Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman (4 page)

Chapter Six

T
HE PROBLEM WITH
someone offering to pay you to kill someone is that you can’t talk to anyone about it. Not anyone. Usually when you’ve got some sort of monumental, life-changing decision to make, you run it past your family, your friends, your confidants, strangers on the street. But I couldn’t breathe a word of it to anybody. Not that there was a decision to make. I’d made up my mind I wasn’t going to become a hired killer. But I’ve got to admit that it was all I thought about. Not the actual act of killing, but what it meant that Tony (or was it Anthony?) Delveccio thought I was capable of such a thing. Could he see something in me that I’d never admitted to myself?

I went back to work the next day, because I figured that I didn’t need to lose my job on top of everything else. But my heart wasn’t in it. Not that it ever was. I hated my job taking insurance claims for automobile accidents. You can never fully grasp the true stupidity of your fellow man until you’ve worked at a service call center. Between calls I thought about Delveccio’s offer. A lot. By the time my lunch hour, or more accurately my lunch
half
hour, rolled around, my head was spinning.

My best friend at Insuring the Future hobbled toward me across the break room. Armani Vasquez consistently earned the lowest scores on our customer service call audits, but she’s never in danger of losing her job. “
I’m a female, Latina, gimp,” she declares proudly. “I got the Americans with Disabilities Act covering my ass. Ain’t no one gonna fire someone missing three fingers with only one good leg.”

She is, of course, right. No one dares to discipline her for fear of a discrimination lawsuit. As a result, she takes ridiculously long breaks and mouths off to managers on a consistent basis. She can be a royal pain in the ass, but I like her. Maybe it’s because she says what she thinks, or maybe it’s because more than once I’ve caught her taking the blame for mistakes other employees have made. Something she does with some regularity and with no expectation of reciprocation. She’s not nearly as self-centered as she pretends to be . . . but she is damn good at the pretending.

“I got a reading tonight.” Breathlessly she flopped into the chair opposite me.

She’s got one of those cool scooter things, but she refuses to use it most of the time, preferring instead to drag her bad leg behind her, lurching like a drunken sailor. She’s fiercely independent that way. It’s another reason to like her. “I got a reading,” she repeated.

“Good for you.”

Besides being the poster child for the Americans with Disabilities Act here at Future, Armani Vazquez was starting a side business . . . as a psychic. While I don’t believe in signs, premonitions, vibes, or luck, Armani does.

“Referral from a former customer.”

“Uh huh.” I considered asking her why she hadn’t foreseen the car accident that had just demolished my life or the runaway Zamboni that had ruined her leg and chewed up her missing fingers.

“I tried googling the girl, but I didn’t come up with much.”

“Not even Facebook?”

Armani shook her head, her face appearing and disappearing behind her thick curtain of dark hair like a magician’s trick. Her hair was part of her mystique and she played it for all it was worth. “Girl’s pretty cagey about revealing personal information online.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How inconvenient for you.”

Armani liked to scout out details about her clients before they met her. She claimed it helped her get a better idea of the big picture of their lives. She may have almost fooled herself into believing her own bullshit, but I wasn’t buying. Fortune-telling was just a con, designed to take money from some poor, desperate sap who was looking for a couple blanket reassurances—you’re not going to die alone; you’ll find love—that kind of crap.

“She’s a four,” Armani announced with disdain.

“Excuse me?”

“A four. Lisa. L-I-S-A. Four.”

“Which means . . . ?” Like all good con artists, Armani had put her own spin on things. Some so-called-psychics read palms, other cards, and still others tea leaves, but Armani Vasquez read Scrabble tiles.

Yes, Scrabble tiles. She’d ask a mark to pull a handful out of a cloth bag and lay them on the table. Then she’d spell out words or make up anagrams and “read” the future. She practiced here in the break room on unsuspecting co-workers all the time, perfecting her act, reading their tells.

She’d never offered to look into my future. Maybe she sensed that I’d seen enough in my past. Maybe she figured I wasn’t quite as dumb as the rest of these idiots we called our peers.

“You know how I feel about fours.” Armani judged everyone based on the numerical value (as determined by Scrabble letters) of their name. Armani equaled eight. Vasquez was like hitting the jackpot in her book. It equaled twenty-eight.

