The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

drops thick with lust run down heavy leaves in very slow motion. Down by the harbor I come across my mother standing outside her little shop, in her horrible communist skirt and Marilyn Monroe blouse, with a white cast on her right arm, and a fist on her left, pounding the air and shouting at me:
    “This tandoori woman is all pleasure and no partner! When you pick a wife you must have conference between heart and brain. But you don’t talk to any of them and let your dick decide! I loved your father for forty-two years. He loved me for forty. The first two years he was still fucking Gordana, the Serbian whore. But then he got bored with her and kept his dick at home after that. You are lucky to be born after his sex life was over! Or else you would have been a Serb and your brother would have killed you in the war. Let me tell you, lust don’t last! Only love does! You break my heart, you break my arm, and you break all your promises. Tell me, Tomo, when are you going back to your studies?”
    I studied architectural landscaping for a year and a half in the wonderful town of Hanover, Germany. There I met Niko Nevolja (Naughty Niko) who introduced me to the science of the con. It all started with a couple of small-time cocaine deals. Then we got on to drug and gun smuggling and finally, we were introduced to the art of game-fixing. Every Friday night we dined with a different soccer referee from one of the lower German Bundesligas. They were not the most fun dinner partners (“I always iron my jersey the night before the match”) but watching them perform the day after was nothing less than addictive. Giveaway penalties and excellent goals denied. Angry players and a crowd gone mad. And it was all our work. Architectural landscaping was out, social landscaping was in. We being Croatian added an extra kick to it. No matter if the fucking Germans won the international games against us, we won all the games in their Bundesligas. And then we collected the money from the Fußball-Lotto. We were doing it for the fatherland. The Sauerkraut Suckers destroyed half of my grandfather’s generation.
    I’m sitting with the pillows on the sofa, with a white Christian towel around my waist, browsing the local TV channels, when suddenly the front door bangs open and a super-blonde girl in her twenties rushes inside. Without noticing the hitman of her dreams, she beelines for the kitchen and starts opening every one of the drawers. She seems to be in a big hurry, flinging curses inside each drawer before closing it with a bang. “Shit!” Finally, there is silence. She must then have heard the TV, for seconds later she stands in the doorway and asks me something that sounds like:
    “Queer air thew.”
    “Excuse me?”
    She switches to pretty professional English:
    “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
    “I’m To—I’m Father Friendly. I just got in this morning. From New York. They, Goodmoondoor and Sickreader, they told me—”
    “Aha,” she sighs with disinterest and disappears back into the kitchen. On the screen some balding carpenter-type is reading from a book that must be the Bible. The set looks like he built it himself. This must be their channel. Right. The letter A shines in the upper corner. They should call it “Omen” rather than “Amen.” This is one-camera TV: the still-life style of it, the dead plant in the background, the carpenter’s Polish suit, the way he only looks up from the book every three pages (as if he’s checking the red REC light of the camera). It all makes North Korean State TV look like MTV. Poor guys. Dikan’s position as the big boss can’t possibly be hurt by me appearing on this drab channel. Judging from the expression on the carpenter’s face, he knows he’s not talking to more than ten viewers.
    I get up from the sofa, make sure the towel is tight around my waist, and head for the kitchen. I comfort my shy belly—it always withdraws at the sight of serious girls—before appearing in the doorway like a freshly updated and slightly inflated version of Adonis. The girl is still searching the kitchen like a burglar on speed.
    “Are you looking for something?” I ask her. Tone is hymn-like, voice is gym-like.
    “Yeah. My keys,” she murmurs into a cupboard.
    Her body is slim, with small breasts and a tight ass, firm as a fully inflated airbag. If she was the only woman in our platoon and we were stuck in the mountains for a month, I’d start dreaming about