“Why is it that women who are always acting hardest to please get all the attention anyway?” I ask, letting my eyes close.
“Squeaky hinge gets the oil,” he quotes. “Sounds like your brain’s been quite busy, analysing everything that everyone else considers to be within the range of a normal pattern of guilt and forgiveness, and turning-over-a-new-leaf in relationships scenarios.”
“If you mean corruption and manipulation, and getting away with murder, then it’s all the same to me,” I reply with a sigh. “Don’t know why. I don’t have the more subtle social engineering applications for those skills in my toolbox. It’s all criminal activity being covered up, as far as I can make out.”
“You just haven’t been in a relationship in which to learn how they’re used in everyday life,” he says. “You expect it to be something different to your everyday life when it happens. All trust and honesty. Makes you defensive when someone tries to find a sneaky way in, without the right to be there. As if you think they’re hoping to find out your secrets, once they get a look inside your head, that they can then use against you. Your relationship patterns, what your type is, what your weaknesses are.”
“Yeah, how’s that going for you?” I ask, and hear him chuckle. He doesn’t deny it. Sounds like the way Kaavey Canem brainwashed his women into thinking they were all sub-contracted CIA operatives instead of hookers. “What did you think my brain was full of, instead of useful stuff like that so far, then?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“You’re just testing me,” I mutter. “Same as everyone else does.”
“Damn right.” He tickles my ear. “Yours was decaf, by the way.”
“I guessed.” I wonder if I’ve been talking too much compared to usual, and whether he put one of his truth drug cocktails in the coffee as well.
But I don’t feel any different to how I normally feel after work. Just tired, basically. Under pressure of expectations for work this coming week. I’m kind of glad to hear he’s likely to be doing the same. At least, unlike head office and WXYZ Logistics, he isn’t voicing assumptions about my brain being full of stuff about cars and shoes, which is only true when I get time to myself in which to enjoy acting like a normal human female.
A very small amount of time, it feels like at the moment.
“Whenever I try to picture what’s in your mind,” I say thoughtfully, consulting mental files and images, “all I see is a bunch of skeleton keys that you keep for any given scenario you can think of.”
“There’s a difference between keeping skeleton keys and actually using them,” he says, after a pause. “It doesn’t take that much intelligence to knock first.”
“That does, however, rely on somebody being home to answer,” I joke, opening my eyes to blink and rub my contact lenses into a more comfortable spot on each eye, and finding he’s turned the lights down to dimmest setting in the office. It seems more considerate than most people, and I feel a bit guilty for not giving him as much credit so far for that sort of thing. “I mean, for normal interaction to occur.”
“I know what you mean.” He’s still watching the CCTV, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking or not, so I choose not to say anything else. As I close my eyes once more, having got more comfortable, I feel his arm move from where it was still resting across the back of my chair, and I open them again just as he leans forward and hooks my feet off the desk into his lap instead, my chair swivelling to align correctly without resistance. Strangely I still feel safe enough to let my eyes close again as he rests his arm across my shins. Or maybe I’m just shuttering out the intimacy of facing him rather than sitting parallel. “Is that what you’re worried about, that I’m just going to pull a bunch of brainwashing stunts on you - because you don’t have an existing relationship personality to negotiate with?”
“Pretty much sums it up,” I admit. “Sorry about that.”
“No, it’s all right,” he says. “Other people’s relationship expectations, and patterns they’re constantly replaying, all complicate things too much anyway. We’re always competing with invisible deadlines and comparisons they’re carrying around in their heads, which have nothing to do with us. Do I seem that judgemental to you?”
“Sometimes.”
“You know it’s not about you, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “Ditto, what you just said.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but his hand runs up and down my shin reassuringly, which is the last thing I remember before falling asleep.
I discover myself dreaming about giant bulldozers uncovering mass graves, full of mummified tramps made to look like Tutankhamen, and zombie pole-dancers buried alongside as their attendants into the spirit world.
Weird.
