Page 90 of Assassin Anonymous

Everyone nods slowly, creating a space for these feelings to reverberate through the room.

“I just keep thinking about that first night I met her. It was February, and there were these trees around Bryant Park, and they looked like hands. Like skeletal hands reaching up to the moon, which was glowing in the sky. And removed from the context I guess it seems like a bit of a spooky image. But I keep thinking about how those limbs were reaching for something beyond their grasp. And that’s what being with her felt like. Like there was something greater I could be reaching for. Something beyond myself, but I guess, also within myself? I don’t know. Like, the more you reach the more you realize there’s something worth reaching for…”

The words I’ve been struggling to find finally come to me.

“Before I met her, my life felt very small. And afterward, it felt a lot bigger. I know that I’ve made mistakes, and I don’t want to be those mistakes. I want to be something else. I don’t know what that something else is. I just know that I want it.”

Valencia leans forward and squeezes my hand.

“You don’t need to know why you’re here,” she says. “You just need to be here.”

“I just…”

There’s more I want to say, but the sob that’s been building in my chest explodes outward, and then I’m hunched over, crying like a baby, and these three people, they put their hands on me. Hands they’ve used to kill, but tonight, just feeling the weight and the warmth of them, they knit together the things inside me that are broken.

13

If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.

—Genghis Khan

Somewhere…

Now

A burning sensation starts in my nostril and moves through my body, the warm blanket I’ve been wrapped in suddenly ripped off. I’m ejected into the cold air, my skin ringing like an old bell. Then a sound: something hard and plastic hitting the floor. There’s so much to take in at once, my brain can’t keep up.

Instead it doles things out in phases.

My hands are bound behind me. Metal cuts into my skin.

There’s a song playing softly in the distance. Something familiar.

Smells like a pine forest, but we’re inside.

Deep breath.

The song that’s playing is “Ave Maria.” I’m sitting at the base of an enormous Christmas tree. The kind you know is expensive because it’s real and doesn’t have any kitschy ornaments. It reaches toward the top of the cathedral ceiling, and the white stars pulsing in the center are the only source of light in the room. Beyond the tree are floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. I catch a corner of Central Park in the panorama. I think we’re looking north. The sun has set but it’s a clear night and we’re so high up I think I can see the curvature of the earth.

Sitting across from me, bound to a chair, her face bloodied, is Astrid. She looks like she’s waking up from a nap. Probably coming out of whatever put me under.

She has a little red bow on her head.

I think I do, too—something’s tugging at my hair.

Seated to the right of us is Kozlov.

He’s not bound. Just lounging on a chair turned backward, his arms draped over the top rail, smiling like we’re all friends.

“Dobriy vecher,” he says.

“I wouldn’t call the evening good, all things considered,” I say. “I was wondering when I’d run into you.”

“Before this gets started, I would just like to say”—he puts his hand to his chest—“I am a big fan. I know it would be silly to say ‘no hard feelings’ after what happened”—he leans back, waving his hand around his gut—“you know, with me stabbing you? But I hope in time we can get past it.”

My nostril still burns. “What did you dose us with?”

“Just now?” He nods toward a small, plastic nasal injector on the floor. “Naloxone. To counteract halothane with a small amount of fentanyl.”

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