Say you're coming straight out of a meeting, and you shone, and you know it. You're high, completely and utterly, and you know that you are the shit. This man, this man you hate, you have his land, his store, his house, and you deserved every bit of it and he didn't, and justice has been done and now you have it all to yourself, your company loves you, it's your prize for breaking that bastard, that punk who thought you were nothing, who tried to ruin you the way you just ruined him (or at least, so you remember). Now, say that you feel this way, you, the most beautiful person in the world, and you see in front of you, through the glass double door with the silver cylinder of a handle (smeared in two spots almost down to the brass underside, where everyone's hands have grabbed it) and walking into the courtyard, there is someone wearing the same clothes and the same briefcase (not quite, but close enough, the blue pinstripes in your suit are a little darker, and your briefcase has a bottom that expands if you put too much in it), with the same hair (at least from the back). And say you watch him, somewhat fascinated, because you rarely see someone who looks like you (you think there was a man like that at the meeting, but you really didn't care then, it just would have broken your stride), and it is a curious sensation, it makes you a bit queasy, and you feel somehow doubled. And he turns to walk towards the lot where you keep your car, the very same lot, and he is holding his keys in his hand, the way you do, feeling, without looking, for the one he needs. And then, say you see his head stop drifting from side to side the way your head does when you walk, and say you see this head keep itself rigid and focused on a point some ways off, and then the glass door that has been slowly closing is shut all the way, and you see yourself reflected and through that reflection, you see the other you, the one ahead of you, in the courtyard, fall down in a heap, curling forward because of the weight of their huge human head, the glass door shaking with the sudden crack of noise.

But wait, instead, let's say that you've just stepped through the glass door into the brick courtyard, turning toward the parking lot, your keys in your hand. You hope to get there ahead of that freak that comes too close to reminding of yourself (you know he's right behind you, you don't want to look, your eyes just slide right off the form, a hole in your vision), and you're thinking of the meeting where that one (the one you can't see) nearly stood on the table, crowing over the theft (as you see it) of one small man's store, and how you wish you didn't have to think of these things as much as you do. Now, say there's a man on the roof, that one right over there, the four-storey building, the white one, with the trees next to it that almost reach up to the top. And say this man (you can barely see him (the light blue of his shirt matches the sky, his hands and head floating), it could be a man or a woman, but for convention's sake (you'll know what I mean in a minute) we'll call it a man), say this man is looking right at you, or at least you feel like it. And say this man, this fellow on the rooftop, is raising up a rifle (it really could be any long stick, but in your imagination, you see a rifle), and he points it at you and then, for the sake of argument, let's say time stops for you at this point.

Now say that you are the man, the man on the roof, squinting down with one eye through the sight at the suit in the cross hairs (or rather, the head above the the suit, but the suit is what you were looking for, the suit is the signifier, pinstriped and black (and out of fashion), a nice contrast with the red brick of the courtyard (which, you noticed earlier, is in a spiral visible only from as high up as you are)) and you see the suit turn and walk toward you (low black shoes, minimal heel, double breasted unbuttoned coat, brass buttons with anchor insignia stamped into them, shirt white and crisp, collar buttoned with no tie, all just like you were told). And if you are the one on the roof, looking through the sight, you are careful, oh so careful, you don't want to make a mistake, you think back, listen again in your head (you hadn't recorded it, you hadn't needed to, you were, are, and always will be a complete professional) to the phone call you received a week ago, the way you had so many times through the week, and you hear the broker's voice in your ear (you imagine him, behind the computer distortion you both use to mask your voices (though sometimes you have to repeat yourselves, but anonymity is well worth it), you imagine that the broker is a fat man who wears wide red ties and looks an awful like Luca Brasi) you heard this voice describe the rhythms of the suit, the life of the suit, the shape and cut of the suit, you hear that Stephen Hawking voice in your head over and over, checking it for the last time, and you know, you know in your fingers, you know you have it right, and, the rifle raised to your shoulder, you squeeze the trigger.

Or say that you are the broker, the one who is about to call the appropriate hit man, with your fat fingers (too thick for most rings, your husband has your wedding ring stretched a little thinner every year during the week you think you lose it, but even so, you've had to go to the emergency room in the hottest days of summer, your finger pale from the band on) searching through the PDA you bought yourself last May for the name of someone who can be at the right place at the right time, searching for someone who's cheap enough and poor enough that they'll do what you need them to do. The man who called you, the one who whispered so quietly and whose voice was so muffled you don't know if you even heard him, he gave you the description you need (you know it well enough to pass on), and his cookies came through in the mail (and they weren't that good, but you expect that from store-bought cookies spending a week in transit) and can find the target, which you will do (you thought briefly about not doing anything, just telling him you did, and you do do this often enough (it is easier, cheaper, and safer for everyone involved, especially since most of the people who call you really just want to think that they have killed someone), but this one would know the result (but what could he do, sue for breach of contract? "Your honor, this woman did not have the man killed that I paid her to kill.") and, more, there was something cute about the way he asked you to help him). So, say you find the right man for the job, this one who thought he was Oswald and Booth and Chapman rolled into one ("but better," he would probably say, "because people know their names and no one has ever been able to find out mine"), and you know he would do it, simply because of the nature of the target (if the man who called you, whispering, is at all accurate in his description), and probably not even ask for much to do it, which leaves enough for you to pay the bills for another three months, telling your husband, as you always do, that your mail-order business is really raking in the dough.

