Nova didn’t mind that I fucked her roughly, thoughtlessly, brutally. She would lay face down on the grubby sheets and make animal gasps and moans. 

I would come in her, wait a few minutes, and then get off the bed. Put my underwear and trousers back on; I would still be wearing my shirt and shoulder holster. I didn’t care whether she’d come: this was a one-time thing. I'd put my jacket on and leave. Until next time.

⁂

She touched my elbow; I was at the bar in The Curfew. It wasn’t a lesbian dive; I was looking for alcohol, not company.

“Sorry, I’m going to let my butch take me home and fuck me ragged,” she said. 

I didn’t look; didn’t need to. Three guys, hanging back; the one that had been harassing her all evening in the front. I’m no paladin; it had been annoying, but she was nothing to me.

I leaned back on my stool, letting my jacket fall open, and the polymer butt of my HK45-CT show.

They backed off; a stream of profanity. Dyke. Bitch. Tranny. I thought I remembered a time when those words would be weighted with hurt; but maybe I was fooling myself.

I waited for the girl to leave as well. When she didn’t I finally looked. Femme. Slight. Slutty. 

“Are you going to make a liar out of me, butch?”

⁂

It wasn’t just the one time; though I couldn’t tell you why not. 

She found me in The Curfew again; she sat in the stool next to me and drank vodka. I didn’t speak; even acquaintances are a weakness.

She talked a mile a minute. Her name was Nova, she had a hundred zero-hour gig-work jobs, from food delivery to hostess. She had a lot of friends, enemies and lovers, and they seemed to move between those classifications randomly.

When I put my whiskey glass down, with the finality that signalled it was for the last time that night, she slipped off her stool. “My place, I assume,” she said.

⁂

The third time I sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments afterwards. I don’t know why.

“Do you actually come?” I asked.

Nova laughed. “I’m a mess down there; I leak and leak. I’m not purely a masochist.”

“I’m not a good lover.” This was not an apology, just a statement of fact.

“Sometimes all I want is to be ploughed mercilessly by someone who isn’t even sure she likes me,” she said.

“Hmm. Fair enough.” 

I got to my feet, got dressed, and left.

⁂

“Pull my hair,” she asked, next time.

I didn’t break my savage rhythm, but reached out a hand and coiled it in her dark hair, tugging hard.

Her moans changed. “Yes,” she whispered amongst them. I tugged again, harder.

Afterwards, she lit a joint; she offered me some. I shook my head.

“Why don’t you ever ask me what I do for work? Where I live? What my name is?” I asked.

She laughed. “And force you to lie to me? You carry a gun, and you are loaded down with violence. You probably change names and houses like I change underwear. Any answers would be bad ones.”

Her fingers traced some bullet scars on my leg.

She is right. My job is violence. I am a gun, and I don’t even choose when to fire. There are multiple safe-houses across the world, and they might move me tomorrow. And my name? I could tell her the name on one of my passports, or one of my driving licences. But what would be the point?

“I knew of a man,” I said, wanting to share something personal. Or that seemed personal. “Each time he killed someone whose name he knew, he would take their name, until the next.”

“And then?”

“Huh?”

“How does the story end?”

“Oh, he’s dead.” Two to the chest, one to the head; textbook stuff, if I say so myself. “Unmarked grave. Nameless.”   

She took a huge drag, held it, and eventually blew out a cloud of sweet smoke.

“Most people care about endings,” she said, voice rough.

“If it’s an ending, surely that means you don’t have to care anymore?”

She smoked in silence for a while. 

“When I was young, I used to watch a TV show, old even in those days,” she said, in a distant, dreamy tone. “El Vaquero Americano; about a cowboy who went up north in search of a killer. He was taciturn, determined, and quite violent for an old kids show. A superb rider too. So I think I will call you la vaquera.”

“How did it end? The show. Did he find the killer?”

She exhaled. “I never saw.”

La vaquera was as good a handle as any, I supposed.

⁂

“Fucking hell,” said Nova.

“It’s fine, it’s mending,” I said. It was just my body; not something to get attached to. “He missed the kneecap.”

“With what?” said Nova. “A fucking chainsaw?”

“Just a crowbar,” I said. She had stopped halfway undressed. “My fault, should have checked the room properly.” He was dead, by the time he swung. But death doesn’t erase momentum. The medics had stitched and taped me up. I received a phone call from my employer: an irritated reprimand, a frustration that a tool had not worked properly.

“You try to straddle me and plough me, you’ll have blood and stitches everywhere,” said Nova.

I tried to disagree, but I was already walking on it more than the medics advised. The dressing was spotted with blood.

“Spoon me,” said Nova, “and fuck me.”

We manoeuvred into bed, and into position; as clumsy as virgins. It was—of necessity—gentler than usual; my injured leg barely moving. Because Nova was no longer pressed into the mattress, I reached around and rubbed her small but hard girlcock. I bit her shoulders, and kissed them too.

When we were spent, I went to get up, but Nova said, “You’re injured, love, stay here.” I was too tired to argue.

