It happened to be an August evening on a Friday, the sun nearing the time to set
but still not gathering the balls to just do it already. Lynn was sitting outside the train station, waiting for the outbound to come and finally take her home. She was clicking through her phone, deleting old texts and such. She was just finishing watching all her sent messages from the past month be deleted when someone stepped in front of her.
	The man was out of breath from running three blocks. He had a scar on his cheek and ragged, black hair. He wore a collared shirt under a nice-looking coat and well-fitting black pants, but he still looked like a wreck. “Can I borrow your phone?” he asked quickly. “I need to call my sister.”
	Lynn hesitated, but the man just kept speaking. “Her number’s Three-Oh-One – I said – I mean, it’s One-Three-Oh-One…” He dictated the number to her, and she typed it into her phone and hit send, handing it to him. He took it and was silent. “Samantha! It’s Nick, hey! Hey, I’m sorry I got to you so late, you wouldn’t believe my day. No, this isn’t my phone, I borrowed it – I know, I lost mine.” Lynn stood. The train was approaching. She looked worriedly at the man, and he saw the look. “Hey – Hey, listen, I’m gonna visit Mom tonight, so I’ll call you there. I’m real sorry for what happened! Your boyfriend is just a dick, I’ll kill him or something. I’m kidding! Talk to you later. Bye. Love you.”
He hung up and handed the phone back. “Three blocks to find someone using their phone!” He laughed. Lynn just nodded, pocketing it. “Thank you so much.” She nodded.
“It’s not a problem. Tell your sister happy birthday.” He made an affirmative noise, smiling, and turned to hurry off in the direction he’d come from. That was when Lynn saw it. There was a gun stuck in the back of his pants, held by the elastic. His coat flapped to hide it quickly, but she still saw the flash of black.
Lynn got on the train and went home.
That evening, she went to a party. Nick also went to a party. As luck would have it, it was the same party! And as luck would have it, Lynn spotted Nick in the crowd. Had Nick spotted her, he wouldn’t have done anything. Nick was completely unable to tell faces apart. He even lost his own mother in crowds, back before she was in rehab for her cocaine addiction and could actually be in crowds. This wasn’t just his stupidity: something about his mind simply refused to remember faces. He could remember heights, weights, hair color, even eye color if it struck him, but just given a photo of a face, he was lost. So Lynn was the one who stepped over to him and asked, “How’s your sister?” He looked at her blankly.
“You her friend? She’s having a party down at her place.” Lynn hesitated.
“I’m the girl whose phone you used.” She wanted to add “prick,” but she figured she’d be polite.
“Oh! Christ, I’m sorry!” His drink sloshed as he jerked with shock. “I’m real sorry, I’m awful with faces.” He was more than awful. “Hey, what’s your name? I’m Nick Bracket, you know Marco?” She nodded. He had invited her to the party.
“Lynn Kirch.” They shook hands. “What do you do?” He looked at her blankly, confused. “For a… job?”
“Oh! Right, sorry, I’m really tired, I’ve had a hell of a… I do boring office stuff.”
“For?” He rose his brow. He hoped it showed that no one had ever asked him, for he sure as hell didn’t know how to answer. But he hoped the eyebrow raise would make it seem like his job was so monotonously boring that there was no reason asking who he did the incredibly boring work for. But Lynn just waited for the reply.
“Scavo,” he replied.
“What is that?”
“Some life insurance shit. It’s – Italian.”
“You speak Italian?” She seemed impressed, Nick thought! Aldo Scavo, his senior and best friend, more or less, since people didn’t tend to warm to Nick (his inability to remember who they were at first helped with that), had taught him a little Italian. Mostly swears.
“Just a little,” he said sheepishly.
“You took it in school?”
“Oh. No. Just, uh, tutors, and stuff.” He didn’t want this to be about him, so he quickly asked, “Do you speak anything?”
“English,” she said. He didn’t know whether to laugh or not, so he just smiled. “I can’t remember any of the French I learned in high school.”
“I’m with you, Spanish is like… a foreign language now. I mean, it is. But it’s still, uh, I don’t… Hola, that’s all I got.” He even knew how stupid he sounded, which he didn’t always recognize at first. This was bad. Aldo had told him to always keep the conversation on the other person – whether getting information, schmoozing, or flirting. Nick wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he kept with the advice. “So, where do you work?”
