Okay bud I am goin to tell you my story. I apologize in advance because it may not be the easiest story to read (rambles a lot, kind of long, has lots of scenes of motherfuckers getting killed, etc.) but the fact is I am not a professional Writer so cut me some slack thanks.

     I guess there are a lot of ways I could start this. Like I could start by telling you that I was fourteen the first time I killed someone, which was lucky, because some people go their entire lives without learning what God made them good at, and I learned it early. Or I could start with the time I tried stuffing some motherfucker's body into a steel drum, but he was too fat, so I had to cut the tendons in one leg and bend his knee backwards to make it fit. That would probably get your attention right away and make you think I am a pretty resourceful badass, which is probably a good way to open a story come to think of it. Now I wish I had started the story that way actually.

     But the thing is, none of that really matters (I told you I would ramble bud so don't act surprised), because at the end of this story I am not so sure my story is even about me. Actually the more and more I think about it the more I think it is probably about the girl. You might've heard of her. She's an actress, been in a couple of movies. Plus she's got one of those fancy Hollywood names that sticks in your head when you hear it.

Her name is Tracy Lee Brooks.

     "We want her dead," Puggy Sanguinetti said, slurping spaghetti into his mouth. We were sitting in Pulcinella , his favorite restaurant, the place where he gave me all my marching orders. "An' we want her body found in her apartment, no later'n Tuesday morning. Here's the address." And he slid a piece of paper across the table to me.

I didn't ask why he wanted her done. I'd been working for the Sanguinettis since shortly after killing my first motherfucker, and I hadn't gotten the job by asking questions.

     "Tuesday morning," I said, as casual as I could. "Easy." And to be honest, it did sound easy. With showbiz types all you gotta do is make it look like suicide, drug overdose, or erotic asphyxiation. (Nobody bats an eyelash when a showbiz asshole dies of erotic asphyxiation. They're like, "Oh, another Hollywood asshole died of erotic asphyxiation. So what else is new? Is the Pope still being Catholic and shit? Etc etc")

     "Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy," cackled Twist, Puggy's idiot nephew, who was sitting with us. This gave Puggy an idea and he pointed at the wiry little snot. "Hey. Maybe you can take Twist with you, teach him a few things. He could use the experience. What do you say?"

     I wasn't quite sure how to answer, because the truth was, I woulda preferred to shoot Twist in the face. Partly because he thought he was hot shit with a gun, partly because he was always saying annoying shit like "Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy," ( What the hell does that even mean ?) but mostly because he was just plain ugly. His skin had a soggy, grey look to it, like he was the squirmy wet thing you might find underneath a flat rock.

     "Maybe next time," I said.

     "You sure bout that? He looks up to you, ya know. It might be a really good idea..."

     "You're probably right," I said, which was my polite way of saying no. "I just prefer to work alone."

     "Suit yourself, big man," Puggy said. He smiled, but there was a hint of angry dog in his voice. "Remember, Tuesday morning."

     "Aye-aye, Skipper," I said, saluting.

     He laughed at that and waved me away. I went, feeling Twist's eyes on my back all the way out the door.

     (Okay by this point you have probably guessed I am a hitman. But before we go any further I just wanna be clear on one point: normally I would never accept a job whacking a chick. No women or children, that's my rule. But in this particular case there were extenuating circumstances, as you will see. Not to give anything away but I just wanted you to know up front you are not dealing with a sicko or anything ok thanks)

***

     Tracy Lee Brooks lived in a pretty fancy high-rise on 5 th avenue. Luckily it didn't have a doorman, though, it had a buzzer gate.

"Hello?" a drowsy female voice said, almost a full minute after I pressed the buzzer.

     "Delivery," I said, trying to sound bored.

Buzz. The gate clicked open and I pushed through, then rode the elevator up to her apartment. She answered the door in her sweats, looking like she'd just woken up, and it didn't make a damn bit of difference because she was so fuckin' beautiful she was almost glowing: she coulda been standing on the other side of a brick wall, and I think I woulda felt her presence through it.

     "Don't make a sound," I said, showing my gun. She backed into her apartment, and I followed, closing the door behind us.

For a minute I just stared at her. Her eyes were like saucers, but she didn't speak.

"Relax," I said, "I'm not gonna kill you...I'm a really big fan ."

