Nobody Knew They Were There

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I am here to perform a delicate piece of surgery. I am here to commit a murder. Take your choice.

She is here to assist me, she says. In getting settled, she says. Professor Raines has sent her. She meets me at the airport in a borrowed automobile. She is wearing brown skirt, sweater, and boots. A huge outrageous leather Mexican sombrero is tilted onto her forehead. Long brown hair cascades halfway down her back. She can be no older than twenty-one, and she carries herself like a beauty though she is not one. Her eyes in the sudden glare of sunshine, as we come out of the terminal and walk toward the battered red Volkswagen, are two distinctly different shades of green.

“Are you a witch?” I ask.

“No. Are you?”

“I’m an assassin.”

“So I’ve been told,” she says.

“Does that frighten you?”

“Should it?”

“Perhaps.”

Pretentious dialogue. Beginnings are always bullshit She drives well She has very long legs; the small car seems too confining. She is aware of her profile. She tries to affect a haughty bored look. When the look fails, she discards it without regret, and then tries it on again not a moment later. It is hot in the automobile. October shouts stridently on the hillside, but there is a shimmering hanging heat that diffuses all color, rendering the landscape mute.

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