“The dry cleaners on Bank Street.” It wasn’t a luxurious job. But Lynn had gotten used to it, and the staff stopped recognizing her as a part-timer despite that she’d always been working full-time. She got a long lunch break and the work was easy. The customers were friendly, too. No one is an ass when you’re the one deciding how they look.
“Yeah? Is that, like, fun?” She gave him a look. “I’m not mocking you! I’m – I mean, you don’t think about that kind of work! So, I don’t really know how it works.”
“You put the clothes in the washer and then… fold them, I suppose. Well, if they ask them to be folded. Sometimes they go on hangars. And you need to remember which ones need starch and such… It’s monotonous, but I’ve gotten used to it. And the coworkers are friendly.”
“That’s nice.” He meant it – most of his coworkers were assholes. Murderous assholes. But that was their job. “Where do you live?”
“Outside Haverport.”
“Hey, that’s not far. You drive?”
“Bike.” He must have looked surprised. From Lynn’s view, he did. “I don’t have the cash for a car. I take the subway.”
“Hey, that’s neat. I wish I did that. Cars are dumb.” She rose her brow. “They pollute and… stuff. It’s grimy. They’re handy, I guess, but I wish I, I mean, you get a lot of exercise.” Lynn shrugged, sipping her drink.
	“Did you go to college?” she asked. He shook his head, laughing slightly. “Really? I figured you did, if you work in an office.” He felt the color drain from his face, but Lynn didn’t notice anything, truly curious.
	“My dad knew some people,” he lied. His dad had been dead for a few years.
	“What does he do?” Shit.
	“He’s dead,” Nick said, quickly adding, “but I met some of his friends and, uh, stuff happened, and I got a job.”
	“Oh. Well, I’m sorry for your loss.” He shook his head, laughing weakly.
	“It’s been a little while since… What do your folks do, then?” She shrugged.
	“My dad works in investment, and my mom is a schoolteacher. Boring shit.”
	“That sounds neat. What grade?” High school, she answered. “What subject?” English. “That’s pretty neat.”
	The conversation teetered off, and they parted ways.
	Nick went back to his apartment, took a shower, tossed his bloody shirts in the hamper, and went to bed. He laid awake, staring at the ceiling, mind unable to clear. He was obsessed. Maybe it was the booze, but even then he hadn’t had that much to drink. No matter what he did, he couldn’t stop thinking of her.
	He sat up and grabbed for his cell phone off the table. It wasn’t there. He hesitated, the cursed, slumping against the backboard of his bed. “That damn…” He let his eyes close, remembering the man who had stepped on his phone. It had never happened before. Who does that, anyway?
	Nick sat up and stood, walking through the condo and grabbing his coat. It was after three in the morning. He was tired, but he could drive, sure. He grabbed his car keys and ran downstairs, locking his door behind him and heading towards the garage. He stood outside his little automobile, silent, and decided no, he couldn’t drive. He had promised his mom he’d never drive impaired. He wasn’t drunk! Not at all. Just tired. Nick unlocked the door, taking the gun from the compartment in the back, and shut it, sliding it behind him into the back of his pants. He was a quick draw. Something Aldo had always complemented him on.
	Aldo, right. Nick locked the car, pocketed his keys, and walked down the silent streets to Aldo’s apartment twenty minutes away.
	He stood at the door, waiting. It was hardly cold out. He tapped his toes, staring down at them, and imagining them as little drummers in a marching band. God, he was tired. The door opened, and Aldo stared out at him.
	Aldo had been sleeping in his bed for two hours before he was woken by “Aldo! It’s Nick! Aldo!” and furious knocking. His dark blond hair was neatly combed and he had a bathrobe on, one he had grabbed while heading to the door. No matter what, Aldo Scavo always looked sharp. He could have been in a train accident and still looked like Armani himself had asked him to model. He was also never late.
	“What’s the matter?” he asked, leaning on the door frame.
	“I can’t stop thinking about this girl,” Nick said.
	“You could have called me,” he said, opening the door and ushering him in.
