Agnes and the Hitman

Agnes gri

“Maybe,” Lisa Livia said. “But I’m loving the omelet, so I’m not arguing.”

“I like having you here,” Agnes said, throwing grated cheese onto her eggs. “I like it that Joey shows up every day and that Carpenter wanders through and that Garth is putting in hydrangeas right now even though he has no receipts.”

“And?” Lisa Livia said.

“And what?” Agnes said, keeping her eyes on her eggs.

“Shane,” Lisa Livia said. “God, are you transparent”

“Shane.” Agnes nodded. “He’s a good friend, but that has to be it I mean, he’s a hitman, and I’m giving up violence, and he’s never going to be stable, and my next guy is going to be permanent, a nice regular guy, you know? But Shane’s a good guy, a good friend.” She caught Lisa Livia looking at her with contempt. “What?”

“You’re insane, that’s what”

“I don’t see why that’s insane. I think that’s a good plan. Dr. Garvin would approve.”

“No, you’re insane.” Lisa Livia cut into her omelet again. “There’s nobody I’d go to faster in a crisis, but you are nuts. And not in a cute way. You have been since I met you.”

Agnes looked at her, stu

Lisa Livia nodded, chewing omelet. “And everybody in that damn boarding school was scared of you. You know what the first thing they told me was? Don’t make Agnes mad. Seniors told me that.”

Agnes looked down at her omelet and began to lift the edges automatically. “They said that? I thought they thought I was an untouchable because my dad and mom never came back.”

“They never got that far. Evidently something happened the first week you were there and they saw the red light in your eyes and you became legend. Anyway, by the end of the first week I was there, I knew exactly who you were. My kind of people. And I asked to be your roommate and here we are.”

Agnes swallowed. “They were afraid of me?”

“Agnes, it was a good thing,” Lisa Livia said. “Because otherwise, they’d have made your life hell because you had no parents and wore cheap clothes. Thank God they thought you were Carrie.”

“Oh, God.” Agnes turned off the heat under the omelet pan because she’d lost all concentration.

“Look, I’m sorry, I’m not trying to ruin your day-”

“Somebody tried to kill me last night, Lisa Livia,” Agnes snapped. “Ancient boarding school news is not likely to ruin my day today.”

“-I’m just trying to explain why finding a nice guy is not in the cards for you,” Lisa Livia finished. “What the hell are you going to do with a nice guy?”

“I can be nice,” Agnes said.

“Why would you want to be?” Lisa Livia said.

Agnes stopped, dumbfounded.

“Agnes, you’re furious and fascinating and wonderful. You should probably not stab anybody with a meat fork again, but why be nice when you can be Cranky Agnes?” Lisa Livia pointed her fork at the red glasses logo on Agnes’s apron. “You think you’re syndicated in a hundred newspapers because you’re nice? You think you’d be in any newspaper if you wrote a column called ‘Nice Agnes’?”

“I’m talking about my personal life-”

Lisa Livia slapped her hand on the table. “I’m talkin’ about you. Stop pretending you’re normal. You’re insane. Make that work for you. That Dr. Garvin shit where you step on yourself all the time, that’s not good. Forking people isn’t good, either, but jeez, Agnes, you talk about finding some normal guy-hell, that’s how you ended up with Taylor, remember? You talked about nice he was, how normal he was, how easygoing he was. You went out and found the most white-bread guy in America, and he turned out to be a jackal. Maybe that’s not a good plan for you, Agnes.”

“Well, hell, Lisa Livia,” Agnes said mildly. “Maybe a hitman isn’t a good plan, either.”

Lisa Livia picked up her fork again. “Well, he sure put a smile on your face this morning.”

“That’s just sex,” Agnes said, and thought, That’s a lie, and then Rhett woke up and barked, and Agnes realized somebody was standing on her back porch looking at her through the screen door. “Hello?”

“I knocked,” the woman said, her drawl more of a chirp. “I truly did, but you all didn’t hear. I’m Kristy. From Wesley’s Wonderful Wedding Memories.”

Lisa Livia rolled her eyes.

“Come on in, Kristy,” Agnes said. “This is Lisa Livia, the mother of the bride, and I’m Agnes.”

Kristy opened the screen door and came in, cute as a bug with her pixie face, short dark hair, and tight little body strung with cameras and bags and a lot of other stuff that looked professional but could have been garbage for all Agnes knew. Rhett looked at her and barked again, and Agnes shushed him, so he sighed and went back to sleep as Kristy smiled at Lisa Livia.

“You can’t possibly be the mother of the bride,” Kristy said to her. “You must be her sister.”

“Right,” Lisa Livia said, and kept eating omelet.

“Have you had breakfast?” Agnes said to Kristy, looking at her cheese omelet with longing, but ready to give it up for hospitality’s sake.

“No, ma’am, but thank you for the offer,” Kristy said, and Agnes liked her better.

“Well, feel free to look around,” Agnes said. “The wedding is going to be in the gazebo and the reception is in the barn, which you’ll find if you follow the flagstone path off to the right of the porch there. Anything you need to know?”

“I’ll just wander around taking some trial shots,” Kristy said, batting her big blue eyes. “Any of the wedding party present besides Mrs. Fortunato?” She nodded to Lisa Livia.

“Miss. Never married.” Lisa Livia picked up her toast.

Kristy nodded again, having evidently given up on bonding.

“Nope,” Agnes said. “Unless you count the flamingos.”

Kristy nodded, smiled, and escaped through the back door.

“I’m just saying,” Lisa Livia said when she was gone, “you have a lot more in common with Shane than with some normal guy. Taylor freaked when you attacked him with a meat fork. Shane took it away from you and made you come your brains out. I think that’s significant.”

“He kills people,” Agnes said. “Lucky for you,” Lisa Livia said.

Agnes picked up her omelet and took it to the table and sat down across from Lisa Livia. “I’m definitely not going to have sex with him again.”

Lisa Livia nodded. “I’m definitely going to sleep with Carpenter.” Agnes sighed.

“Agnes, stop fighting your nature. You’re a killer. Accept that and you’ll be a lot happier.”

“I’ve never killed anybody,” Agnes protested, and then stopped, realizing that might have sounded holier than thou, considering the people she was hanging out with.

“And with the grace of God you never will,” Lisa Livia said. “The important thing is, we know we can if we have to.” She finished her omelet and pushed her plate away. “So what are we doing today?”

“I have to bake the wedding cakes,” Agnes said, “and call in that cake supply order to the bakery in Sava

“There you go,” Lisa Livia said, and got up to take her plate to the sink.

“And then I have to make lunch,” Agnes said, and began to eat her omelet.

Shane pulled up to the old warehouse on the edge of the swamp on the east side of Sava