See You Tomorrow (11 page)

Oh, sweetbabyjesus.

‘Rudi, you rotten pimp!’

Cecilie comes storming through the undergrowth. Her eyes are bright red with anger, tears have run down her cheeks, blackening them with smeared make-up, and what is it she’s carrying?

‘I hate you!’

She comes to a stop just in front of him, with something in her hands – what the hell is that?

‘Chessi, what the hell do you think you’re doing?!’

She throws it at him, what the fuck is it? He brings his arms up to catch it, a
hedgehog!

‘What are you playing at? Have you lost it completely? I’m at work, twatmuff! At work! You know bloody well that this is unacceptable, what do you think Jani’s going to say? I take you out in the Volvo to get a little fresh air, toss five hundred kroner bills your way and you can’t manage to sit still for
five little minute
s, you barge in with…’ He throws the hedgehog onto the ground. ‘You need to fucking get yourself tog—’

Cecilie’s lips quiver. She sniffles, goes down on her knees in front of the animal. ‘Rudi,’ she says, her breathing fitful, ‘it’s a hedgehog. And you just drove right over it.’

Rudi bends over and hugs her. ‘It’s okay now. Rudimann is here. I didn’t do it on purpose but you can’t—’

She frees herself from his arms, gets to her feet and takes a small
step backwards. Points towards Pål who appears behind them, his features contorted in a expression of fright.

‘Who’s that?’

Rudi clasps his hands round the back of his neck and sighs. ‘Yeah, this is…’ He stops himself. ‘This is someone I’m working with.’

‘What a lovely dog…’

Cecilie goes down on one knee. She stretches her arms out to the dog. It sniffs its way over, snout to the ground, and enters her embrace. Pål stands nailed to the ground. Not so strange, thinks Rudi, people are usually slightly taken aback when they first meet Chessi.

She gets to her feet. Puts her hand out towards Pål.

‘Cecilie,’ she says, in a high-pitched voice, shaking the hand of the stranger. ‘Cecilie Haraldsen. I’m Rudi’s woman. Such a cute dog, what’s its name?’

‘Zitha,’ says Pål, ‘she’s called Zitha.’

‘Zitha, yeaaah,’ Cecilie pats the dog across the snout again, gives Pål a pleasant look. ‘So, what are the two of you working on then?’

Something seeps into her expression. Her forehead furrows slightly. ‘But … have I … have I seen you before?’

‘No, don’t think so,’ says Pål. ‘No.’

Cecilie nods. ‘Just thought I’d seen you before.’

Jan Inge is not going to like this. Cecilie doing as she pleases. Flirting with this Pål guy. Bollocks, thinks Rudi, snapping after his thoughts. Get thee behind me, Satan. She’s my whole life. She’s the twisted light, she’s canary-yellow happiness.

‘Okay, Chessi,’ he says, ‘now you’ve shown us the hedgehog, are you satisfied? Pål’s got troubles, you understand? He’s got two daughters, and a mother, their mother that is, but it’s complicated, and I think you’re just complicating it even further now. Can you head back, so as we can finish off our meeting here?’

Are you out there, Dad?

Malene is standing on the loading ramp behind the shop. She knows it's at rest but it feels like a boat that's rocking. She's conscious of the stinging in her ankle as she lets her gaze gather what she has in front of her, the houses, the high-rises, the woods, the sky, as though her eyes were somehow magic and could capture everything; the people in the buildings, the forest behind the school, what's happened and what's going to happen.

Dad, what are you up to?

Malene feels a dull thumping from the pulse in her ear. It makes her think of the tension just before a gymnastics competition, her feet on the mat, her body fully concentrated. She feels like she has her dad's shoes in her hands, even though she knows she doesn't. She feels she's standing in the bathroom folding her dad's jeans, even though she knows she isn't. She feels like she's sitting in her dad's lap, even though she's fully aware that she's standing on the ramp.

Tiril lights up another cigarette behind her, the nauseous smell of it drifting her way. She hears her sister shift her feet in irritation.

‘Well? Are you just going to stand there staring? Hey? Lol?'

Malene doesn't reply.

