Requiem for an Assassin

like that for a minute or so, and the kiss grew into something more. I could feel her breasts, the heat of her skin, and suddenly I wanted badly to be alone with her someplace.
    She broke the kiss and hooked her fingers through my belt. “Let’s go to your apartment,” she said. “We can fight better there.”
    We did. And things were good again, until next time, when the pattern would repeat itself.
    But between the periodic swings from bitter argument to sweet resolution, things were mostly good. I haven’t been deeply involved with many women, but among them, only Delilah really knew about, and accepted, what I was beginning to try to think of as my past. The surprising depth of our mutual chemistry, and the improbability of the romance it led to, was a quiet miracle for me. Delilah shared with me intimacies that I sensed came from the deepest places within her, aspects of her mind and her body that by long habit she had learned to protect ferociously and that she conceded now only slowly, cautiously, with fear-tinged hope.
    I found myself opening up with her, as well. I’d meant it when I told her I was getting attached. I’d been alone so long, I’d learned to conceive of myself that way, but slowly and strangely, my conception of myself was beginning to include someone else. Sometimes the attachment scared me, and felt like a burden. Other times it seemed like a life raft, or at least like ballast. Either way, it was real, and deepening.
    But one thing I didn’t share with Delilah was the onset of periodic…anxiety attacks, for want of a better description. Occasionally, I would get so lost in a book in a café that I would neglect to look up when I heard someone come in, or so lost in thought on a morning stroll that I’d suddenly realize an entire minute had elapsed and I hadn’t checked my back. At those moments, I’d be gripped by a kind of horror, the feeling you get if you accidentally run a red light at full speed and miraculously manage to breeze through the intersection unscathed. You can tell yourself no harm, no foul, but still you know you fucked up, that in another universe you were annihilated by a truck coming from your left, or you mowed down a young mother stepping off the curb, or were overtaken by some similar catastrophe. A primal part of your mind screams, How could you be so careless? Do you want to die?
    I was used to living with fear, and there was always a reason for it, typically that someone was trying to kill me. Now that the causes of fear were growing distant, the fear itself diminishing, anxiety was filling the vacuum. Had I been afraid so long that I needed something to be afraid of, something the fear could focus on?
    I tried taking long walks at night, the more deserted the streets, the better. There was an area in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, known as La Goutte d’Or, near Barbès, that I particularly favored. Decorated with the incinerated husks of cars the locals had torched, and inhabited by dealers, beggars, and illegals from the Maghreb, the area had a dangerous, desperate edge that kept me on my toes. Its street denizens would observe me as I moved through, not knowing what to make of me. I was in France, but my face was Japanese; my attire was civilian, but my vibe was anything but. Aside from occasional offers of drugs, they mostly left me alone.
    Once, a tall Moroccan with a shaved head and ears weighed down by multiple metal studs started pacing me from behind while I walked. I calmly glanced back at him, and at the two friends trailing in his wake, to let them know I was aware of their presence, and to signal thereby that I wasn’t afraid, stupid, or likely to be easy. He mistook my cautionary glance as an opening, though, and called out to me in Moroccan-accented French, “What you doing here, man? You want to buy something? I help you find it. What you want?”
    I checked the area to ensure I wasn’t being flanked, then stopped and turned to him. “I’m not what you’re looking for,” I said in French.
    But he kept coming. He might have been too stupid to have understood my signals. Or maybe he had decided to resolve his cognitive dissonance over my appearance and vibe by more closely examining me, rather than just shrugging and moving on.
    “No, man,” he said. “Wait up. I just want to help.”
    His friends were fanning out now, moving toward my flanks. I felt adrenaline churn through my system, and damn if its hot rush wasn’t almost