Ferocity

by Michael Callinglast

  She laughs.

  Here’s what I dig about Vic Pride; you can say pretty much anything to her and she doesn’t really judge. I mean I kill people for a living. She sets me up to kill people for a living. So with that bit of amoral trivia between us, there really aren’t any toes left to step on.

  “Well I’m glad you’re back,” she says. “Why don’t we meet at the usual place and we’ll talk.” By talk she means I’ll get paid.

  “Sounds genuine.”

  We agree and hang up.

  Monday morning. Seattle traffic is a glossy sheen of glass and brake lights. The rain is fresh from the sky, drizzling down without any real hurry.

  The 520 bridge is a strip of thick asphalt and steel strung out precariously on Lake Washington joining Seattle and Bellevue. It’s not a fun bridge to cross. Right over there is the little community of Medina, where Bill Gates lives. During Christmastime he’s got his humble abode all lit up like who gives a fuck about electric bills.

  And speaking of Bill Gates, fucking traffic! Most of these jerkies are on their way to Microsoft, in Redmond.

  Keira’s father works for Microsoft.

  Jesus Christ, planets are forming right now as traffic stalls! I’m going to be late for class. American History, taught by the ever ebullient Professor Kline.

  #

  Like I said, I’m not a bad guy. There are worse people out there and sure, I kill people for a living, but really… it’s not like I’m doing it for free. I’m not Ted Bundy. I’m not the Green River Killer. Maybe I am a bit of a villain, but if so, so what? Don’t villains have the most fun? You know what my favorite part of any movie is? It’s when the villain is so goddamn buoyant about their schemes coming together that all they can do is sing about it, and they’re so freakin’ happy!

  Here we are. West Forest Community College, in Kirkland, located between a BMW dealership and trees.

  The college is small, made up of four, independent brick buildings joined together by sidewalks, grass, and parking lots. It isn’t anything spectacular but it does its job.

  I remember when I first decided to go to college. Driving across the 520 bridge over Lake Washington, coming from Bellevue to Seattle, and I crisply recall passing the University of Washington, and all the young pretty people walking, biking, skating, jogging, all with backpacks and spurred on by some infallible sense of future accomplishment and grandeur. No fear in their eyes, no hindrance of question, just an exclamatory presence of conquest against a challenge.

  I desired that. Suddenly, on that warm, Spring day, with the illustrious blue sky and the aroma of clean air, I needed what they had; life anew. A career with a great dental plan, a 401k, health insurance, and that sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. I wanted co-workers. I wanted a job that required a tie for godsakes! I wanted to be… well a grown-up.

  I drove home that day, my afternoon ruined. Popped open a bottle of Jack Daniels and tried to lose my morose self-discoveries in consumable denials. It didn’t work. These fizzy little spheres of newfound crave kept jumbling my good humor.

  So the next week I looked into enrolling. I wasn’t going to the University of Washington, I knew that much. That campus is just too overwhelming, too complex and intimidating. I’m a reasonably intelligent guy but I’ve also been out of school for a while. So I decided to go to a much smaller, more personable, if somewhat less charming school.

  #

  Mr. Kline sprints into class, slides across the white tile, and bangs his shins on the podium. His round face blossoms crimson and he stands there for a minute, gathering his wits and willing himself not to shout, and then he slowly becomes himself again.

  “Yo, me peeps!” Kline says. He pops a Red Bull open and spills some down his shirt. He wipes it off but he’s a big guy with no neck so it’s hard for him to really see where it went. A lot of it remained on his yellow tie. His glasses drop from his pug nose, clatter across the tile. He bends down to pick them up and knocks over his stool with his large ass. A few kids in front snicker. He blushes, stands up, cleans his glasses on his tie and puts them back on. His glasses are now smeared with Red Bull.

  This is him every day.

  “All right my peeps!” he says again. No one over the age of thirteen should ever utter the word Peeps. “American History! Yes! Who’s down for some real life adventures? Fo Sho!”

  There are twelve of us in his class, ranging in ages from the just out of high school, to the old guy in the back whose name is Burt Fenn. Burt Fenn will die of old age before he graduates.

