The Electric Assassins

THE ELECTRIC ASSASSINS

It was a dark, wet Friday afternoon, and we sat in the Chevy with the
windows rolled down. I stuck my arm out, gathered a palmful of rain,
then swept it through my hair.
Michel hit the lighter. He offered me a cigarette.
"Cigarette?"
"I don't smoke. You know that."
"Would you like one anyway?"
"Yes."
I took one and he lit it for me. "Last time, right?"
I tilted my head and blew a thin stream of smoke out into the clean
suburban air. We took a few minutes of silence in order to look over
Jean Paul's house. It had been four years since Glasgow. Neither one of
us had forgotten.
"What are you thinking about?" I asked Michel.
"I was thinking... I was thinking that if I ever got a house like that
I would buy a dozen pink flamingos and paint them all black."
I smiled although he hadn't meant it to be funny.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Yes." I finished off the cigarette and tossed into onto the pavement
before getting out of the car and stepping on it.
"Let's do it."
And we walked across the street to pay our old friend Jean Paul a
visit.

The door was not answered by Jean Paul. It was answered by a petite
brown-haired woman in a rather sensible-looking black dress. This was
not Jean Paul. Jean Paul was tall, and we knew him to be male.
"Hello?" the woman asked. This was a question, not a statement.
It took us a while for Michel and I to respond.
"Oh, hi," I said in a soft whisper. "Hi, I'm sorry, we were under the
impression that a man named Jean Paul Gouissant lived here. Is
he...around?"
"No, Jean Paul's at work. He'll be back later today."
"Oh, so he does live here," We paused briefly to reflect upon the
awkwardness of the situation. "Well, if you don't mind my asking,
exactly what is you're relationship with Jean Paul?"
She let out a girlish laugh. "I'm his wife, Rachel. Rachel
Gouissant."
This came to us as quite a surprise. We hadn't known Jean Paul to be
the marrying type. It had of course been four years since we last saw
him. "Oh, his wife."
"Yes, are the two of you friends of Jean Paul? You look
familiar."
"No, no, I don't think that we've ever met," insisted Michel.
"Yes, wait....I know you. Michel and...," she puzzled over my name for
a bit.
"Sophie."
"Yes, Sophie."
"You know our names," squirmed Michel.
"Yes, well, Jean Paul has shown me pictures."
"Has he told you any stories?" asked Michel.
"He doesn't really talk much about his childhood. But he has mentioned
you. You grew up in England together, right?"
We didn't answer.
She smiled, her mouth did anyway. "Oh, excuse me, would you like to
come in and wait for Jean Paul? You'll catch a cold standing in the
rain like this."
"I like the rain," said Michel. He bit his lip. "Well, thank you, but
if Jean Paul isn't in right now I don't think we have much business in
your home. We'll busy ourselves with something else. Um, sorry to have
bothered you."
"Oh, it's no bother."
"Just the same, I think we'd best be on our way. Have a very wonderful
day."
"It was just lovely meeting you," I said, shaking Mrs. Gouissant's
hand.
"Just lovely," repeated Michel, as we got back into the car.
We sat there in silence again.

"Second thoughts?" I asked him.
"A few. Can't believe he's married now. He knows better than
that."
"If you don't want to do this we don't have to. We could go back to
the hotel and sleep it off."
"No, not in the mood for that. We flew all this way to see Jean Paul.
This isn't a vacation. We came to do this. Let's do this."
"Michel, this has nothing to do with professionalism. This isn't about
money anymore, and it's not about secrecy. No one is making us do
this."
It took Michel a moment to think about this. "Honor. Honor and
responsibility."
I nodded. "Not doing us any good sitting out here. She's probably
watching us right now, calling the police."
"She can call the police. Fine. What's she going to tell them? I just
don't want her telling Jean Paul."
"So do you want to talk to her? Find out what she knows."
"I guess we have to."

We knocked on the door again and Jean Paul's wife opened up to us
again. She looked at us and we looked at her, and there was a brief
pause before she decided to invite us in again. But her eyes told it
all. We knew she knew, and she knew we knew. I waited for Michel to
make the decision. He didn't waste any time.
He pulled out his pistol and pointed it at her, and I could see the
fear in her face and the tears building in her eyes before Michel
squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet through her stomach.
We closed the door behind us.

It didn't really work out, for she was bleeding and wailing and crying
to God like how I used to when I was a little girl. It's a really
horrible thing to see a woman get shot like that and to hear those
sounds and to go through those emotions. The way she was carrying on
like she was, Michel and I both realized that it wouldn't do much good
trying to ask her any questions.
Michael dragged her across the carpeting, but she wasn't kicking
around like she should have been so I figured she might have been
paralyzed. I turned off all the lights as we entered the rooms because
I knew how Michel felt about it.
Then he dumped her in the middle of the living room and sat himself
down in a recliner while I tried to calm her down.
"Shhh, it's okay, luv. Everything will be okay." I got on my knees and
cradled my arms around her shoulders elevating her thorax. Then I
rocked her back and forth, back and forth, still shushing her, but she
was still alive and whimpering like a broken puppy. Michel made an
effort to keep his eyes in another direction. He shook his head almost
unnoticeably.
The girl's warm tears collected on my arm, and suddenly I felt really
awful about the whole thing.
I decided to tell her that her husband loves her very much, but this
did little to comfort her, and so with a quick twist I snapped her neck
in two.
It became silent again, except for a dog barking from a neighbor's
backyard and the rain pounding up against the house from all
sides.
I looked at Jean Paul's wife, swept the hair out of her face, and gave
her a soft kiss on the forehead. Then I released and her head dropped
on the carpet again.
I stood and looked at Michel. "You didn't have to shoot her."
He didn't look at me. He shrugged. But that was okay since I knew what
he was feeling. And why should I make him feel any worse?
"You do what you have to do," he said to me. Same thing we always
said. Same thing Jean Paul probably said when Silvio got his throat
slit open and when Michel was sent up to Mekhet for four years so that
he could be tortured and sodomized and forced to eat animal
feces.
You do what you have to do.

