Lily
When I wake, Roman is gone.
I listen for him, closing my eyes and scanning the house with my ears, for any noise. But there is nothing but a light summer breeze whistling against the house. I roll over, bring my knees to my chest, and stare at the sun-dappled wall, thinking. I think about last night and I think about Carol, and I think about the revelation that the woman who saved my mother was Roman’s mother. That’s the strangest thing. Carol is the saddest, but that’s the strangest. What are the chances of that? Perhaps Roman’s yin-and-yang tattoo really does have some deeper meaning. Maybe all that nastiness happened for a reason. I’m not sure if I believe that, but it’s a nice thought.
I’ve been lying here like this, just staring and thinking—and trying not to cry about Carol—when Roman’s cellphone buzzes from across the room. I know it’s not mine because mine wasn’t on me when we made the getaway from the hospital. I lean up. It’s resting on a cabinet, lurching here and there as it vibrates. He must’ve put it there at some point last night, before we had sex. I think about just ignoring it, but my curiosity gets the better of me. I don’t allow myself much thought as I hop across the room and pick it up. It vibrates in my hand a few times. Part of me wants it to go to voicemail so the decision is robbed from me. But I can’t keep living like that: waiting for somebody else to make a choice. Anyway, I couldn’t exactly call myself Sherlock if I had no curiosity, could I?
Forcing myself not to think about how wrong this is, I answer the phone and hold it to my ear. I don’t know what I expect, or even want. Perhaps just an insight into who the father of my child is. Roman is still being reticent on that front. I asked him last night, late, as we were drifting to sleep, who he was and what he did. Still, he wouldn’t tell me.
I don’t say a thing. I don’t need to. The person on the other end has an entire raging speech prepared.
“I hired to you put this fucker down, to fucking kill him! Do you understand me, Roman? Do you? I hired you to kill this man! Not to spend weeks and weeks failing to kill him! Do you understand this, Roman? Do you fucking hear me? I have important things coming up, important opportunities! I can’t spend months waiting for a loose end to be tied up! I heard good things about you, really good things. Best killer in the States. Most efficient killer in the States. Hitman for hire. Assassin fucking extraordinaire! And now what . . . why aren’t you saying anything?”
I drop the phone, step away from it. I suspected he might be a criminal. Yes, I suspected there might be something dark going on. But to hear it, to have it be made real.
“He’s a killer,” I mutter, staring at the floor. “The father of my child is a killer for hire.”
“I am.” Roman appears in the doorway, a brown paper bag in his hand. He gestures with it. “Breakfast,” he explains. “I went out for breakfast.”
“You’re a . . . killer.” I can hardly say the word. Hours ago, this man and I were writhing in pleasure. Oh, I suspected, I suspected! But suspecting something and having it shoved right in front of your face are two different things. This man, the father of my child, kills people for money.
“You must’ve known.” He steps into the room.
I take a step back. “Don’t come near me.”
He stops, wincing. “Alright,” he mutters. “I’m not going to hurt you, Lily. I’ve told you that already. I’m going to protect you.”
He takes another step, but this time to the side of me. I take my chance: dart for the door. Now I’m the one standing in the doorway and he’s the one standing in the room. He sighs, shakes his head. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeats, as we stare at each other across the room. “I would never hurt you. That was just my boss, Lily, that’s all, reminding me that I need to kill the man. You know the man who was responsible for strangling Les in his sleep? That man? A man responsible for thousands of deaths, maybe even tens of thousands. That’s who I’m being sent to kill. How can you hate me for that?”
“I don’t hate you,” I say. “I just—you’re a killer, Roman. I’ve spent my life trying to help people, trying to make them better, and you get paid to do the opposite.”
Roman shrugs. “Yin-and-yang,” he says. “I reckon we complement each other nicely.”
We watch each other for a long time, silently. Perhaps Roman thinks I am just going to run into his arms. Part of me wants to. But I also cannot connect these two people: a man who might be CIA or Army with a man who is verified as a paid killer. The man he was before I picked up the phone and the man he is now.
“I don’t know . . .”
I let my words trail off when the red and blue lights flash into hallway. I see them out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head and watch as they flash up the stairs, coming from the direction of the front door. I listen, and hear the muffled voices of two men, the slam of a car door.
I turn back to Roman. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just can’t. I can’t live this life.”
Then I spring down the hallway, running as fast as my legs will take me, running toward the police officers in the driveway. I stumble on the stairs, almost fall, catch the railing and jump the last two steps. When I reach the bottom, Roman booms from the top: “Stop, Lily! You don’t know if these fuckers are clean! They might be dirty! Stop, before you get yourself hurt!” He has his gun drawn, aimed down the stairs. Not at me, but at the door beside which I stand.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The tears have started again, the wretched, unstoppable tears. They sting my eyes, already sore from too much crying last night. I can’t bear to look Roman in the eye knowing that I’m going to be leaving him soon. He won’t kill police officers, not if he is the man he says he is. He won’t kill me, either, not with our child inside of me. “I just can’t do this, Roman. I can’t live this life.”
