Sharkey is not a small guy and in the heat he smells strongly of folded male groin. Heat is all you get in southern Europe in the summertime anymore because: have you heard? There is a climate crisis. Right now this means not only is the world dying but also too there’s a lot of ambient groin up in my olfactory. So fuck you very much to the petrochemical industry once for the planet and once for that.

I say: “The Demons are open for business give us business.”

Sharkey says: “Jack no one is looking for your kind of trouble right now.”

“That is why they pay you the big bucks Sharkey you got instincts you got what they say you got a nose—”

(He cannot possibly have an actual nose, he would die of himself.)

“Jack I got a nose I don’t got like Vulcan telepathy force powers I cannot—”

“O shit Charlie would kill you right here Sharkey.”

“What?”

“Vulcan force powers?”

“What?”

“Never mind I will not explain it to you Sharkey the only possible way for you to learn is if someone kills you with a cruet. Proceed.”

“You got weird people Jack. Dangerous and weird.”

“They are individuals Sharkey and exemplary professionals in their own fields.”

“That’s your problem. Fred was dull and people like that in contractors Jack. It makes them happy.”

“You are saying no one wants international assassins to be fun at parties.”

“They do not want them to come to their parties in the first place. Not even their families really want that, in case they get in a disagreement and someone has to be buried under a patio.”

“…I would not do that it is fucking suburban.”

“But they don’t know that! Like if you were Fred I would know the cruet thing was a gag man but with you with your Demons I am not sure.”

—

Actually I am sympathetic to this position because I also am just a person who is trying to get along in the world, but regrettably last year there was a kind of a what you would call a misunderstanding, except that there was no actual misunderstanding per se, more like assumptions of questionable value were made by certain parties, and the consequences of those assumptions were really surprising to actually just about everyone involved, and several of those people did not come by their surprise in positive or sustainable ways. We shall call those people the bad guys and they are not alive anymore.