“I’m flattered you remembered me.”

“How could I forget you?”

“I hear you’re forgetting a lot of things these days.”

Claymore laughed. “I guess I don’t remember much anymore. My brain isn’t working right, probably took too many punches to the head. Did you know I was a fighter?”

“Of course I did.”

“Did you see me fight?”

“No, you weren’t a fighter by the time we met.”

“Just as well, I wasn’t very good. I looked the part, and I was game, but I was too slow and had this bad habit of dropping my right when I tried to throw a jab.”

“I know, you told me.”

“I did?”

“More than once.”

Claymore shook his head. “I suppose that lazy right hand had something to do with why I forget things and don’t always make sense.”

“You make perfect sense now.”

“Good. Do I know him?” Claymore asked as the man who had come into his little apartment moved past where he was sitting and looked out the window.

“No, I don’t think you do.”

“But I know you?”

“Yes.”

“From the old days, when I was boxing?”

“No, after.”

The man Claymore didn’t know looked at the person he did and said, “Maybe it doesn’t matter. He already forgot who you were, and we haven’t been here for five minutes.”

“No,” Claymore said, “I didn’t forget. Some things even a bad brain never forgets. Some things I wish I could forget, but the nightmares are always there to remind me. You ever have nightmares?”

“No.”

“You should.”

The person he knew looked at the one he didn’t and told him, “You heard the man, he remembers.”

The man nodded and drew the hunting knife out of the sheath on his belt.

“You know,” continued the person he knew, “remembering isn’t really a problem for me. It’s the telling people about it.”

“You think I told someone? About you?”

The person nodded.

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. I guess your brain went bad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

The man came from behind Claymore and grabbed his chin with his free hand. He pulled the old boxer’s chin back and dug the knife in under his ear. Once the sharp blade was in deep, he dragged it across Claymore’s neck. The process was fast enough that Claymore was bleeding out before he got his hands up to try to stop it.

The man with the knife stepped away and they both watched Danny ‘The Landmine’ Claymore bleed to death in his easy chair.

“Do the other thing.”

“Why?”

“Because it just seems right.”

“No, that’s not my thing. You want to do it, go ahead.”

The man wiped the blade on one of the few clean spots on Claymore’s blood-soaked shirt and then flipped it over, so he was holding the blade and the handle was facing his partner.

“You think I won’t?”

“No, but I do think if you want to cut on the man some more, you ought to get to it.”

The other person took the blade.

“Since you don’t need to show it to anyone like last time, what are you going to do with it?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

“Okay, we’re done now though, right? You’ll leave Ivy alone?”

“Yeah, we’re done. For now.”

“For now?”

“Yeah. Now shut up and let me cut out punchy’s tongue so we can get the hell out of here.”