⁂

It shouldn’t bother me, but it did. We had a wordless understanding that, if it was possible, we would be in The Curfew on Thursday night. It often wasn’t possible for me; I’d be shooting gangsters or businessmen, zealots or peacemakers. Nova didn’t complain. This was the first time she hadn’t been here. I shouldn’t care; it wasn’t like I’d been stood up, and I was aware of the double standard. I shouldn’t care, anyway.

I threw some cash on the counter.

The drive to her place was short. I knocked twice at her door, to no response. I tried again. Finally, I heard Nova say, “Who is it?” 

I paused. “La vaquera.”

She let me in, closing the door behind me. She’d been crying.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stuffing shoes into a suitcase. “I’ve got to go. Tonight.”

“Why?”

She gestured at a card on the sideboard. “My ex knows where I am. Someone left his card in my mailbox. He’ll be round to collect cash I don’t have, and worse.” She was crying again. “He likes me to be scared.”

I picked up the card; Richie Macías, Manager, El Cazador Gentleman’s Club.

I put the card down. “Lock the door behind me.”

⁂

El Cazador is a strip club, specialising in trans girls. The audience is mostly cis men, but a butch woman doesn’t draw much attention. It is loud and gaudy, as these places usually are. I nursed my overpriced drink and pretended to watch the girls gyrating. 

There was a door to the back rooms, used by customers and girls for private dances and more. But several enforcers and ‘businessmen’ also used this door; I reckoned the manager must be through there. 

The enforcer looked up as I came through the door; tightening his grip on the baseball bat. I was not with a girl, nor was I one of the criminals he knew. Just two enforcers that I could see; this one by the entrance, and one at the heavy door at the far end. There were lots of other doorways off this corridor, but they had curtains for doors.

“Where’s the manager?” I demanded. “One of your girls just slapped me.”

The enforcer relaxed his grip on the bat slightly, but, more importantly, his eyes flicked towards the far door. 

“You don’t want to bother the manager with that,” said the enforcer. “The floor supervisor behind the bar will make it right.”

“Oh, thank you.” I put my hand into my jacket; the key is to do this without tension, like it is the most casual thing in the world. It is, for me. I pulled out my gun—Heckler & Koch HK45 Compact Tactical pistol with SWR Octane 45 HD suppressor—and shot him. In the real world, suppressors do not make a gentle ‘phut’ sound; the enforcer at the end of the corridor hears. He goes for, I assume, his gun but my next bullet is for him. Out of instinct I double tap both of them, even though recovery from a bullet between the eyes is very unlikely. 

I slip into the nearest curtained room. “Out,” I tell the occupants. Unnecessarily, because all the rooms are emptying. This will alert the enforcers in the rest of the club, but they seemed more used to dealing with difficult customers than anything else.

With the bystanders mostly gone, I stepped out. At the far end of the corridor were two enforcers, on high alert. I killed them and ducked into another doorway. I proceeded down the corridor like this. They were just men with guns, but I was my gun, in as much as I was anything.

The manager emptied his revolver, in panic, into wood and wall. I shot him in the arm, and stepped over the bodies of his men.

“Are you Richie Macías?” I asked 

He nodded. “We can make a de—”

I shot him in the mouth, and then killed my way out of the Cazador club.

⁂

“You can unpack,” I told Nova, after she let me in.

“Did you… Is he?”

“A very firm warning,” I lied. “He won’t trouble you again.” That was true.

She smiled and cried. She didn’t believe me, of course; the point wasn’t to convince her, just to make her not an accessory.

She pushed me back onto the bed, knelt in front of me.

“You don’t have to—” I began.

“Shush, mi vaquera,” she said, and unbuttoned my trousers.

⁂

It took three days; longer than I expected. The phone rang; the ring tone that told me it was my employer.

“I understand you went off-piste,” said the voice. Feminine. British. Classy. “Twelve dead in unsanctioned executions.”

“Yes. Personal matter.”

“No,” said the voice. “You are not a person; you do not have personal matters. You are a gun; you do not get to choose where to shoot.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Do you?” she said. “Take out your pistol.”

I did. She knew I would be wearing the holster.

“Put the muzzle to your temple,” she said. I did so. “If we told you to pull the trigger, would you?” 

“Yes.” This was true.

There was a long pause. “Fortunately, the Manor does not have any relationship with Mr Macías’s tiny business. And our bribes to the police are at a flat rate,” she said. “Stand down, holster your weapon.”

I did so.

“You are in a relationship with Nova Marcías,” she said. 

The surname caught me by surprise. “Not a relationship; just fucking.” As I said that I realised that I wasn’t sure if it was true.

“If we told you to execute her, would you do it?”

“Yes,” I lied.

Another long pause. “Well, that won’t be necessary at this time. We have a job for you. Chiang Mai. The details are attached.” She hung up.

⁂

There was no answer to Nova’s door, when I returned. I picked the lock. Her small flat was empty, as if she had never existed. 

I considered the possibilities. Perhaps she had decided to leave, after all. She was a wanderer; she might have left this place and its complexities. Maybe she had just used me to kill an annoying husband. 

Or perhaps my employer had tasked another gun with executing this loose end and cleaning up. Or something in between; bribery, threats, kidnapping.

I sighed and put the souvenir on the window ledge; a small carved Thai elephant.

Most people care about endings. But I am not a person. 

An ending just means you don’t have to care anymore.