Once when she and Tiril were small, Dad fell off the garage roof and broke his arm. Malene had noticed a dead magpie lying up there. A dead bird? Dad would take care of that. But he's clumsy when it comes to that sort of thing. He's not that kind of man. Dad is the type of man who lets the screwdriver slip and gashes his hand, he's the type who stumbles when he goes on top of a garage roof. Malene can remember Mum shaking her head and laughing as they drove to the hospital. She did that a lot, Mum, laughed at
people. Always so sure of things, Mum, so sure about everything. Thought people just needed to pull themselves together, thought that everyone had to take care of themselves. That's how she goes on when she rings from Bergen: Everything all right, Malene? And then, before Malene has the time to answer: Good, that's what I thought. Or: How's the ankle? And then, before Malene has a chance to answer: It'll be fine, you'll soon be back on the mat.

Malene was terrified. She can remember the smell in the car as they drove to the hospital. She couldn't take her eyes off Dad's arm, dangling by his side.

‘Hey, Maly? That thing I asked you about. Do you think it's true? Y'know, about choosing, between the light and the dark?'

Malene doesn't reply. She knows she's a girl who's one metre sixty-two with high cheekbones and a slender figure, a girl without a best friend, who sometimes feels alone, but never feels lonely. She knows she's a girl who reads books and listens to ‘Payphone', ‘Hot N Cold', and ‘Rolling in the Deep', a girl who likes to feel her body sail through the air. She knows she's a girl who's never had a boyfriend, who's never bunked off school, who's always done her homework and taken things one step at a time. She knows that one day she'll marry a man who won't allow himself be henpecked, who'll carry her as though she were a queen. She knows that one day she's going to leave this town, travel to Bergen or Oslo, and study there. And she knows she'll come home every Christmas. She knows she's cautious, but she knows she's courageous. She feels that if a fire is burning someplace then it's her job to fetch the water.

Malene stretches out her injured foot. It's unstable. Can't rely on it any more. Behind her, Tiril puts out her cigarette.

‘Of course you can,' says Malene, without turning to look at Tiril.

Then she whispers into the darkness, low enough for her sister not to hear her: ‘It's Malene. Are you out there? Please. Talk to me, Dad. What is it I haven't noticed? Tell me what to do.'

Only a matter of moments stand between Daniel and that addictive experience: entering a girl. Up until now it’s been a pounding desire, stronger for every day. Envisioned and borne by turbulent currents in his body, raging rapids, which no power can halt, so cold they burn. When he’s felt it rise, he’s often thought about just going out into the dark, seizing hold of the first girl he sees, dragging her into the forest, throwing her down, peeling her clothes off and drilling a hole in her. He’s closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, felt how the power can’t be overcome, how it’s that which is God. Sparks fly within him, the flash of a million sledgehammers falling on blazing iron, a roaring noise in his head. It’s not evil, nor good, but it’s real. The earth’s crust needs to split, light must be torn, knock-kneed girls need to quiver and glisten, sing and die and be hunted like wounded animals across the great darkness.

What is it that the sight of her breasts does to him? Why do they set off such raving hunger, why must he press his lips against them, why must he cup them in his hands? What is it the sight of her closed eyes gives rise to in him? No, they’re
almost closed,
the lids are quivering over her eyeball, like someone at the moment of death, a slightly moist twinkling under the arched lashes. Look at her lips, slightly parted, what is it they do to me? What the fuck is it you do to me?

No one can see them. They’re hidden away in an empty wood, now nobody can get in their way. He stares at her. Sandra pulls down the zip on her jeans. She hooks her thumbs into the waistband, lifts her behind, and begins to wiggle free of her jeans while jerking her hips to and fro.

Daniel gasps.

Now she’s lying there glistening, now she’s lying there glowing.

She’s only wearing panties. She spreads her legs.

Daniel breathes through his nose, his chest is pounding, the oxygen in his head diminishing, he sets his jaw. Her legs are apart, her knees slightly raised. He kneels down, then bends over her, his palms resting on the soil and weeds.

‘Take off your clothes.’

She whispers.

‘Daniel, come on, take off your clothes.’

She opens her eyes slightly, liquid gold runs out. Her voice takes hold of him, she could have asked anything at all of him and he’d have done it. Daniel’s made up his mind. This is what he was put on this earth for.

‘Say it again.’

She smiles.

‘Don’t smile.’

‘Take off your clothes.’

He jerks back up on to his knees, unbuckles his belt, unbuttons his jeans, feeling no nerves, only the hard warmth. He pulls his jeans down to his knees and sees Sandra’s eyes fall upon him.

‘Oh,’ she says.

Your hands. Touch me.