My watch alarm wakes me, which is a strange retro-Eighties experience. I only ever wear a watch for work, and watches frequently disappear on me, having taken them off half-asleep arriving home, and left them on top of the bin, or in the bathroom, or on a random windowsill. There’s a clock in my car, a clock on my phone screensaver and a clock next to my bed, for the time of day any time I’m not standing around, waiting for the end of my shift at work. And I would only ever set my watch alarm for something I needed to be awake unusually for - like today, sorting myself out to catch a plane to Vegas tonight.
Makes a change, from planning a rendezvous with the roof of a local City Council office block, dressed as a Halloween skeleton.
A pillow slips out from under my head as I move, and I find myself lying on the circular sofa-bed in Connor’s living-room, facing the blank reflective screen of the plasma TV. I push the black duvet and claret chenille throw covering me to one side, and rub my eyes, encouraging them to water and re-moisturize my sticky contact lenses.
The study door is open and it’s empty, the monitor idling with its rotating text screensaver, and after looking around confirming there’s no Connor in sight, the next thing I confirm is that my uniform is still on and the right way out, and fastened properly. Not that I don’t trust him, or anything like that. I find my phone in my pocket, and check the screen for missed messages, but the antenna icon informs me that there’s no signal at the moment anyway.
The French door onto the garden slides open abruptly and he steps inside, fortunately for him pushing his mask and hood back off his face as he does so. Because I have spent idle hours of my life at work, figuring out various responses to being ambushed by faceless people in overalls with semi-automatic rifles.
“Oh, good - you’re awake,” he says. “Don’t go outside. Pest Control issue to tidy up. I’ve just got to bin all this stuff, and put it out for them to collect as well.”
“Anything from last night?” I ask, stretching, as he sheds the overalls. He shakes his head.
“Just some radioactive geese stupid enough to land in eastern Europe,” he says. “Got tracked heading north early this morning, and a couple of guys herded them in my direction by plane. They’re nuclear power-plant waste now. Got to be picked up as such. Don’t think there’s any risk of local contamination, but the guys have to be fastidious about it.”
He dumps the overalls into a white marked hazard warning bag, before taking out a small device and holding it up to the contents, shaking his head again.
“More radiation in your mobile phone,” he mutters. “Nit-pickers. I have to do the whole shower routine as well.”
He ties up the bag and opens the sliding door once more, hurling it over the wall before slamming the door shut again and locking it.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he reminds me, peeling off his sweater, picking the gun back up and heading for the stairs. “Won’t be long.”
“Wasn’t planning to,” I reply, retrieving the pillow gratefully and cocooning myself back into the duvet for a catch-up nap.
Before I doze off again, I get a very brief mental image of Animal Rights activists turning up first and trying to resuscitate the glowing corpses, before turning
their radioactive rage on Pest Control in a rabid super-human zombie style. Hmmm.
It’s only about forty minutes later when he wakes me up again with a cup of tea.
“They’re outside bagging and tagging them now,” he tells me, sitting on the sofa-bed with his own mug of tea in one hand, and rubbing my back with the other, as I prop myself up on my elbows to drink my own. “Even dig up the turf or gravel they land in. That’s going to be a few new pot-holes to watch out for in your car.”
“Thanks,” I say, sipping my tea. “Did anything interesting happen over at the main house last night?”
“No, I don’t think the guy’s got his special cocktail recipe quite right yet. Just the usual domestics and puking up party by all accounts.”
“Sounds like my night at work too,” I agree.
“How are you getting to the airport later?”
“Crank’s picking me up in town. Warren wants the car while I’m away, so I’ll have to drop it off first.”
“If we go for our date first in your car, I can take you to meet Crank, and then drop it off after.”
“Ah, good thinking, Batman.” I put my mug down on the floor. Sounds like I could be safe in that case. Not like he was planning any more dates I might want to bring a shovel and a camera for. Mind you, I’m in danger of being distracted at the moment by his hand rubbing my back, which feels really nice after another grim night of standing around watching drunk people I can’t either put up with, or shoot. I’m starting to think that empathising with him is a risk of putting a bigger distance between myself and normal people, having someone more like my true self to identify with. Instead of continuing to avoid becoming more like myself, in the camouflage of the everyday life of others.
