Apartment 42

1

The young woman raked her eyes over the money in the briefcase and smiled. "Beautiful," she murmured.

"Well, it was a beautiful assassination."

The man across her was faceless, but she didn't find anything odd about it. She simply smiled at him. "A pleasure doing business with you."

"Likewise. I shall spread word of the Black Widow. Someone ought to require your services."

Her smile grew. "That would be wonderful."

"Although, I'd hide that pistol a little better. We wouldn't want anyone accusing you of going--" BANG!!

The sound continued three, four more times. She thought he was saying the word, but it sounded like something was pounding a fist against a door.

Again, BANG - BANG - BANG!!

She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, she was staring up at an off-white ceiling through red lines. The banging was coming from the front door. Grumbling and groaning, she rolled out of her bed and into the hallway, nearly falling into the other - empty - room.

BANG - BANG - BANG!!

"I'm coming!" she yelled as she stumbled into the adjoined kitchen, dining, and living room, tripping over a shoe as she reached out for the key on the table.

Muttering curses under her breath, she undid the latches and jammed the key into the door.

"Have you got my rent?" her landlord asked.

"Not yet," she grumbled, thinking about the money she had received in her dream.

"Then you get a new flatmate. Work out the rent between yourselves and if he decides to kick you out for not paying your share, I won't stop him. Enjoy the rest of your day."

As he turned and left, she stuck her middle finger up and twisted her expression. She quickly fixed her appearance -- as best as she could in the large sweatpants and camisole, with her hair in knots wilder than the vines outside the apartment block -- when she noticed the young man with a bag over his shoulder and gave him a smile. "Hi."

"Hi."

"Tallie," she said, sticking her left hand out for him to shake.

"James," he replied before reaching out to shake her hand.

She frowned at their clasped hands. Something about his felt off, awkward. Like it wasn't quite human. She'd shaken the hands of manual labourers before and even they had softer hands.

"It's a prosthetic," he whispered, amused.

Her eyes flew open and her jaw dropped. "Shit. I'm sorry. I didn't m--"

"It's okay. So . . . can I come in?"

She suddenly remembered what a mess she'd made of the apartment. "How about I buy you breakfast and you give me two hours to clean up?" she asked with a hopeful smile.

"If you tell me what Tallie is short for, I'll give your four hours."

She thought about it. She could do with the extra time. "Natalia," she said, "but no one ever calls me Natalia."

"Cute," he said with a grin, turning to leave. "I'll be back later with my stuff . . . Natalia."

She watched him leave, whistling a tune as he shoved his hands into his pockets. Oh, how she wished someone would pay her to kill the landlord.

Going into a spring-clean frenzy, Natalia zipped through the apartment, hiding it all. She removed the weapons from the spare room and found places to hide them in her own room. She raided the kitchen cabinets and made sure there were no traces of the chemicals she used to make poisons and their antidotes. She slipped on the tiles in the bathroom as she scrambled to make the first-aid kit look less like a disaster kit and more like your average home kit.