But she doesn’t. She just lies there. Her eyes have closed. Your hands, he thinks again. Touch me. But she doesn’t. She just lies there. Daniel pulls off his underwear, his erection like a crowbar, then she begins taking off her white panties.

Then she looks up at him:

‘Are you sure it’s your first time, Daniel?’

He blinks confusedly and fixes his eyes on the strange country she has between her legs, which isn’t a flower, isn’t an animal, it’s impossible to say what it is, he only knows he has to get in there. A dog barks not too far off in the distance, but the sound barely registers in Daniel’s consciousness before disappearing again.

‘Wha? Yeah – yeah, why are you asking about that now?’

She pulls him close, her hands move down over his body. She touches him, takes hold of him, guides him into her, pushes a whimper of pain aside, and he begins to move, the wild dogs
storm across the fields and he can’t call them back, it isn’t possible to escape this heaven.

‘Like this? Daniel? Like this? Like this?’

Hear about what they did today. Hear about what they're going to do tomorrow. Fix their duvets a little, lean over them, as though they were still two little tots, give them a hug and a kiss on the forehead. Say goodnight to the girls. Go into the kitchen, clean away the day's mess. Bread in the breadbin, load the dishwasher, turn it on, check the calendar to see if you've forgotten anything, a dentist's appointment, a parent-teacher meeting. Let Zitha outside to pee in the garden. Into the sitting room, slide down in the armchair, put your feet on the pouf, three remote controls in your lap, flick through the channels, watch an episode of
Sons of Anarchy
or
Breaking Bad
. Maybe read a few pages of Michael Connelly or Jo Nesbø. Feel the daylight withdraw, see the wind play with the trees outside, see the moon exposed in the sky, hear the night come with corrosive silence. Get up from the chair, walk quietly across the floor, turn out the lights in each room downstairs, open the door to the basement. Tread gingerly on the creaky first step, go down carefully, set your feet on the cold tiles at the bottom. Go in the door to the right of the laundry room, don't turn on any lights, the blinds are drawn, sit down at the computer. Turn it on. Hear the humming of the fan increase, feel your neck tense, an effervescent rush in your temples and your pulse ticking in your throat, as you push aside the sick feeling unfurling in the pit of your stomach. See how the cold light of the monitor blanches the room, your fingers on the keys, sometimes catching sight of your own reflection but not allowing your gaze to fix upon it. Do this, just do this, say that it's soon over, say it's the last time. Betsson. Oddsbet. Betsafe. Centrebet. Username: Maiden. Password: Zitha. Blackjack, live odds, casino, roulette, poker. Bonus. Win. Raise. Win. Lose, lose, lose. Say goodnight to the girls.

Seen from the outside it's obvious that it can't work. It's so obvious he can't understand that he's done it. How long is it since he played his last ever game? A month? No, two weeks? Three days? No. Last night. Last night, he sat in the glow from the screen and played a round of blackjack, adding another few thousand to the debt he's no longer able to deal with. All the letters, the warnings about repossession, collection agencies, all the bills. He doesn't open them. He slips them into his inside pocket, takes them with him on his evening walks with Zitha, and makes sure they all end up in the same rubbish bin at the same bus shelter in Folkeviseveien.

No matter how easy it is to see from the outside, that this could never work out, it's the inside that counts. That's where we live, where we ache and burn, and that's where I've been, PÃ¥l thinks, while he stands there trying to conceal his amazement from Rudi and his girlfriend. They're a few metres off, Rudi with his arm around her, bending down, talking to her. There's a hedgehog by their feet.

The inside. That's where I live, he thinks. The nausea, I've become so good at pushing it from me, I've learnt to treat it like a ball I can just wrap my hand around and fling towards the horizon. Turn around, smile at the girls. Hi, Malene. Hi, Tiril.

To think he believed it could work. In retrospect it seems ridiculous, before it seemed easy.
The kids will stay with you, PÃ¥l. You get the house, you get the car, you'll get child support and double child allowance. You get everything, PÃ¥l. You're going to manage fine
. He pocketed his pride and resentment, accepted her money, as he always had done. PÃ¥l worked as a case officer for the local authority and it was written all over him: Never going to earn much money. Like it was written all over her: Going to earn a
lot
of money. And back then, when they started out, nobody could see foresee any trouble.