***

Now I gotta backtrack a little here, sorry about this, but these are the extenuating circumstances I was talking about. See, one day a few years earlier, I was walkin' to the movies, and I guess I'd had a little too much to drink that morning, because I was thinking about my life and getting kinda upset. The gist of it was: the only thing I'm really good at is the one thing people should never do. My special talent in life is killing people. What the hell kind of life is this?

Finally I came to a stop outside the theater, looking up at the marquee, swaying a little on my feet and thinking, See, this is your problem, bud. Too many movies. Yeah, Chuck Bronson & Lee Marvin kill motherfuckers and they don't question it -- the only problem is, they're not real. You can't base your thought processes on fictional characters. It's probably not healthy. That's it, no more action movies for you... So instead, I bought a ticket for a chick flick. (Remember, I was drunk.) Then I thought it was gonna be shit and I was gonna be miserable, but instead, Tracy Lee Brooks came onscreen and knocked my fuckin' socks right off of my ass.

It's like I said earlier: she had a presence about her. Not only that, but she acted the shit out of her part. Like, in her last scene, she got to die of a terminal illness. Now, I have seen a lot of people die in a lot of ways in real life, so I am something of an expert on the topic, and I can tell you: she nailed it, 100 percent. What I'm trying to say is, if my talent is for killing motherfuckers, hers was for acting. (Not only that, but she was hot as shit, which goes a long way in my opinion)

I started seeing her movies regular after that. Most of 'em were bad, but she was good enough in 'em to fool you into thinking they were okay. My favorite, though, was The Protectorate , where she was a blind chick who falls for a tough guy. I saw that shit probably (conservative estimate) fifty million times. I practically had it fuckin' memorized, even the bad lines. Especially the bad lines.

And now I was standing face-to-face with the real, live Tracy Lee Brooks, not an image on a movie screen but an actual person, and she was looking at me, waiting for me to speak, and suddenly I got real nervous and felt like I had to say something, so I blurted out the first thing I could think of, my voice too loud, my words outrunning my thoughts:

"A guy's coming to kill you. A real bad guy. Been rolling with the Sanguinetti gang since he was fourteen. Not the kinda guy you wanna take home to mom and dad. And we gotta get you outta here, right now, cause you're in trouble, so you're coming with me, whether you like it or not." And I showed her my gun again.

     "Wow," she said, "I've never been kidnapped before. What should I wear?"

"Scuse me?" I asked.

She scurried to her closet, peeling her pajamas off as she went. In a second she was in her underwear, going through outfits. Now it was turn for my eyes to go wide. She had a killer body.

"I wanna look good in case we show up in the papers," she said. "It might help my career." She held up a red-and-black dress that looked like something Little Orphan Annie might wear. "What do you think? Trying too hard?"

"Er..." I said.

"I knew it. Never mind. What about this one? Oh no, wait -- this one!"

She showed me a couple outfits while I stood there sweating, giving advice on what looked good, acting like I knew what I was doing, and eventually we chose one. Together. And guess what was going through my head the whole time?

Bud, I'll be damned if I know.

***

After her little fashion show in the apartment, she turned strangely quiet. Thinking. I gotta tell you, it threw me off my game a bit. Usually when I kidnap someone at gunpoint, they won't shut up -- "Please don't kill me," "I don't wanna die," blah blah blah. Not her. The only thing she said when we got in the car was, "mind if I listen to the radio?"

"Knock yourself out," I said, pulling the car onto the road. She fiddled around with the stations until she found one playing "Talk Dirty to Me" by Poison. Satisfied, she turned and started doodling shapes/hearts on the fogged-up window. She was totally calm. Totally cool. It worried the crap out of me.

"Don't you have any questions you wanna ask, or anything?" I said after a while.

"Sure," she said, without turning away from her doodles. "What's your name?"

"Doyle," I replied, 'cause it was as good a name to give as any.

"Nice to meet you, Doyle."

"Nice to meet you, Miss...uh...Lee Brooks."

"You're a hitman too, aren't you, Doyle? That's how you know about this guy coming to get me. You work with him, or something like that."

"Something like that." Jesus, she'd figured it out fast.

"Maybe you're gonna kill me, too."

"Hey, I said I wasn't gonna, remember?" Only, I wasn't entirely sure that was true. This was a hell of a mess, and I had to keep my options open. Maybe the uncertainty showed in my face, because her voice got soft and low.

