Page 61 of Assassin Anonymous

“Yeah,” she says. “I can do that.”

“Again, I’m sorry,” I tell her. “For Espinosa. For coming to you with this. I don’t feel great about it.”

“That’s why we’re here, dumbass. You can feel bad, and you should. Now you sit with those feelings and take the next right action. Meanwhile, I forgive you, because the person you were then isn’t the person you are today. Welcome to recovery.”

I fight with my face, to keep it straight. I don’t do a great job, so to buy myself some cover I throw my arms around her, squeeze her tight. She lets me do it, and then she pats me on the shoulder and says, “Stop being a pussy.”

We pull away from each other, temperatures having returned to normal. I nod toward the photos on the bulletin board. “You know I can’t let that go. Looks like you’re working again.”

She huffs and walks over to it, regarding the different headshots. “You know my deal, Mark. I talk about it every week. I want to be a mom. I met with a sperm bank, got some potential profiles.”

“Thought those were supposed to be anonymous.”

She smiles. “Yeah. Not for people like us, though. There are things I’m looking for, things they might not disclose on the forms, and I need to be sure.”

“Such as?”

She turns to me fully and her face softens. It is the most vulnerable I’ve ever seen her. “I want someone who doesn’t have any kind of history of violence.”

Oh.

That thing she saw in me, the last time I was here. Why she stopped me.

That maybe our genes were combustible.

“You think we’re born this way?” I ask.

She offers a half-defeated smirk. “I’m not taking the risk.”

I want to argue and say, no, we were molded into this, but the way my body buzzes when it’s pumped full of adrenaline, the way my blood so easily converts to steam, I don’t know if that’s true.

It makes me wonder what hope there is for me, then. For any of us. It gives me something else to be terrified of. The thought that whatever’s inside me can be passed down.

“C’mon,” she says, moving toward the door. “Let’s get to work.”

Before she can open it I say, “Hey.”

She doesn’t turn. Her voice is barely a whisper. “Yeah.”

“I’m not exactly an expert on the subject, ’cause I never really had one, but for what it’s worth, I think you’d make a good mom.”

Her hand drops to her side, and it seems like she wants to say something. Like she’s preparing herself to let something fly. Whether it’s a thank you or a fuck you, I can’t tell. All I know is that I believe it. Then she reaches up and turns the knob and leaves the room without saying a word.

—

The R train rumbles toward Astoria. Astrid sits across from me. I plug away on my phone, the service going in and out between stops. I don’t have much to go on for finding Stuart. I know his name. I know he’s a serial killer. Based on some stuff he’s said, I turned up a few unsolved murders around the city in the last two years I think could be him.

It feels very uncomfortable going to his home, but I need to check in. In part because maybe he overheard something that I missed. Maybe he’s in danger, too, and despite how I feel about him, I want him to succeed. Every meeting he goes to is a life saved. It makes me think of a Krav Maga instructor I worked with a long time ago. We were doing an active-shooter drill. Every second you stopped a shooter from firing, he said, you saved a life. And according to the Talmud, for every life you saved, you saved a universe.

He would walk around the mat, barefoot, point his hand in the air like it was a gun, and yell, BANG! A universe.

BANG! A universe.

BANG! A universe.

I need to remind myself of that sometimes.

Especially in moments like this.

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