The sun had already long since risen when I made the walk back to my house on my last day alive. One might hope that so close to death, I decided to take the long route home, stop to smell some flowers, chat with the barristas when I stopped by for a perfectly brewed cup of coffee, enjoyed those final moments before the chance for enjoyment was gone altogether. The truth was that I had been enjoying my final moments for over six months by then, and I was pretty damn well sick of it. Every morning since I had met the short man in the Italian suit, I had greeted each morning declaring, "This is the last March 14th I will ever see!" or May 2nd, June 23rd, you understand.

I had met the short man in the Italian suit in a hotel conference room rented by the hour. He was already seated when I arrived. He had been trying to seem comfortable, but kept itching at his shoulder.

"Nicotine patch," he explained, "New Year's resolution to quit smoking, but damn this thing itches. Forty years of smoking and I ever have an itchy arm? Well, maybe now and then, who doesn't? But nothing like this. Is a longer life worth this?"

I shrugged. A longer life was not something I had too much of an interest in by then.

"I don't suppose you have much in the way of resolutions this year, do you?" he asked.

"Just the one," I replied, "Suppose we get down to business?"

"Right. I'll start off with just a few questions for you, make sure it's all to your specifications," he pulled out a little notepad, and poised a pen over the page. "First off, how do you feel about collateral damage? Some people are comfortable with it, hell, some even prefer it that way. The more carnage the better."

"No, I'd prefer a less carnage approach."

"Right. Though you do understand that accidents do happen no matter how much caution the operative exerts. Next. Natural, accident or murder?"

"What?"

"How do you want it to look? There was this one guy wanted it to look like a freak accident, and I do mean freak. I made the front page of the Post with one of those pun headlines."

"Murder. With an on-going investigation."

"Quick and to the point, or slow and painful."

"Quick, please."

He nodded and gave me a look as if he had my measure. "Okay, so here's how it's going to go. My associates and myself will select an appropriate operative for your situation. By Thursday morning, the operative will be in play. They have a year to accomplish the job."

"A year?"

"I know, seems like a long time, but these are artists, they like to do it properly. We tried it with shorter periods of time, but we found that the targets start getting anxious. If you have thirty days, and we're at day twenty-nine, well, even the coolest cucumber starts watching his back. So relax and leave the driving to us."

Of course, I wouldn't have gone to see him in the first place if it hadn't been for Joyce. Sixty-seven, and still at her desk every morning by 8:00, Joyce would hunt and peck her way across the keyboard. Whatever mental filter that stops most people from saying whatever sprung into their minds had completely dissolved, so there was a running commentary as she went about her work. I would be summoned several times a day to answer a question or correct a mistake. Despite all this, she had no intention of retiring.

"What's the point? I'd just sit at home waiting to die?"

And then one morning, it was peaceful. It was the sort of peace that should have been noted as "Quiet, too quiet," but it wasn't until somebody screamed that we became aware of just how silent it had been. The body was taken away by paramedics. The rest of us were given the afternoon off with pay. We had a round of drinks in her honor, and beyond that it was back to work the next day. I don't know if anybody else attended the funeral but I didn't.

I didn't miss Joyce the way I'd miss a friend, or a loved one. It's not like we ever talked about anything interesting, and the truth of it was that work was easier without hearing her mutter one cubicle over. But unlike somebody I'm close to, I was aware of her absence every day. I lived alone, and there was no friend, no family member who I'd expect to see or hear from every day, maybe not even every week. But I saw Joyce's desk every day, cleaned of papers and supplies, just a blank space waiting for a new occupant. It was a sad memorial, and one that made me look around at the rest of my office wondering who would go next. I knew it was years until it was likely to be me, but I had a dread that when it came, I'd leave behind the same smattering of unfinished work, and an overused stapler.

Contrary to the movies, profound life changes are not easy to exact. To presume that some greater calling is available to you, if you merely reach out your hand is overly optimistic at best. I know, I tried holding out my hands, waiting for something good to fall in my lap. Something better, something real. But slowly, the idea crept into my brain, that I'd never have that life, I didn't even know what that life would mean to me, it wasn't even what I wanted. What I craved, hungered for, was a better death. I started walking home from work, alert for children playing ball in the street, sniffing the air for the smell of fire. I imagined giving my life up to save a total stranger. I went to pools, looking for people flailing in need of help. I was prepared to place myself between bodega clerk and armed robber. The truth is that life offers very few opportunities for heroics. And so I contacted the short man in the Italian suit. If I could not die an interesting death naturally, I would have one planned out for me.