My last name Lee is only worth three, but I’m saved by the fact that my first name is a ten, if I go by Maggie, or twelve if I use Margaret. Otherwise I don’t think we’d be friends because she doesn’t trust anyone five or below.

I didn’t respond to her comment about fours. I had more important things on my mind. Like why Delveccio thought I was capable of murder.

“What’s wrong with you? “ Armani asked sharply, jolting me out of my morose musings.

I couldn’t tell her the truth, that my future might hold a murder. “I dunno. My sister’s dead. My niece is in a coma. Excuse me if I’m not going to win Little Miss Sunshine today.”

“Today, my amiga, you are not even in the running.”

“So go sit somewhere else if you don’t like my company.”

She ignored that as she started rummaging in her purse. “What you need is to channel your inner Chiquita.”

“You want me to channel my inner banana?” I knew what she meant, but I liked teasing her. For as long as I’ve known Armani, she’s been trying to get me to set my “true self” free. I was too bottled up for her taste. I didn’t tell her that my reserve was something I’d carefully constructed over the years. The ability to control my emotions, to lock them up and refuse to express them, was a conscious choice. It was what separated me from my crazy mother. I wasn’t about to let loose any time soon . . . or ever, if I could help it.

Still, Armani kept trying to get me to let go by calling it different things: “Let the world see the real you” and “Be your bitch self” were just two of the previous campaigns she’d waged. She’d dropped it right after the accident, but apparently she’d decided I’d been my mopier-than-usual self for long enough.

“Let that cute, smart, passionate girl that’s inside you out, Chiquita. You have a big heart stuck in that petite persona you show to the world.” She pulled a bottle out of her purse and spritzed my arm with some Glow by J Lo perfume. “You’ve gotta get your glow on.”

“You just put your Glow on me, which, by the way, is not cool. I don’t care if you are a cripple, you try that shit again, and I will lay your ass out.”

She beamed. “Yes, that’s it! Send some energy out into the universe, and let it come back at you ten-fold!”

“You have lost your fucking mind!” I jumped out of my chair before she could spray me again.

“And you have lost your way, Grasshopper. But I believe that you will find your path.”

Right then I was worried that the path she was referring to might lead me straight to the death penalty, but of course I couldn’t tell her that. Instead, I went back to work, knowing that as soon as my shift was over I was going home to talk to the other living . . . being I could talk to.

Chapter Seven

I
SHOULD HAVE KNOWN
that my plan to go home and spend a nice quiet evening talking with a lizard, who calls himself God, about whether or not I look like a stone cold killer, was doomed from the start.

Aunt Leslie waited for me in denim overalls and a Grateful Dead t-shirt, her white hair waving in the wind like a flag of surrender. She was hammering something above my front door, a difficult task for most women, but at six-four, she rarely needed a ladder.

“What are you doing?”

She swung around in my direction, almost causing me thousands of dollars worth of dental reconstruction. I jumped back, narrowly escaping a hammer to the mouth. Oblivious that she’d almost taken my head off with her hammer, she threw her arms around me, enveloping me in that disgusting scent she wore. She squeezed my ribcage like she was trying to get the last drop of toothpaste out of a used-up tube.

“We missed you at the wake.”

Extricating myself from her grip, I backed away a few feet to where the air was fresh and clean (or at least where I could breathe in the familiar smog that passes for fresh air in New Jersey). “What are you hanging?”

Aunt Leslie beamed, obviously proud of her find. “A horseshoe.”

“A what?”

“A horseshoe. It’s supposed to ward off bad luck.”

Kinda late for that,
I thought. “You know I don’t believe in that kind of stuff, right?”

Her smile turned upside down into a pathetic, pouting, frown. Her lower lip trembled ominously.

“But hey, it can’t hurt!” I wanted to avoid one of Aunt Leslie’s emotional outbreaks like a lingerie model wants to avoid cellulite. “I’ll take all the help I can get. Thanks, Aunt Leslie!”

She smiled and I breathed a sigh of relief (albeit a shallow one, since I was still trying to avoid the noxious fumes emanating from her person). A mini-meltdown had been avoided.

“So was that all you wanted? To hang the horseshoe?”

“That, and to check on you. You’ve been so strong through all of this. I just wanted to see how you’re holding up.”

I briefly considered revealing how I’d snapped and attacked a man with a chair.

“And . . . ,” she said, a little too brightly. “I wanted to see if you’d like to visit your mother.”

