She didn’t reply, perhaps she couldn’t hear. He got the idea that they should watch a porn film. He had bought a videocassette but the first and so far only time they watched it together was a complete disaster. It made him horny but it only made Jessica mad.
She came out of the bathroom and looked questioningly at the second bottle.
“Tomorrow’s a workday,” she said.
He stood up hastily, but sank just as quickly back onto the chair.There probably won’t be a porn film tonight, he thought. It’s a workday tomorrow.
Jessica disappeared into the bedroom. Stig remained where he was.
“I’m a virgin,” he said quietly and found himself getting aroused as he said it.
Laura was a beautiful woman, but crazy, he had understood that much during the course of the evening. For a while he had even become scared of her. It was unlikely that she was a virgin. What kind of life had she lived anyway?
There was something alluring about her. As if she was a figure from a novel living in a house of horrors, surrounded by the wild and unkempt garden. The chaotic mess in the rooms bore witness to a life in disarray. Or had she only started to live like this now that her father had disappeared?
He had worked together with Laura for many years but had never really gotten to know her. She had always been an isolated and complicated person but it was only this evening that he had seen the extent of her problems. There was little to find fault with regarding her work, of course, quite the opposite, in fact. During their low period a few years ago Laura was the one who had contributed the enthusiasm and creativity.
He regretted the fact that he had followed her in, but at the same time it pleased him that he had seen and experienced something beyond the everyday, as if he had taken a step into the land of insanity and returned. The dark side was frightening but also tempting. He was making a guest appearance. Now he was back in his clean and well-ordered kitchen, lit up by an attractive lamp, cherry cabinets, and gleaming white appliances.
Laura’s kitchen was the complete opposite: an interior from the fifties, as he remembered the kitchen from his childhood, dirty and dark, with a smell that was reminiscent of corruption and stagnation.
He thought about her body. Above all it was the delicate whiteness that he remembered, as if Laura was made of the finest china, light in his hands, pleasing to drink from but nothing to take out every day. She would shatter like a fragile, translucent cup if used too often.
He chuckled and took a sip of beer.
“What’s so funny?” Jessica asked from the bedroom.
“Nothing,” he said.
He felt found out, in spite of the fact that he hadn’t said anything. He felt as if Jessica had seen through him and his thoughts, and it put him in a bad mood. She bothered him. Because what he had gone through was something extraordinary that required thought. He wanted to linger in the feeling of unreality and exclusivity. Laura was no casual hotel-room conquest, but rather a rare experience of a mysterious and original liquid that dissipated in his hands. At the same time as he touched Laura she moved, gliding away with a smile he had never before seen in a woman. He had for a few hours been transported to a human sanctuary of intimacy, a moment of magic.
Now he was going to shower and crawl into bed with his wife.
Eight
“I can’t,” Ann Lindell said. “It’s impossible. Another day we might be able to…”
Fear shot up into her mouth like sour porridge and silenced her abruptly. Erik was screaming, or rather, singing. In recent months he had started to sing more and more, long strings of unconnected words. Sometimes Ann could identify the sounds, songs she herself sang in a distant childhood.
In September a new preschool teacher had started in Erik’s group and had made serious efforts to bring song and rhymes into the curriculum. Now songs were a constant feature.
“Wait a minute, I’m going to switch phones,” she said, mostly in order to win time. She took the handheld phone, left the kitchen, and went to the bedroom.
“A concert,” Charles Morgansson said.
“Yes, that’s Erik. I have a lot to do right now.”
“Petrus Blomgren is dead and we can’t do much about that. Not tonight.”
“I was thinking…”
Her objection stopped here. She knew he was right.
“What were you planning to see?”
“A crime film,” he said and chuckled into the receiver.
It was the first time she heard his laugh.
“Mystic River. Clint Eastwood is the director. I’ve read the book and it’s damn good.”
She knew nothing about the film or the book.
“A detective story,” she said doubtfully.
Charles Morgansson waited for her objection, but Ann knew she wasn’t going to be able to think of another suggestion due to the simple reason that she didn’t know what else was showing right now. The last movie she had seen had been a French production that she saw with Beatrice, probably a year ago.
She looked out the window. All snow had melted on the parking lot. The wet asphalt reflected the light from the streetlamps. She wiggled the blinds back and forth. Erik had started a new song that reminded her of something she felt was familiar:“… little bunny… oh, oh dear me…”
“One moment,” she said quickly and put the receiver down on the bed, took several steps toward the kitchen but stopped just as quickly and stared at it. Now he was lying there, Charles Morgansson, on her sloppily made bed. He was breathing into the phone. He was waiting for an answer.
She picked it bak up.
“It may work out,” she said.
They decided on a time and place. Morgansson promised to get the tickets. The only thing she had to do was show up on time and buy him popcorn.
She exhaled, stood absolutely still for a few moments with her eyes closed, before she dropped the phone onto the bed, picked it up again, and dialed Görel’s number.
The clock in the kitchen read several minutes past five.
“Spaghetti,” she said.
Erik looked up but kept singing. Ann crouched down.
“I love you,” she said softly and stroked his head.
“Little snail,” he said.
Erik was watching a video. Ann let her clothes fall in a pile on the hall floor.
“Mommie’s going to take a shower,” she yelled.
She closed the door, opened the bathroom cabinet, took out her razor and inserted a fresh blade, stepped into the shower stall, changed her mind, stepped out, and cracked the door. Erik was singing along to the song in the film.
With the razor in her hand, she scrutinized her body in the rectangular mirror. Sometimes she had the impression that it lied, made her look more slender than she really was. She often felt chubby despite the fact that Beatrice-the only one at work who ever commented on her appearance-nagged her about how she should eat more.
“You’re as thin as a goat!” she would say.
Ann thought Bea’s comments came from the fact that she herself was getting increasingly chubby. After her second child she had put on eight, nine kilos, remained there, and now had to struggle in order not to put on more weight.
She was right about Ann having lost some weight. She thought it was due to her changed evening routine. Not as many sandwiches and only one glass of wine a night.
She ran a hand down her breasts and stomach and felt a feeling of joy, a reminder of something long ago. She turned her body. Her thighs were still good. She twitched as if a hand had appeared on her buttock. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the feeling, but it wasn’t the same.
“This is me,” she said aloud, stepped closer to the mirror and looked at herself intensely, let her hand caress down her stomach, find its way lower down, but the feeling wouldn’t come. Her hand was somehow too unrefined, too insensitive. It only signaled a longing for pleasure but someone’s hand on your body meant something else, so much more.