IN A SWELTERING jungle at sunset, the red setting sun reflected brightly from a woman’s mirrored sunglasses. Two figures were tromping through the calf-deep mud of an endless marsh in mid-summer. Mountains were not far away and the foliage was green and thick, with a red-orange ball of fire melting into the horizon. The curious figures of a woman and a man appeared as silhouettes and shadows walking slowly, slogging through the murky mire.
The thirty-year-old woman, dressed in a dark pantsuit, was walking behind the man. She was wearing the mirrored sunglasses and holding a .9mm gun, fitted with a silencer. The lady was Vera Dratt, and the man was Billy Champ. Billy was in his late forties, wearing a very expensive suit, though it was partially torn and shredded by thick bamboo and mud.
Billy quickly lifted his left foot after his shoe was bitten by a small croc that he kicked away.
“Wow, that was close!” he said, tossing away what was left of his shoe. He balanced on one leg, holding his water-soaked sock in the air, and looked back at Vera.
“How much further, honey?”
“Just a little ahead...”
A little further into the thickening swamp, they came upon a small cluster of palms.
“Oh, the hell with it!” Billy chuckled, pulling his sock off and plunging his foot into the cool, slippery mud. He sat there for a moment then he lifted his other foot, pulled the sock and shoe off and hurled them away too, all the while laughing to himself as he slipped and fell flat on his back into the muck.
Vera waited for him patiently with a faint smile as he managed to get up with both his feet sunk deep into the dark, wet earth.
“This is like when I was a kid,” he said, and then they started forward again. “Hey, do you mind if I talk a little? I feel like talking.”
“Talk your head off. Just keep it down.”
“My wife was always saying that – ‘Speak up, say what’s bugging you,’ she would say, but she didn’t know about you.”
“Didn’t know, huh?”
“Not really. Part of me wanted to tell her, but I thought it best not to.”
He picked up a handful of mud and began shaping into a ball.
“My Marie... I loved her but you know what? I cheated on her all the time. I don’t even know why. It wasn’t the sex. Marie was great in bed. I think if I wasn’t married I probably wouldn’t have even looked at those babes. I knew she couldn’t trust me, so how could I trust her? If she was here right now I think I’d tell her that I was sorry. But of course, if she were here right now, maybe I wouldn’t feel like talking.”
He threw the mud ball at the distant palm trees, but they were too far away to hit.
“I know you!” Billy blurted out suddenly.
“Yeah, what do you know?”
“They say you’re a savvy bitch.”
“Really.”
“I know this may seem like an odd question, but can I ask you how much the contract was for?”
“Why should I tell you?” she scoffed, adjusting the gun in her hand.
“Okay, okay, I get it. Just curious, that’s all.”
“If it makes you feel better, it was for a hundred K.”
“Wow, that’s a lot for poor old me, Billy Champ. That the usual fee?”
“Depends on the job.”
“Yeah, guess so. Do you fear a time coming when someone will come for you? Ever thought about that? What do you call it?”
“Marked.”
“That’s right. When I had someone marked, I would call our main contact to transfer the money, and soon as I hung up the phone, I forgot about them.”
“Everyone who plays the game knows the cost,” she stated coldly.
“That’s what I told myself. Kinda like karma, huh.” Champ laughed again, getting giggly like he was high. “I just wondered who the bastard was I met that hired you.”
Something occurred to him, and he looked irately back at her.
“Don’t even think about it, Billy,” she said firmly, finger on the trigger.
“Our contractor would fuck any of us. How can anyone trust a man like that?”
“At least he pays good.”
“I thought that I would be thinking about Marie, or working, or that I’d be having these deep, sad and depressing thoughts, but I’m not. I’m trying to think really noble thoughts, but I can’t. Instead, it all seems very funny to me.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking about fried bananas. I haven’t had a fried banana since I was ten years old. Right now, I’m thinking how much I’d love it with vanilla ice cream.”
“After sex, no doubt.”
Billy laughed, and she laughed agreeably with him. But he suddenly stopped laughing, nearing a rice paddy and tall palm trees.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What do others do?”
He looked at the palm trees, his voice fading in the light wind.
“Everyone does it differently; some are ready, some aren’t.”
“Do they get down on their knees, begging for forgiveness?”
“A bit glum, aren’t you?”
“When I thought about it, there was always that image in the back of my head of me on my knees, begging. It wouldn’t go away and it really bugged me; something that I could never get away from. But now I feel okay, I’m ready.”
“Can I ask you a question? Why didn’t you split when you had the chance?”
“And give this exciting life up?”
“Yeah.”
Billy reflected back, “I used to think about it, but I had my sweet Marie. She wanted babies. I thought about moving somewhere far away like, Maui – I could see all of that, but I wouldn’t know what to do next, so I stopped thinking about it and went back to work. Get it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Billy smiled, looked around at the grove of palms and trees.
“I always thought maybe I would end up in some dirty old land dump, under someone else’s garbage. Kept thinking about those plastic bags covering my body.”
He looked at the peachy red sun seeping into the darkening horizon.
“Look at that. I haven’t watched the sun set in a long time...Do you mind?”
She gazed down sadly at him, as Billy stared joyfully at the last of the light.
“Beautiful...Cosmic, man!” he grinned.
With his face away from her, his tired eyes began to tear up. Vera watched him staring at the setting sun, and looked down at the .9mm pistol in her hand.
When the sun was gone, with a red glow at the bottom of a dark hunk of trees, the quiet sound of a muffled gunshot went off, and Billy’s limp body fell face down into the mud. There were two more gun shots, and a flock of startled jungle birds flew up in the night sky.
Vera shook her head in consternation, took a deep breath and let the air out slowly. She was standing alone in contemplation in the middle of the dark in a bloody rice paddy.