“No.” I didn’t have to think about it. The answer was automatic.

“But . . .” Her voice cracked, a sure signal the tears would start any moment. “But I know she’d like to see you.”

“And you know I wouldn’t like to see her.”

“Susan said you’d refuse, but I thought if I could just talk to you . . .” The waterworks started on cue, just like those sprinklers that go off in the produce section of the supermarket just when you’re reaching for a head of lettuce.

I held my breath, waiting to exhale a sigh of exasperation. But there was no need to upset her more. She was just trying to be a good aunt and sister. I couldn’t fault her for that.

Closing the distance between us, I wrapped my arms around her waist. “I appreciate you coming to check on me, Aunt Leslie. And I appreciate the horseshoe. I even appreciate the invite to visit Mom, but I’m sorry, with everything else that’s happened, I can’t. I just can’t take any more. Can you understand that? Can you forgive me?”

Hugging me back, she pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “There’s nothing to forgive, Maggie. When you’re ready, I’ll be here to go with you. Until then you take care of yourself.”

She walked away, taking her cloud of stinky perfume with her. I watched her go, feeling guilty for upsetting her. I knew she meant well. I knew she loved me. I knew she didn’t mean to meddle.

“Oh,” she yelled as she reached her car. “I forgot to tell you that Susan says that when you decide that Katie is too much responsibility for you, just let her know.”

My good will toward her evaporated instantly. Meddling fools!

I was muttering as I unlocked the door and walked inside my apartment. “She makes it sound like this was all my idea. I mean it’s not like I ever had any desire to have a kid. I’m a realist. I know I’d suck at it.”

“Suck at what?” God asked in that self-important tone of his.

I was so upset about Aunt Leslie’s visit that I’d totally forgotten I’d left him and his terrarium in the middle of my kitchen table.

His voice was so unexpected that I jumped back, knocking a framed family portrait photograph off the wall. It crashed to the floor, the glass shattering.

“Dammit! Look what you made me do.”

“What do you suck at?”

“Raising a kid. I know I’d end up screwing up a kid just the way my . . . just the way I was screwed up. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want another living soul to inherit that kind of legacy? The world really doesn’t need one more fuck-up.”

Picking up the frame, taking care not to look at the photograph, I leaned it up against the wall.

“That’s why I balked when Theresa asked me to be godmother to her unborn child. Katie hadn’t been born yet, and Theresa was already asking me to make a commitment to be responsible for the kid if something should happen to her and Dirk. I turned Theresa down the first two times she asked me. I caved the third time, when she pulled out the big guilt guns,
If you don’t agree to take her, she’ll end up with the coven
.”

“That’s an excellent impression of her.” The lizard sounded impressed in a bored kind of way. “Spot on.”

“And of course nothing could get me to quit shirking my responsibilities quicker than the impending threat of the coven, also known as the three witches, also known as my three aunts. Not that Susan, Leslie, and Loretta are bad witches, or women, or aunts. I actually think they mean well most of the time, but sometimes their meddling feels downright evil.”

“And what horribly, evil thing have they done to you, that you’ve labeled them witches?” God managed to make every single syllable drip with disparagement.

“
I
didn’t label them. My father called them the three bitches. My mother changed bitch to witch every time. As a kid Theresa thought that meant they were the three witches. The name stuck.”

“And you never outgrew the childish name-calling.”

Ignoring his chastisement I rummaged in the kitchen pantry for my dust pan and brush to clean up the broken glass in the foyer. “If I’m totally honest, I’ve gotta say that there have been plenty of times I’ve wondered whether the nuthouse locked up the right Ginty sister. I mean, sure my mother is delusional, but I don’t think she’s any crazier than her loony sisters.”

“You do realize you’re telling all this to a lizard, don’t you?”

I sighed. “I was trying not to dwell on that particular fact.”

“You’re not very sensitive.”

“About what?”

“Mental illness. You toss around
nuthouse
and
loony
like they’re beads at Mardi Gras.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been to Mardi Gras?”

“I’m trying to tell you that the stigma of mental illness runs rampant, and you shouldn’t be so callous as to perpetuate the stereotypes.”

“I’m being lectured by an amphibian.”

“Reptile.”

“Whatever.”

“And I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I glared at God. It’s really difficult to stare down a lizard. They don’t have eyelids, so you know they’re not going to blink first.