Why should we think about money troubles? Why should we think about the economic imbalance between us? After all, we share everything, said Christine. PÃ¥l made a quarter the amount she did, but he didn't experience any feelings of displeasure about it, just as he didn't feel any displeasure at having an ambitious
wife who travelled abroad with Statoil, who constantly worked overtime. He liked that she was on the go, the same way he liked his own ordered life, and instead of thinking that a job with the local authority is an insecure job, because there's no opportunity to earn more money if you should suddenly find your life beginning to go under, he thought that a job with the local authority is a good job, because at least you have one if the world begins to go under.

When she left, things looked okay, PÃ¥l didn't need to change his habits, didn't need to start shopping at cheaper supermarket chains or cancel his newspaper subscription. He managed to pay the bills, was able to live like before. The support payments from Bergen were generous. But after a few years things started getting a bit tight. The upkeep on such a big house was expensive. The money from Bergen became more infrequent. And after four or five years PÃ¥l had to face the fact that funds were running low. He needed a new lawnmower; he had to get drainage problems outside the house sorted after some damp damage had shown up in the basement. Where was he going to get the money from? He cut down on things here, there and everywhere, food, clothes, holidays, downloaded TV series off the net. But it still wasn't enough. He traded in his car, it didn't help. He borrowed money from his mother, it didn't help. And then one night he began to gamble. Almost out of curiosity. It helped. After a few minutes he was sitting with several hundred thousand in his account. PÃ¥l, nervous and grinning, switched off the computer. Never again, he said to himself, and got the area round the house drained and damp-proofed with the money, but a month later he was back in front of the screen, and so began the life he's lived since: win a little, lose a little, win less, lose even more.

It's not just nights he's been playing. Lately he's been in the sitting room with a smile plastered to his face, the laptop on his knees, two windows open, one an online newspaper, the other a gambling site. On Sunday, he'd said, casually, his eyes on the screen: Hey Malene, what's your favourite number? She gave him a strange look and said, eh seven, why do you ask? Oh, was just wondering, he said, betting on seven. What are you doing, Dad?
Hm, ah, just checking the weather forecast in the paper here. Lose. Lose. Lose. Continue. Continue. Continue. Personal loan, maxed-out card, GE Money Bank are throwing loans at people these days, and no one knows who PÃ¥l Fagerland is, apart from them: Hi PÃ¥l, how's it going? The telephone rings late one night. Listen, we wondered if you wanted to come along to a poker tournament in Riga? Or: Hi PÃ¥l, we transferred 500 euros to you today, a little bonus. And when does that call come? Just as he's logged on. After a few day's absence.
They know who you are.
No one else.

The inside.

That's where I live, he thinks. But what is it that's going on inside of me?

He won big one time, felt the money rain down upon him one time, and that one time he's believed it was down to talent, but the laws are such that eventually he'll lose, everything. That's the heart of the game. He knows that. But how does that help? It doesn't, not at all. PÃ¥l was terrified of smoking when he was small. It didn't prevent him from starting to smoke. He smoked for seventeen years. The only reason he managed to quit was Malene, when she was ten and lay crying because she was sure her daddy would die. That was something that raked at him on the inside. PÃ¥l knows that it's not going to work. But no matter how well he knows it, he still believes in that jackpot every night, the one that can cancel all his debts and make him rich and worry-free.

Zitha rubs her snout against his thigh and PÃ¥l feels his jaw loosen, his chin drop, hears himself sigh.

‘Yeaah,' he whispers, glancing over at Cecilie and Rudi, ‘yeaah, good girl.'

He was amazed when she showed up. She hasn't changed since the time he went into her room. 1986. She's just the same, only more run-down. Just as thin, just as bony, just as discordantly composed. Her skin was soft and pink back then, now it's grainy and grey, but still freckly.

Pål needs to take pains to avoid being recognised. It's not going to go down well if Rudi realises he's been one of her – well – customers. To think she was the first girl Pål was with. Two hundred kroner? Wasn't it two hundred kroner he stole from his mum and
dad? They took the bus out to the house in Hillevåg, he and Hasse. Pål handed the money over to Videoboy, was directed towards a room that lay at the end of a long hall. She was lying in there. A little girl under a duvet. Posters on the walls, one of a cat and another of Wham! He undressed. She giggled, he remembers, and lifted the duvet. He got into the bed, put his hands on those tiny tits. He didn't sleep with her, didn't have time, he came as soon as her fingers stroked his dick. Pål felt sick with shame afterwards, ran away from the horror movies and the rented girl and never went back.

