She laughed, overcome with memory, and said, “Remember the summer we came over to your parents’ place? What did we call it? The Schloss Dunstoned!”
“The Schloss Dunstoned,” he repeated, transported back briefly. “God that seems like forever ago.”
She sat smiling, thinking of it, then said, “So what’s your excuse? Why did you disappear?”
“I didn’t disappear. I just, you know how it is ... you’re so busy doing whatever it is you do.” He picked up his tea and took a sip, invigoratingly hot, a blend that had plenty of Darjeeling in it.
He was about to try another feint by commenting on it, but she got there first, asking, “And what exactly is it that you do?”
“It sounds more exciting than it is,” he said, putting the tea down again. “A small venture capital company in Zurich, THS; I’m the H.”
“THS,” she repeated, clearly not believing him, making him wonder if rumors had ever passed along the grapevine about him. “Funny, I’ve never heard of it.”
“Maybe you haven’t been listening hard enough. I did say it was small.” He imagined her going into work the next day, making some checks, finding that it existed after all and that he was the H just as he’d said. She was an old friend though, onto something and running with it, uninhibited by any reputation he’d earned since, seeing no need to tread carefully around him like some people would.
“I heard you were a spy or something, or ...” She trailed off.
He raised his eyebrows, slightly mocking, and pressed her, “Or what?”
“I heard you were a hitman,” she said, trying to laugh off the embarrassment of how fanciful it sounded. It sounded fanciful to him too, even after all this time, certain that it was a coincidence, that someone had made it up rather than having heard a proper rumor.
“A hitman?” he said in response, astonished, reinforcing her doubts. “Why would a history graduate become a hitman? How?” Once again it was a good point, one he’d put to himself countless times, never really coming up with an answer. After all, why did anyone end up doing it?
She smiled, deferring and saying, “I know, it’s ridiculous. But you can hardly blame people for speculating when no one hears anything for all this time.”
“I suppose not. Who told you anyway?”
“I don’t know where it started. It’s almost like an in-joke now.” She sipped her tea and continued, “And in its own way it makes sense. I mean, you never told anyone at college you could shoot. If we hadn’t come to Switzerland we’d never have found out.”
“So? I hardly think a youthful interest in biathlon marks you out for being a hitman.”
“It’s not just that,” she said defensively. “It’s ... I don’t know, it’s just so easy to believe I suppose. Of you anyway.” The emphasis on the last three words knocked him slightly off balance, a glancing blow with its innocent suggestion that the deficiency had always been there, just like in a person marked for crime or serial killing or any other socially outcast trait.
“Why do you find it so easy to believe I could kill people?”
She laughed at the hurt quality of the question and said, “I don’t know! Don’t read too much into it. It’s just ...”
She seemed to catch up with her thoughts as she looked at him, her face freezing before she said in a more subdued tone, “Oh my God. It’s true isn’t it?” He could still easily persuade her otherwise, but it felt liberating somehow to be a simple admission away from her knowing. He’d come here to escape all of that for a few hours but now he wanted her to know. And he wanted to know, too, why it had been so easy for people to see him in that role, one he’d never even imagined for himself.
The question still hanging in the air, he looked at her and nodded, finally putting it into words. “It’s true.”
Though she’d guessed, she still looked stunned. “That’s amazing,” she said. And then, “You’ve actually killed people?”
“I wouldn’t be a very good hitman if I hadn’t.”
“But when? How recently?” There was probably only so much honesty she could stomach, and the six in the last two days had been personal business anyway, so thinking back to the last proper job and embellishing it, he said, “Er, let me see, just over a month ago. I can’t tell you where but it wasn’t in this country. It was someone involved in the arms trade, someone who was threatening British interests.”
“So you’re like a soldier?” she said, falling for the spin he’d put on it. “Is it dangerous?”
“Not really.”
“Do you carry a gun?” He nodded in response. “Even now, here?” Another nod. “Can I see it?”
“Do you want to?” He was puzzled by the request, something he might have expected from a male friend and which he’d have refused because of that. Coming from her though, it was different and when she confirmed that she wanted to he took it from the holster and laid it on the table between them, the silencer pointing away into the corner.
She stared at the gun without saying anything, transfixed, as if she couldn’t quite believe it was there. She reached out and touched it lightly, once again as if to prove it was real.
“Do you want to hold it?” She shook her head and he said, “Shall I put it back?”
“I think so.”
He slipped the gun back beneath his jacket and said, “Why isn’t it surprising that I’m a hitman? I’m curious that other people saw it in me when I never saw it in myself.”
“It’s funny but I don’t see it either now. You know, when it was some abstract idea it seemed to make sense.” Her eyes looked elsewhere, like the gun was still on the table between them. “This is real though, not some fantasy of what JJ might be doing. I can’t see it in you now, someone who kills people without even thinking about it, following orders; it’s not who you are.” She looked upset, and JJ already regretted that he’d told her; he didn’t want her to think badly of him.
“That’s just the trouble though—that’s not who I am. See, I don’t take orders as such, and I do think about it, and I do wonder how I—”
“How did you get into it?” she asked, preempting him, her mind on a rush.
“In a roundabout way I was recruited, that’s all I can say. And yes, initially I was drawn by the excitement, the intrigue.” He laughed. “Maybe I still am, I don’t know. I have a nasty feeling I’d miss it.”
“Does that bother you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and then, “I have a good life, I have a nice place in Geneva, plenty of money, plenty of free time. I’m okay, you know, and I’m sure a lot of people who graduated with us have had a raw deal.”
