“What’s going on, Annie? Something happen?” Annie motioned her over.
“Come on in.”
Then she got up and closed the door.
“Now things are going to change!”
A shudder went down Berit’s spine.
“What do you mean?”
“Curt’s up to something.”
“Up to what?”
“He’s calling an employee meeting. Not today, not tomorrow, but on Monday of all the damn days of the week.” “Employee meeting?”
“Yep. Apparently something he wants to tell us all together.” “Is he going to fire us?”
“Who the heck knows.”
“But… where is he now?”
“Going to a meeting. Gone the rest of the day. Gone tomorrow, too.”
“Oh, Annie… what are we going to do?”
“Do? Nothing we can do until Monday. Just wait. All day tomorrow and wait all weekend, too.”
“Why did he bring it up now? Why couldn’t he wait until Monday then?”
Annie shrugged. Her hair was a mess. She ought to do something with it.
“What did he look like? How did he make the announcement?” “Like always. A big port-salut cheese for a face.” Berit took a paperclip from the desk and began to twist and turn it, bend it backwards.
“I met Elizabeth at lunch, you know, that blonde who works over at Bonniers.”
“That little gossip.”
“Oh, she’s not that bad. But she was cryptically hinting that Curt was going to sell to Bonniers.”
“We’ve heard that one before, and nothing’s ever come of it.” “Well, what if now is the time? Why do you think he’s calling for an employee meeting?”
“You think. So we can be Bonniers employees.” “You would be. You’re still fairly young. But me, I’m turning forty-six this year. I’m not so sure that The Big Boys will take on an old lady like me.”
Annie was silent for a moment.
“But… if he’s selling the company, he’s selling us, too, like, we’re part of the deal,” she exclaimed. “I mean… we go, too. Otherwise, he has to buy us out somehow. Some kind of employment termination amount.”
“Ha! Do you have a golden parachute I don’t know about?”
“No.”
The paper clip broke and snagged her thumb. “What is everyone else saying?”
“Same stuff. They’re scared shitless. Lotta even got a stomach ache and had to go home.”
Berit went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. It was messy and cluttered as usuaclass="underline" dirty coffee mugs, an empty Lean-Cuisine package. She picked that up and tossed it into the garbage, and exclaimed, “Goddamn pit, this place!”
“Come and have coffee,” she angrily called out into the hall, as if it were an order. Everyone came, silent and worried.
The publishing business had twelve employees, including Carl Lüding himself. Non-fiction was their best seller. Or had been. They had one real best-selling author, Sonja Karlberg, who wrote old-fashioned romance novels that, strangely enough, were hits with contemporary readers. She appeared to be a mild and fragile old lady, but Annie, who was her editor, began to feel ill the moment that Sonja Karlson called and said she was on the way in. Sonja Karlson could be furious over the slightest correction and once threw a galley down so hard that both the galley and Annie’s keyboard broke apart.
Silently, everyone took a seat, sipping from their coffee mugs. Outside, dusk was coming, and raindrops had begun to hit the window panes. Berit glanced at the pots with the green plants in the window and noticed that no one had watered them. They were withering. Her stomach knotted. She loved all of this, all these faces around the table now heavy with worry, the mess, the bundles of manuscripts, the stress, the books off to printers, everything that was a part of her work.
She had studied languages at the university. She had no idea what she wanted to do, and chance brought her to the world of publishing. A teeny-tiny ad from a teeny-tiny press that wanted an editor. The house was Strena, and it had since gone out of business, but for a few years, Berit corrected manuscripts for thrillers, and that proved lucrative during the time she married and had children.
At an office party, she began to talk with Carl Lüding. As it turned out, he was expanding his business and he hired her on the spot without demanding a formal degree. But that was the way it tended to turn out for most of them in the publishing world, the hand of chance.
Berit’s husband Tor was an accountant. The first few years, they lived in his cramped, one-room apartment on Thulegatan. It was a challenging time. When the boys were two and three, the family could finally move to a house of their own in Ängby.
Now the boys had moved.
Out of the nest.
She sometimes was sad about not having them home any longer. Now they were grown men and they were lost to her forever.
She left the office early that day, at four in the afternoon. On the way home, she bought two ox fillets and a bottle of red wine. Tor had not come home yet. She changed clothes and set the table in the dining room, using candles and the linen napkins.
“He’s going to think we have something to celebrate,” she thought bitterly.
When she heard him drive in the garage, she put butter in the frying pan and uncorked the wine.
He opened the outer door and hung up his coat, and she heard the thud of his shoes as he untied them and kicked them toward the wall. He came to the kitchen, looking weary.
“I thought we could cheer ourselves up a bit,” she said.
“Well, all right, but why?”
“Why not?”
“Something special? An anniversary or something?”
“Not that I know of. But shouldn’t we have the right to have a cheerful dinner on an average Thursday evening?”
“All right, then.”
They ate their dinner in silence. Berit drank quite a bit of wine, which went to her head and made her tipsy.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked.
“What do you mean with me?”
“Something’s going on, I can tell.”
“Tor, tell me the truth. Are you still attracted to me?”
“Berit!”
“Come on! Do I make you hard and horny?”
He pushed away his plate.
“Why are you blathering about that now?”
“I’m not blathering. I’m asking you a straight question and I want a straight answer. Is that so damned strange?” “You’re my wife.”
“That’s exactly why I’m asking!”
She got up and went around the table, behind him, and placed her hands on his head. He had just begun to go bald right on the top of the skull, she caressed him right there, then let her hands glide down to his shirt, his middle.
“Berit,” he said. “I want to finish eating.”
On Saturday she took the subway out to Hässelby. It felt strange to be riding the subway on the weekend instead of the usual work day, its totally different kinds of passengers, many children and their parents, a different kind of light, other colors, other sounds. She noticed how dirty and rundown everything looked. The floor of the car was blotchy with particles and dried fluids; many of the seats had so much graffiti they looked black.
Snow had come during the night, and it had stayed. She got off at the final station and her memories washed over her, memories from her teenage years. While she walked to the bus stop, she noticed that the area surrounding the subway had been renovated and renewed. The Konsum grocery store was gone. Instead there was a budget store with flashy red sale signs.
She had planned walking to the cemetery, but since the bus was already there, she rode the few stops. The sun glistened on the snow cover, which made her eyes water. She should have brought her sunglasses!
The cemetery looked idyllic, practically countryside, with its snow-covered gravestones and the blue titmouses chattering in the branches. On the right side of the chapel, there was a heap of snow-covered wreaths. Friday was a typical funeral day. Both her parents were buried on a Friday, first her mother and then, two years later, her father.