There was no obvious solution in sight for Josh and Andy. How had it come to that, exactly? How did Andy turn out so wrong?

It could not be explained by singling out a moment of his personal story. It was more of a build up: bad choices, frustrations, crutches. He was only human, after all.

From a young age he had found himself looking at life from a distance, like he was slightly out of this world. He stayed quiet through the seventies’ recession, as his parent’s wages and living conditions kept worsening. As a kid, he had the distinct impression of being a passenger on a sinking ship. Instead of bewildering him, this feeling appeased him. Everything was all right because it would not last forever. There was beauty in it: all the foolish people, the stupid rules,the everyday violence of life, folding onto itself in a grand goodbye. One day, reality called and he realized the end of civilization as we know it most likely wouldn’t happen in his lifetime. Sometimes that was what becoming a grown up meant: giving up the illusion that everything would end in a cleansing fire.

He still held hope for a nuclear war.

He landed his first job when he was fourteen, selling ice-cream on the seashore in the summer. The cart he pushed was a modified trailer which had been painted a pale pink with the help of this father. People walked by and bought sherbets, lollies, snow cones to the lanky teenager that wouldn’t smile. A few years in, the seaside shops closed and the tourists learned how to do better than the poorest neighborhood for vacations. Now kids were playing other games, chasing each other through the narrow streets, hiding in the boarded houses. Andy wasn’t a kid anymore and someone had a plan for his future.

He could have looked the other way when that guy offered him a job, promising steady income and responsibilities. He knew what was going on there, but in his mind, there was not much difference between selling snow cones and the kind of snow they gave him. Both made people less healthy, and they still had a good chance of dying of something else. His serious-looking attitude and proper appearance, which he was specific about, was a plus. He looked like a young office worker who had lost his way, not like a drug dealer.

Months went on and gradually the responsibilities changed. Well, those were the times, you could get a job and a carrier in one go. Now all you could hope for was part-time mobster. You’d be lucky if they didn’t swap you for an intern.

When he was twenty, Andy got his first taste of alcohol. He had been pretty serious in that regard, like he was in all things except the ones that mattered. He entered the bar alone, asked for a gin and tonic. To a man with almost no perceptible emotion, the altered state of mind he found himself in was akin to a door opening on another world. From that day on he never felt alone again — with the help of a bottle.

He wasn’t the type to indulge, really. He would reserve his drinks like one would setup a date. He enjoyed the moment. It was a conversation between himself and a brighter world than his brain chemistry usually allowed.

Andy didn’t, or couldn’t precisely remember his first kill. The man who had taken him under his wing was really happy with him. He thought Andy could be so much more, if he wanted to. Did he? Andy didn’t remember a precise moment of excitement, of longing. He didn’t recall having dreams, apart from those time he was singing. For leisure or on popular demand, he sang well and he was not shy about it. It brought him a pleasure almost like drinking: a warm flow went through his throat, except the belly was the start of the flow, not the end. Andy probably felt more from his tract than he ever did with his heart, or anything else for that matter.

So he killed. He killed a bunch, always on purpose, never in anger. They didn’t have to train him to be that way. It was not that he didn’t see the immorality in it, as he was affected by every life he ended. But what power had a wrong doing in a world of constant decay? Why would you save a life in limbo?

In that regard, he was not surprised with the wars that started. He skeptically watched meager peace being reached and laughed at political campaigns, regardless of their opinions. He was a killer for hire and it was as good as anything else. Certainly, the carrier path that had opened for him at first seemed to be slowing down. He was too good at what he did, they said, and it would be a shame to give someone with his qualifications a desk job. Going through two decades without batting an eyelash or changing style, he remained a high-end mobster.

Ten years ago, they gave him a driver: Josh, who they still called by the atrocious nickname of Spanky, was in his twenties and had a puppy-like respect for the aging hit man. They surprisingly got along and balanced each other. The team gained reputation quickly.

Andy was still courting gin along with a few other quality alcohols. Changing the grinding reality into tales of the green fairy now required a good amount of medicine. Taking it every day also helped in stabilizing the effect.

He knew better than to let his hobbies interfere with the job: he never drank on the days he had to off someone. On those days, the drinks had a strange aftertaste anyway. He was still good, still the best, but a new boss had replaced the old one. He didn’t seem to value competence as much as a clear separation between what was going on below and above. Andy had been close to the old boss, and it bothered him that someone sent out to do the dirty work knew so much about the top of the organization. What if he got caught? Gradually, he was perceived as a liability. No more big-time operations, now he secured quick shots and petty revenges.

One day, after he got back home he noticed a splatter of blood on the collar of his shirt. How unlike him! He got changed, went to the bathroom and attempted to clean the stain, to no avail. Astonishingly, the mundane task left him frantic. He had to catch his breath. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a terrified old man. Was this all that was left of him? What had his life amounted to? Maybe, just maybe killing people wasn’t so much like picking tomatoes. Maybe it had gotten to him somehow, over the years. Wasn’t he immune to feelings?

He had to turn away from the mirror. He dropped a clean vomit in the toilets and flushed it. That kind of trouble had its medication.

From that day on, he allowed himself to drink a lot more. He needed to. A month later, the Dollahan job happened and they got away from all of it. Just him and Josh. New game, new identity, new life. Surely his doubts and crimes were gonna leave him a second chance, right? He felt like he hadn’t started living yet, but there was no time left. The blood he spilled for years was left drying on his body. Soon it didn’t matter how much he drank, because he was what was sinking. He was the rotten smell, the hopeless situation. Maybe he had been all along. He was left trying to outdrink himself.

Not working anymore had released a lot of the bad. It was like some things had been occulted by his mind so he could continue doing what he did. Now that the objective was gone, the pressure had gone away, along with anything that made Andy feel like a person. Now he saw his life for what it had been. Now he saw the ugliness and the broken lives. The choices that were his before. The paths he didn’t take.

Sometimes when he puked and his head was pounding, he wondered if the alcohol was really the one dealing him so much pain. Maybe it was guilt. He probably deserved it. Even now, thinking back on all the kills he remembered, he couldn’t feel a shred of sadness: just blank remorse, knowing he had harmed so many.

He considered offing himself, but the irony was too much, and he started laughing and crying just thinking about it. Hit man gets his last kill. No. He was done with it. He wouldn’t kill so much as a rabbit anymore. Life would do the offing. It usually did that pretty well.

He told none of this to Josh, because it was none of his business, and because he might have wanted to help. That would have been the worst. Josh was completely able to make the pain last forever solely with goodwill as a weapon.

A week after their talk about his drinking habits, when Andy had seemingly seen the light then gone back to his old ways, he woke up to find the house cleaned up. Not a bottle in sight. Josh was there, cooking. He had taken the day off.

Rage wouldn’t begin to describe how Andy felt. He wanted to get up and smash Josh so he would understand how that felt. He wanted to slap him back and forth for being such a smart-ass little fucker. Soon, he found out he could barely get up, because the world was spinning like a dish in a circus trick.

“Oh, you’re angry, aren’t you?” said Josh, feeling salty. “You wanna beat me up, old man? Just try it, if you can even stand!”