“You’re special to him too,” you are told. Princess lights some candles, as he always does, for dinner. Tonight he’s made a light chilled cucumber soup with a little mint and lemon zest. Then it’s some broiled salmon crusted with crushed almonds and pepper served on angel hair with crisp vegetables. You don’t like fish—well, not salmon, but this is pretty damn good. And you’re not in a position to complain anyway. You did like the soup, and you tell Princess. You might be his job, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be polite.
     “I’m glad you like it. I wasn’t sure about the almonds with the salmon, but I think it worked out pretty well.” He grabs a magazine from the counter, hands it to you, open. “She suggested the soup.” It’s Martha Stewart. Suddenly you’re crying.
     Princess hands you a clean napkin. He says you shouldn’t get yourself worked up. He says not to worry, and that it won’t be long now. A few days, no more. You aren’t reassured. You thought since they were all on HBO now, you thought everyone was safe. Thought no one would dare embody the cliché, but it doesn’t seem quite the anachronism you expected it to be. You lamented at first that he wasn’t more like that French guy in that movie, but now you’re glad. The French guy didn’t look like he could cook, and, well, Princess can.
     But this isn’t about you.

Fante calls in the morning, he says the suit is ready, and that his son will be at the shop all day if Princess wants to pick it up. Princess says thanks, pulls on his shoes. It’s not so hot yet that he needs to take a cab, so he thinks he’ll walk to the Starbucks and see if maybe his girl is there. She made a nice americano. Princess won’t let anyone tell him that the corporatization of coffee makes for consistent quality that not even the dirtiest coffee-hating nazi bastard could screw up, he knows that even if the machines do most of the work, still it takes a pure soul and a strong heart—not to mention family—to be the sort of person that can give a good americano. This girl, not only was she sensitive to the structure of her world, this little world of just a few several blocks that had cradled Princess his entire life, but her eyes they were deep espresso, almost black, and her teeth weren’t straightened, but instead she let them gap just a little and cross just so; she doesn’t even know they needed work. Not that Princess is saying they did.
     He asks you do you need anything, and takes you to the bathroom. He’s rushing just a little, he’s a little distracted. He forgets to turn on the light in the closet when he leaves, but then he comes back, apologizes and lights the little lamp, locks you in, then leaves again. You hear the three solid clicks of the locks on the closet, and then a second or two later the softer grinding turn of the simpler lock on the knob on the door, and you’re alone again.
     Princess doesn’t notice Johnny Falcon pull up next to him and pace him for half a block. Johnny finally calls out, asking does Princess need a ride, in such a hurry as he is, apparently, this morning? Princess waves him on. “Hey Princess, you got you a date or something?” Johnny asks, laughing. And Princess realizes how inappropriate it might appear, him so giddy on the way to pick up the funeral clothes, and he slows his pace some, takes the spring a little out of his step. He pulls down the smile and lowers his eyes. He waves Johnny on again and Johnny shrugs and pulls out into traffic. When the cab is out of sight, Princess feels light again, and turns his head to the sky, scanning the tops of the trees in the Park for young birds.
     He knows someday he’ll look up and there won’t be anything any more. This is all just the little shudders and clicks of a car cooling down; it’s been off, abandoned on some cosmic back road, and one day or another it’ll all stop. But he doesn’t care today. And he doesn’t care that he doesn’t care. He’s got a new suit, and there’s a girl just around the corner with thick black hair too heavy to hold a ponytail, whose shine makes it fall like olive oil over itself, each strand a slippery molecule sliding under its own weight to rest perfectly next to the others… he doesn’t want to think of her in terms of food. It’s strange. He tries thinking of it less organically, then just gives up, smiling about his suit and his coffee. It doesn’t matter the reason for the suit. It is always a good thing, a new one.
     And she is there, at Starbucks, and she smiles the second he walks in. Princess smiles back, nods, and this girl, this wonderful girl who understands this small world, she moves immediately to the machine and begins to pull her perfect miracle for him. Princess looks around, behind the counter, at the tables. The girl says, “Oh, the boy? From yesterday?” Princess nods. “He’s fired. He’s going back to L.A.” She hands him his americano, iced, glorious.
