The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

Gunnhildur is shaken and smokes a whole packet before brushing her teeth for twenty long minutes.
    We lie in her bed, cast in marble, locked in a silent embrace, like ancient lovers in a museum. This not my favorite really, to lie together like this, but I put my preferences on hold for the special occasion: my first night living together with a person I’ve had sex with, plus we’re not getting any sleep anyway with the ice-rock blasting through the wall. I’m missing Balatov already. Thirty more minutes of musical torture and his name has acquired the distinction of a famous classical composer. Then the poor guy puts the same song on repeat for the next half an hour. The singer screams as if he were stuck at the bottom of a glacial canyon, with a broken thigh.
    “What’s he singing?”
    “Sódóma,” she answers in a weak voice.
    “What does that mean?”
    “Just…you know…Sodom…”
    “Like in Sodom and Gomorrah?”
    “Yeah. I guess.”
    Bible-reading is paying off. And the priest’s son across the wall knows how to get his message through. Gunnhildur clings to me like a dying mouse. Finally Truster has exhausted his sibling jealousy, and the two sodomites get their sleep.
    Luckily the crane bird spends even less time around the house now than back in springtime days, when yours truly was a freshman fugitive and everything was a bit more exciting. I slowly adapt to the Icelandic every day. I spend the mornings on the Internet, googling my various names along with the “FBI,” “David Friendly,” or “Lithuanian Mafia” without much success, writing emails to people who could possibly know where my good old Senka might be found, or writing letters to my mother, which Gunnhildur’s friend brings with her to London and posts at some royal post office. Noon has me standing at the main square again, waiting for bus 6 along with the local loonies. The month of August finishes with a more traditional timing of sunset. I welcome the dark.
    Torture Therapy fades out in the form of a few check-up calls from the master, plus regular visits to the crazy masses at his sweaty church. At my first visit he welcomes me with bravado and introduces Tommy to his desperate we-take-the-bus crowd as “a good Icelander and a dear friend! A man who spent most of his life in Hotel Hell but has now checked out and rented a room in heaven, God bless his soul! Hallelujah!”
    The congregation takes to its feet (in fact they hardly ever sit), and the hairy ladies throw their hands in the air, repeating Torture’s hallelujah. It’s like Harlem without the choreography. Before I know it, I’m hugging a skinny disabled man with a very cold cheek. “Velkominn,” he says, in a weak voice. Then the preacher switches back to Icelandic, and to my surprise I understand most of it.
    “You should know your enemies! You should know that Sin is your worst enemy! And you should never invite Sin to your house! Never invite Sin over for dinner! YOU SHOULD NOT EVEN BUY SIN A CUP OF COFFEE!” he screams in his manly baritone, sounding more like a Hell’s Angel than God’s mouthpiece. “For Sin will ask for cream in its coffee. And Sin will ask for sugar. And Sin will ask for WHISKEY in the coffee. So before you know, Sin will be drinking IRISH COFFEE! And soon YOU will be drinking with her. You’ll be drinking with Sin, singing with Sin, and dancing with Sin, to all her favorite songs! So let me tell you one more time: DON’T YOU EVER BUY SIN A CUP OF COFFEE! HALLELUJAH!”
    I hear myself echo the last word, along with the crowd, while feeling the form of my old new gun with the sole of my right foot. The small piece fits just right in my size forty-six shoe. I bought myself a pair of sneakers, the ones with the thickest sole in the shop, and did a little surgery on the right one, removing enough of the layers in its sole to fit the PP9 right into it. So now I’m “walking on God’s road” as Goodmoondoor says, with a gun in my shoe. It’s pretty uncomfortable, but when the time comes, I will be prepared.
    I don’t think the Pearly Gates come with a metal detector anyway.
    My warm Gun doesn’t know about the cold one. This is not her problem; we have enough already. Don’t get me wrong. Gunnhildur is great. The real problem is me. I haven’t shared an apartment with anyone since good old Niko back in our Hanover days. Living with him gave me a bachelor’s degree in tolerance, but Gunnhildur’s endless smoking, and