The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

and there was the sound of broken glass. It only added fuel to our fire. Nothing makes love more exciting than war. We were breathing heavily and I had my fingers on her firm army breasts when two of my fellow soldiers suddenly appeared inside the room, laughing and cheering me on. It had the opposite effect. They noticed and pushed me aside, putting their dirty hands over Senka’s mouth.
    I had to watch them. I tried closing my eyes, but it was only worse. I had to fucking watch them. I didn’t want them to kill her so I had to wait until they were done.
    You can have two MHMs.
    For years I tried to contact her. Every single one of my months in New York, I googled her name and wrote to her family and friends without much success. One of her Split girlfriends wrote me from Italy, telling me she got a postcard from Senka some years back, from Belgrade. Other than that, nothing. Not even our great national cemetery files seemed to contain her name. Only her stepfather’s. He was buried in Novi Sad in 2002. She was probably living outside the reach of the Internet, in a mountain village or some faraway land. I hadn’t typed her name for over three months when this past winter I fucking ran into her.
    In Reykjavik.
    Of all the places in the world, I bumped into her in the Kringlan Mall, just outside the Penninn bookstore, next to the crazy souvenir shop. It was right before Christmas. The place was buzzing with overstressed Easelanders, and we literally bumped into each other. There was no denying it was her. I’d recognize that birthmark in any mass grave. It took her a few seconds to recognize me. People rushed by as we just stood there frozen, looking at each other without saying much. I’d gone to the mall in search of a Christmas present for Gunnhildur and found Senka. She hid her big scar with a scarf. Her cheeks were still kind of hard and her lips looked soft and juicy, but her beauty had faded. She’d also turned a bit fat. I could tell that she thought the same of me. We sat down for a coffee, and she added some tears to her latte.
    “You should have killed me in that basement,” I said in our beloved language.
    “No. Then your friends would have killed me.”
    “They almost killed me for letting you go.”
    “I guess we all died a little in that war. It’s like mother used to say. War kills everybody, including the ones who live.”
    The two of them had been in Iceland for more than three years, coming up here after a decade of living all over the place, including a Red Cross refugee camp for over a year, where Senka’s stepfather, the poet, had passed away. Her sister had died in the war, along with her family. Finally they decided to join a group of thirty Serbs and start a new life in a new country. In the beginning of 2003, the group settled down in a small village in the west part of Iceland. There mother and daughter stayed for two years, in a brand-new apartment furnished by the locals.
    “The people are really nice up there. But it was like living in a closet, with steep blue mountains all around us. During wintertime you don’t see the sun for almost three months.” Her mother stayed at home gazing out the window, at the ocean—“You could see all the way to Greenland”—while Senka worked in the fish factory. “The most boring job of my life.” But when the old one needed more nursing, they moved to the city down south. At first she worked as a cashier in one of the Bónus’s stores, but just recently she fulfilled her lifelong dream when she landed a job as a “stagehand” at the City Theatre.
    How freaky was it all? Of all the cities in the world, we both ended up in this one.
    Now the old woman had gone senile, Senka said. “She doesn’t talk about anything other than Greenland. That she has to go to Greenland.” Her mother found the best way to deal with her losses, through Alzheimer’s disease. Me and Senka found a different way.
    She’s expecting my baby.
    I know. My Torture School degree didn’t come with a minor in sainthood.
    I make my way into Garðabær. The black Audi seems to find its way all by itself. Soon I have parked it outside the house of my Icelandic in-laws.
    The bullet has made my bladder swell to the size of a Desert Eagle egg. It takes me about four minutes to exit the car. Why did I come here anyway? I should have gone straight to the morgue. That way I’d have saved a lot of people’s time and money. I just wanted to give Gunnhildur