Juliet rode to the Martian desert surrounding Tews. She lowered the sailer so close to the ground that Mark saw trails of beige dirt swirl in their wake.
He thought she was going to kill him there.
She didn’t.
By the time they arrived at Mark’s hotel, he felt sober.
He wasn’t.
As soon as he got off the still humming machine, he tripped and crashed down in front of the entrance bay. Juliet parked the sailer and helped him to his room, ignoring the snobby look of the hotel receptionist, a young man in his twenties.
She laid him on the bed and took off his shoes. The room was spinning. Out of the corner of his eye, Mark spotted the time fading in and out on the television-wall: 11.30 P.M. He was about to die as he’d lived—scared, alone, and wasted.
“Would you like to make a last phone call?”
“Nay.”
Mark felt her shuffle on the bed. She got up and slipped into the bathroom. His eyes were heavy, but somehow it felt rude to fall asleep when your assassin was freshening up. He waited. He half-hoped she’d emerge naked from the bathroom. No such luck.
She switched off the lights in the room and closed the bathroom door. The time blinking on the television-wall in the background outlined her slender figure in red flashes. She sat on the bed.
“Whatcha got there?” Mark asked when the red flash glinted off a small cylinder in her hand.
“It’s almost time.” She sighed as if she wanted to empty her lungs. “I’m sorry I have to do this. I never,” she paused and searched for the appropriate word, “bonded any of my other targets. I wish I didn’t have to kill you.”
“Do you hate to?”
“I do.”
Mark let her take her time. Now there was no going back. No more having to face the regrets, stare in the mirror, live the life—it was better this way. Had to be.
“With this,” she said after another, longer sigh, pointing at the aluminum-coated cylinder, “you won’t feel a thing. You’ll just fall asleep and never wake up. No pain. Isn’t that what you were afraid of?”
“Do you want me to thank you?”
“I want you to tell me this is what you wanted.”
“It’s what I wanted.”
She didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say. She moved and Mark knew she was checking the time on the wall.
“Will you do me one final favor?” Mark asked Juliet.
She froze. “What is it?”
Mark inhaled, trying to chase Ol’ Jack’s vapors out of his mind. “You remember when I said I could never touch you?”
He heard her chest rise but no other sound followed.
“Don’t worry, I don’t want you to have sex with me,” he rushed out. Then, more calmly, he added, “Do you know why I said that?”
“After the Golem riots, some people shifted their views of us. From whores, they promoted us to saints that must never be touched. Others treat us as if we’re carriers of some horrible disease. Don’t worry. I’m used to it.”
Mark’s body convulsed with a dry chuckle; the mattress shook, and the bed creaked. “Turn on the lights,” he told her. “Come lie with me.”
She obeyed without a word. The ceiling burst to life, but reaching for the lights control panel above the bed, Juliet dialed the blinding white to a soft cream. She threw her coat and hat near the foot of the bed and slid next to Mark. Surrounded by her orange hair, her face swam in a fiery lake.
Her brow creased with sadness. “Is this the final favor you wanted?”
Mark smiled. “Remember that daughter I told you about. Must be about your age. That’s why I can never...”
He reached for her face with his hand, and she let him caress her freckles. He’d imagined them bumpy, but they were a part of her skin—soft.
“Is it why you want me to have emotions?”
“What are you talking about?”
Her frown deepened. “It’s emotions I lack, not intelligence. This last thing of yours—it’s linked to your daughter, isn’t it?”
Mark grinned and nodded. “After you’re…done with me, please tell her that I killed myself.”
“Why?”
“Will you do it?”
“No.”
He frowned. “Please.”
“No.”
“You said you liked me. Do you want me to beg? I can beg.”
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were moist and glistening. “I won’t lie.”
“Not even this once?”
“I’m sorry.” Mark could see that she was. It was unfair of him to ask her to clean up his mess, but then she was about to assassinate him.
Her hand seized Mark’s and she pressed it against her cheek. Her flesh there was warm and downy. Mark closed his eyes and was transported to his latest trip to Earth. He’d visited a farm and found the farmer’s boy playing with a yellow, soft animal. The boy had told Mark the creature was a baby chicken. He opened his eyes and saw Juliet’s staring at him. She let go of his hand and put hers on his face, outlining his flat nose, the creases of his wrinkled skin, plunging her fingers in his bristly, graying beard.
“Why do you want to lie to her?”
“I fucked up her life.”
“Why didn’t you go see her six hours ago?”
Even if he’d wanted to, a trip to Earth took four days. Mark didn’t tell Juliet that. He thought back to all his visits to Earth, all the one-way stares, all the almosts. Only bitter memories. He clenched his teeth. “She hates my guts.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t you hear me? I fucked up her life.”
