Page 68 of Assassin Anonymous

My hand goes to the spot on my head that opened up when I killed Amato. “Never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“We never even got into the ice-skating rink, so, no, I will not,” she says, then retreats to the kitchen. I click through the TV, hoping to find a documentary that’ll bore me enough that I want to sleep.

Her words ringing in my ears.

It didn’t use to be like this. It used to be that I slept like a baby pumped full of Ambien. That night I met Sara, after we had sex, I was up until sunrise, alternating between watching her sleeping form and staring at the ceiling, searching for words that could even skirt the edge of what I was feeling.

Still can’t find the right words, still can’t sleep.

On her way from the kitchen to the staircase she stops at the tree. We already stacked the presents we got for each other underneath.

I’ve never bought anyone presents before.

No one’s ever gotten presents for me.

She adds one more to the pile, placing it down softly so maybe I won’t notice, but of course I do, because I’m trained to notice things, but I give her the respect of pretending I don’t.

“Don’t stay up too late,” Sara says as she climbs the stairs. “Early morning.”

“That’s what coffee is for.”

Once she’s cleared the staircase and I hear her footsteps padding around the bedroom, I go to the kitchen and pour myself a few fingers of rye, then restart It’s a Wonderful Life. Because I want that little hint of my old life, but also, I want to understand what it is about the movie that suddenly feels different.

And as the whiskey does its work, I think I get it.

It’s George’s journey with Clarence. Touring George’s life to discover how the world would look without him. His brother drowned as a child, the town in shambles, the people in his life sad and broken.

If I were gone, how would the world look?

A lot of people would be dead.

But a lot of people would be alive, too.

There were the six members of the Islamic Jihad Movement, planning a dirty bomb for Times Square during the summer tourist season. The fourteen members of the People’s Liberation Front in Ethiopia behind an ethnic cleansing campaign. Twelve members of the Paraguayan Congress, a shadow wing of the country’s communist Patria Libre party, which was responsible for hundreds of kidnappings, bombings, and other armed operations.

The math on those was clear.

Then there was Michael Albertson, the British journalist who uncovered direct evidence of Russian tampering in U.S. elections. A matter of national security, I was told. And Carol Gyzander, the environmental activist planning a debilitating attack on the Kuparuk River oil field in Alaska. People could die, I was told, plus all the chaos it would cause to the U.S. market.

Sometimes the math is fuzzy.

And even if I was saving lives, they were theoretical.

The only number that matters is the hard number of the people I’ve killed.

Some nights when I can’t sleep, I sit and contemplate the paper crane that Kenji gave me. It sits on a bookshelf in my apartment, and I have yet to open it, for fear of how that might change the equation. And some nights, it’s because I can’t shake the scream of Antonio Amato’s daughter, finding her dad dead in a bathroom in Bryant Park.

I take a sip of rye and savor the sting that trickles down the back of my throat.

My phone buzzes on the coffee table. I pick it up and find a text from Ravi:

Got a job for you. Tried to wait until after Christmas but it’s an ASAP op. Flight leaves from JFK in three hours. I’m waiting in the Terminal B Chili’s. Text me when you’re close and I’ll order you a drink.

I stare at it for a moment. I’ve been renting a storage locker close by for exactly this kind of situation, so I wouldn’t have to go all the way home to get my gear. But I glance at the staircase, and the tree, and that wrapped first edition of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath that I am dying to watch Sara open, and there’s not even a decision to be made.

Me: Sorry, bud. Got plans for the holiday.

There’s a long pause. I imagine Ravi’s expression of confusion and indignation. My heart slams against the inside of my chest.

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