“He’s not here.”
“Then ask him to call when he gets in.”
Nina said an overly hasty goodbye and put the phone back down on the desk with a hard bang. The babies’ mothers were still sitting on the floor in the next room, and she could hear their soft, cooing voices, their laughter, and the babies’ little grunts of satisfaction at the attention.
She waved a quick farewell to the women and then walked rapidly down the hallway toward the exit. She needed a break. It had started raining outside. Soft, heavy drops were falling from the gray May sky and had already soaked the lawn in front of the main building. Nina stood in the doorway watching the water run in little rivulets over the paved walkway, which was lined with old cigarette butts and gum wrappers. Spring spruced up the Coal-House Camp, no question. But there was no hiding the fact that both the residents and the Danish government were basically indifferent to the place. It was ugly and uncared for. Scratched up, scuffed, worn out. Being here made people gray, no matter how much paint they sloshed on the outside and how much IKEA furniture they stuffed inside.
She took a deep breath. The scent of wet dirt and grass and asphalt and summer. She made a decision. She would bring Ida, Anton, and Morten to Viborg with her this year, to stay with her mother. The kids really ought to spend a little time with their grandmother. Nina would just have to grit her teeth and smile her way through it.
Her phone’s protracted trills interrupted her, and she just managed to get it up out of her pocket before the ringing stopped.
“Nina?”
It was Peter. She recognized his voice after a brief delay. He didn’t sound the way he usually did. “Nina, I know Morten isn’t home yet, but I was really hoping you could make an exception. I’m.…” Peter was cut short by a protracted coughing fit, followed by long, labored gasps for breath. “I’ve come down with something,” he said. “I’m sure it’s the same thing the young Roma boy has. It’s really nasty. I’m so.…”
Again a protracted rattling cough that almost made Nina hold the phone away from her until the worst of the fit had passed. She lowered her voice.
“What were you hoping I could do?”
Peter laughed hollowly into the phone.
“Nothing fancy. I’ve gathered a few supplies for that young man at the Valby garage. You know, fluids, Imodium, seasickness pills, and that rehydration powder you said he should have. What was that stuff called.…” Nina could hear Peter rustling around in some packages. “Well, it doesn’t matter.” He called off the hunt. “Now the problem is that I’m not up to driving out there to drop them off. I’ve been throwing up nonstop.”
His voice became high-pitched, almost childlike, as he said that last bit, and that made Nina hesitate with her refusal. She looked at her watch and considered her options. Anton was going to spend the night next door at Mathias’s. They had been planning that for a few weeks, so she wouldn’t need to feel guilty about defending that to Morten, and it was pretty much standard routine that Ida disappeared into her room the instant Nina walked in the door.
“I’m not driving out to Valby, Peter,” Nina said. “But I’ll come over and check on you. You shouldn’t be lying there all by yourself.” That wasn’t breaking her promise to Morten, she thought, painstakingly suppressing the sudden sense of relief she felt at not having to spend the evening ignoring Ida’s coldness.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Peter?”
“Thanks, Nina. That’s really nice of you.” Peter’s voice caught a little over his own unaccustomed politeness. Peter didn’t usually thank people, Nina mused. Peter usually demanded her assistance for the Network and took it for granted that she would say yes. Nina furrowed her brow and let her phone fall back into her jacket pocket. Only then did the penny drop. Peter didn’t care if she went to Valby tonight. This time he had been calling to get help for himself.
PETER’S HOUSE WAS on a long, flat street on the borderline between two of Copenhagen’s less fashionable suburbs, Vanløse and Brønshøj. She had never been there before and had to double-check the house number on the little yellow slip of paper she had sitting next to her on the passenger’s seat. The street was lined with light-green beech hedges, and behind them she caught glimpses of gardens tended with varying degrees of enthusiasm, with small, crooked fruit trees, lilacs, birches, and chestnuts. The houses looked like they were from the 1950s, originally small, but now with add-ons and remodels on all sides and of generally doubtful aesthetic merits.
Peter’s house was no exception. A small, red-brick bungalow surrounded by a lawn, a couple of bushes, and a narrow garage at the end of the driveway. Peter had his own alterations underway, Nina knew. A little annex that would connect the garage to the bungalow. He had been talking about it for several years. Being able to bring people, unseen, into the house from the garage would make some of his work for the Network easier, but of course that hadn’t been an option while he was married. No self-respecting woman would have allowed the monstrosity Nina saw being added onto the end of the house. Not even if it was going to help save the world.
The foundation had been poured for the little add-on, and a hole had been knocked through the wall. That was as far as he, or the workmen, had gotten, and a perfunctory tarpaulin now covered the opening, flapping gently in the cool May breeze. Small, shiny pools of water sat on what would be the floor of the annex someday.
The divorce had taken its toll on him, Nina thought. He never mentioned it when they saw each other. He rarely talked about himself, just the “cases” and the “clients.” But Nina felt she could see the grim contours of the divorce in the construction mess—the sagging sacks of building rubble slumped at the corner of the driveway and the windows gaping emptily out at the garden. His wife must have taken the curtains, she thought with disapproval. That was the kind of thing women did to their ex-husbands, knowing full well that the poor slobs would never get around to fixing new ones. And on top of that, Peter now obviously didn’t have anyone besides her to call when he was sick.
It took Peter a while to open the door.
He was fully dressed, but unmistakably sick. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot, his face unshaven, and his hair was sticking out every which way, sweaty and disheveled. There was no mistaking the sour smell of sweat and vomit as he stepped aside and invited her in with a sarcastic, stewardess-like gesture.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” he chimed with a wan smile.
Nina smiled back, setting her grocery bag of fresh supplies—a loaf of bread, cola, and oatmeal—on the floor in the hallway.
“How bad is it?”
Peter sighed. “Well, I think it’s a little better,” he replied evasively. “I haven’t thrown up in over an hour, but I’m just completely wasted.”
Nina nodded.
“Well, let’s look on the bright side. Did you eat or drink anything when you were at the house?”
“Oh, it’s hardly a house. It’s an old auto mechanic’s shop. But, no. I don’t think I did. A cup of tea at the most.”
“Good. Then I don’t think it’s food poisoning. It sounds more like a stomach virus. They can be ridiculously contagious.”
Peter turned around and slowly made his way into the sparsely furnished living room, where he collapsed onto a faded sofa. A bucket and mop were in position next to him, and on a low table he had a stack of hand towels, a roll of paper towels, and a pitcher of water.
“I’m really sorry I called you like that,” he said. “But at one point I just got so … scared. I damn nearly blacked out when I tried to stand up, and I really freaked that something was seriously wrong. But now I risk infecting you, too.”