All I knew was he went by Rod. I found him through a friend of a friend of an acquaintance after I couldn’t find a granny witch. Everybody said I didn’t want to open that door, and I tended to agree. So straight-up murder, no magic, then.

I assumed he came from a neighboring county that had, shall we say, less stringent laws? The authorities would turn a blind eye to lots of misdeeds…especially if you feathered their nest if the public got to lookin’ too close. But I wasn’t going to ask him about his family and politics. The less we knew about each other, the better.

It’s surprisingly easy to put a hit out. And cheap! Less than what you’d pay for a mediocre used car. The details were simple: meet in a corner booth in a Mexican restaurant. Wear a black shirt (how original, I know). Order a burrito with extra sour cream. Slide the money under a stack of napkins at the earliest convenience. Finish the meal, and get the heck out. Leave first and don’t look back.

So that’s what we did. Rod was sturdily built, with a goatee. He looked like any number of guys in these parts. Not a killer. He was wearing a plaid shirt with pockets and blue jeans. Lace-up boots. A pack of cigarettes in one pocket, sunglasses in another. He was just a blue-collar guy with blood on his hands.

He didn’t ask me why. I guess he gets gigs like this regularly, jilted women with enough pocket money to make it happen. For my part, I was willing to forgo my annual Coach bag for the next few years. I was willing to eat bologna sammiches and ramen noodles for the next six years if that’s what it took. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I was dry-eyed when I passed the money over. He ordered water and taco salad. Cheap date, I thought, with a hint of irony. He tried to make small talk about the weather. For anyone looking at us, they may have hypothesized that we were business colleagues. Which, when you think about it, they would be quite right. When I looked into his eyes, I expected ice blue ones to meet my own. But they were a surprisingly warm tone of brown. I knew a few merciless people with brown eyes, so I guess I shouldn’t have given it a second thought. One minute they would look like melted chocolate, the next beady, like a mud turtle’s. I wanted to give him some pointers. He wouldn’t even have to shoot him or stab him. Really, he could walk away clean, other than his conscience. Just lace his drugs with something extra lethal. That’s all it would take. But something told me he’d done his research before ever agreeing to this hit. I wondered how many people he’d killed. I wondered what was the easiest way. I wondered if he attended church and if his momma was still alive, and if so did he sit at her table on Sunday afternoons and eat fried chicken and drink sweet tea? I wondered what he told people he did for a living. Is this what he did, or did he have a legitimate job, where he paid taxes? Was this just a side hustle? How long had he done this? How’d he get involved? What was his first hit? Did he have any close calls? Did he always succeed? Had he ever been suspected? There was no tell-tale teardrop tattoo, and I couldn’t exactly ask for a resume, but my brain itched the longer we sat there. And he could tell. We called for the check quickly.

Yes, he’d be missed, but no one would be surprised. There would be a funeral at his neighborhood funeral parlor, and everyone would remark that he’d shown promise for those years he was married to “that girl”. Got his life straightened out, shed his old skin for a better life. But then a wandering eye. Excitement. And so began the first in a long string of bad decisions, leading him back to his past. Ashes to ashes. Life is but a vapor. Rest in peace.