     Princess wonders does maybe she have a name, but not aloud, and then decides that maybe it’s best that she remain as is. She didn’t ask his. He left it alone. Princess puts ten dollars in the tip glass. He wanted to put a hundred, since that’s how things are done, but he thought it might be misinterpreted here, while the ten would convey the same meaning without drawing attention. The hundreds that get passed around, they don’t get spent, only exchanged now and then for newer bills. They’re like tokens. This girl, she needs the money, and were Princess to give her the hundred she’d have to spend it. He doesn’t want to put her in that position. He says, Thank you. He nods and she smiles and he leaves.
     Salvador, Fante’s son, is skating outside the shop when Princess arrives.
     “What’s up, P?” he says, flipping his board and falling on his ass.
     Princess takes Salvador’s board. He walks into the shop.
     Salvador rushes in behind him, “I’ll get your suit. You got a minute, to try it on?” Princess says he does. Salvador ducks into the back, returns eight seconds later with the suit, black.
     No such thing as double-breasted for Princess, he never liked the boxy, big look, though he did understand the utility it offered when one had to carry certain tools with them. Before ’68 that wasn’t an issue, so Princess was always single-breasting himself, alternating between two and three buttons on the jacket, depending on his mood, no break on the cuff of the pants, pleats making their appearance as the years went by. The lines were always simple, though he could have dandied himself, he’d been handsome enough to pull it off without looking like a puff. He kept everything straight, thinking himself like a tower, a slender tree, always reaching up; Princess never needed to look solid, never wanted to project the imposing appearance the other guys sought. Fante had graduated Princess to four buttons with this suit—they’d played with five, six, even eight buttons back in the day, for the boys who were too thin to pull off the double, who were more concerned with style than tradition, though they invariably dropped the number of buttons as they matured, every last one of them bulking up on pasta and sidearms until they had to go for boxy. This one, Fante’s created an architectural masterpiece worthy of the runways, but understated enough for a sixty five-year old man to wear without looking ridiculous. A single vent in the back of the jacket, a single pleat on the pants, a straight line from the chest to the waist and the lining of the pants working with hidden seams to provide the intrinsic structure necessary to carry the line all the way to the cuff; Princess stepped into the fitting room and changed. Fante had forgotten to take into account the slight irregularity in Princess’ shoulders, how the right dipped just a centimeter lower than the left, which caused the right lapel to push out just a little. Princess understood, it wasn’t a big deal. He’d move the buttons later, maybe half a centimeter. It would make the bottom a bit uneven, but not so much that anyone except Fante would notice. The bulge in the lapel would make him look like he was carrying, and he didn’t want that. He didn’t carry his gun like that. Princess had always favored a special holster that placed his gun, a gift from Dominic P. after his first job, in the small of his back. It made him stand straighter and that always made the suits hang the way they were meant to, and though he wasn’t a man with many pretensions, he did like the antiquated idealized look of the man of industry, head up, eyes to the future. It did not matter to the suit that there wasn’t anything to look toward anymore.
     “All cool, P?” Salvador asked through the door. Princess stepped into his shoes, stepped out of the room, holding his shoulders even to make the suit hang straight. “Shit man, that’s tight. Turn around now… yeah, that’s the shit.”
     “Thank you, Salvador,” Princess said. “And thank your father for me.”
     “Dad plies him a mean trade. Get you all the girls in that rig.”
     Princess stepped back into the fitting room and changed. Salvador called through the door, “Next one you let me make it, O.K.?” Princess said he would. He didn’t know when he would need another, but a new one is always a good thing. Wouldn’t hurt to have more.
     “I’ll come in next week,” Princess said. He asked Salvador to wrap the suit for him.