“Let’s see what Hieronymous is ranting about today,” Connor says, putting his mug next to mine and picking up the TV remote, referring to the Japanese-American-Jewish true-life-story talk show host. “Need to check the TV signal anyway… I’m hoping he’ll finally get Siamese twins on who want a sex-change.”
I get the feeling he’s looking for distractions in everyday life as well, but unlike me, on his own inner motivation, instead of through struggling to identify with others. I guess he has his own reasons for not bothering with putting too much emphasis on the value of a social life. Maybe it let him down one too many times.
Or maybe he came across too many targets in it. The fat Mafia chick on TV, who is Hieronymous Kaikyo’s opening guest - claiming to be related to Lucky Luciano and in possession of half of a code relating to hidden assets of his, and promoting a book she’s written about it - reminds me in physical appearance alone of Sandra Harte. It doesn’t feel like a good place to be, wondering which of the next people you meet at work is going to discover the Hollywood hit-man, get-rich-quick-get-dead-quicker lifestyle.
“Funny how a few of the old school Mobsters ended up in Hollywood under straight-laced aliases looking for a quiet life following the Second World War,” Connor remarks, evidently thinking along the same theme. “It’s as if the new school hit-men have got the story twisted around, and think that by definition being a contract killer is about getting a Hollywood image, and a cool nickname. Not hiding out there pretending to be Joe Nobody, film extra and scene shifter.”
“Like I thought when I was a kid, that to be an artist by definition you had to draw naked people? When apparently art’s all about empty cardboard boxes and buildings? Keeping your brain lodged permanently between post-modern quotation marks?” I suggest.
“Something like that,” he chuckles, and lounges back on his elbows in a more comfortable position next to me, keeping the contact with his fingers brushing the back of my arm, where I’m leaning forwards onto mine. “I go through life feeling like a film extra half the time. Changing name and moving around, not seeing any continuity or settling down. Filling in for other people, while they do the important stuff like getting married and living a normal life.”
“Yeah, I know that feeling,” I agree. “It’s always someone else’s life story has all the right thread and continuity when I hear it. Like they’re telling me the plot of some book or film. All neatly packaged with no loose ends in.”
“Yeah,” he echoes thoughtfully. “We should make one of those deals. To tie up our own loose ends.”
“What kind of deal?” I ask, wondering if a shovel or a suicide note is involved. That would be contributing to the ‘Hollywood Hit-Man’ myth, more than anything else.
“Like if something happens. If we get separated and moved on, or head office shut up shop, the List gets closed, or we get replaced by new technology and retired quietly, we should have a deal where we meet up as ourselves somewhere else, at some future point in time. To deal with any loose ends. See if either of us has a life story to tell after all.”
I consider briefly.
“What sort of loose ends?” I’m still considering when the subject of suicide pact is going to come up, because it’d be like having Bonnie & Clyde Hollywood hit-man matching tattoos.
“Well, if we haven’t had sex by then, you can pencil that in as number one,” he grins, as I look at him over my shoulder.
Cool, I think immediately, forseeing an indefinite amount of avoidance time being offered to me in that instant. Sounds like a preferable form of inevitable to put off for a while, rather than the Hollywood hit-man big hole in the desert and a shovel somewhere.
“Deal,” I say, and offer him my hand.
“Deal.” He grips my hand in his, and then pulls it towards him and kisses the back of it. I just smile and look away back to the TV, before he can see me blush.
In the back of my mind, I’m aware of wondering why he’d suggest it. Whether, as usual, he knows more than he’s letting on.
And whether starting to create our own private contracts and agreements between us, is something we should be thinking twice about getting into.
In head office terms.
Coming up next in Tales Of The Deathrunners: Death & Sin City
Death & the City Book Two Page 39
