“Can I get right to the point?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“I need your help to find John.”
“Who’s John?”
“A man I know.”
“I’ll need more than that.”
“He’s disappeared,” she said before looking at something out the window behind me — but there was nothing there, just Stockholm dying her death in beauty. The woman shifted her gaze to the bookshelf just to the left of my window. It was filled with crime novels. Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Borges, Stendhal, Yates, Burroughs, Hemingway, Strindberg. She examined the open book on my desk.
“What are you reading there?”
“Finnegan’s Wake,” I said. “James Joyce.”
“Is it good?”
“I’ve just started.”
“You’re at the end,” she said, nodding toward it.
“I always start at the back,” I replied.
“Is that how people read Joyce?”
“That’s how people should read this book. I’ve solved the riddle.”
“I see,” she said. “I never read.”
“Reading is good for the soul.”
“So what should I read? Any suggestions?”
“The Red Room by August Strindberg,” I said. “It’s about Stockholm.”
“I’m tired of Stockholm.”
“If you’re tired of Stockholm, you’re tired of life,” I said.
“So you’re a philosopher.”
“You get that way in this job.”
“You look tired,” she said.
“Not that way.”
“Can you philosophize some help for me?”
“Is John your spouse?”
She stared at me as if she didn’t understand the word. Spouse. Sounds a little old-fashioned, but I’m an old-fashioned man. I keep a bottle of Dewar’s White Label in my desk drawer. I wear a suit and tie. I was about to lighten the bottle a bit when she came in. I listen to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, in that order. When evening falls, I like to remember my youth, 1969 and 1970. I can say I had a year of real life, which many people don’t even get.
“Are you married?” I asked to clarify.
“Yeah, but not to each other,” she said, elegantly fluttering her wrist.
I considered my ghostly memory of her long after she’d gone. She’d told me her name was Rebecka, and it could be true enough — I didn’t ask for her ID, I’m not the police. And, well, my name could be Jimmy Page or Tony Iommi, for example, or even Peter Kempinsky, which is what it says on the office door. It’s a nice name. I chose it myself.
I sat as the electrified darkness shone in through the window from the street below. Birkastan. My part of Stockholm. I wasn’t born here, but I’ve come to call it home. Lost in my reflections, my hangover intensified and I suddenly needed my medicine, so I opened the desk drawer and pulled out the bottle, poured two fingers in the glass that had been set in front of Malcolm Lowry on the bookshelf. I lifted the glass and drank, feeling the warmth go through my chest as it burned my throat. The water of life. The devil’s drink. The devil’s music. I held the glass up toward the window. The alcohol was clear and it shimmered in the night, pure and true — it wasn’t grubby like the rest of life. I took another swig. My desk drawer also held my other medicine; I knew that the only place I’d remember to look for it was next to the whiskey bottle. Venlafaxin Hexal and Dewar’s, an extraordinary combination to battle depression, a cure not unknown but condemned by psychiatry. The pills have no taste.
John, John, John, I thought. Follow John, I thought. Where are you, buddy? I’d taken the job. I’d told her it wasn’t going to be easy. People who want to disappear can manage it pretty well. I glanced at the photo she’d handed me. John stood against a neutral background. He seemed neutral himself, good-looking, friendly. It would have been better if he’d looked like an asshole.
“He hasn’t been accused of a crime,” she’d told me, recrossing her legs.
“How do you know that?” I’d asked.
She didn’t answer. I believed her, naive as I am.
“He could be anywhere,” I said. “Here in Stockholm, out in the countryside, abroad.”
“No, he’s in Stockholm. I’m sure of it. In fact, I’m sure he’s still in Birkastan.”
“How do you know? Lots of people leave Stockholm, not to mention Birkastan.”
“Not him. Not John. He can’t.”
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer this question either. Perhaps she would later on, but I hoped we wouldn’t meet again. I had no desire to see her again — it wouldn’t be good for either of us. Her beautiful legs looked artificial, as if they’d been carved from an endangered wood.
She paid and left. Five hundred thousand royal Swedish kronor, cash, in an envelope. Half my fee. Too high a sum? I needed it, and she was ready to pay. I knew who’d told her how much I charged, and I planned to spring for a glass of Glenfarclas, the forty-two-year-old bottle, the next time I saw him. She had been absolutely certain that I was the right one for the job, and she was right, but for the wrong reason.
There were hints of spring in the air as I walked down toward the Atlas wall. The promise of light. Stockholm would soon melt into another summer. It was the same miracle every year. The city was bigger than life in that way, bigger than all of us; it had been here before we arrived and it would be here when we were gone. I had no plans to leave this mortal plane anytime soon, but I wasn’t so sure about John. I had a hunch, but I could be wrong. It’s been known to happen. I’m just a sinner with a bad conscience.
On the other side of the inlet, Kungsholms strand glittered with gold. I hardly ever walked over the bridge. Kungsholmen is a part of the city that nobody with brains would ever trust. It’s always smiling but its smile is false. Even now, it winks with its red and yellow cat’s eyes, but nobody who comes from the northern part of town is fooled.
It smelled like charcoal and fire and thyme inside Degiulio’s. They’d left two tables out on the sidewalk, as if some tourist would want to sit there and dream of spring. As if Italians eat outside when it’s forty degrees Fahrenheit.
I took my usual table at the back of the room. Maria had set flowers on the table, as she always did. That day they were yellow tulips, my favorite. I leaned toward them and drew in a deep breath, feeling like a real person for a moment.
Maria was at my table already. My only human friend in this world.
“You look tired, Peter,” she said.
“A glass of that red varietal you had yesterday,” I said. “A large glass. Thanks.”
“It’s called Alba,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
She walked over to the bar and poured the wine, returning with a large glass. The flames inside the oven refracted the red color. There are so many shades of red. I’ve seen most of them.
“You have any lasagna with mushrooms tonight?” I asked. “No meat.”
“You can have whatever you want,” she said.
“Then I want a grappa too.”
“You drank too much grappa yesterday, Peter,” she warned.
“That’s why I need another glass today.”
She gave me a look that triggered a long-forgotten memory: someone had leaned over me once when I was a small child; a good person, but not my mother. It was my first memory. I could never catch it and hold onto it, but I knew it had been the happiest moment of my entire life.
“Then get me a second glass of the Alba instead.”
“You haven’t finished the first one yet,” she said.
“I’ll drink it while you’re getting the second glass. I thought I could have anything I wanted.”