It was an unusually long kiss considering the fact that it was our first one. It was a kiss brought to us by the Feds. And their white-hatted assistants. Once it was over, I invited her up to my loft space, and in a matter of minutes we were making our first love atop the North Face sleeping bag, me thus becoming her #41. She turned out to be all the ice cream I had been longing for. Warm ice cream. She was incredible. My boner was steel-hard and she got very excited as well, screaming like an angry feminist protesting against a rapist being brought from car to justice. I even had to cover her mouth with my hand, fearing the police would show up again. She bit me. The arctic animal. I got a bit intimidated. Still she seemed to enjoy my shaky performance, her body shaking all over like an old man’s hand with Parkinson’s disease—or maybe it was just something she picked up in Slut Magazine. Afterwards we lay like two naked criminals at large, resting and talking.
“You’re so beautiful.”
That’s me talking, of course.
“And you’re so…..”
“Fat?”
“You’re so strange.”
“Strange?”
“Yes, you’re so strange. I’ve never…You come from another world. I’ve never….”
“You’ve never been with a killer before?”
“No. Yeah. Never,” she says with a short laugh. “A Mafia guy….”
I should maybe thank the Talians here. They’ve really done the image work for us mobsters. Though the girls of Manhattan may treat us like second-class citizens, we’re still king overseas.
“You didn’t like me when I was playing the priest.”
“No. That’s right.”
“Well. I’m a bad actor.”
“No, it was because you’re such a good actor, I guess.”
“You hate your dad?”
“No. I don’t hate him,” she says with a soft voice. “But it’s hard being brought up in a church. I wasn’t even allowed to dye my hair. ‘We have to respect God’s original design, blah, blah, blah…’ I mean, I just had enough. I had to break away. And that was pretty tough. Like coming out as a lesbian or something. When Dad found out about me smoking, he had his friend Torture come by the house to exorcise the evil spirits from my body. It was insane, really.”
“And he didn’t succeed?”
“Well, in a way. I went from Winstons to Winston Lights.”
I get pregnant with laughter.
“So you don’t have much contact with your parents then?”
“No. The least possible. I only go there two times a year. For Christmas and Eurovision.”
“What about Truster?”
“Truster?” she laughs. “You always call him Truster. It’s Þröstur. Like ‘thrush,’ you know, the bird. ‘Thrush’ and then T, U, R. It’s not that hard.”
“OK. Sorry. But what about your dad and him?”
“Oh? They’re OK. Dad likes him. He’s quiet, handy, and helpful. He’s done tons of work for him at the TV station. Without getting paid at all. ‘The Lord will pay him in heaven, blah, blah…’ You get it? My parents are just impossible people, really.”
Then she goes to fetch her post-orgasm cigarette. Because of the low ceiling, she’s forced to walk like a hunchback towards the open hatch. Her small breasts stay put (I mean, there is no flopping around) as she bows over the opening in the floor, but shake a bit as she descends the staircase. Moments later she’s back with her packet—polished pink nails tiptoeing across the rough floor—and lays herself beside me. Her butter-blonde hair is combed back in a small bun at the back of her head. I gently stroke it from forehead to bun. It feels kind of hard and sort of reminds me of the helmety hairdo of my black NY-doorman, though I’ve never dreamed of touching that wonder of nature. I let my eyes travel along her white, healthy body, from toes to cigarette, with short stopovers at her trimmed triangle and the pierced navel. She sucks on the slim stick of poison.
“How do you say ‘love,’ in Icelandic?”
“Kynlíf.”
“Queen Leaf?”
“No, kynlíf.”
She’s fucking playing with me. Those bloody Icelanders can never be honest, apart from the ones that God has ordered to. They always have to be cool. Must be the cold.
“What’s it in Croatian?” she asks.
“Ljubav.”
“That’s like ‘love’ with a B.”
“Yes, it’s love to be. Yours is with a Q or a K…”
“I was joking. Kynlíf means sex. Love is ást.”