	“Some guy stepped on my phone, it’s broken. I have to go get a new thing tomorrow.” He stepped inside, closing the door as Aldo went to the kitchen, turning on a coffee pot. Nick pulled off his shoes and coat, sniffing. It smelled like cigarette smoke. “You smoking again?”
	“A little, today was difficult.”
	“That girl again?”
	“That girl. She keeps stealing my kills. I honestly wonder if she’s even an assassin, or just someone who likes to get her hands dirty with blood.” He motioned with one of his long fingers. “Sit.”
Nick sat at the bar.
“Tell me about this woman.”
Nick told him. There wasn’t much to say. She worked at a Laundromat, he’d borrowed her phone, she had looked frustrated when he didn’t recognize her – “I don’t even recognize you half the time!” Nick said to Aldo, who nodded knowingly – and her parents were in investment and school. Aldo set coffee in front of him as he spoke, nodding silently and closing his eyes.
“She sounds average,” he said.
“Exactly,” Nick said. “I don’t know why I’m – I mean, we were just chatting! It was a party! I chat with tons of people!”
“And then you kill them,” Aldo noted. Nick hesitated.
“If I’m supposed to,” he replied, sipping the drink. Nick got coffee at a small store a town over every morning. The little barista remembered his order. He found this funny, since he didn’t ever remember her face. Aldo refused to let anyone but himself touch his coffee. “I wish I knew how to make coffee.”
“You’ve got your cute little chic shop,” Aldo said, leaning against the counter. “Now, Nick, a crush is nothing to be ashamed of. What is to be ashamed of is that you’ll never find this girl again.”
“Huh?”
“Think about how many Laundromats there are in this city. To top it off, you don’t even know what she looks like.” Nick stared into the cup. “Did you get her name?”
“Lynn… Kirch? That sounds right. Lynn Kirch.”
“Not exactly a common name, but not an odd one, either.” He combed his hair with his fingers, silent for a moment. “It’s just a crush. It’ll pass.” Nick put his chin on his fist, staring at his superior.
















	He was face-down on the couch in the living room. The apartment was completely torn apart: food lay on the floor, plates scattered and broken around the kitchen, the rug was upturned in some places, there was stuffing coming out of pillows. For a second, Lev had to hesitate out of wonder if Nick was dead. His body turned slightly when he closed the door, and he breathed an internal sign of relief.
	“How are you?” he asked, then bit his tongue. What a stupid question. His head rose from the couch and he smiled up at Lev. His eyes were empty. “Sit up, I’ll make you coffee. What happened to your place? Sit up.” He had put his head back down.
	“Killed her.” Lev stopped. “They told me to kill her so’s I killed her.”
	“Ah.”
	“Black with two sugars?” That’s not black, Lev began to say.
	“Sure.” He cleared broken plates off the counter, pulling the coffee pot from the sink. It was cracked. He looked back at Nick, who was slowly sitting up, running a hand through his tangled hair. It was growing long, Lev noticed. “Think you’ll cut it?” He looked up. “Your hair.” Nick shook his head. “Hm.” He looked like a hobo.
	“Lev,” he sang, sitting back in the couch. “You’re really stupid, making friends with an American assassin.”
	“Perhaps you’re the idiot for making friends with a Russian one,” Lev replied. “Mind if I smoke?” He shook his head from side to side, letting it flop across his neck. Lev walked back near him, fiddling his lighter as he dug out a box of cigarettes. “You want one?”
	“No.” He rose his hand, examining the gun in it. His eyes flicked up to Lev as he lit his cigarette, watching his relaxed figure, and he smiled. Lev looked at him and smiled back.
	“Despite being depressed, you seem happy.” His smile grew, and soon he began to laugh. He kept laughing, as if he’d remembered something funny, until tears came to his eyes. Lev just stared at him, unsure whether to chuckle or hold him. After a bit his laughter became choked sobs as he buried his face in his hands, shaking his head from side to side. “Nick – “
	“Don’t,” he managed, looking up with anger in his eyes, “lecture me about my stupid feeling for her, you loveless monster.” Lev stared at him, down the hole of a barrel, and hit the flo
	When he woke up, he was lying in bed. A glance down at his hands told him he was in a new body.