“That’s the place. And they have three different sushi restaurants to choose from on their list.”
She smiles a drunken smile that’s both sad and wistful. She forgets the sushi for a minute. “I had the windows in your Saab replaced with bulletproof glass,” she says.
Mystifying. “How could you get it done so fast?”
She toys with her glass. “I used my feminine charms.”
And her charms are many: She’s entrancing, excruciatingly beautiful, intelligent, responsible, has a good sense of humor, is a born nurturer with a great capacity for empathy, and pleasant company as well. She has vittuvaki, the power of the vagina. I don’t know the etymology of the term, perhaps it’s lost in the sands of time, but it stems from the era of pagan ritual and the celebration of the feminine, when it was believed the vagina possessed mystical potency. If anyone possesses vittuvaki, it’s Mirjami. Only one downfall prevents me from falling in love with her. I’m already in love with my wife.
Kate is my wife and the mother of my child, and I love her to the exclusion of all others. I lost the ability to feel emotion as a result of having the tumor removed from my brain, but it’s drifting back, slow but sure. For some weeks, my primary emotion was irritation. That’s fading, too. For Mirjami, although my sexual attraction toward her is magnetic-there are few heterosexual men who wouldn’t feel it-my primary emotion is tenderness.
“Thank you,” I say. “Let me repay you in sushi.”
“Isn’t Gastronautti extravagantly expensive?”
I smile. “It ain’t cheap.”
“What’s it like to be rich?” she asks.
I consider it. “Mostly, it relieves some of the pressures of life that plague most people.”
“How much did you, Sweetness and Milo steal from drug dealers?”
The questions of a drunk girl, childish in their innocence. My smile broadens and I sip kossu. “Oodles.”
“This seems like a good time to give Mirjami her present and crack the champagne,” Sweetness says.
I had forgotten about the champagne. It’s the last thing she needs. But what the fuck, it’s her birthday. I hid the liquor store gift bag stuffed with cash in a closet. I get it and set it in front of her, then play the good host and set out champagne glasses.
“Ugh,” Jenna says, so out of character that I wonder if she’s pregnant and has morning sickness. I say nothing and pour for the rest of us. “None for me.”
Strange indeed. I pour for the rest of us, we toast Mirjami’s birthday again and I tell her to open her gift.
She fumbles with the drawstring, gets it open and stares into the bag. She looks confused, shakes her head as if to clear it. She turns the bag upside down and shakes wads of cash onto the table.
“How?” Struck speechless, she can’t say more.
I don’t know if she wants to ask how much it is or how we got it. “Half a million, give or take. Proceeds from the evening. It was Sweetness’s doing. He should get the thanks.”
Drunk, she doesn’t hear the part about Sweetness, just throws her arms around me and starts at once laughing and crying. She’s got that annoying girl-drunk-weepy thing going on now. She gulps champagne and pushes the cash toward me. “It’s too much. I can’t.”
I laugh and push it back. “You can and you will.”
She doesn’t argue, just stares at the money with a disbelieving grin on her face.
From a wooden box on the bookcase where I keep miscellaneous odds and ends, I take an unopened pack of playing cards and hand it to Sweetness. “Show me the trick you cheated with.”
He says, “I’m pretty drunk, don’t know if I can,” but opens the pack and discards the jokers. He shuffles, I cut, and he deals. I get a royal straight flush and he gets a pair of deuces. He puts the cards back in order and does it again, except this time he gets the royal straight flush and I get the deuces. I saw nothing. He’s wearing a T-shirt, so has nothing up his sleeves.
“How the fuck do you do it?” I ask.
He zings out the deck in a long string in the air almost too fast for me to see, collapses it back together, hands it to me, and shoots me a sly smile. “Let’s just say it’s one of those things you learn when you have way too much time on your hands. I could try to teach you. You won’t be able to do it, though. You don’t have the dexterity.”
True. I have the grace of a bear, and a lifetime of weight lifting has left my stubby hands as thick as they are wide. I often break things by accident because I’m too rough with them. My hands have only two settings. Stop and go. It comes to me that, at least in that way, I must be a lousy and clumsy lover.
Impressed, I order a mountain of sushi, and we have champagne, with the ever-present kossu on the side, of course, while we wait, and Sweetness and I tell the story of how we found and lost Loviise, sans the double killing.
“How do you know she didn’t put the knife in his back?” Jenna asks.
“I don’t,” I say, “and if she did, considering what he had waiting in store for her, I don’t care. I tend to believe her, though, and I’m curious about the identity of the magazine-beautiful woman. She’s the killer. But given the circumstances surrounding the murder, the Russians won’t want Finns investigating the case, they’ll invoke diplomatic privilege to shut it down, and it’s not my problem. I would give odds on a bet that the apartment is already cleaned out, redecorated and painted, like nothing ever happened there. Out of curiosity, though, I’m going to run the prints we lifted through the computer, just to see if we get a match.”
The sushi arrives. Sweetness has never had it before. He gives it a tentative sniff, suspicious. “Is this the equivalent of fucking Chinese girls?” he asks.
I ask what he means.
“It’s good, but two hours later you’re horny again.” He guffaws at the old bad joke. His raucous laughter makes Mirjami and me laugh with him. Jenna scowls, doesn’t find jokes about him having sex with other women humorous. Nor will she touch the food. Not feeling well has put a bug up her ass.
Sweetness discovers the pleasures of sushi, and the three of us devour two massive platters of it. The evening has gone well. With so much drink, I expected tears, arguments, the usual drunken party ending. It didn’t happen. In the wee hours, we all decide to turn in.
Mirjami follows me to the master bedroom. I’m drunk, but not wasted. She’s blasted, weaving as she slips the spaghetti straps from her summer dress over her shoulders. It slides to the floor. Barefoot and braless, she steps out of it, peels off her panties and comes toward me. She puts her hand on my crotch and rubs the hard-on she knew she would find there.
I take her hand away from between my legs and hold it.
“Give me the birthday present I’ve been waiting for,” she says.
Dear God, she’s beautiful. When I first met her, I had a hard time not staring at her, and with her naked in front of me, all I can do is let my eyes roam up and down her lissome body. “I can’t,” I say.
She starts to unbutton my jeans. “Then let me give you the present I know you want from me.”
I take both her wrists in one hand. “We talked about this once. I can’t cheat on Kate.”
The booze and disappointment make her temper flare. Anger flashes in her eyes. “Kate who? I don’t see any Kate.”
“My wife, Kate. The mother of my child.”
Her voice rises to a near shout. “Every goddamned man in Helsinki wants to fuck me, and I don’t want any of them except one. You, you fucking bastard. And that one man turns me down. You’re an ungrateful asshole.”
Drunken braggadocio perhaps, but not far from the truth. “Maybe, but I’m a faithful one. I’m faithful to you too, in a way. I would do anything you asked of me, except this. And if I did do it, would you feel the same way about me afterward? If I dumped Kate for you, how could you ever trust me to not treat you the same way? I’m sorry, but I have a wife.”