the last weekend in June till the first one in August. It is also said that this is the time it takes to fall in love. The only problem is that during this period the ice country is lighted up like Madison Square Garden at a Knicks game, 24-7. There are no shadows, no dark corners. It’s pretty impossible to hide things, like a car or a kiss.
    We decided that Gun better not come to the hotel again. We wanted to keep her parents out of it until we had set the date. The Seven Elevens are not the problem, but Balatov may be, and Good Knee definitely is. But my genius girl finds a way. She realizes that one of her girlfriends actually works at Mahabharata, the Indian furniture shop across the parking lot. All I have to do is to sneak out around midnight and take a stroll around our deserted neighborhood, saying hi to the team of seagulls responsible for keeping it clean, before ending up at the back door of the Indian store, where Gun waits in her little red Fabia, fresh from massage class or a night out with the Tarantino Fan Club. She’s got the key as well as the security code she types into the thing on the wall next to the entrance. We make our way through the office and out into the store. In back there are three king size beds on display, all made in India by twelve-year-old carpenter whiz-kids. We’ve tried them all, but the one behind the Kama Sutra room divider is the safest. It can’t be seen from the screaming bright window out front. So after all, we manage to find a semi-dark corner in the bright and shining land. And by making the Hindu handiwork squeak, I can honor the memory of my lost love. Still the bed holds up to all our freaky gymnastics. Those Indian kids really know their craft.
    Our nights in the Mahabharata must count as one of the best products of globalization. The Croat celebrates his Indian summer in Iceland with French champagne, Japanese sushi, and muscle-relaxing Thai music. (Gun brings this all, the music bit from her class.) Condoms come from Manchester, England, and cigarettes from Richmond, Virginia, the hometown of our Friendly Father. No, she doesn’t smoke inside the shop. And we have to be careful not to leave any stains or bras behind.
    Bit by bit Gun manages to move the rest of Munita’s stuff (head included) out of my brain and redecorates it with her own. Indian rugs and lamps. And bit by bit the summer of sex becomes the summer of something else. The secrecy adds a deeper dimension to it, and I try everything I can to make her ice melt, while her newly-learned carnal tricks easily turn my blood into running lava. I could die happy and be buried in Icelandic soil with a tombstone marked: Tommy Olafs, dishwasher (1971–2007). At the end of each session, Gun sprays the bed with some Indian aroma she found in the office. By the end of the month it smells like the best little whorehouse in Bombay.
    “It’s OK, really,” she says. “Nobody buys beds during the summer.”
    “Why not?”
    “They’re too busy using the old one.”
    Apparently Icelanders are a different people during the bright season. They stop doing things they use to do in wintertime, like watching TV, dressing up, and bathing. Until recently TV was even shut down in July. Summer is so short that people really need to focus on it. If the temperature reaches