"Why are you doing this, Doyle?" she asked.

It was a good question; I'd been asking myself the same thing since I entered her apartment. Why was I doing it? It was the end of me working for the Sanguinettis, that was for sure. Probably worse than that, if I didn't take care of her fast. Yeah, I'd screwed the pooch just about as hard as I could, and for what? I'd wanted to talk to her, I guess. Just have a little time alone with her. Get to know what she was really like, before I...

     "I don't know how to answer that," I mumbled, finally.

     She just looked me in the eye, her head slightly cocked like she was making up her mind about something. Then she shrugged. "Well, for what it's worth, I'm grateful. I want you to know that."

Then she smiled at me for the first time. It was the full Flatbush cemetery, a 1,000-kilowatt, movie-star smile. And I don't mind telling you it made me feel pretty good.

***

Backtracking again. Sorry I keep doing this bud but I promise this is the last time. Anyway back when I was feeling depressed about my life & was going to see chick flicks instead of action films, I was also having trouble sleeping. I forgot to mention that. So I got in the habit of taking long drives at night to clear my mind, and one night I gave this hitchhiker a lift, and it turned out he was a Writer. He had a cottage upstate, a nice out-of-the way place. He'd even mentioned that he didn't use it in the winter, that he had another place he went to and the cottage just sat there, empty.

"If you ever need it, friend, stop by," he'd said.

Well, I needed it now. I couldn't take Tracy back to my place, it would be the first place the Sanguinettis would look when she didn't turn up dead -- and besides, my place was a shithole, how would it look to a big star like Tracy Lee Brooks? No, it had to be the cottage.

And now we'd reached it. I turned down the long gravel driveway and there it was, just as I'd remembered it. Tucked back deep in the woods, on the edge of a pond. They'd find us there eventually, of course, but until they did, I'd have a little time to think.

"Last stop," I said. "Everybody out."

"Roger dodger," she said, which made me smile. It was one of her lines from The Protectorate .

As she got out, I reached over and pulled my extra gun, a Baretta, from the glove compartment. Just in case.

And as I did, I noticed that she'd written DOYLE on her window in a looping, feminine cursive.

* * *

     It was cold and dark in the cottage, no electricity, no heater, and there was only one bedroom so we had to share the bed. I tried to act all cool about it but of course secretly inside I was like holy shit I'm getting in actual bed with an actual goddamn movie star.

"I should warn you, I snore," she said.

"That's OK. I should warn you, I'm a real light sleeper." I showed her that I kept one hand under the pillow, on my gun. "You put so much as a toe on the floor and I'll be awake."

She just nodded like that was the most normal thing in the world, snuggled under the covers, and then, as I lay there worrying about how I was gonna get out of this situation, she curled up beside me and immediately went to sleep. Like a little cat, huddled against me for warmth. Me, a bum who'd never done a good thing in his life; I was keeping her warm. Keeping her safe.

Protecting her.

     Goddammit.

     I lay there trying to think of what to do, but it was no go. Sleep came lapping at my brain in little waves. Bit by bit, the tide rose. I drifted off on the current...

     I was back in Junior High again, but as an adult. Somehow I was going to the winter wonderland dance with the most popular girl in school, even though I didn't know her and she didn't know me. The night of the dance came and I was standing outside the gym, looking in, afraid to cross the threshold. I could see lots of fake snow everywhere, could hear "Talk Dirty to Me" playing on the jukebox...and then She was there, looking like a queen, beckoning to me with a golden cup. " Come ," she cried...

     I opened my eyes to see Tracy standing at the foot of the bed, the morning sun shining in her hair and a plate of bacon & scrambled eggs in her hand. "Breakfast!" she chirped.

     I bolted up. "How'd you get outta bed without waking me?"

     She frowned. The exact same cute, dimpled frown I'd seen a hundred times on a movie screen. "I told you I was getting up to make breakfast, remember? You were half-asleep."

     Was I? Jesus, I musta been out of it. I hadn't slept like that since...when?

She put the plate in my lap and laid a flower on top of it. Freshly plucked. "Here," she said, "you can stick it in the barrel of your gun."

And she sashayed out of the room, leaving me to eat my breakfast in a kind of stunned wonder.