“Wow. That’s harsh. How do you spell it?”
“A with hat, S, and T.”
“AST? That’s Ax and Saw Treatment in our language.”
“What does that mean?” she asks.
I don’t answer. Munita suddenly breaks into my brain and fills it like a balloon. Munita, my love. Sorry. I have slept with another woman behind your butt. But it’s not my fault, really. If there’s someone to blame it must be the local police. Had they found me, this would never have happened. Gunholder tells me it’s common knowledge that the White Hats are hopeless and that Iceland has its own SWAT team called The Viking Squad, but they’re not available all the time.
“There is only one squad. They must be busy now.”
I feel a bit offended, jealous even. How could they possibly have found a more serious assignment on Gun-Free Island than capturing the triple six-pack killer of an FBI agent and a world-famous priest?
“What could that be?”
“I don’t know. They do all kinds of things. Maybe some president’s in town, or they’re monitoring a high school dance up north.”
“A high school dance? The kids have guns?”
“No, but Icelandic kids, when they get drunk, they go nuts.”
So, guns against nuts. I count myself lucky to have stumbled upon Rev. Friendly at the JFK toilets. I could have killed someone with a ticket to Baghdad. Iceland is a Gangster’s Paradise. No army, no guns, no murders, and almost no police. Only gorgeous women with groovy names.
“It’s not Gunholder. It’s Gunnhildur,” she says.
“Goonhilda?”
“No. Gunn! You start with Gunn, and then hildur. Gunnhildur!”
“Gunhilda?”
“Æ, whatever. I’ll just call you Tott.”
“What does that mean?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“You never had a nickname?”
“When we lived in the States, the kids always called me Gunn and my dad still calls me that sometimes.”
“Gun?”
“No. Gunn!”
“You’re my Gun. The one I’ve been looking for ever since I came up here.”
Her lips vibrate with joyful irritation as she exhales her last draw of smoke.
“A smoking Gun,” I add while taking a good look at her.
She’s the total opposite of my Munita. The butter-blonde ice queen and my tandoori tarantula. I lean in for a kiss and fall into her Icelandic arms.
CHAPTER 16
LOVE IS IN THE FRIDGE
05.22.2006
I’ve finished my first week in exile. Even though I’ve not killed anyone for the past seven days, except one small dog, this has to count as one of the most interesting weeks of my life. For seven days and seven nights the sun has not set. I’ve had five different nationalities and held down two jobs. I’ve appeared on live television. I watched the European Song Contest for the first time in six years. I broke into two apartments, stole one car, three beers, some bread and bacon and six eggs. I also find myself in love with two different girls. One Icelandic and one Indian-Peruvian.
To avoid further police visits, I have the blonde buy me a new phone, equipped with a virgin number. I then call the dark one. I call her all morning, all afternoon. I call her cell, I call her at work, I call her at home. I send messages. I leave messages. And massages.
I finally decide to call the doorman of my building in SoHo, the one with the freaky hairdo. Just hearing his deep voi
ce gives me a warm feeling mixed with a dash of homesickness. But it mixes badly in my stomach.
He says Munita came by a few days ago, accompanied by a Talian looking stud. They went upstairs. She told the doorman she had keys to my apartment. This is a lie. I never gave her any keys. But the doorman had to believe her, he saw her enter the building with me all the time. The Talian guy came downstairs a few fucking hours later, but she has not left the building since. The bitch.
I thank him and speedily finish the phone call before dialing my own apartment. There’s no answer. Of course not. The horny bitch. Fucking Talians all over my bathroom tiles! I should call Interflora and order a bouquet of poisonous lilies to be delivered to my door in NYC. Why couldn’t she just have done it at her place? Why did she have to smear my white leather couch with Talian sweat?
I call the doorman again—suddenly getting the feeling that he’s the only person I know in the Big Apple. (I know I killed most of my New York contacts, but still, this fact is pretty sad. Six years have been erased from my life.) I ask him to call my apartment and if there is no answer, call the police or something. Someone has to enter the goddamn door and bring the fucking woman to the fist-fucking phone.
