This line of work can be nothing but songs you sing to yourself between curtain calls.

This line of work can be nothing but songs you sing to yourself between curtain calls.

Just be careful. They tend to get stuck in your head.

Line them up. I write murder ballads in my sleep.

The night was clear and the moon was yellow. And the leaves came tumbling down.

Not enough slots.

I don't want to kill anyone, if I can help it.

Don't fret, philosophical authorities have declared with confidence that 'death is not the end'. Nice line for a song, don't you think?

Some jobs stick to you. Some people too.

It's usually the bloodier affairs, incited by 'forces of nature', those human lightning rods -- the ones they write songs about.

What kind of songs?

Folk requiems. The popular form of our era.

Trauma beaten into beauty, rendered bearable through rhythm and rhyme. Contained. Whatever gets you through the next assignment.

Memories projected upon a white bedsheet, rough with grain and burned by cigarettes.

Become a different person every time, then they can't catch up.

In theory, yes. Leave the ghosts haunting the safehouses.

And seal the doors behind you.

It's not real. We're called international actors for a reason.

Two shots to the back of the head. Now they're all dead.

Look at that, writing songs already. Takes the sting out, doesn't it?

The blood's fake, the deaths are scripted and blocked...

And the killers are all tragic heroes who got what they had coming.

Will anyone write songs about me?

That depends on how you go out. And who you take with you.

And who packs you off.

I don't hear any music.

It's there -- just beyond the shrieks and gunsmoke and half-muttered last words.