He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. In keeping with the style of the room, it was properly cracked. His reflection somewhat split, he met his own gaze a bit cubistically. The blemish on his cheek was the same as ever, but he gave thanks to various creators that it had at least stopped growing. For a while he had worried that it would end up covering his whole face.
Why did Kerstin’s presence always make him think of that blemish?
He wandered into the bedroom, naked, and by the time he covered the twelve feet, he was dry; when he lay down on the bed, the sweat began to return. He lay there and pondered his male organ. He considered masturbating-that was always a way to make oneself feel at home-but the circumstances weren’t right. Instead, he practiced an appropriate breathing method, as strength-preserving as possible, and quickly fell asleep.
In his dream, just at the right moment, Kerstin popped in. He was in a different hotel room. He was sleeping in his sleep and dreaming in his dream. Or rather, in his dream, he found himself in a state between dream and wakefulness. Then she came in. From nowhere, her small, dark figure sailed through the room. In his dream they had talked about sex earlier that evening, a bit tipsily, but openly, maturely, modernly. It didn’t have to result in anything.
He had happened-if you could call it happened-to mention his favorite fantasy, and now she was lying beside him and masturbating, just a few feet away. His subconscious had pedantically stored the memory of each of her movements, and for a year it had drawn them forth at night, every little singularity in the way she touched herself, every caress; and a whole collection of his desires and longings were interspersed with every movement. Then there was a knock, and she drew her hand down through the triangle of hair like a harrow; there was a knock, and she slowly, slowly spread her legs; there was a knock, and she caught hold of…
There was a knock.
He shot straight up in bed and looked down at his erection.
“Paul?” a feminine whisper came through the door. “Are you awake?”
“Yes! I’m naked!” He was almost awake. “Awake!” he called a bit louder, hoping that the door was resistant to Freudian slips. “Is it time already?”
“Not really,” said Kerstin. “Will you let me in?”
“Hold on,” He was finally awake. His erection was still awfully stiff. He came up with a white lie: “I’m in the shower, wait a minute!”
Why couldn’t he work with this woman without making her into a sex object? Was he not a grown man? He thought he had a relatively healthy view of equality and women’s rights and all, but lust was a tyrant that would always live on. If anything, he thought, he was making her into a sex subject, but where the fuck was the limit?
Ridiculously, his erection didn’t give up. He laughed at himself. What a fool! And the fool had to make a choice: put her off, and risk burning up the last vestiges of their built-up trust, or else be honest-and risk burning up the last vestiges of their built-up trust.
He teetered on the brink for a few seconds, then: “I’ve got an erection.”
“What the hell are you saying? Let me in.”
He grabbed a towel from in the bathroom and wrapped it around himself. It looked so pathetic that it no longer was pathetic by the time he reached the door and turned the key. She stepped in, clad in an elegant, tight little black dress.
“What did you say?” she asked the more or less presentable newly showered person.
“I was in the shower,” he said, gesturing awkwardly. “I didn’t think it was time yet.”
“But you’re dry,” she said skeptically.
“The heat. Everything dries right away.”
“It isn’t time yet,” she said in a more professional tone, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I just thought we could talk through our strategy.”
“Strategy?” He bent over the suitcase on the other side of the bed. His towel wasn’t on tightly, so he had to hold it with one hand and undo the straps of the suitcase with the other. It wasn’t all that easy.
“That looks hard,” she said maternally, turning away. “Let go of the towel. I promise not to look.”
Relieved, he let go of the towel, took out fresh clothes, and put them on. “Why do we need a strategy?”
“It’s the FBI we’re going to meet with. They’re going to see us as the country cousins on a visit to the big city. They’ll consider it to be their primary task to make sure we don’t get run over or robbed and murdered or become junkies. We have to know exactly what we want to do here and stand firm. They’re the ones who are going to supply us with tasks, not the other way around; the killer is on our turf. So what is it we’re actually doing here?”
He took out a narrow purple tie and started to tie it. “We’re going to fish for clues and see if they’ve missed anything.”
“But we can’t put it that way… Are you going to wear that?”
He looked down himself. “What?”
“We probably shouldn’t look more countrified than we are. We are from a big city, after all, even if it is a small one.”
“What’s wrong?” he said, mystified.
“What color is your shirt?” she said pedagogically.
“Blue,” he said.
“It’s closer to azure. And your tie?”
“Purple?”
“Do those go together?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“Come here.” He obeyed her. She untied the tie and started to unbutton his shirt.
Control yourself, he ordered his unruly nether regions. “What are you doing?” he asked calmly.
“Since I’m assuming you have only one tie with you, we’ll have to change the shirt. What have you got?” She rooted around in his suitcase and took out a white one. “This’ll have to do.” She tossed it to him.
“No,” she said, changing the subject abruptly, “we can’t present it as though we’re here to correct their mistakes. That might be a sensitive subject-if not for Larner, then for his superiors.”
“So we ought to focus on the Swedish stuff?” he said, buttoning his shirt.
“I think so, yes. But first and foremost we ought to share our information liberally. It could be that they’ll be able to add something, of course, but above all it’s a goodwill gesture. If we lay our cards on the table, maybe we’ll get a few cards back.”
“So our strategy is, one: unconditionally blurt out everything we have, and two: say we want to go through the material to try to find a Swedish connection.”
“And assure them that we’re here to work on it only from a Swedish perspective. We won’t step on any toes. We’ll be diplomatic. Can you handle that?”
He ought to have felt insulted, but this was the first thing she’d said that approached a personal remark. “Yes.”
“As you know, I’ve gone through all the material we’ve had access to pretty carefully. I don’t know how complete it is, but Larner seems to have latched on to Wayne Jennings a little too early. When Jennings disappeared from the scene, all the ideas disappeared, too. There’s not a single tiny hypothesis among the material from after the break. Maybe I’m being unfair, but Larner seemed to give up after his failure with Jennings. Now he’s just collecting facts. It feels like there should be a lot more to do, not least with the later portion of the case.”
He nodded. Even with his considerably scantier knowledge of the details, he saw that the American side was at a loss when faced with the Kentucky Killer’s return after fifteen years.
“So you don’t think we ought to mention the KGB theory?” he said seriously.
“We can hold off on that for a bit,” she said, just as seriously.
Ray Larner’s lunch consisted of a magnificently authentic pasta carbonara at a little restaurant annex called Divina Commedia on Eleventh Street. Paul and Kerstin were surprised to see the meal served with Loka brand bottled water, but as people said, the world was getting smaller. Larner was in top form and talked exclusively about the art of Italian cooking; he waved off everything else as irrelevant. A long and painfully prestige-loaded argument over whether the world’s best olive oil came from Spain or Italy ended in a thrown game when Kerstin suddenly remembered her diplomatic strategy and let Italy win. Hjelm countered with Greece but scored no goals. Australia got a few unexpected points from a neighboring table.