“You have the key to my apartment, right?”
“Yes, of course I have your key,” the doorman says.
He tells me to call him back in an hour.
In an hour…Well, fuck my fuck. In a fucking hour the fucking Truster is back home and I can’t possibly talk on the phone now. I have to remain completely still and silent up here in the cold, cold attic. In the cold, cold Atlantic. Poor me. I shouldn’t have taken #66 to the dumpsite. I should have finished him in his car. Then his friends never would have gotten near me with their zoom lenses. It was just that his car was so fucking great. It looked so expensive. (I sometimes inflated my fee by giving the victim’s car to Radovan’s guy out in Jackson Heights, a much used used-cars salesman named Ivo.)
Fucking Radovan. The fountain of all my troubles.
I listen to Truster and Gunholder watch the evening news. Lilliput Island seems to have enough of political scandals and fucked-up celebrities to fill a daily news-hour. Or they’re just saying that nothing happened today. No murders, no war, no nothing. Aw, fuck it. I call anyway. I can’t possibly wait until morning. Gently I turn my body around, dive into the sleeping bag head first, butt upwards, and whisper to my good old doorman:
“It’s Tod again. Did you call her?”
“Yes.”
“And what?”
“There was no answer. So, I went upstairs.”
“And…? Was she there?”
“The apartment was empty.”
“Empty?”
“Yeah. But there was this strange smell. A very strong smell.”
“What kind of a smell? Body-smell? Sweat?”
“A kind of like, body-smell, yes.”
“Well, fuck her,” I try not to shout into my brand new Icelandic phone, shaking with wrath inside the loud sleeping bag.
“So I checked all the rooms, sir,” he continues.
“Ah ha?”
“I checked all the rooms, sir…The bathroom, the kitchen…”
“Uh-huh?”
“All the windows were closed. I checked all the windows. They were all closed.”
“OK.”
“Finally…I don’t know why really…I opened the fridge.”
“The fridge?”
“Yes. I opened the fridge, and…”
“Some food gone bad? I left some food?”
“I’m sorry sir, but I don’t really know how to tell you this.”
His deep baritone voice turns even more serious than normal.
“What?” I ask, trembling with excitement.
“Her head was there, sir.”
“Her head? In the fridge?”
“Yes, sir. Her head stood there, on a plate. The…the face was all swollen, yellow, and blue. But…”
“But?”
“But it was her. I recognized her. It was your friend.”
“On a plate?”
“Yes, sir. In the fridge. It was rather…”
“Only her head?”
As I say this, it dawns upon me that Munita is dead.
“Yes, sir. Only her head. I couldn’t find her body.”
“But you could smell it?”
“Yes, I guess so. It might be there somewhere.”
“What kind of a body-smell was it?”
“What kind?”
“Yes. Was it pussy? Pussy-smell?”
What the hell am I saying? My sick old Croatian mind. I deserve to die. Oh, Munita. Why did you have to cheat on me with a mobster? I cheated on you with a nice little ice-mouse. I guess I should cry now. Your head in the fridge! Those lovely lips turned cold. Those eyes with a frozen glaze. Your hair like cold noodles. What about your body? They ate that already? And now your soul, your beheaded soul, is hugging its limbless parents in heaven. Oh, Bonita…
“Yes. I guess you can say that, sir. Pussy…but very strong,” my doorman says into my right ear.
CHAPTER 17
THE HOWLING HITMAN
05.23.2006
I come downstairs. I don’t care anymore. I open the hatch and bring down the staircase. They wake up of course. Truster comes at me with a flying fist, as if I was a simple burglar. I stop his blow in mid-air, holding his arm in my hand. He’s pretty strong, but of course he was never a soldier. The girl cools her brother down and asks me what the hell I’m doing?
“I don’t care anymore.”