Peter called the night before the funeral. Princess was making dinner while you sat at the table, trying to do a crossword in the paper. The ropes made it difficult to see what you were doing, and Princess was sympathetic to your trouble, but you didn’t ask him for anything. He’d come by and give you answers every few minutes, lifting your hands by the rope between your wrists, say, “38 down is malign,” then, “55 across is never on a Sunday—one word,” and then drop your hands back on the table. Princess looks at you once while he’s talking to Peter, and you know this has something to do with you. You haven’t bothered to try to figure out what your significance is here, what exactly any of this has to do with you. You just know that it does. Now you know that it has something to do with Peter, with Chicago maybe, though that doesn’t help any, you still don’t know anything.
     “12 down is agrarian,” Princess isn’t on the phone anymore. He goes back to the kitchen and finishes preparing the salads. You’re having big Caesar salads tonight, and Princess picked up some Gelato on the way home, and a movie. You read The Stranger today, Princess gave it to you before he went out, and you thought maybe he was saying something with it. You’d read it in high school and you liked it. You didn’t expect to, but you liked it again today.
     After dinner Princess washes the dishes. You offer to help, just kidding of course, but Princess thanks you and hands you a towel, reminding you to be careful to not get the ropes wet.
     You eat gelato on the couch and watch “The African Queen.” There’s no symbolism here, this is not a metaphor for anything, no one’s trying to tell you anything. Princess just wants to see it, and you’re watching it with him.

Princess lets you sleep in the next morning. You don’t have any sense of time in the closet, so you don’t know how long you slept until Princess opens the door and you can tell by the light in the apartment that it’s late morning. You have only a few hours before the funeral, so you figure this is all going to be over soon. Confusion has resigned you, Camus has confirmed you; there’s something about certainty and unavoidability that makes you placid. You tell Princess you don’t need breakfast, you’d just like to finish this, if he doesn’t mind. You’re tired, you’re bored, and though Princess has been more than kind, the most genial of hosts, even if you did spend the last week bound in a closet, you’re ready to have this done with.
     “You are coming with me to the funeral,” Princess says, making a small adjustment on something on the table.
     And suddenly, it’s all clear. Sort of. Princess’ job is to bring you to the funeral. You don’t know why it’s important, why you have to be there—someone could have just called and you would have been on a plane within an hour, they didn’t have to go this route. You don’t pretend to understand the way things work, but still, they could have just called you. You say you don’t have anything to wear, and Princess tells you that’s not a problem, he has suits enough. One of them will fit you. You like this idea. Those suits are nice.
     Princess pulls one of them out, a simple, charcoal gray three-button affair that looks about your size. You ask how you’re supposed to get dressed with the ropes and all, but even as you’re asking Princess starts to untie you. He indicates the bathroom, tells you there are fresh towels and you go happily in, steaming a week’s worth of your own odors off your body. You shave, you find some pomade, you make yourself good enough for the suit.
     You walk into the living room, wearing the boxers and tee shirt Princess left by the sink. Princess approaches you, holding some kind of belt with a small black box in the middle, the thing he’d been messing with on the table. “A simple precaution,” he explains, “not something I want to do, but necessary, you understand.” He shows you how it works, how the box is a tazer with electrodes that will rest on either side of your spine, and he holds out a small remote, presses the button and demonstrates for you that it is more than sufficient to immobilize you—should that be required. You assure him that you’ll be good—you’re almost giddy, but you do a good job of suppressing it—and strap the thing on yourself with a smile and small flourish, turning around to show him how well it fits. Princess smiles and makes some small adjustments to make sure it’s placed right and then hands you the suit. The shirt’s white, the tie a predominantly blue pattern. You look good. Probably not as good as Princess did when he wore this, but it’s better than anything you own. Your shoes will do. They need a shine; Princess gives you the means and spreads some newspaper on the floor, asking you to be careful of the suit.

Princess hails a cab out in front of the apartment. It’s not Johnny that stops. He’s at the funeral. Everyone’s at the funeral. Johnny couldn’t afford the time off or the plane fare, but arrangements were made, as they were for everyone, and so he’s there instead of in the front seat of the cab that you and Princess climb into, looking nothing at all like what you are, and only a little like a couple of guys on their way to a funeral, on their way to view a funeral anyway, if not to make a physical appearance.