And now here she was. She'd become Rudi's girlfriend.

He was always a nutcase, thinks PÃ¥l, looking over at the pair of them. Was this a good idea? Help him get hold of a million? Rudi was always twisted but now he seems even more so. Probably the same with criminals as the rest of us, we become ourselves more and more as life goes on, we expand, and it's not only the good sides that grow, the bad ones do too.

The eighties come wafting back to PÃ¥l, a time smelling of Sky Channel and late nights, flickering bike lamps, humming dynamos and puddle rock. The Tjensvoll Gang, sick rumours circulated about them. They looked tough, they lived by their own rules, they had the courage not to give a shit, not about school, or teachers, or parents, if they had any. PÃ¥l never possessed that kind of courage. Hasse was drawn to it, his curiosity greater than any moral qualms, he had to get to see everything, but PÃ¥l grew frightened when he heard about the things they got up to. Even their names scared him,
Rudi, Tommy Pogo, Janka Bat.
People spoke of Rudi's eyes sparkling the time he held a wailing cat in his grip, knocked it on the head with a stone, opened its mouth, placed a firecracker on its still pink tongue, laughed so much he almost retched, closed the cat's mouth, lit the fuse, took a few steps back and said:

‘This is the most fun I've ever fucking had, and it hasn't even happened yet.'

People said the cat's head cracked and its eyes exploded like glass. Two weeks later they stole a can of petrol from the garage of a house in Ragnhilds Gate, captured a hedgehog, doused the
animal with it and watched the flames rise into the night sky as they discussed what to do next, and did anyone have any drain cleaner at home?

Rudi has placed both hands on Cecilie's shoulders. It looks like he's trying to press her down into the ground. She nods. Then she looks over at PÃ¥l while saying something. PÃ¥l swallows. Are they talking about him? Has she recognised him?

Rudi looks in his direction.

No, thinks PÃ¥l. I need to go. He's going to kill me.

There's a flash in Rudi's eyes. He raises his forefinger.

I need to go. Now.

Rudi begins to walk towards him.

‘Nice to meet you, Pål,' says Cecilie, ‘I have to be off, so … see you.'

PÃ¥l clears his throat but doesn't manage to get a word out.

She bends over, picks up the hedgehog and begins walking back down through the forest. A bit like a soldier, PÃ¥l thinks, and sees Rudi approach. He looks like one of the trees in the forest, like one of the trees has torn its roots up out of the soil and begun ambling across the earth in the darkness.

‘Okay, Pål Wall.'

Rudi hawks and spits.

No, no, no. I should never have done this.

Rudi puts his finger on Pål's chest, jabs him hard a few times. ‘Listen,' he says. ‘Don't worry about it. Woman stuff. You'll know all about it when you get yourself a lady, Påli—'

Woman stuff?

‘Sorrysorrysorry, daughters? Two daughters? But no wife? Rudi's not going to stick his nose in. You know all about it. What do I know? Isn't it the very reason someone like you and someone like me are talking? Woman stuff, it's a full-time job, man. You smoke? No?'

They didn't recognise me.

‘Quit a few years back,' Pål says, and breathes out.

‘Yeah, I quit too. Couple of weeks back. Hell to pay. No. The ladies. Got to have a spine of steel. Love, Snåli. You know about love?'

‘Yeah, I've—'

Rudi fixes his eyes on him.

‘I'm a man of love, Jåli.'

That look of his, utterly mad. It's like he's going to spontaneously combust and lava's going to flow out of his head.

‘Never doubt it, not for a fucking minute,' Rudi says, seething. ‘You can talk all the shit you like about Rudi but he's a man of love, never ever doubt that. You hear me, Swalli?'

‘Yeah, of co—'

‘Good. I can't stand talking to people who don't listen. But. We can't stand here nattering. Will I tell you what's wrong with the world today, Wålli? The internet. There you have it. What happened to the human factor? Answer me that, Zålli. The internet. Don't get me started, brother! The internet, that's what wrong with the world today. As you well know, my keyboard-clicking friend. And The Good Book, who reads that nowadays? And the family, who watches over them nowadays? Okay, Håli, I'll tell you how we'll do this.'

Say goodnight to the girls, PÃ¥l thinks, trying hard to hold back the tears. I need to get away from here, this is all wrong, I need to get home and say goodnight to the girls.