  There are no attractive girls in this class. I discovered this on my first day and it’s bothered me since. I used to lament this fact to Keira but she didn’t sympathize.

  “In two weeks, my bruh-thas,” Kline says, holding up two stubby fingers, “we’ll be having us some mid-terms, yo. I know that the better of you already have the date marked in your calendars. Yes? No? Yes?”

  I do. He’s talking to me.

  “Now then, the Louisiana Purchase.” He eyes us with the kind of severity that only community college professors talking about history can pull off. “Who can tell me the name of the President at the time of the Purchase?”

  I know this one. This one is easy. I raise my hand.

  “J-Man?”

  “Thomas Jefferson,” I answer. “He did so even though many considered it to be unConstitutional. He didn’t want France and Spain to have the ability to cut off trade routes with our ports in New Orleans. Jefferson, our third president of the United States, elected in 1801, and one of the principal authors of the Declaration Independence. As a boy-”

  “Okay, J-Man, I think we got it,” Kline says. There’s a glint of pride in his eye. He favors me, the star pupil in this class.

  I learned early on to treat each class as I would a job. This means acquiring every amount of information about the subject as thoroughly as possible, leaving no room for error. The information I’ve acquired on Thomas Jefferson, I could teach this class. And I’d be a much better teacher than you, Kline, because I’d be funny, which you, sadly, are not.

  “Who can tell me the exact date of the Purchase?”

  I raise my hand because, the exact date? Is this guy kidding? What are these, elementary school questions? Let’s talk about some of the heavy shit I read last night? Jesus man, call yourself a teacher.

  “Anyone besides the J-Man?”

  I look around. No hands other than mine in the air.

  Kline waits. He sighs. He nods to me.

  “April 30th, 1803,” I answer like I own it. “The Federalists strongly opposed the Purchase, preferring to side more with Britain than with Napoleon, and feared that the Purchase would only incite a war with France. However-”

  “Okay, Jack, I think we got it.”

  I wasn’t finished.

  Kline continues talking but everything he’s saying I already read about. I researched the stupid Louisiana Purchase online, I downloaded .pdf files from Seattle Public Library archives, and even checked out as many books as I could on it at the library. And this is the thanks I get. Right here. Him talking. He and I could be up there in front of the class together. I could be his McCartney. I could be his Keith Richards.

  Class trollops along at a painful pace and I spend most of my time wishing myself finished with this quarter.

  I wonder what she’s doing right now. Is she thinking about me? Is she in her class, learning abstract theories that I have no clue about? Is she on a NASA rocket blasting off to parts unknown?

  Unknown.

  I know how to kill people. It can get complicated, but I understand human anatomy and how to make it quit functioning permanently.

  Nora Kates, age thirty-three. An auto accident incapacitated her and the sister’s boyfriend wanted Nora gone. So I walked in and pumped a bunch of air bubbles into Nora’s I.V. line. Fifteen thousand dollars earned due to air embolism.

  Lance Eversmith Wayne, age fifty-nine. Heavy smoker, rich in
dustrialist living in Portland, Oregon. I switched out three cartons of his Camel Wides cigarettes with lithium dusted smokes in high concentrations. He died quickly (three packs a day habit) due to Pulmonary Edema, leading to respiratory failure. Sixteen grand for that one.

  Rodriquez Mason Swift. Age thirty. Slid a seven inch slender needle through his left ear canal as we sat in a movie theater watching Napoleon Dynamite (the part where Napoleon says: You know, there's like a boat-load of gangs at this school. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bow staff. ) and pow-dead. Minimal blood and they chocked it up to brain aneurism. I felt kind of bad taking him out so early because the movie cracked me up and he missed it.

  The point is, I know the basics of chemistry and bad interactions with blood, I know how to stop a heart with certain solvents, I can break a neck with just the right amount of applied pressure in a church, so quietly not even God would know. This I can do.

  But understanding girls...

  I plug in my i-pod and listen to Incubus’s Here in my room. This is such a sad damn song. We got into an argument once, rightly so, and she spent the day listening to this song, walking around town, crying. She told me this later, in a letter.