“What’s the
but
?” He looked at her puzzled, and Jools smiled back at him. “You know, ‘I have a great life, great house, dedum, de-dum, dedum, but...’ So what’s the
but
?”
He smiled too now and said, “Ah,
that but.
” He thought about it, something he’d thought about plenty of times but had never put into words before. “Well, I don’t know. Just that, sometimes I feel I’ve fucked up I suppose, big time. Fucked up in a way that’s ... I don’t know ...”
“But you’re still young,” she said emphatically. “You could retire, change careers, do something that lets you live the way you want to.” She wanted him to do it, he could tell, one meeting in nearly ten years and she was desperate for him to give up, like he’d just admitted to a heroin habit or something like that.
He shook his head and said, “Trust me. That’s not an option.”
He’d seen a couple of people who’d taken that route of cutting themselves off completely from the past, had even killed one, but it was a sham existence anyway, a constant pretense that a history like that could just be folded away like a board game and forgotten about.
He smiled again, dismissively, and said, “You’ve caught me at a low point, Jools, that’s all. I just need to find some balance, you know, to find some way of living a full life as well as doing this.”
She smiled too and added, “Isn’t that what we’re all doing?” She patted her stomach to drive the point home.
He nodded agreement but thinking of her, of where her life was heading, lost in a future that seemed unavailable to him, he said, “That’s a good point though, kids, stuff like that. Falling in love.” He laughed, almost defensively, in response to the idea. “I really don’t know if I could cope with falling in love.”
“You haven’t been in love since ...” She didn’t say the name, knowing that JJ didn’t need her to, a sensitivity on her part even to the distant past.
“No, I don’t think I have, which means I haven’t I suppose. I’ve had relationships, happy ones too, but the thought of being in love with someone, being that close ... It’s scary, especially now.” He felt like he was rambling, incoherent, his thoughts tumbling over the last day and a half, but it was obviously making some sense.
Jools suddenly looked concerned and said, “Are you in some kind of trouble? I mean, are you in danger?”
“No,” he said quickly, making it implicit in his tone that the question was preposterous. “No, Jools, seriously. I don’t have many chances to talk about these things, that’s all it is, like I shouldn’t really be talking to you, so it’s just spilling out and not making sense. Really, I’m embarrassed to be going on about it, especially when there are so many other things we could be talking about.” He did feel bad for burdening her, yet at the same time he’d wanted to tell her much more: that he was lonely, that he felt like indistinct bits of him were dying, that nothing was clear anymore. It was enough though, what he’d told her was enough, like a gasp of pure oxygen, burning the tissue of his lungs.
“I don’t mind,” she said, apparently reassured, taking it in her stride. “I’m glad you told me.” And as an afterthought, “I suppose I have to keep it all very hush-hush?”
“I’d prefer it if you did. Tell them about my venture capital company.”
She stared down into her mug, both hands wrapped around it as if for the warmth, and when she looked up again, she said, “So that’s the real reason you’ve never been in touch.”
It was as though the two things had only just found their way together in her head, and now, making that connection, she seemed happy that there had been a reason, that it hadn’t been simply a case of him losing interest. Yet perhaps in truth, for a while at least, he had lost interest, the closeness he’d had with her and others seeming irrelevant.
“Maybe that’s what I was trying to say before,” he said, answering her. “It’s difficult to balance things like regular friends, relationships, people who aren’t in the know.” Aurianne crashed suddenly through his vision, like a moth spinning recklessly into a lit room, hitting things at random, her smile, the way she undressed when she was tired, the scent of the shampoo she used. “It isn’t fair on people,” he said, shutting the memory off. “Even you, now; I’d never call you from my own apartment, never give you my number or address. I wouldn’t want anyone to know that you know me. It wouldn’t ... it wouldn’t be wise.”
“That’s scary,” she said, shuddering slightly.
JJ jumped back in, quickly taking the edge off it. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a question of danger. It’s ... well, it’s complicated. And, Jools, I can assure you, I haven’t compromised you in any way by coming here. I’m very discreet, very careful, and I think too much of you, even if it has been eight years.”
She smiled back and mouthed the words, “Me too,” no sound coming out. The smile grew broader then and she said, “Why don’t we open a bottle of Chilean red and we can sit and look through all my old photos and be really sad oldies?”
He nodded, smiling too, and saying as an afterthought, “Can you drink?”
“Glass or two now and again. Starting his or her education early.”
“You don’t know what it is?”
She shook her head in response and shrugged, like it was incidental knowledge.
They sat in the living room for an hour, drinking wine, looking through photos, JJ playing catch-up on various faces, Jools finding little to say about most of them, only that they were in some management job or other, that they were married, single, still with the same partner from college. They talked mainly about the past, the brief window of their student years, as though at graduation they’d stopped doing things worth committing to memory.
It was a good way to wallow out the evening, but as they talked JJ could feel a sense slowly building inside him that maybe he’d come too far, even if some of the others hadn’t. Maybe those friendships were only that, boxes of old photos, and there he was in some of them, but they were like pictures of a doppelgänger, someone who looked like him but had a different past, a different outlook, different DNA.
And as much as he enjoyed being with Jools again, as natural as it felt after just a couple of hours, what would there be beyond that? Even if he found some way of being in contact with her on a regular basis, what would there be to talk about except the child that would soon be her focal point?
Perhaps he would keep in touch in his own way now, dropping in once a year or so, out of the blue as he had that evening, so they could measure the progress of each other’s lives for a couple of hours before parting again. And at some point perhaps she’d notice that it had been more than a year, two years, three, and that would be the mark of his passing in the world he’d once inhabited.