He just stared at me with that infuriating implacability of his. “You’re angry, Maggie?”

“It’s a double standard.”

“What is?”

“Understanding. I’m supposed to understand. Be patient. Excuse and forgive.”

God licked his eyeball, his equivalent of blinking. It’s disgusting to watch. “You’re not making a lot of sense.”

“Maybe that means I’ve gone ’round the bend. Over the bridge to grandmother’s house I’ve gone.”

“You’re going to your grandmother’s house?”

“Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house . . . Oh never mind. It’s just a song Mom used to sing when I was little—before she went ’round the bend and over the edge. I have a headache. I don’t want to talk about this any more.”

“You speak of her with such . . . disdain.”

“I love my mother.”

“All the time?”

Busted. I hung my head. He was right. There were times when I didn’t love her or even like her. It was my secret shame.

“Tell me why.”

I shook my head. It was bad enough that I was confiding in a lizard. I sure as hell didn’t need to confess to him, too. I couldn’t even look at him.

“Why, M&M?

The old nickname caught me like a sucker punch to the gut. The air whooshed right out of me on a pained gasp. How did he even know to call me that?

Only one person had ever called me M&M (Margaret May): my youngest sister, Darlene. I did my best not to think about her. It just hurt too much. It had been over ten years since she’d been kidnapped from the traveling carnival passing through town. Almost nine years since her body had been discovered and identified.

God summoning her memory was a low blow.

Before I could even process the renewed sense of grief, he delivered the knockout punch.

“Why do you hate your mother?”

“Because it’s all her fault!” The accusation came from somewhere deep in my core. Like lava it bubbled up and out, obliterating everything in its path. There was no reason or logic left, just the searing pain.

I fell to my knees in the foyer, shards of glass tearing at my flesh. My eyes burned. I wanted to cry, to let it out, but no tears came.

“I should have been keeping an eye on the girls, but I was so busy watching her, making sure she didn’t do anything crazy, that they wandered off.” Speaking softly didn’t dampen the ugliness of the admission. I hated my mother because of my own failure to protect my little sisters.

“You are going to feed me soon, I hope.”

Disbelievingly, I turned to give the scaly little guy the evil eye. Here I was, pouring out my heart, and he was worried about his stomach?

“Typical male,” I muttered.

God flicked his tail, a sure sign he was displeased. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that the minute I start talking about my feelings, you go and change the subject. Typical. A guy
says
he wants to know you, but that’s a lie. All he cares about is food, sex, the latest app on his phone, or the score of the game.”

“There’s a game involved? I like games!”

I began sweeping up the broken glass with short, choppy strokes. “Never mind.”

“No. I want to understand about this game.”

“There is no game! I just meant guys are always checking on a baseball, football, or basketball game.”

“I enjoy more intellectual pursuits. I am not into sports.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You did say I was a typical male.”

I considered throwing the swept up shards at him, but he was too well protected by his cage. I’d just have to sweep them up again.

“Just to be certain I’ve assessed this situation correctly: you hate your mother, you hate your aunts, and you hate all males. Is that correct?”

I shook my head. Geez, when he put it like that, it made me sound like the most bitter, lonely woman on the planet. No wonder I’d been reduced to talking to a lizard. “I don’t hate my aunts. It’s just that they drive me insane.” I winced at my unfortunate choice of words. “And I don’t hate men.”

“Then what’s with the unprovoked male bashing?”

“It wasn’t unprovoked! You—”

“All I said was that I’m hungry.”

I took a deep breath. If men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, that must mean lizards are from Zargon. We were never going to understand one another. “Fine. I’ll feed you.”

I hauled myself to my feet. A million splinters of pain set my knees on fire. Looking down I saw glittering chips of picture frame stuck through my pants. “I just need to get this glass out of me first.”

Carrying the dust pan, which tinkled with every step, I limped into the kitchen. I dumped the contents into the trash can before hobbling into the bathroom where I grabbed my first-aid kit.

I glanced at the light fixture above the sink. A light bulb had blown out in the morning, but being late for work, I hadn’t had time to replace it. As a result, it was too dark to perform minor surgery.

Walking lamely back into the kitchen, I turned on all the lights and slumped into a chair. This practically put me at eye-level with the lizard.

“You’re going to need tweezers.”

“They’re in the kit.”

“And antiseptic.”

“It’s in there.”