Page 18 of Assassin Anonymous

“That’s going to be a lot of real heavy stuff.”

Astrid nods. “I get that. But if I’m in this now, I want to know the scope of it.”

The money, I don’t give a damn about. It’s the emotional honesty that feels like too steep a price. Especially because I spend so much time unpacking my past in program, it’s nice to have time where I don’t do that.

But I sense this isn’t a negotiation. Or it is, and I’ve already lost.

“Fine.” I get to my feet and my body feels like a concrete statue come to life. “I’ll tell you more on the plane. Let’s go get us some passports.”

“I thought it wasn’t safe for me to go home?”

“It’s not,” I tell her. “I have a guy.”

She nods, then glances at the carrier. “Is the cat coming, too?”

I look at P. Kitty, now standing in the tub, peeking over the rim. When the smell wafts over I realize I should have gotten a tray and some litter, too, but at least he was smart enough to go in the tub. I peel off another hundred and leave it on the dresser for cleanup.

I could probably leave him with Ms. Nguyen, or at a shelter, but I don’t want to. I want P. Kitty with me, where I know I can protect him. I don’t say that to Astrid because she might be annoyed that I seem more committed to him.

But she’s not the only one in this room who’s saved my life.

“Yeah,” I say. “We’re taking him with us.”

—

The copy store on St. Mark’s Place is easy to miss. It’s below street level, at the bottom of a short but treacherous flight of stairs, the stone grooved by time and foot traffic. The sign is battered, letters missing, and the door is half covered in plywood, someone having kicked in the lower pane of glass.

The inside is a jumbled mess, with a broken copier on the left wall and a counter dominating the rest of the space, behind which there are endless, haphazard stacks of unopened paper and cardboard boxes. The bald, heavyset Hawaiian man behind the counter is munching from a package of Oreos and reading a beaten Green Lantern comic. He barely looks up when we enter.

“Black-and-white copies only,” he says, turning to the next page.

“Actually, I was wondering if you could help me,” I tell him. “I’ve got this old Xerox, model 5052, that I’m trying to fix up. I’m in the market for spare parts. Specifically, the roller attachment. The hinge broke.”

The man puts down the comic and slowly chews an Oreo as he looks me up and down, then Astrid, making sure to take his time on her. Then he glances down at the cat carrier but doesn’t say anything about it.

Satisfied with what he sees, he flips up a section of the counter and squeezes past us to the front door, which he locks. Then he flicks off the lights, leaving us with nothing but the red glowing exit sign to navigate by.

He disappears toward the back, wending through a narrow pathway between the paper and boxes, where he turns on a small lamp. He uses a key to open another door behind him, which reveals a storage room full of more copier paper. He hands me two bundled reams.

“Put them anywhere,” he says.

I place them down precariously on another pile. Astrid joins in and the three of us form an assembly line, moving paper until the man uncovers the edges of a doorway in the floor. He inserts another key and pulls it up, opening to a pool of darkness. Lights click on from somewhere down below, revealing a metal staircase. He turns around to take the stairs backward, bracing with his hands so he can worm his way through the opening, and Astrid asks, “Can we have a moment?”

He shrugs. “Need a few minutes to get set up.” Then he’s gone.

She turns to me and slaps me on the chest. “What is this, Mark?”

“We’re getting passports and IDs. Fake names. Only way to travel.”

She looks around at the stacks of copier paper. “Okay, this is some John Wick shit, though.”

“And?”

“You told me it was nothing like that.”

“Maybe it’s a little like that.”

“I don’t feel good about this,” she says, eyeing the basement.

---