She looks at me with a frozen face and Truster looks at her, even more bewildered.
“You know him?” he asks her in Icelandic, which must mean I don’t look like a priest anymore.
She doesn’t answer. He’s naked except for some crazy underpants. Homer Simpson looks at me out from his crotch, a tongue in cheek. She wears a dark blue T-shirt that says “Sorry” in white. I’m fully dressed. I got my running shoes on. Igor’s running shoes. Gun follows me out of the apartment and down the staircase asking all kinds of questions that I do not answer. And I avoid looking at her face. It would spur the wrong thoughts.
I don’t care anymore. I go outside. Bye.
It’s very early. The streets are even more silent than during the day. They’re beyond silence. Reminds me of All Dead Village. It’s bright as hell, but cloudy. One big massive and foggy cloud hangs low over the city like a lid on a saucepan. It seems to be sinking lower and lower. It has the light-gray color of ice. As ever, the temperature is that of a refrigerator.
A fucking fridge.
I’m looking for a plate to put my head on.
I walk down the street. I haven’t got the faintest idea where I’m going or what I’m doing. I just have to go somewhere. When your head turns dead, your feet take over. I’m a walking headless chicken spurting blood from my sore, sore throat.
Between the houses I can make out The Pond. A silly looking swan sails slowly between a roof and a light pole. They put her head on a plate. Why the fuck did they do that? To scare me? The more I think of it, the more it smells like Talian cooking. In their language your girlfriend’s head in the fridge translates into heavy shit. Why can’t they just come find me and kill me right away? Cut the fucking poetry!
I can’t believe she’s dead. My girl, Munita. And such a shameless, tasteless violent death. All according to family tradition. They took the head off her body…That holy body…Last night she was the hottest girl on the planet, today she’s in the fridge.
As am I.
I guess this is my punishment, being locked inside this icy land. I guess I deserve it. I cheated on her. But at least my head is still connected to my body. She must have cheated ten times harder, ten times more often. Gave up her head for the head she gave. I knew it. I fucking knew it. The Hindu-Hispanic wonder was not to be trusted. I know they say that no human is to be trusted completely, except for Jesus Christ and Laura Bush, but you can alwa
ys hope that your partner has at least applied for a trial membership of their holy club.
I remember once when we were coming from a dinner at a classy restaurant on the Upper East Side and the soft breeze was as warm as the air from an exhaust pipe. She walked slowly out on to the pavement, rearranging the strap of her purse on her shoulder, and I could feel her great thighs rubbing against each other beneath her noisy red satin dress. (Munita was one of those rare women who wear dresses half the time.) It had this triangular opening at the back (one of those things I don’t know the English word for), going almost all the way down to her butt. And as the yellow cabs rushed by her great voluptuous body wrapped in red, my sick mind was hiding in the darkness inside her dress, right there up in the triangular opening, on the border of butt and thighs, contemplating whether she’d had another man that week, that day, that year…
Inside the restaurant we’d been talking about relationships in general and making fun of the square SWAP or WASP (or whatever you call it) couple three tables away. “She must have a zipper cunt,” Munita whispered over her spoon full of Thai soup. I’d never heard that one before. A zipper cunt? The two words instantly unzipped my hard love for her. This woman was the girl of all my difficult dreams. I paid the bill with a hard-on and decided to tell her that I loved her once we were outside.
It would have been the first time I’d have told her.
But as we came out on the street, and my mind was hiding in her private shadows, I suddenly saw this hand between her thighs, a grown man’s hand with hair on its back, fingering its way up her leg. One of the fingers wore a thick golden wedding ring. It was just a vision, quick as a flash of light.
She turned her royal sweetness around, flipping my eyes from rear to front, and smiled her sweet smile, with closed juicy lips: that sexy grin of hers.
“Thanks for dinner, honey. It was great.”
A kiss. And the sound of a fire engine some ten blocks down.
“Is he married?”
The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning Page 10
