Page 63 of Assassin Anonymous

“Stop,” she says.

He’s crying, curled into a fetal position. I realize all I’m doing is stepping on an ant. I look up and expect, I don’t know, something other than what I see, which is everyone squished to either side of the car, absolutely terrified.

At the most savage part of me.

I wish I could say I regret it, but I don’t.

This is the perfect moment to call Kenji. And I can’t.

“We need to go,” Astrid says.

A few straphangers have their phones out and they’re filming. Right. This’ll end up on social media. Of course. Everyone looking for me will suddenly know exactly where I am.

When the doors open at 28th Street, Astrid pulls me off and we go aboveground, looking for a cab, as I clench my fists so hard they hurt.

—

This seems to be the place. The fries are good. Thin cut, crunchy on the outside, pillowy on the inside, perfectly seasoned. At our last group meeting, Stuart said something about scoping out a bartender near his place where the fries are really good. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but I found four different food blogs praising the fries at Rusty’s Tavern.

It’s an old-man bar on the corner of 31st and Steinway. Lots of wood and old-school stools, and a mix of older clientele who just want to drown in a drink, along with wide-eyed gentrifiers who started flooding this neighborhood when they got priced out of Brooklyn.

It was a little busy when we came in, so after I went to the bathroom and washed the blood off my hands, Astrid and I found seats at the bar and ordered two pints and some fries. She doesn’t touch her beer. I get halfway through mine—not enough to get tipsy, but enough to blunt the edge.

Astrid isn’t speaking to me. I think she’s spooked. She should be. I feel like this thing I’ve been grasping onto for the past year is slipping through my fingers.

And my suspicion was true. Twitter is blowing up—the video of me beating on Smiley is being shared around, and it’s being politicized on both sides. The right thinks it’s time to take our city back with violence, the left is condemning me for attacking someone like that, calling on the mayor for more funding for mental health services.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with my feelings of regret, and hard evidence for the Agency that I’m back in New York.

The bartender comes over to check on us. She’s young and pretty—dark hair freshly blown out and hanging in shiny waves, piercing blue eyes, and the kind of smile that attracts zealous overtipping. “Need anything?”

“Yeah, actually,” I tell her. “Got a question for you.”

Her shoulders tense. I don’t think she’s explicitly creeped out by me, but when a strange man tells a pretty bartender he has a question for her, it’s perfectly reasonable to put up some defenses.

“Got a friend, comes in here sometimes I think,” I tell her. “He’s either really noticeable or not noticeable at all. His name is Stuart…”

Her eyes twitch a little in response.

“So you do know him?”

She nods slowly. “He’s your friend?”

“I shouldn’t say ‘friend,’ ” I tell her. “He’s a guy I know. I need to find him. I’m Mark, by the way—”

“That guy weirds me out.”

“Me too. If you don’t mind me asking, has he ever done anything inappropriate?”

“No, he’s perfectly polite. There’s just something about him. It’s like he’s wearing a mask.” She picks up a glass and wipes it down, then looks at me with some reservation. Probably because my face looks like raw meat. Finally she says, “He’s always respectful and he tips well and he keeps to himself. He’s the perfect patron, outside of the fact that he makes my skin crawl.”

“I need to find him. Anything you can tell me—”

“He lives around the corner. There’s a bunch of brick houses on the left-hand side, all in a row. I can’t remember which one he lives in. They all look the same to me. But I saw him coming out of there once.”

I peel a hundred out of my wallet and slap it on the bar for the fries and the beer. She slides it off, looking at me expectantly.

“Keep the change,” I tell her.

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