The Victorian Ladies Saddle and Gun Club
The man, short, thin, mousy, balding, wearing a flowery Hawaiian shirt, was standing behind Anna as she unlocked her door and he pushed through into the living room. He was carrying her groceries and set them onto the table in the dining room. When Anna turned to thank him, he was standing beside her dining room table holding a Glock 17 in his hand.
“So, you’re the guy they sent?” she said, laughing.
“I’m the best there is.”
“Oh come on. A guy who looks like Mickey Mouse is the best there is?’
Vigo squinted at Anna, cocked his head, his eyes full of suspicion, and tried to stand tall.
“This isn’t the usual reaction I get from people.”
“What do they usually do, fall down weeping and begging for mercy?”
“Why are you acting this way, lady? It’s not natural. Everyone wants to live.”
“I try to find amusement in everything. It’s just that you’re not what I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting? A guy dressed in a black robe with a hood, carrying a scythe?”
Anna laughed. “Of course. Shouldn’t death be kind of scary? You’re about as scary as a puddle.”
Vigo’s face reddened. “Listen Lady, I came here to do a job, my job, not to get insulted by the likes of you.”
“That’s rich coming from a mousy hit man. What are you, the mouse that roared? I’m a kindergarten teacher. I prepare the future. You just get rid of your boss’s little embarrassments.”
“Embarrassments! He about craps his pants when your name comes up. You could send him up the river for life.”
“I’m glad I’m having such an effect on people.”
“Effect. Yeah. That’s it.”
“Is your boss as big a psychopath as you are?”
“Don’t call me that! I ain’t no psychopath. I ain’t no sociopath neither. In fact, I ain’t no path at all.”
“You’re the one holding the gun.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t see it, but there’s a gun on me too, and my old man is holding it.”
“So you’ve got Daddy issues. Who doesn’t?”
“Not many people got Daddy issues like I got. Most boys got dads who give them footballs for Christmas. My Dad gave me a Glock 17. Most dads take their boys to baseball games; mine took me to slaughterhouses. He wanted to make me watch something die. Said it would make a man out of me. I wanted to learn to play the piano, but my Dad said he didn’t want to pay for me to be no sissy boy, so he gave me a lifetime membership in the NRA. Now, everybody hates me, but they fear me too. Ok, I’m about to kill them, but they could at least give me the benefit of the doubt.”
“Oh, cry me a river!” Anna said, making the world's smallest violin with her thumb and finger.
“I know I’m short and ugly. I could never get a date with a girl like you. You’re beautiful, full of life, and sort of good. I’d rather fuck you than kill you. But I’d take you to dinner first. I can just imagine what we’d order—me a chateaubriand, you a squab rubbed with thyme and rosemary and something only known to the head chef. I’d order an expensive wine, French, or from like, California. And then we’d dance all night long, laughing about life and love and long walks on the beach and how much we both love kids. But no, I have to shoot you in the head.”
Anna looked at Vigo, puzzled. “How did you get this job in the first place?”
A look of fear crossed Vigo’s face, and he quickly hid it away. “My family.”
“What happened? Did your Dad make you become a hit man?”
Vigo looked around the room as if someone might be listening. “I don’t like to talk about this stuff.”
“Like I’m going to tell somebody? I’m going to be dead soon, remember?”
“I wanted to be a standup comedian. I was pretty good, too. I got great reviews in the Catskills.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Well, my family had already set me up as a hit man. You’d be surprised how hard it is to get into this business. Like being an actor or a football player. After I’d made my bones, I began to wonder if I had any future as a comic, and well, there’s good money in whacking. Besides, dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
“So your life was planned for you by your family? That sucks, but so was mine. My mother wanted me to be a beauty queen. I was ten when I started, and every pageant, I had to stand up there and smile like I was the happiest girl in the world. I won one pageant after another, and my mother was ecstatic until I lost my chance to go to the Miss America pageant because I wouldn’t sleep with somebody. She threw me out of the house.”
“If I had known you then, I would have whacked her for you. No charge.”
“That’s sweet. For a while, though, we patched it up, until I told her I never wanted to be a beauty queen. She hung up on me and we haven’t spoken since.”
“Geez. What a bitch.”
“What about your family? What would happen if you told them you didn’t want to be a hit man, that you wanted to do something else with your life? Would they have killed you?”
“They wouldn’t kill me. They’d just kill something I loved. I had this beagle pup I really loved. He used to greet me when I came in from a job and climb up in my lap. He was really great. My old man must have thought I was complaining too much because I came home one day and found him dead in the kitchen. Poisoned. What kind of sick bastard poisons a dog just to keep his kids in line?”
“Yeah. My dad hated dogs, too. He used to shoot at them with his .22 whenever they got near the back yard,” Anna said.
“Yeah, but you got it easy. Everybody loves you, but they hate me, even my old man. Of course, he hates everybody. And I didn’t do nothing to deserve it.”
“Well, you do kill people.”
“Oh yeah, there’s that. But even before then, in High School. I used to ask girls out all the time, but they just made fun of me. They said I was too ugly, too mousy looking, too short, whatever. Ok, I killed five or six of them after our class reunion, but it didn’t make me feel any better.”
“If you really feel that way, why don’t you just let me off? Tell them you killed me and just let me go. I’ll leave town and you’ll never see me again.”
“Can’t do that. If I just start letting people off, somebody here and somebody there, they’d find out and they’d get sick of it. And then they’d whack me for sure. Sometimes, I just want to put a hit on myself.” He started to cry, and Anna went to him, held him, rocked him back and forth. Then she pulled away a bit, turned Vigo’s hand holding the gun around. The two struggled for a moment, and the gun went off. Anna stood and backed away as Vigo lay against the cushions, blood pumping from a hole in his chest.
“Why did you do that?” he said. “I thought we were having a moment.”
“We were,” said Anna. “I told you I’d help you any way I could, and well, this was all I could think of. Besides, there’s no way I’d go out with a guy like you.”
“Oh God,” Vigo said. “This is just like High School.”