Michel helped me lift Jean Paul's wife onto the couch. He took a
moment to examine her face. He couldn't help smiling a little.
"It's not funny."
"No, it's not. It's just that, well, you had to have noticed."
"No, I haven't. What?"
"Yes, you have. How could you not? Look, her face. She's a Jew. Not
only did Jean Paul get married, but he got married to a Jew."
"Don't talk like that. I don't like you when you talk like
that."
"I realize that she's probably not completely Jewish, but still, she
has some Semitic blood in her. It's ironic. You remember those movies
they used to show us, don't you?"
"How could I forget those movies? Those movies were sick and horrible.
Don't ever mention those movies again, Michel."
"I'm just commenting, things have changed. Jean Paul has changed.
Remember, just remember, they used to go around telling us that we were
meant to be part of a superior race. It's just ironic, that's
all."
Michel continued smiling but then stopped when he realized that I
wasn't.
"She is pretty, though," I commented.
"She was pretty," said Michel. "She's dead now."

Michel began poking around the refrigerator while I decided to clean
myself up. Our hostess was dead. We made ourselves at home.
I took a shower and began looking through the bedroom drawers for
something clean and dry to wear. In Jean Paul's top drawer I found a
photo album. I called to Michel so we could look through it
together.
There were pictures of us in it, pictures of Jean Paul. On some pages
there were pictures of the three of us together, but on most pages
there were pictures of Silvio before he died, or Silvio with Jean Paul,
or Silvio with Leanna, who was also no longer among us. Michel flipped
through the pages with great care and consideration.
He pocketed two of the photos: one of the boys hunting grouse in the
woods, another of Jean Paul eating ice cream cones with Silvio and
Leanna and some fellow we met down in Scotland whose first name I don't
remember. I was in neither of the pictures.
Michel decided to burn the rest of them when he was finished.

I looked through the closet, taking out a very lovely red evening gown
and showing it to Michel for approval.
He held it up, then looked at me. Then he grinned and tossed the dress
onto the dresser.
"Here, you know what? I think you should wear what you have on right
now. Yes, wear the bathrobe. Just, um, just pull the belt a little
tighter. There."
I gave him a foxy smile. "Why?"
"Oh, nothing, it's psychological. For when Jean Paul comes home." He
tossed me a towel. "And wear this around your hair."
I put the towel on and began studying myself in the bedroom mirror
while Michel began snooping around Jean Paul's nightstand. "Michel,
this is so mean."
"It'll be funny," said Michel.
"Michel?"
"Yes? What, what do you want?"
"How come you never tell me that you think I'm pretty?"
He turned around to look at me. "I think you're pretty. Yes, I think
you're very pretty."
"Well, then how come you never tell me?"
He paused to rest his head against the wall. "I figured you would know
by now."
"Well, I don't know. Sometimes it's just nice to hear things like
that."

Jean Paul got home at a little after eight. Michel had cooked dinner,
by that time it had gone cold and we had eaten most of it.
It was quite a surprise for Jean Paul. He opened the door and all the
lights were out, save for the television glowing from the living
room.
"Rachel? Rachel?" he called out. "Hon?"
I walked up to him and gave him a long kiss on the lips. "Welcome
back."
He looked at me, puzzled. I smiled. Then he realized. His stomach
turned.
"Sophie?"
"Yes."
"God, it's been such a long time. Where's Rachel?"
"Rachel doesn't live here anymore."
"No, seriously, where is she?"
"Gone."
"Gone where."
"Out shopping, I guess." I really didn't want to have to tell him.
"You shouldn't have gotten married, Jean Paul. It's just not
done."
"Things are different now, Sophie. The world has changed. I'm not a
part of it anymore."
"I believe you. You think you're better than us?"
"No, it's just that....Sophie, where's my wife? What have you done?
Who do you think...?" He stopped in mid-sentence. Something else had
caught Jean Paul's attention. "Louise, were you watching the
television?"
I shook my head.
A husky John Wayne vocalism echoed down the hallway from the living
room. "Wait a second, is that Jean Paul Gouissant I hear? Why, I'd know
that armpit smell anywhere! Jean Paul, you son-of-a-gun! Haul your
skinny butt in here right now, yeh hooligan!"
Jean Paul turned an unusual color. He looked at me.
"He wants to have a talk with you, Jean Paul."
"I hadn't expected him to still be alive."
"None of us did. He surprised us all, didn't he?" I smiled as I took
Jean Paul's coat.
Jean Paul marched into the living room.
I went to fetch the boys some beers after I heard the first gunshot.
That's how I knew that the talk had begun and would go on into the
night.