Bad Weather.
Rain.
It is cold but not as cold as it used to be. The car is shrinking by the minute, getting more uncomfortable, I can’t breathe. I hate it when this happens. I’ve been watching her door for hours, a whole damn night, she hasn’t come out yet, she’s still in there with him. Why women hurt men like this I’ll never know. We have it in our blood, we’re supposed to do it. Women are supposed to stay inside the house.
And he’ll cry. Damn. I can picture it now, him crying, burying his face against the palms of his hands, sniveling and sniffing and snorting, shoulders shaking, face getting redder, why’d she have to go and do that for? Why would she do this to me? What’d I do? The whole enchilada, I fucking hate that show. They’re all queers in my opinion. A guy who can’t keep his wife must be doing something wrong in the sack, not pushing the right buttons. And then they ask me what they did wrong? Not fucking your wife right is what they did wrong. It’s getting colder.
Fat droplets of rain hit the windshield and splash, just explode. There’s no light yet, everything is black and you can feel it. Sometimes the night becomes something else, some other person sitting next to you. Sometimes it curls around you, changes your mood, your attitude, your will. Sometimes the night turns you into a different guy. Maybe I wouldn’t have agreed to do this is if he’d asked me before sunset.
And he was shaking, the faggot. Couldn’t use the words, couldn’t say the actual words. Five thousand dollars. That’s what I keep telling myself, five thousand dollars.
I got my gloves on, a bowler hat, sunglasses. I’m using a phony license plate I got from a friend who works back in the junkyard. I have the camera with me too. He wanted the pictures, that’s what he said, he needed confirmation first. Get the pictures before you do it. Shit, if he was any sort of real man he would do it himself. And he wouldn’t need any kind of confirmation either. You can see what type of girl a woman is just by looking into their eyes. Sluts, grifters, angels, freaks, hard workers. Same with men. Look into their eyes and see what they’re made of. My father, now there was a fucking man. Grey eyes that never ended, seemed to go on forever, you could just tell he wasn’t afraid of anything. Of policemen or criminals or beating the shit out of you or anybody. The sort of eyes you don’t see anymore. The sort of eyes that asshole didn’t have.
And when he asked me if I would do it, he said: “And if… A job like that— hypothetically speaking, of course, a job like that, I mean… How much— If I said to you, for example, just for… Just to throw a number out there, just to say… anything really, just for conversation, if I told you… If I said three thousand dollars. Would that be enough—? I mean, if you did that sort of thing?”
I felt something indescribable. I felt something in my chest, like pumping hot water into my brain, like pressing burning iron against my skin. It took me five seconds to decide if I could really do something like this. Five, four seconds. Just that much. “Five thousands dollars,” I muttered. And he nodded like an asshole, like the faggot that he is.
“OK,” he said. “I mean— I mean, I could do that. Hypothetically speaking, of course. I could do that.”
Now I can look myself in the rear view mirror and see what kind of man I am. Grey eyes that seem to go on forever. Grey eyes that never end. That’s the sort of man I am, a face not made by God. But I’m afraid. I really am. I don’t know why, I don’t understand why, my hand is steady. It’s just something inside. Something that tells me that I should go home, not do this, that there’s no going back. It’s not the act itself, I think. It’s not whether I can do it or not, I know I can. It’s the waiting. It’s what comes after. It’s what sort of man this will make me. It’s what sort of man my father was.
Rain, still.
A light comes from one of the windows. Is that them? The building is old, weathered, it’s impossible to think that someone would come here to make love. It’s impossible to think that anybody would come here for anything other than what I have come here to do. The gun feels heavy. The holster seems to be pushing me downwards, down, down, down. First and only time I killed somebody was when I was still working as a cop. Kid came at me with a nigger knife, a broken bottle. I told him not to.
Gun went off on its own or maybe I pulled the trigger. Either way, next thing I see is the kid laying there on the ground, dead as fuck.
Turns out he was fourteen.
Newspapers call it a racial killing, trigger-happy policeman shoots black youth. Some racist comments I made get out there, a month later I get shit-canned. Get my PI license not long after. Now, I’m apparently a hitman.
Light goes out again. Minutes later the door opens. She comes out and her hand is wrapped around his, she’s smiling and laughing and he’s looking at her like she’s the most beautiful woman on earth. Camera against my face going click, click, click. There’s your fucking proof, you fucking queer. The revolver belonged to my father. The kind of handgun that could replace Gabriel’s fiery sword, .367 magnum double-action six-shooter. Big gun, blows your head right off.
Let’s go. The rain hits my head and I’m soaked right away. They don’t scream.
I’ll buy a refrigerator.
[First thing I've written in English for a long time. I was just bored and started writing, and for the first time in ages felt I was writing something that didn't sound like a bad translation of what I had in my head. I know it's not the best thing I've ever written, but it's nice. And it's always awesome to write a character who's a completely fucked up man. Racist, woman-hating, ultra macho hombre grande, murderous. Worth mentioning are the movie "Blood Simple" and Bogart.]