     “Intended destination?” the driver inquires, not turning around, just looking a little in the mirror.
     “52nd and Madison,” Princess says. This tells you nothing. The driver launches himself into traffic, a little heavy right now, honking and swerving. “We have time to spare,” Princess tells the driver. And part of you knows that normally this would have no effect on your average cabbie, but you’ve just spent the last week in this man’s closet, and so you’re not surprised when the driver immediately slows down and begins to drive sensibly. You try to pinpoint the why of it, the what of the communication between Princess and this man who does not know him. You don’t know, you’re so used to the idea of Princess as what he is, you don’t know how anyone else might see him.
     It’s a good day. Bright, clear, not hot. Birds and happy people. Unhappy people too, sure, but they’re not in the way, and so their unhappiness doesn’t matter. Some of them might be dying even, on the way to see their oncologists or surgeons, but nobody’s dying right now. No one is going to die today. That much you know. That whole death thing is on hold at the moment, out of deference to Joe.
     Princess pays the driver, tips him well, and you get out of the cab. Princess steers you toward a Kinko’s, and you’re about to ask questions, you’re about to say at least five stupid things, but you hold back and wait for the answers, since they’re coming. You don’t need to ask anything, everything’s taken care of already. Princess holds the door to Kinko’s open, and you almost do it, you almost ask questions, but again you have the good sense to keep your mouth shut. You are left by a register while Princess talks to a boy over by the computers. The boy nods, says something about the last one finishing up a simple print job right now, but yes it’ll be clear in under five minutes. Princess thanks him and comes back to retrieve you. You had a full minute there, you suddenly realize. You could have left. Princess wasn’t watching you at all, and the range on your belt thing probably didn’t even reach to the door, you could have gone. It’s the suit that held you. Princess might not care about you, but he would have hunted you down to get the suit back, you’re certain of that. But the moment’s gone, the chance past, and really, it would have negated the last week in the closet. Your curiosity unsated and you would have never known for sure what this was all about. It might be enough to know that for some unknown reason someone had arranged for your presence at a copy shop to sit with this old hit man and watch them lay Joe to rest, but you’re not too sure about that.
     Princess motions you to follow, using a small gesture, his hands clear of the pocket holding the trigger. No coercion, no threat, just a simple request. You comply and follow Princess to the computers. They’ve cleared it out for you. It’s just you and Princess, and you realize they’re emptying out the whole shop. The doors are locked and the clerks disappear into the back. You can see a security camera. You wonder if they’re watching. You wonder what there will be to see.
     On top of the monitor of one of the Macs is a little orb-shaped camera. Princess goes to that computer, and you follow him, waiting for an invitation to sit or speak or play dead or something. You stop waiting, pull up a chair and watch Princess open up a browser, type in an IP address, then mess with some settings on the site that comes up. After a brief lapse where the computer looks to have locked up, a small scene emerges. Strange textured gray, some kind of jiggly abstractionist painting, you’re not sure. It shifts and you see a lever, a handle of some kind, and then it pans up and you’re seeing the back of a car seat. A ding from the computer’s speakers and then someone’s voice says, “Hey, he’s on. It’s Princess…” and then the view swings crazy and someone’s nose and mouth fill the screen. “Hey Princess! Howareya?”
     Princess laughs, a little, the first laugh you think you’ve heard. “You’re too close.” A pause while the camera swings again. “You need your teeth cleaned.” He didn’t even laugh during the movie last night, he was so serious about it.
     The screen shows the back seat of a car. A Lincoln, you think. Maybe a BMW. Not that they’re similar, but it really could be either. You see a couple of people, one with a laptop, the other with his arm in some kind of exploded perspective: he must be holding the camera. You try to figure out what kind of hookup they’ve got here, satellite phone? Would a cell phone be able to handle this kind of transmission? They answer it for you: “Wireless T1, baby, you like it?”