Now say that you are sitting at a dinner table, and your best friend, the one you've known since you were three (terrorizing your nursery school teacher, Ms. Bunting, while you sat atop a castle made of safety legos, digging tunnels through summer-dried kudzu, ditching band practice to go look for Chester the Molester (who you never believed existed and you never found), dedicating poetry to each other at Open Mike Nights), he's sitting across from you, and he is not looking up to you, his eyes stay fixed on his food, and putting it in his mouth, the fork shaking just a touch. He doesn't speak to you, he nods or shakes his head, and when he does look up (he has to after he drinks his Coke down to the bottom of the glass, just before he sets it down, and your eyes meet for the first time all night), when he does look up, he gives you a quick smile, the lips pressed together (a bit of ketchup in that wisp of a mustache he's been cultivating since he was a high-school sophomore) with the contact white, and you know, you just know he's not feeling good. And you know that this dinner, the one you cooked for him (his favorite, sausage and spinach quiche and corn on the cob, which he never learned to cook, though it isn't that difficult), the dinner that is supposed to celebrate the new stage in his life when he acknowledges that his boutique would never work and he goes on and joins the ranks of JC Penny's (earning twice what he did before for less work), you know he might not wake up tomorrow or any day for the rest of his life, and you see his life in an office (hunting for clerks stealing someone else's merchandise by pouring over someone else's books) and he goes home every night with nothing to do, everything taken care of by his underlings and superiors, and you hate the one who killed your best friend. So, let's say, for the sake of argument, when you leave him in his house, you don't just let this hate fester, the way you do with any other hate that you build from day to day, but instead, because this man, your best friend, who you love, you decide to relieve it (the way you did in high school, when those two Seniors beat him up every day and he could do nothing about it, but you went to them (and you still haven't told him this) and you took them on yourself, both, and you ended up with the name ball-biter until you graduated). So let's say you pick up one of those magazines, like Soldier of Fortune (which you never looked at, but you've heard this is how you do it) and you looked in the back, in those one-line penny ads and you call the number from the gas station you buy the magazine, to somewhere in Toledo (a pay phone in the Ameritech's records, but the line has been hijacked) and you talk to a computer voice in a whisper, with a handkerchief over the receiver (you know that's the way it's supposed to be done) and you feel so much better when you hang up the phone, no guilt at all, not even when you mail a tin of cookies (the tin with a New England winter scene, the cookies almond and peanut butter) with ten thousand dollars to a PO box. And then, for the sake of record, you feel so much better.

Now, say that you are closing your store before you go to the dinner your best friend has made for you, locking it up with the key that you'll keep in the back of your underwear drawer (useless when the locks change during the night and new keys, already in the right hands, not yours, will open the door in the morning) and you won't take it out, ever, and when you see it, you'll ignore it (when you have a daughter, ten years from now, she'll find it soon after she learns to walk, and she'll try it on every lock she knows, then lose it when it falls out of her pocket as she builds small dams to trap tadpoles in the ditch alongside your house). And after you close the door, you put the key in the lock, slowly enough to feel the tumblers catch on every tooth (the way you used to sneak in when you were in college and you thought your roommate was asleep (it never worked, but he pretended that he didn't wake up)) and the light on the motion detector is flashing, warning that it will be triggered soon, and you turn the key and feel the bolt snap home. You think of the one who has taken it from you, and the way he sounded over the phone when he told you, trying to keep his voice (one that sounded so familiar, but you couldn't place it) level and calm, that you could no longer run your business, that the company he represented had bought your mortgage and foreclosed on it. You want to see him here, to watch you lock up (the motion detector stops flashing, and you know you can't go back in without the police getting involved, and they would have to take you to jail for breaking in), but you know that if he were here, with you, he would smile and you would not be able to say anything.

Now, say you are sitting in your office, wearing that suit (the double breasted with the dark blue pinstripes) you like so well, (you haven't taken off your jacket, and you won't, but it's wrinkle-free (so the label says) so you don't have to) and it's early in the day (you like to come in early so, if you work through lunch, you can just avoid the traffic on the drive home), and you have on your desk, placed there the night before, a large manila envelope. Say that you open it, and out comes about ten pages, photocopied (you can tell as the text is slightly askew) and stapled in the middle top. You have no choice but to smile as you look at it, flipping up the first page, then the second, not needing to look beyond that. You know what it says, you know what it lets you do. In front of you, that paper, could be the death of a man, and you like the way it feels to think about it, to hold someone's (no, not just someone's, a very certain man's, one you know too well) livelihood between your thumb and forefinger. You know it is symbolic, this paper, a mere record of what has to happen, part of a ritual you initiated with the hope that you would be the one chosen to complete it. And so you read the paper carefully, just to treasure the words, though they are quite dry and dense, and you don't understand them at all, but you don't need to, you know what it says, and you know what the words will make happen.

Return from whence you came.