‘Hello.’
Frank Frølich put down his spoon and turned round. There was something familiar about her face. About thirty years of age, he thought. She had black hair, partly covered by a woolly hat, held in place like a beret. Her complexion was pale, her lips were bright red and her eyebrows formed sharp angles, two inverted Vs high on her forehead.
Classy, he thought. It struck him that she wouldn’t have been out of place in a black-and-white still from a forties film. She was wearing a long, clinging woollen skirt and short jacket. Her outfit emphasized her figure – hips, waist and shoulders.
‘Torggata,’ she said, tilting her head, becoming a little impatient at his slow-wittedness. ‘Marlboro, Prince, cigarettes.’
Then he remembered: the eyes and especially her mouth. Which lent her an air of vulnerability. But the small wrinkles around her mouth told him she was older than he had at first believed. Instinctively, he searched for the blue of her eyes – without being able to find it immediately. Must be the light, he thought, must be the harsh neon light which deadened the blue. The lightbulbs in Badir’s shop must have been the regular variety.
‘You let me go.’
He suddenly felt uneasy and looked for ways out. Not much was left of the soup and he had paid. Something about this encounter put him on edge; the situation activated a slumbering sensation at the back of his mind. He would have to rebuff her approach, but he was slightly reluctant. She was standing quite close to him, looking into his eyes. It would be unpleasant turning his back on her. He said: ‘My pleasure. You hadn’t done anything wrong.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I took three packets of Marlboro and a Snickers bar.’
He pushed his bowl away. ‘So you’re a thief, then.’
‘You saw, didn’t you?’
‘Saw what?’ He put on his jacket and patted his pocket to check he had his wallet.
‘You saw me.’
For a brief moment, the words unsettled him. You saw me. She could have expressed herself differently, but this was a message which he could not misunderstand. It was an attempt to present herself not just as an object for his attention, but to suggest she owed him a favour because he had done something for her, something that would have to remain a secret.
‘I have to go,’ he announced. ‘All the best…’ He reflected. Her name. She had told him her name. He had even made a mental note of it. In the nick of time the name emerged in his consciousness. He said: ‘… Have a nice evening, Elisabeth.’
He stood still for a few seconds as the glass door slid to behind him. The wind had dropped a little, but the rain was still pouring down. Buttoning his jacket, he shook himself, as if to rid himself of the discomfiture of the incident. He took the few metres to the underpass leading to the Metro at a brisk pace. Here, he went into his usual Metro trance to the accompaniment of the smell of refuse, used air, wet woollens, autumn and influenza; elderly women ran gloved fingers under their noses; men raised their eyes to God in a quiet prayer to be spared another bout of angina, here in this tight scrum of humanity in which everyone was blind to each other’s existence. He squeezed back against the glass wall of the Metro carriage, touched the condensation on the glass; only to wake from the trance when the doors shut at Manglerud and the creature of habit in him liberated itself from its corner to step closer to the doors as the train braked on its approach to Ryen station. The doors were two metal lips which opened, ready to spit him out. At this altitude, the rain had turned into the autumn’s first sleet showers. Car headlights shone on the tarmac of the ring road and were devoured by the blackness. He trudged up the hill as cars sped by.
Something must have caught his attention, a sound or a shadow behaving differently, as he approached the entrance to his flat. He stopped and turned. The street light by the petrol station was directly behind her, outlining her silhouette in yellow light. She stood still. He stood still. They were alert to each other’s every move. Her hands deep in the pockets of the short jacket and her facial expression in shadow. Her hair cascaded down onto her shoulders, with the light from the street lamp like an aura above the woolly hat, the tight jacket and the skirt covering her knees.
It was just the two of them – in the dark. No one else around. The remote drone of the traffic. A street lamp buzzed. He walked towards her with determined steps. She didn’t move. He walked into the road and then around her, forcing her to follow him with her eyes and turn towards the light so that he could see her face.
They were staring into each other’s eyes throughout this whole carousel movement. He detected something in her gaze: an energy, something he couldn’t define in words, something it was difficult to confront without speaking. ‘Are you following me?’
‘You’d rather I didn’t?’
The response took his breath away – again.
Finally she lowered her gaze. ‘You saw me,’ she said.
Those three words again. ‘And?’ he said.
They stood close to each other. He had gone right up to her but she hadn’t budged. He could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek.
She took his hands in hers.
His mind froze. He cleared his throat, but didn’t move. She had heavy eyelids and long, curly eyelashes. At the end of each lash a tiny drop of condensation had gathered. Her breath streamed like mist from between the half-open lips, caressing his cheeks before it dissipated. As she spoke, the words nestled against his cheeks.
‘What did you say?’ was as much as his voice could manage. His mouth was only a few centimetres from hers as she softly whispered: ‘I forget no one if I kiss you.’
Then he released his hands and clasped her slender face between them.
Before leaving, she stood for a long time in the shower. He lay on his back in bed listening to the murmur of the water.
When she closed the front door behind her, it was four o’clock in the morning. Then he got up and went into the bathroom. He stood with his forehead against the tiled wall as the water stroked his shoulders. His mind was on the hours that had passed. The way his body towered over hers. The way she had held his gaze as he breathed in again and again, then let it out loudly, breathing in again and again, letting it out loudly again and again. The beads of sweat between her breasts, reflecting thousands of facets. The way her soft breasts rose and fell to the rhythm of her breathing before he thrust the breath out of her. The desire raw, untamed, hungry – the kind that leaves in its wake guilt, shame, abortions, fatherless children, HIV. He could still feel the pressure of her fingers as she grabbed him hard around the waist, ten nails digging into him. She wanted more, yet had less breath because she could see the countdown flicker behind his eyelids.
Afterwards, alone, his head pressed against the tiles: Frank Frølich twists the tap to red and allows himself to be scalded by boiling-hot water – recalling the strange tattoo on her hip as she straddles him backwards. He cannot picture this without becoming aroused yet again, feeling the urge to do it once more, knowing that if she had walked in through the door at that moment, he would have thrown her down on the bathroom floor, or in there, over the desk – and he would have been unstoppable.
Such thoughts are a virus. In the end they disappear, but it takes time. Eventually everything passes. Three days, possibly four, a week – then the thoughts release their grip. In the end your body is left numb and begins to function normally, glad that it is over.
Six days went by. He was back in shape. But then the mobile phone on his desk bleeped. One message. He read it. A single word: Come!