     Princess smiles, asks how their families are, how everyone’s holding up. The men in the car turn serious, somber, suit themselves to the occasion. “We’ll be at Peter and Paul in a minute, most everyone’s there already. Shame you couldn’t be here, but you got your responsibilities.”
     “I’m there enough,” Princess says, “you just keep the connection open. You got full batteries?”
     One of the men in the car snorts and says something about batteries, the other looks at the screen of the laptop. “Says we’ve got 98 percent here. Should be good for the duration, but we got an extra in case we got to switch. In such case, we’ll do it on the way to the cemetery, O.K.?”
     Princess tells them it doesn’t matter too much to him. He says car rides aren’t all that interesting to him anyway, and as long as they do the switch then, it doesn’t make any difference. You hear the car stop, doors open, and then the perspective swings crazy again and the screen bounces for a few seconds. You can make out brick and other masonry, some desert-looking plants, and then it slows down and the guy with the camera pans it right then left, then up and down, slowly showing you the façade of the church, some people milling out front. “We’re going in now,” one of them says. Then dark for a second, and then you can make out the interior of the church. The men move to the front and you get a panoramic shot of the back of a pew and then the altar as they move the camera into place.
     “We’ve still got some time,” Princess tells you. You settle in for the wait. You want to say surreal, but that sounds stupid. You want to turn to someone, nudge them, share their popcorn or something. You don’t know what to think of this, this unprecedented thing, but it doesn’t really matter what you think, since this isn’t about you anyway. But still, you want to commentate, you want to editorialize, you want to have something to say and someone to say it to… you’ll tell your mother, you’ll tell your friends, they’ve all got to be wondering where you’ve been these last several days, and even though no one will believe you, they’re going to love the story nonetheless. They’ll say you should write it down, and maybe you will. Maybe you’ll submit it to Esquire or GQ. They’d so go for this kind of thing. You’ll have to play up the locked in a closet in the apartment of an old hit man part, make it more… something. The reality there wouldn’t translate well, you’ll have to find some peripheral tale there, some long dark closet of the soul angle to play upon it.
     People are moving past the camera, everyone stopping and saying hello, everyone wishing he could be there, it’s been so long, but everyone understanding. You wonder do they see you. You wonder if it matters to them. Probably not. They probably don’t know anything about you, and that’s probably best. Definitely best if none of these people see you. One story for Esquire or GQ is quite enough, thank you.
     The ceremony starts, the camera is pointed toward the back of the church, and follows the progress of the casket and its entourage up the aisle to the front of the church. There are only five pallbearers. You wonder what this means. You look at Princess and you think you understand. Princess was supposed to be there. Princess was the sixth, but he’s here with you, doing this stupid job.
     It’s a good Catholic ceremony. You’ve always kind of liked how every ceremony is just a mass with other stuff going on. Follows the same progression, the same steps taken every time, and you’re not surprised one bit when Princess stands at the beginning—you stand with him, you know when to do everything too—and waits for the opening bit to finish before he sits. An Alleluia, some this, some that, and then you’re on your knees just like Princess, just like everyone at the church. Profession of Faith, Mysteries of Faith, Homily, Offertory… it’s all there. You don’t recognize the scripture, but you’re sure you’ve heard it before. Then the funereal bits are pieced in, and the Cardinal says something and then Bishop says something, then a whole bunch of other people in beautiful suits, though none as beautiful as yours; Princess’ outshines your own and you wish for him that he could have been there, the Mafioso fashion event of the decade. Shame to waste such a suit on Kinko’s. Communion comes after the Offertory, and you are surprised when Princess pulls from his pocket a small gold container, opens it to reveal that he’s brought the Host with him. He turns to you: “The body of Christ.”
     “Amen,” you say, accepting the Lord into your mouth.
     Princess takes his own, and then you’re both on your knees again. For like twenty minutes this time, they’re silent so long. And then Princess touches your shoulder, you zoned out a little, and you stand with him while the ceremony is concluded. The camera follows the casket back down the aisle and out the shining mouth of the church, brilliant the way you imagine the gates of Heaven must be, and you know that you and Princess are the only ones to have this perspective, to see the Ascension of Joe.