  It’s important to note that she has no idea that I’m a contract killer. Contract killer, assassin, hit-man, hired gun… these are all the popular names in the movies, but I prefer the title; Big Game Hunter. It just sounds a bit more… Hemingwayesque.

  Class is over and I don’t notice until Burt Fenn shuffles by, his hands propping his back up as he struggles with his heavy book bag. Kline’s noticing some stains on his Dockers and is trying to clean them and I think sometimes that I’m going to lose my mind.

  She thinks that I’m just a college student, that I work part time at some low-dive seafood diner in Seattle, struggling my ass off to pay for everything. I’m not really lying to her though, just withholding certain facts so I don’t go to prison.

  Before the chaos, before the sledgehammer, you weren’t happy but you weren’t unhappy. Right now I am fucking miserable.

  She smoked Marlboro 100’s. She idolized Marilyn Manson, which I excused to her youth and naivety, and she used to live in Crossroads, near Bellevue. On some rainy afternoons we’d stay in her room, eating tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, watching movies on her laptop, and most of those quiet, happy days, I spent not watching the movie, but her. Memorizing her quiet smile, the way the movie reflected perfectly in her eyes.

  #

  I live in Fremont (the center of the universe). My apartment is on the third floor of this ramshackle building. The parking garage is always damp and constantly reeks of urine and wet leaves.

  Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Fremont district in Seattle, but if you ever find yourself in the Emerald city, then go. It’s a boss district. Located right across the ship canal that connects the Puget Sound to Lake Washington, you take Fremont Bridge and there you are. The people here are very vintage, kind of a cross between the old hippies and bohemians, and college kids who love to wear sandals and pedal-pushers.

  In Fremont you’ll see skinny white guys carrying back-packs, their lime-green baggy pants swaying like sails as they stroll and smoke cigarettes. There, on 36th street, you can often find college students reading books beneath the mighty bronze statue of Lenin. Lenin, caught immortal, keeps his stern gaze as his whole body thrusts forward.

  Often I like to just meander through the small, docile streets, step into a local tavern for a heady brew, with my i-pod strapped on. Best songs to listen to while strolling a day: Joe Brown, I’ll See You In My Dreams, Dandy Warhols’ Bohemian Like You, Jonas Brothers, What I Go To School For. No. I’m just kidding about the Jonas Brothers. We have a popular saying in Seattle that goes; Fuck the Jonas Brothers.

  I take the elevator up. My head’s killing me. Sitting through an hour of Professor Kjellman’s Biology class pummeled my brain. Talking and talking about the life cycles of mollusks and the evolution of some weird sort of shellfish, shoot me. In Kline’s class I have to read a whole chapter by tomorrow. Ach.

  Keira’s supposedly living with her parents, in Redmond. I know where they live, on a ritzy, Beemer driving, manicured lawn lane. Redmond is full of the Hugo Boss polo clad primates and I used to spend my afternoons there, being silly with her hand in mine, on the sidewalks, sipping coffees at the cafes. Buying Mexican candy.

  The elevator dings open. The old familiar scent of my hallway.

  I have four neighbors on this floor. The first door belongs to some guy who dresses like a lumberman and works early in the morning. In 3D there’s a young black couple, the Marshalls. I think they’re college students, but I’m not sure. 3E is a small Asian man, in his late fifties, and he owns a small restaurant on Pike. He’s pretty cool.

  The door across the hall from my apartment opens. This old muppet of a lady with huge white hair pokes her head out. She’s all squinty like.

  “Mrs. Nederbaum!”

  “Jack? Oh, Jack, it is you. I thought I heard someone in the hall,” Nederbaum says. She has the hearing of a collie. “You hungry? I just made some meatloaf.”

  “Oh, thanks, Mrs. Nederbaum, but I’m good. Hey, how’s Percil?”

  “Feeling better. I took him down to the vet and he gave me some special kitty medicine. Thank you for asking, Jack. My. Such a nice kid. Say, where’s that lovely young girl at? Keira. I like her.”

  And so it goes.

  “Well she’s been real busy lately. She thinks the world of you though.”

  Mrs. Nederbaum smiles. “Well you should bring her over next time. I have her birthday present still wrapped.”

