Page 54 of Assassin Anonymous

Sara is outlined against the light pouring out of the building’s lobby, giving her a warm, golden aura. She’s wearing a blue knit hat and a dark overcoat with a fuzzy black collar that swaddles her neck. The wind seems to stop the moment we lock eyes, causing the ambient temperature to come up a few degrees. All that rush of Midtown traffic and pedestrians suddenly goes silent.

“That’s me,” I say, trying to sound suave.

She smiles and tilts her head, and the way she looks at me is like she recognizes something. Then her eyes dart down to my crotch and she raises an eyebrow. “Your fly is down.”

I spin around and zip it up in one motion, then turn back to her. “Not the kind of first impression I was hoping to make.”

“It’s okay,” she says, stepping toward me, and I smell lavender. “How about that hot cocoa?”

We’ve only just met—some texting and one video chat—but she turns in the direction of the park and hooks her arm into mine. It feels adorably old-fashioned. There’s a magnetism drawing me toward her. It would be unsettling if it weren’t so soothing.

The branches of the trees surrounding the park reach into the sky like skeletal hands, cradling a heavy full moon in the indigo sky. We wend our way through the tables, the space lit by twinkle lights, the ground wet from melted snow and crunchy with salt, and head for the truck offering hot cocoa. It costs ten dollars a cup and takes five minutes to make. The line would move faster if fewer people were taking selfies at the front.

“New York exists in a quantum state,” I tell Sara.

“Oh yeah?” she asks.

I nod toward a young couple throwing up peace signs for selfies with their cups of cocoa, blocking the next group of people from placing their order. “Simultaneously the best and worst city in the entire world.”

She looks at the lights strung around the park, cranes her neck to watch the ice-skating rink, then turns to the tables filled with people talking and laughing.

“I don’t know,” she says with a smile. “I think it’s pretty great.”

Well, then. The way she punctured and deflated my cynicism makes me feel sheepish. But I don’t mind it, either.

And that smile. I struggle with how to approach describing that smile.

Like she has it figured out, all of it, and she’s patiently waiting for me to join her so she can celebrate my success.

We wait in a little pocket of silence, the line slowly inching forward, when she asks, “So what do you do, Mark? You never said.”

“Data analyst,” I tell her, which is my go-to. There’s a kernel of truth there—my job is math-based, in a way—but it sounds broad and boring enough that it doesn’t invite follow-up questions.

“Tell me how you got into that,” she says.

Except now, I guess.

“I’ve always been a numbers guy,” I tell her. “Math is how I make sense of the world. Makes me feel like I have a purpose. It’s not what I wanted to do when I was growing up, but hey, who gets to do that?”

“And what did you want to do when you were growing up?”

“Astronaut.”

She moves her body closer into mine to stay warm, fitting into the grooves like a puzzle piece. “Why?”

My pulse ticks up a few notches. I’m not used to people asking me questions about myself. I can’t remember the last time I had a real conversation with another human being that wasn’t related to my job. And those conversations tend to be brief or unfriendly.

The real answer is that I wanted to escape this earth and with it, my childhood, an unsettled and insecure series of foster homes. But that feels too intimate to share, so I tell her, “I wanted to see the stars.”

Her smile tells me she knows I’m not telling the whole truth.

We take our hot cocoa and find an empty table—it’s flimsy and the seats are small and cold but they’re dry, and we sit and sip and stare at each other and something significant is happening. My brain is always passively taking in the surroundings, at some level of alert, even now when there’s no present danger. It’s just this constant hum: Where are the exits? How many people are around me? What can I use as a weapon?

And right now it’s like all I have is this tunnel vision with her at the end of it. My perception is working in stops and starts. More than that, I feel like I should be worried, like I’m off my game, like it’s not good to be distracted.

“So you said you were in the nonprofit world,” I say.

She takes a sip of her cocoa and rolls her eyes back. “Oh, that’s good…Yeah, I help run a group that organizes food pantries around the city. I wanted to be a princess when I was a kid, but part of the reason for that is I wanted to be a benevolent ruler where no one in the kingdom starved, so, it’s on brand, at least.”

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