     And then everyone files out, then the camera crew moves back to the car.
     “Beautiful ceremony,” you say.
     Princess agrees, then asks you to be quiet for a while, until this is done.
     The guys in the car come back on screen, “Hey, we’re going to shut down and switch, all right? We’re going to go into standby, so we don’t have to reboot. I don’t know if that’ll work, but it’s worth a shot.”
     Princess says he’ll be there, he’ll see them in a minute.
     You think that standby only works if there’s a battery in, but who knows? You try to figure out how that all works, if the state of the computer is saved onto the drive, or if it just remains in RAM, but it doesn’t matter, since they’re back almost immediately, congratulating themselves. “Bobby got a damn fine piece of machinery here,” you are informed. And you agree.
     The majority of the ride is spent watching the knee and the edge of the screen of the laptop. Despite their momentary joviality with the laptop thing, they’re still pretty serious, still a little beat up by the day. You wonder how much a wireless T1 runs these days, where you get one anyway, what the limitations and capabilities are… is it in the trunk, is there a truck following the car and they’ve got a wireless router and wireless network card and…
     The car arrives at the cemetery. Must not have been too far. You’re used to endless processions from one side of town to the other, taking hours sometimes. But then, nobody’s ever been Joe in the lead car before. And they’re not here, so it may very well be a short ride… but considering everything else you’ve seen in the last week, they probably just bulldozed a straight line from the church to the cemetery. In your little sense of what absurd really means anymore, that doesn’t really fall within the definition. That’ll sound good in the article, the metaphor, whatever it might be, the straight and narrow line of destruction created to take this man to paradise. You’re thinking that kind of thing is more Esquire’s style.
     The colors on the screen are washed out by the bright sunlight. God himself made an appearance at the interment, you write on a little powerbook in your head. Nobody talks, except the priest, and he’s brief. Then they let fly the doves, a nice touch, you think, however cliché. And then it’s done. One of the guys with the laptop, his voice hoarse, whispers that they’re going to shut down now, and they’ll see Princess in a couple of days. Princess says thank you to them, says goodbye and closes the browser.
     “Thank you for attending this with me,” he says to you, and stands.
     You stand and follow Princess out of the shop. He hails a cab and gives an address not his. He explains that he’d like to walk the last couple of blocks.
     It’s a nice walk through the park back to his apartment. No homeless people, just happy people, happy and alive and free. You’re betting that the infinitely considerate Princess has somehow arranged to have your clothes laundered, ironed, perfumed, folded… that they’ll be ready for you when you get back upstairs. You’ll step out a hundred times better than you stepped in, cleaner and smelling better, a whole new man ready for a night on the town.
     You enter the building and take the stairs. Princess behind you, you’re taking the steps two, three at a time. You’re giddy and you can’t wait to start writing. Should you see some people first, test the story on a couple of audiences, get some style and flow going before you try to type it out? That seems the best bet.
Princess is attaching a silencer to his gun. You don’t know this.
     There are two men waiting in Princess’ apartment. You do not know this either.
     You reach the door and Princess puts a bullet in your head. The door opens and the men step out and take care of you. See, this wasn’t about you. This was never about you.
     “He can keep the suit,” Princess tells them. “Fante made it for him. It’s his.”
     “Nice suit,” one of the men says.
     “Fante does good work,” the other agrees, “That’s his on you, too, isn’t it?”
     Princess says it is. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to it, then,” he says and goes back downstairs. He wants some espresso.
     Looking at the park, something catches Princess’ eye. Above the trees, off to his right, the paper of the sky looks to be peeling, its old adhesive gummy and stringy, not the sort of stuff one would use for something meant to last forever. It held long enough, longer than it was needed. Princess turns away and walks, not hiding the spring in his step this time, to Starbucks. He smiles, he even whistles a little.
     “Well, hello Mister President!” the girl says when he walks in. Princess bows and asks her would she like to dance.