She smiled and Mark was compelled to return the gesture.
“How did you do that?”
“I drank and wrote and drank and wrote. I wish I could say I neglected her. It was worse.”
“Why do you want her to believe that you killed yourself?”
“So she hates me more for taking the coward’s way out. She’s used to despising me. Figure it’s easier if she doesn’t have to feel sorry about my death.”
Mark squinted to clear his misty sight. Juliet had raised her head away from the pillow. Her neck muscles were tensed. It was evident she didn’t want to Ms. a single detail.
“Once I die, she’ll start regretting never confronting me, never giving me a chance to prove to her how wrong she was about me. She wasn’t. I’ve always been a selfish piece of shit.”
Her hand froze. Her lips tightened. “But you brought all those feelings to people, Titan’s oceans and all.”
Mark smiled and his hand left her face to seize her fingers. He took them from his beard to his lips. He kissed them, pressing her knuckles against his mouth until his lips went numb.
“I did. But I forgot my own kid. When I got that huge advance I told you about, I ran home. Couldn’t wait to tell her. We were rich. But she was gone. She’d stood by my side through the hell of her mother’s death and my drinking and our shitty life. She studied and worked to feed us. And when I caught that one break, when I could’ve given her anything she wanted—anything she deserved, she was gone. Do you know why she couldn’t wait another fucking minute?”
“Why?”
“No idea. Never spoke to her again.”
“Why didn’t you go after her? Tell her about the millions?”
Mark wondered if he should tell Juliet about his visits to Earth, jumping around from country to country, France, Japan, America, following her, repeating the apologies and promises inside his head. Should he tell her about the times he’d stood close enough to his daughter to smell her familiar perfume at her desk, to hear her giggles when she was on a date, and later, to glance at the little ones running around in the garden? If he told her, would Juliet think of it as a breach of his daughter’s privacy, a sadomasochistic, guilt-induced punishment, or would she recognize it for the plain cowardice it was?
“Always figured she’d come back when she found out about the money. When she didn’t, I was too proud to reach out, then pride turned into shame, and shame into self-righteous resentment, and that’s that.”
Juliet sighed, opened her mouth, and sighed again. “That’s what you want for me? A life like yours, in which I love and suffer in return? You’re offering me despair?”
“I’m offering you everything that comes with despair,” Mark said.
She bit on her lip and Mark remained silent.
She turned her face to the wall. “It’s time,” she said.
“I know.” Mark laughed. Slowly at first, but then hysterically until tears flooded his beard.
“What’s so funny?”
“Irony. You wouldn’t understand.”
She kept staring at him.
“It’s just that I’ve just gotten the idea for a perfect story. A striking beauty of a Golem is hired to assassinate a famous writer. Add a few subplots, a twist-ending, maybe a time machine, and it’d be—well, a killer story.”
She smiled. “You’re wrong. I think I get the irony.”
“Trust me, sweetheart. If you have to think about it, you don’t get it.”
She put the rounded end of the cylinder against Mark’s neck. Air whistled as it escaped its pressurized chamber. Mark blinked once, twice, and Juliet blurred.
Her other, free hand tightened her grip around Mark’s fingers.
“Is that it?”
She echoed a choppy yes. Mark fluttered his eyelids, trying to clear the fog, but it kept thickening with every blink.
Before the blurring world darkened and Mark’s senses faded, he glimpsed Juliet’s eyes and could swear the shiny gold had smeared into a muddy maroon.
“I tried to get you to call her, you stupid son-of-a-bitch,” Juliet wailed. She stayed silent for a few seconds during which her breaths were short and loud. “Don’t you get it? Your daughter’s the one who hired me.”
Of course. That made more sense that the fans or the publishers or the random critic. His lips stretched into a smile. Juliet’s face was wrinkled like a tight knot, and her lips kept trembling. Everything was a deep gray now, and it was hurling toward pure black.
“I guess I should’ve guessed.”
“How can you say that? A daughter’s supposed to love her father. Isn’t that how it works?”
“And a father’s supposed to take care of his little girl.”
“But—”
“Sometimes…” Mark realized he’d stopped speaking in the middle of his sentence. His eyelids were so heavy. “Sometimes it’s not the doing that hurts the most, Juliet.”
“And you’d like me to welcome that into my life?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Never.”
A blast of coughs escaped Mark’s mouth. “Too late, sweetheart.”
Whatever color her eyes had seemed moments earlier, Mark had recognized the timbre of her voice as she revealed who her contractor was. He’d heard it in recordings from thankful readers, hateful ones, and every shade in-between.
All those recordings and Juliet’s tone had one thing in common—emotional overload.
THE END