I should have worried when she bought the sketchbook, but I suppose I was just glad she had found a hobby. It's not healthy for members of our profession to neglect their creative side. And for Kirika, who only knew how to destroy… so I was relieved and didn't ask any questions.
Then I saw her with the man down by the Seine, and I knew. Of course something had triggered her sudden interest in art. She had caught a glimpse of a different world and its possibilities, and she eagerly fell in love with someone who embodied it, just as I had done.
I tried to warn her. Over lunch, I told her it would be best if she didn't see him again. Of course she didn't listen. She couldn't. Would I have listened, if there had been someone around to warn me?
Still, I wonder if I could have tried harder. Or maybe I was too insistent, too brusque... it's so hard to tell. My mind comes back to the memory of that lunch often. The scent of the coffee had taken me back, as it always does, to John. To his smile, to lunches outside the American embassy where he worked, to spirited discussions of Ernest Hemingway and his other favorite writers, to the touch of his hand on my neck just behind my hair...
Did I stop trying to persuade her because I thought I'd made my point? Or because I knew she wouldn't listen anyway? Perhaps I just wanted to embrace the foolish, crazy hope that the world wouldn't hurt her, that her love could protect them, that for her it would be different.
It wasn't, of course. Kirika didn't have to say anything; I saw the look in her eyes when she slid her sketchbook into a brown paper bag, and I knew everything. I saw her friend jumping in front of the bullet trying to protect her—or was that John again? The gunshots overlapped in my mind; their blood mingled in the streets. His eyes had widened in shock as he fell to the pavement. He hadn't deserved any of it.
"You idiot," I said, trying to hide my tears. "This is why I told you…that's why—that's why I told you…"
I think again of giving up this life. Kirika and I could throw our guns in the river and trade bullets for boyfriends. Get a job in an office or a restaurant. Walk down the streets without looking around corners and over our shoulders. Grow old surrounded by friends and children, love and laughter. It would be the easiest thing in the world.
I hear John's laughter, and his voice as he repeats his favorite quote: "Yes. Isn't it pretty to think so?"