“Sharkey this is all very cogent but I have to ask what made you look at Eiger in the first place?”

“Well Jack there is a thing about Eiger.”

“What thing?”

“There is the thing about his being in the Legion and all.”

“He was in the Legion he was this hard-ass we know this.”

“Yeah but Jack it didn’t matter until now so you didn’t likely look much at his record—”

“Just say it—”

“Okay okay he was a recon scout sniper—”

“FUCK—”

“Jack please do not wave the detonator—”

“Saul I’m not waving the—oh thank you yes I was—”

“That is fine but Mr. Sharkey here has been most helpful Jack and it’s important to be seen to be reasonable under difficult circumstances is that not right Mr. Sharkey?”

“Yes Skipper it absolutely—”

Saul hands me back the detonator and asks Sharkey super-duper nicely not to call him that.

Yeah haha. Very ha indeed but here is the thing Sharkey is right. Sharkey is right and—

Hans Eiger.

Hans Eiger has done that with his bank and the first buyer is me and he has fucked me in my Ukrainian.

—

All around the world there are a bajillion differing perceptions of what you owe to your friends and loved ones and what is appropriate when someone fucks with them. These perceptions range from respecting their caritas and the forgiveness of all mankind to burning cities and putting heads on sticks but the points is there is a spectrum or in fact there is a like a complex three-dimensional space into which all these responses could be placed. What there is not is unanimity and no one gets to tell you what is appropriate to your grief your relationship your private inner knowledge that maybe things were not as they seemed or la la la. Right?

But here this is not that, it is o so much simpler because yes Volodya was on some level my friend. Sure. That is to say I enjoyed his company and god help me his dubiously-sourced-dried-meat hobbyism and his grisly Soviet Industrial murder bullshit. I even loved that he carried his ridiculous out-of-date-ass rifle everywhere and we had to dress it up as a puppet one time whatever. He was an old fart and I liked him and he liked me, so to say he approved of my brand of awful and he liked that I liked his terrible jokes and his dubiously sourced dried meats and yeah maybe just maybe there was some kind of commonality of soul or I don’t know what.

I am not a soul kinduva person. I don’t really do that stuff so I am not sad right now not like sad sad not like crying. I am totally in touch with my emotions but I am not the crying sort of person and I am not sad. I’m fine. I mean I’ll miss him but I am.

Fine.