Roman is halfway down the stairs. He’s not even looking at me. His eyes are fixed on the doorway. He brings his fingers to his lips. “They might be dirty,” he repeats, this time in a low whisper. “If you want to get away from me, running into the arms of dirty cops ain’t no way to do it.”
I want to believe him, I want to go to him, but I also want to re-enter the real world. I want to be able to go to work, to go to Carol’s funeral, to live a normal life. I want to go to sleep knowing who I am, where I am, where I’m going. I want my life back.
“I’m sorry, Roman,” I say, and then turn toward the door. I open my mouth to shout. I don’t know what I’m going to shout. Help me, perhaps. Although that will make me feel rotten and mean. I don’t need help from Roman. I don’t think he’d hurt me. But then, do I know that? How well do I really know him? How well do I know the killer whose child is growing inside my belly?
It doesn’t matter, because the second I open my mouth to shout, the police officer yells: “They’re there! I can see them! Look, in the doorway! Fuck!”
I barely have time to register the words before the glass in the door shatters into thousands of pieces. A split-second after, bullets pound through the door, through the walls, thudding repeatedly all around me. I would be dead if it were not for Roman, who leaps down the stairs and tackles me to the ground. I don’t know what’s happening. Everything is chaos. Bullets thud into the walls, over and over, shattering picture frames and tearing through the plasterboard walls. I am crawling without really crawling. Roman is half-dragging me somewhere, I have no clue where, and I have no choice but to follow him. I keep thinking: are these police? Are these police? And then: are they mad? Are they mad? They must be, surely, to shoot up a suburb in naked daylight.
I was going to run into the arms of these men. The thought causes more horrid tears to slide down my cheeks, as Roman and I crawl through the house.
“Roman, what is happening? What is happening?”
My voice sounds crazed and shocked, even to myself. I know what is happening, but I keep mumbling it, over and over, until I am whispering it to myself, a whisper only I can hear over the gunshots. Am I going mad? Is it possible to go mad this quickly?
When we’re in the kitchen, crouched low with our hands over our ears as bullets cut through the oven, the microwave, the blender, the knife stand, all of it exploding in a frenzy of shrapnel that sends wood and plastic and metal flying to all corners, the front door smashes open and the men charge into the house. Even over the chaos, I hear their footsteps, eager, too eager. These men, these police, want us dead, badly. The bullets stop. I open my eyes—I didn’t even realize they were closed—and see Roman, blurry, tear-shrouded, take his gun from his waistband. He brings his fingers to his lips. This time, I listen.
“Think they’re dead?” one of the cops says.
“No idea,” the other replies, quieter. “Let’s not risk it, though. Stay sharp.”
“Look at this place.” The first cop’s voice is deep and gravelly. I imagine him as a much older man, wrinkled and grim-looking. The other sounds like a kid. “No way in hell anybody survives this.”
They’re getting closer now, their boots crunching over the broken glass of the living room. Another ten seconds and they’ll be in here, ready to do us real harm. But Roman lifts his gun and aims it at the doorway, and then calls out: “Stop right where you fuckin’ are.”
The steady crunch-crunch-crunch of the men’s boots ceases.
“We’re stopped,” the younger one says calmly.
“Drop your guns,” Roman says.
“Now why the fuck would we do that—”
“Okay, we’re dropping them.”
There’s a pause, a rustling noise, and then two distinctly metal clinks as their guns hit the floor.
I begin to calm down during this recess. I wipe my eyes. My heartbeat is still like the stampeding of a herd of buffalo, but my mind is less clouded. I stop whispering to myself, bite down on my lip, try and make myself tough. But I am a nurse. I am experienced in the aftermath of violence, not violence itself. Still, I will try and be stronger. I have to be. At least they dropped their guns—
“That wasn’t your guns,” Roman says, his voice tinged with anger. “Don’t fuck with me, boys. If you don’t drop your guns right fuckin’ now, I’m goin’ to kill you both stone-fuckin’-dead. You’ve got three seconds.”
“How the hell did he know they weren’t our—”
“Three . . .”
“Let’s rush him—”
“Two . . .”
“Fuck, I’m not dying for this. You know who this guy is, don’t you?” The younger one sighs, and then something else drops, something heavier. After a moment, there’s another drop.
Roman mouths to me, wait here, and then stands up, gun aimed in front of him, and goes into the living room.
I wait a few moments to make sure the gunfire isn’t going to start again, and then I creep to the door and poke my head around. I was wrong. Both men are young, even younger than me. Around nineteen or twenty, pink-faced, with embarrassed looks on their faces as Roman takes the curtain rope and ties them back to back.
As I watch, one of them turns to me. He smiles, licks his lips.
Then his head sags as Roman cuffs him across the ear.
“You don’t fuckin’ look at my woman.”
I return to the kitchen, thinking about that. His woman. Is that what I am, now? His woman?
I’m not sure how to feel about that.