It had taken six months and I had done what I could to fill up my days in the meantime. I made it a rule that I had to go out every day to give my operative a chance. Minimally, that meant getting a morning coffee at the local cafe. I'd often sit there for hours, reading my favorite books one last time or the ones I'd always intended to. I visited museums, as well as the city's various tourist destinations that as a local I'd never actually gone to. I toured the historical graveyards with avid interest. The art museums were my favorites, though, and it was in the Egyptian wing of one that I met Christina.

She was on one knee sketching furiously, and as I rounded a sarcophagus, I stumbled over her. The two of us fell in a heap, her pencil skittering across the floor. I was up first, offering her my hand.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going."

"No, no, it's my fault. Sometimes I get like that where I just want to start sketching without a thought to where I am. Did you see where my pencil went?"

It had landed near a statue of a Pharaoh, well inside the markings which nobody was supposed to pass. Christina's eyes looked at it with despair.

"I'll get it for you," I strode valiantly to the line, and then made an exaggerated search for security guards and laser eyes, I reached over to retrieve the pencil. I handed it back to her with mock solemnity.

"How can I ever thank you?"

"Would you have dinner with me?"

"I think there's some ancient Egyptian saying about how one should never go to dinner with strange men you meet in tombs."

"Right, but that pencil already has a mummy's curse on it, and we've both touched it, so what else do we have to lose?"

"Well, I suppose if we're going to die anyway, then we might as well have dinner first."

It was the best date I'd ever been on. In the past, I'd always been timid about the details of my life. My go nowhere job, my insecurities about the future. That night, I didn't have a care or a concern. I wasn't trying to create something lasting, I was simply enjoying the company of an attractive woman, and to my surprise, she seemed to be enjoying my company as well. That night, she gave me her number and a kiss before she descended into the subway.

Soon enough, we were meeting in the evenings, she'd stay the night, and we'd wander around town together the following morning. Knowing we had so little time, I allowed myself to be far more open than I'd be otherwise, unexpectedly blurting out that I loved her one evening as we walked by the river. I was almost sure that I'd receive the assassin's bullet right then in a fatal burst of irony, but still I lived. Christina twined her fingers with mine, and leaned her head against my shoulder.

My last morning alive, I knew that Christina would be waiting for me when I got home. I knew she'd be mad, would want to know where I'd been. She'd probably gone through all the possibilities in her head, that I'd been in an accident, in a hospital without memory of who I was, or maybe dead, but without identification. Or maybe the optimistic sit-com version where I was intending on proposing to her that morning, but through various comic situations I had to track down the wedding ring. Of course, by the time I arrived, she'd settled on the obvious answer, that I'd been with another woman, and of course, she was correct.

When summer began, I had agreed to have Christina move in with me. She was in need, and I was still viewing everything with the view that it was temporary. However serious things seemed to be getting, I knew that I always had an out. Not a great way of viewing a relationship, but I figured I could break up with her, or just wait until I was killed. At least with the latter, she could add a little spice to her own life narrative, the man she lost to an unknown killer's bullet. But more and more, I was thinking like that, looking towards the out. The months had passed, and my life had gone back to a routine. I'd even picked up a part time job at a bookstore to fill up some of the hours. I'd been to every museum in town, read all the books in my queue, and started picking up new stuff at random. My fling had become a relationship, and while I felt nothing was worth arguing over, I still fell for Christina's bait, and we'd argue over nothing.

So the night before, when Melanie invited me along with the others for post-shift drinks, I was glad to not go home. Melanie was one of those beautiful, intelligent nihilists. The sort of person who wanted something to believe in but couldn't help pick everything into so many pieces that there was nothing to hold on to when she was done. Maybe she'd seen my own fatalism, or knew that I wouldn't hang around long enough to utterly disappoint her. I don't know. But we were the last to leave the bar that night, my last night on earth, and when she stumbled up the stairs to her apartment, she held on to me for a moment as if I were real.

So the sun had already long since risen when I made the walk back to my house on my last day alive. I knew that Christina would be waiting for me when I got home. I knew she'd expect an explanation, but I didn't have any, nothing I could tell her. And there she was in the living room when I opened the door, her arms crossed, sitting on the couch. Had she been like that for hours, or did she pose specifically when she heard my key in the door.

"I think we should call it quits," I said.

"You think so?" she was on her feet fast, incredibly fast. A lamp hit the floor smashing.

"I'm sorry, I never should have begun this in the first place."

"No, you shouldn't have," and she was in my arms, her head against my shoulder, leaving my shirt wet with tears.

And then she stepped away, and I felt the knife stuck between my ribs. She was lowering me to the floor, and then my head was in her lap, while she stroked my hair. I was staring up into her face, my mouth fumbling for words. She shushed me, but still I tried until I found them.

"Thank you."