THE JOB AT HAND

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The year will be remembered for the crisp weather and the magnificent views of the lake and the mountains behind it. Friday was one of the clearest days ever experienced, the visibility almost twenty miles, and something in the air itself that seemed to sharpen the grain of the scene until it approached the resolution of nature itself. During the first part of the week there had been periods of brief rain, but they had cleared by Friday. She sat on her porch and looked south. She saw her father’s cabin on the far shore of the lake. She saw the flag waving atop town hall. She saw the glinting glass facade of the new hotel, and the red band of the canopy over the rooftop restaurant, and even the brick chimney for the pizza oven beside which she had, just weeks before, sat and enjoyed a beer with Edward, her ex-husband, at which he had argued that they never should have separated, since they were still deeply attracted to each other and still young enough to make the most of it (“I think about your hair so much,” he had said, shaking his head ruefully as if the fault was all his), and she had passed him a plain white envelope containing enough cash to keep him focused on the job at hand, which was a simple matter, really, of driving to a lodge on the near shore where several prominent politicians were meeting for lavishly catered dinners and light hikes through the beautiful foothills, pulling into the roundabout, handing his keys to the valet—he made sure that the man got a good look at him, or rather, at his disguise, the shaggy greying hair, the scar along the left side of his jawbone—striding through the lobby, and assassinating the Senator. Edward was right. They still charged each others’ batteries. Even thinking of him going through the lobby with purpose set off a little firework at the base of her skull—and elsewhere. “And elsewhere,” she said to no one. She ran her hand through the long black curtain of her hair.