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could well be an installation at The Icelandic Museum of Modern Living. Plus, I find it all a bit too luxurious for devout followers of Christ. I doubt that any of the apostles possessed such a big flat screen. But at least it’s all as clean as the Savior’s conscience.
    I turn on the bathtub, for my jet lag, and the TV, for the sound of it. The screen shows ten thousand people singing in Christian unison in some overblown indoor sports arena down south. “Our God Is an Awesome God!” Pretty awesome, I have to admit. Born-again people are so energetic. Screaming like newborns. I switch to The Bold and the Beautiful and try reading the subtitles. Looks like Hungarian to me.
    In the kitchen I spot some letters addressed to Guðmundur Engilbertsson and Sigríður Ingibjörg Sigurhjartardóttir . It takes about two minutes to read each name. And back in the living room I find some family photos standing in frames on a big cabinet. They seem to have two kids. A girl and a boy. The little snow-haired girl looks a bit like her mother. Still the house seems totally kid-free. Maybe they store them away at some papal prep school. Or they donated them to missionary work down in Mozambique. There is a nice photo showing the whole family in America: Four holy smiles at some outdoor rodeo mass. Somehow it reminds me of hit #43. The fat man outside the church in Atlanta. My bullet traveled the incredible distance of two city blocks before entering his head. One of my master hits. He was wearing a white cowboy hat made out of felt—the kind of material that absorbs liquid. By the time I drove past the scene it all looked quite wonderful, so calm and innocent: A fat man had fallen on the sidewalk, nothing more. A fat man in a beautiful red hat.
    The water in the tub is crazy hot. Volcano water. I have to cool it down before adding my body to it. I lie there for an hour while my mind travels the bushy regions of the sweet old republic of Munita. The dark forest reeks of clit extract; drops thick with lust run down heavy leaves in very slow motion. Down by the harbor I come across my mother standing outside her little shop, in her horrible communist skirt and Marilyn Monroe blouse, with a white cast on her right arm, and a fist on her left, pounding the air and shouting at me:
    “This tandoori woman is all pleasure and no partner! When you pick a wife you must have conference between heart and brain. But you don’t talk to any of them and let your dick decide! I loved your father for forty-two years. He loved me for forty. The first two years he was still fucking Gordana, the Serbian whore. But then he got bored with her and kept his dick at home after that. You are lucky to be born after his sex life was over! Or else you would have been a Serb and your brother would have killed you in the war. Let me tell you, lust don’t last! Only love does! You break my heart, you break my arm, and you break all your promises. Tell me, Tomo, when are you going back to your studies?”
    I studied architectural landscaping for a year and a half in the wonderful town of Hanover, Germany. There I met Niko Nevolja (Naughty Niko) who introduced me to the science of the con. It all started with a couple of small-time cocaine deals. Then we got on to drug and gun smuggling and finally, we were introduced to the art of game-fixing. Every Friday night we dined with a different soccer referee from one of the lower German Bundesligas. They were not the most fun dinner partners (“I always iron my jersey the night before the match”) but watching them perform the day after was nothing less than addictive. Giveaway penalties and excellent goals denied. Angry players and a crowd gone mad. And it was all our work. Architectural landscaping was out, social landscaping was in. We being Croatian added an extra kick to it. No matter if the fucking Germans won the international games against us, we won all the games in their Bundesligas. And then we collected the