  That’s right. We were supposed to go to Mrs. Nederbaum’s place for Keira’s birthday last week. And we would’ve if the pirates hadn’t have stolen her. What in the hell happened to her?

  “You okay, Jack?” Nederbaum asks. She looks concerned.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. You have a good night, okay?”

  She smiles, pats my hands, and goes back into her apartment.

  One rainy afternoon Keira came over and spent an hour talking with Nederbaum. Keira found her adorable. Nederbaum gave us some homemade lasagna that night that we later ate while watching V for Vendetta.

  What’s the movie about?

  You never heard of V for Vendetta?

  No. I try and stay away from hitman movies.

  She laughed and said, it’s not a hitman movie. Not really. It’s pretty outrageous. I think you’ll like it.

  I guess.

  Aw come on, Jack-monkey. You gotta love movies. It’s how life is explained. It’s how we make sense of everything. When I think of you, you know who I think of?

  Who?

  Val Kilmer. You have Val Kilmer’s smile.

  Which reminds me... there’s this movie that I wanted her to see. A movie that I felt extremely important for her to see. What’s the movie’s name?

  And 3F is me. Right at the end of the hall.

  The small strips of tape that I’ve placed along the door are still there, undisturbed. This is telling me if anyone’s been in my place. Everything looks fine. Next I take out my little pen-light and check in the door lock. No bombs.

  Someone could’ve snuck in through one of my windows though.

  I slide the key into the lock, slowly, breathing softly. Turn the key. There’s a Glock 17 in my backpack, within quick reach. As I open the door I hunker down to avoid a possible head-shot.

  The door’s open. No bad guys standing in ambush, waiting for me. I step in and close the door.

  My apartment. Living room. Exactly fifteen steps from the door, past the couch, and into the kitchen. I check all four windows. The tape remains unbroken, the threads are still there, the dust is undisturbed. A person can replace tape and thread, but I’ve found that replacing dust is a bit difficult.

  From the kitchen, past the living room, and into the bedroom, are exactly twenty-six steps. I c
heck the hall closet. Everything’s normal. My room. Queen size bed, burgundy covers (bought at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for a reasonable price) and no-one under the bed. No one in the closet. Next is the bathroom.

  There are four small flip-screen monitors in the bathroom, all situated around the toilet. There’s also a berretta with a silencer taped beneath the sink and a three inch knife down by the porcelain base. The monitors are hooked up via wireless to various cameras in the apartment. You see, ever since John Travolta’s character got whacked on the toilet in Pulp Fiction, hitmen the world over have been terrified to go to the can. This is my pseudo inoculation against getting the shit blown out of me.

  Having established that my apartment is safe, I can now relax.

  Put on Ice Cube’s It Was A Good Day, off his 1992 The Predator album, then switch on the television (it’s a 52 inch Vaio flatscreen. Hardcore man, something you’d find only on the bridge of the Enterprise!).

  Right over there, next to the speakers and computer, is where she put up the Christmas tree. And this ornament, white porcelain angel with my name inscribed in gold, she bought this for the tree.

  Is this your place?

  Yeah, you like?

  It’s pretty cool. Wow, Jack, that is quite the television. Where’s this famous music collection you keep braggin on?

  Right here.

  Maybe she’ll answer this time.

  She has some Marilyn Manson ring-tone that, quite frankly, I no longer find as charming as I used to. Marilyn Manson only gets her five points. Now if she’d have put on the Beatles then she’d have been awarded the entire ten points, but alas she-

  Freaking voice mail again.

  “Hey Keira-Monster, it’s me again.” I’m never any good at leaving messages. I hate it in fact. I mean there’s always that extreme possibility that I’ll say something stupid and there it will be, recorded for all ages to come with no take-backs. “Hey, I’m thinking you should try this cool thing called answering your freaking phone! I mean, I’m honestly worried about you.” This is true. “I guess… I mean I don’t really know what to say. Did I… well no, but…listen K, I don’t know why you would want to hide, but I can’t get through, my hands are tied, I won’t want to stay, I don’t have much to say, but I can’t turn away and you won’t see me.”