Mr. Murder

feel small, alone, adrift. His heart begins to beat fast. His palms are suddenly so damp, the steering wheel slips through them.
        Then, as he brakes at a traffic light, he looks at the car in the lane beside him and sees a family revealed by the street lamps. The father is driving. The mother sits in the passenger seat, an attractive woman.
        A boy of about ten and a girl of six or seven are in the back seat.
        On their way home from a night out. Maybe a movie. Talking, laughing, parents and children together, sharing.
        In his deteriorating condition, that sight is a merciless hammer blow, and he makes a thin wordless sound of anguish.
        He pulls off the street, into the parking lot of an Italian restaurant.
        Slumps in his seat. Breathes in quick shallow gasps.
        The emptiness. He dreads the emptiness.
        And now it is upon him.
        He feels as if he is a hollow man, made of the thinnest blown glass, fragile, only slightly more substantial than a ghost.
        At times like this, he desperately needs a mirror. His reflection is one of the few things that can confirm his existence.
        The restaurant's elaborate red and green neon sign illuminates the interior of the Ford. When he tilts the rearview mirror to look at himself, his skin has a cadaverous cast, and his eyes are alight with changing crimson shapes, as if fires burn within him.
        Tonight, his reflection is not enough to diminish his agitation. He feels less substantial by the moment. Perhaps he will breathe out one last time, expelling the final thin substance of himself in that exhalation.
        Tears blur his vision. He is overwhelmed by his loneliness, and tortured by the meaninglessness of his life.
        He folds his arms across his chest, hugs himself, leans forward, and rests his forehead against the steering wheel. He sobs as if he is a small child.
        He doesn't know his name, only the names he will use while in Kansas City. He wants so much to have a name of his own that is not as counterfeit as the credit cards on which it appears. He has no family, no friends, no home. He cannot recall who gave him this assignment-or any of the jobs before it-and he doesn't know why his targets must die.
        Incredibly, he has no idea who pays him, does not remember where he got the money in his wallet or where he bought the clothes he wears.
        On a more profound level, he does not know who he is. He has no memory of a time when his profession was anything other than murder. He has no politics, no religion, no personal philosophy whatsoever. Whenever he tries to take an interest in current affairs, he finds himself unable to retain what he reads in the newspapers, he can't even focus his attention on television news. He is intelligent, yet he permits himself-or is permitted-only satisfactions of a physical nature, food, sex, the savage exhilaration of homicide. Vast regions of his mind remain uncharted.
        A few minutes pass in green and red neon.
        His tears dry. Gradually he stops trembling.
        He will be all right. Back on the rails. Steady, controlled.
        In fact he ascends with remarkable speed from the depths of despair.
        Surprising, how readily he is willing to continue with his latest assignment-and with the mere shadow of a life that he leads.
        Sometimes it seems to him that he operates as if programmed in the manner of a dumb and obedient machine.
        On the other hand, if he were not to continue, what else would he do?
        This shadow of a life is the only life he has.
        While the girls were upstairs, brushing their teeth and preparing for bed, Marty methodically went from room to room on the first floor, making sure all of the doors and windows were locked.
        He had circled half the downstairs-and was testing the latch on the window above the kitchen sink-before he realized what a peculiar task he had set for himself. Prior to turning in every night, he checked the front and back doors, of course, plus the sliding doors between the family room and patio, but he did not ordinarily verify that any particular window was secure unless he knew that it had been open for ventilation during the day. Nevertheless, he was confirming the integrity of the house perimeter as conscientiously as a sentry might certify the outer defenses of a fortress besieged by enemies.
        As he was finishing in