Pressing the palms of my hands against his chest, I start to push him away, needing to get out from underneath him, but he won’t let me.
“I smell it on you,” I say, and sigh with disappointment.
With his hands pressed into the mattress on both sides of me, holding up his weight, Victor glances at his shirt, sniffs lightly, then looks back at me, still with a look of question. “You smell what on me?”
“You know exactly what I smell.” I manage to worm my way out from underneath him.
He sits upright on the edge of the bed; I can feel his eyes on me from behind as I step into my skirt.
“Izabel,” he says, “I’m sorry, but I do not know what you are talking about.”
I turn around to face him. “Oh come on, Victor,” I say, “don’t make it worse by lying to me—that’ll piss me off more than what you did.”
“What did I do?” He seems genuinely confused. But I know better. “Tell me—”
“You killed someone,” I say, slipping my arms into my shirt. “I can smell the gun smoke, or nitroglycerin, or whatever it’s called on your clothes.”
His shoulders rise and fall along with his act.
Shaking my head, I say, “That’s why we came here, isn’t it?” He doesn’t respond—and he doesn’t have to—so I go on. “I wondered why you picked Venezuela, of all places, to take our vacation. Nothing against Venezuela, but I can think of a few places I’d rather go—that’s why you shot down The Bahamas.” Stepping into my flip-flops, I turn to him and ask, “So who was it? How much was this job worth?”
“Fifty-five thousand,” he answers.
My eyebrows crumple under wrinkles of confusion. Fifty-five thousand? That can’t be right; Victor never takes a job under one hundred thousand anymore.
“So then you admit,” I say, ignoring the meager payday for the moment, “that this whole vacation idea really had nothing to do with you and me, alone time, away from all the chaos—it was just an excuse.”
Victor shakes his head. “No, Izabel,” he counters, “it wasn’t an excuse, and yes, I brought you here to be alone with you.”
“But you wouldn’t have chosen this place,” I say, not with anger, but with disappointment, “if your target wasn’t here. We could be soaking up the sun and breathing in the clean air of The Bahamas right now, but your hit was more important.”
“That is not fair, Izabel, and you know it.”
He’s right, I’m not being fair. I know more than anyone that our lifestyle is far from ordinary, normal. I knew getting into this—the relationship with Victor, the profession—that ‘normal’ would always be an illusion. So yes, he’s right, I’m not being fair. But he didn’t have to lie to me about it, either.
Victor sighs heavily and looks off toward the wall.
“I just wanted to make it seem as real as it could,” he says. “I could have told you the truth, I know, but I did not want to ruin it for you.”
“I know,” I tell him, forgiving him.
I go back over and sit sideways on his lap; he hooks his hands around my waist.
“So tell me about the job,” I say. “And why only fifty-five thousand?”
He kisses the side of my neck.
“It came at the perfect time,” he begins. “We needed to get away from Boston—I could kill two birds with one stone, so I took the job.”
“So then I’m a bird that needs to be killed?”
Victor frowns.
I smile.
“I’m just messing with you,” I tell him, and kiss his lips.
Victor smiles lightly, and then helps me off his lap.
“I apologize,” he says. “I know I could have—should have—just set everything else aside and taken you where you wanted to go; made the vacation about you. About us.”
“It’s OK,” I say. “This is who we are, Victor. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Besides, you’re the Great Victor Faust, and you have a reputation to maintain. Bein’ all God-like and stuff.” I scrunch my nose up at him, and smile. I’m just trying to lighten the mood again.
“Izabel,” he says, walking away, mood not lightened, “you give me far more credit than I deserve.” He pulls his gun from the back of his pants and sets it on the table beside the ice bucket. And then he strips off his shirt. “You’ve only ever seen two sides of me. I’m not perfect. I’m skilled, yes. But immortal? No.”
I want to laugh—how could he assume I believe something so ridiculous? But I don’t laugh. I don’t because I realize that all this time I’ve never really believed that anything could ever happen to Victor; I can’t think of a single instant when I was truly afraid for him—he’s right: without realizing it, all this time I’ve considered him immortal. And maybe even perfect, too.