* * *

When afternoon came we were sitting out back, on the dock overlooking the pond. I was still racking my brains trying to figure out how to deal with the Sanguinettis. The problem was, I kept getting distracted by Tracy. She'd found a fishing rod tucked away in a closet and was trying to catch something with it. It was her first time fishing and she was giggling a lot, fumbling around with the reel and being girly and shit. It was cute.

"What's your spirit animal?" she asked, outta the blue. Before I could tell her I didn't believe in that goofy shit because I'm not eight years old anymore, she added, "Mine is snake. That means I have Goddess energy, psychic energy, creative power, and transmutation." But here is the thing. Her eyes were all lit up at the idea of spirit animals and special magic powers; it was really something to see. She got excited when she talked, and that got me excited too. And it had been a long time since I'd been excited about anything.

"Well," I said, "I guess I'm a bear."

"Regular bear or polar bear?"

"Uh...regular bear."

I was then treated to an in-depth explanation of Bear's magical powers, which included Introspection, Defense, Transformation, Visions, and Death & rebirth.

"Death & rebirth, huh?" I said. "Well, I hope not anytime soon."

"You're worried that the people you work for are gonna find us, aren't you?"

"How'd you know?"

"I told you, my spirit animal is snake. Psychic energy." She tapped her head.

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I would have to say we're fucked in my opinion. We can't stay here cause they'll find us eventually, and we can't stay on the run forever, either."

"Wait a second," Tracy said. "I've got an idea."

She explained it, and it sounded pretty good. Basically I had to get the drop on a guy, subdue him, and give him a speech to take back to the Sanguinettis that would scare the crap out of them.

Or something like that.

It was pretty easy for us to come up with the speech together because I'd seen so many movies and she'd been in so many. The dialogue just flowed between us. We understood each other. We were a good team.

After that we wound up sitting out on that dock just about the whole day, talking. It was weird, at first I'd felt more awkward around her than with anyone, but now I felt like I could tell her anything in the world. And I pretty much did. I talked about being confused about my life and how it led to me watching a movie with her in it and everything. I even tried explaining about how God gave each of us a special talent, and I think I didn't make a whole lot of sense but it seemed like she understood me anyway. She nodded a lot and smiled in all the right places and that was the important thing anyway. I really liked her for that.

And sometimes she looked at me a certain way. If you've ever looked at someone or been looked at that way, you probably know what I mean. Like a woman looks at a man, if you catch my drift, which is a fancy way of saying that I think she wanted to bone me. (Pardon my language)

But then other times I caught her staring at me with a strange look in her eyes, like she was sizing me up, reading me, and that made me wonder.

At sunset, over a candlelit dinner, Tracy asked me if I knew why the Sanguinettis wanted her dead. I shrugged.

"I can think of a couple a reasons."

"Such as?"

"They mighta been testing me, for one." I told her. "Ever since I started seeing your movies, I've felt, I dunno. Different. Inside. You know. Anyway I tried to keep it on the down-low and I didn't think it was affecting my work, but maybe it was. Sometimes you think you're keeping a secret so good and then you find out everyone can see right through you. You know? All this time, and it turns out you've been totally transparent."

She nodded, that watchful look in her eyes.

"If they found out about me seeing your movies, they'd be worried I was going soft. And what better way to test me than..." I shrugged again. "That's one reason I can think of."

"What's the other?"

"That you did something real bad."

She laughed at that. "Who, little old me?"

"Well, you are a snake."

"That's true," she said, eyes twinkling, "I'm slippery." She made a weaving motion with her hand. And just like that it hit me, twisting my guts up fast.

What if?

What if she was just pretending to like me, to get on my good side? What if this was a performance, here and now? No matter how calm and cool she seemed, she had to be terrified, scared for her life. She'd use every trick in her book to save her skin. And the first trick she'd use would be the one that came most natural, the thing she was best at.

     Acting.   

I spat. It was rotten, thinking like that. Besides, this wasn't a movie -- she wasn't playing for the camera. It was just her and me, every minute of the day. If she slipped up for even a second, let me see how scared she was of me, I'd know she was faking. No, it was impossible. She'd have to be putting on one hell of a show.

     You think so, bud? a voice in my head asked. I bet you could put on a pretty good show, too, if someone was holding a gun to your head.

     But I wasn't the one holding a gun to her head.

Aren't you? said the voice.