See You Tomorrow (8 page)

120 kilos now. 120 on the nose. 120 on board.

Jan Inge has been holding the telephone in his hand for almost a minute. He has been standing like a statue on the living-room floor with the phone two feet from his stomach and his eyes turned to the ceiling. Typical me, he thinks, lost in thought. That’s what everyone says, that he has great concentration. And no one dares disturb him when he’s thinking, there’s no one who lacks respect for JANI WHEN HE’S THINKING.

He pictures it like that. In big letters.

Like those neon signs in small American towns beset by gruesome atrocities.

Jan Inge has always been like that, with his head full of big letters.

He puts away the phone. Jan Inge misses the old house telephone. He nods, making the fat on the back of his neck wobble. Grey with red numbers. That telephone worked like a dream, but hi-tech advances meant they had to throw in the towel. So much new technology at the moment that it’s becoming a problem. Mobile phones are okay, with top-up cards at any rate, but all this pressure on you to use the internet, it’s not good. It’s not like it was in the good old days.

There it is again. THE GOOD OLD DAYS. You can’t say it without big letters.

Jan Inge glances at the wheelchair at the far end of the hall.

120 on the nose.

It’s important Rudi doesn’t screw this up. He needs to see through the fog. But if there is one thing Jan Inge has learned, it’s
that where it seems most foggy, that’s where the gold might be, and if you want to get your hands on the gold, you have to venture into the fog. As long as Rudi keeps his wits about him and doesn’t start blabbering.

Jan Inge takes the inhaler from the pocket of his jogging pants and sucks. He shuffles across the floor in felt slippers, down the long hallway. He stops in front of the wheelchair.

120 on board.

He has always been fat. Or at least thickset and chubby. So was Mum, may you rest in purgatory, you detestable person. There have always been a few surplus kilos on this body, always a little extra to offer, but 120? He was weighing in at about 100 for a number of years. Nice round number. Easy to relate to. It accorded him a little class, some executive authority. It’s only right for a boss to be a few kilos heavier than the others. Rudi, lanky though he is, weighs ninety-five after all. But after a while it started to rise. An occasional check on the scales now and again. Oops. 105. Down to 100. Oops. No, seems to have gone up, this … 110 …
Jani 110, since when?

It rhymes, Tong said, just before he went inside.

They had done a job in Jæren, a clean break-in, got lots of computers, just easy-to-sell stuff that would mean clean cash from Buonanotte. Well planned, well executed. Keys, swipe cards, the whole shebang. There had never been a single mistake on Tong’s watch, never been anyone sent down. If there is one man you can count on, it’s Tong, because he doesn’t count on anyone. Thank Christ he’s getting out on Friday. He carried out the job itself perfectly, but then? You’d think he had suddenly become an amateur again. Thirty-five years old, tonnes of experience, and he ends up doing something like that? It’s the drugs, Tong. Jan Inge has told him a thousand times. You think your senses are sharpened. But that shit has chomped lumps out of that brilliant brain of yours. We have a policy in this company, we rack up a few lines before we go to work, to get our heads up and running, but we don’t degenerate into a gang of junkies. But what do you go and do, Tong? You hit a party in Orre after the job, you stuff your nut full of speed, and God knows what else, and you know how horny that coke makes you, and then you’re pulled in for intercourse with a minor.
A month later you’re in the dock, faced with two fuming parents and a sobbing girl, all pointing the finger at you, and you claim you had no idea that she was only fourteen.

Jan Inge has said it a million times: listen to me, you horny Korean, the coke has gobbled at your brain, and I know what I’m talking about – my mum drank five bottles of spirits a week and she went as mad as a March hare and as empty as a drum upstairs, and she was a terror and nobody, neither man nor beast, misses that old bitch. Well, all right, Chessi … poor bag of bones … maybe she … no, Chessi remembers shag all. She was only little when Mum died. She can’t go around missing someone she practically never set eyes on.

But me, I remember that sicko, and I’ve nothing good to say about her, no wonder Dad took off when he got that job in Houston.

Jan Inge has spent a good deal of time thinking about it. Thinking about what exactly was wrong with her.

And he has arrived at the conclusion that she lacked something.

That she quite simply didn’t have it in her to love people.

And that’s why Jan Inge has drawn his own conclusions about what is important. To find your own people. To find your own family. To hang on to them. To love them long and love them right. No matter if they make a major blunder that lands them back inside Åna, and no matter if they take 120 kilos on board.

Dad heading to Houston was of little consequence. At least he always sent money, give him his due. Sent money right up until Chessi turned eighteen. And Christmas cards. Or that time in 1985, Jan Inge thought his heart was going to burst out of his chest: a package arrived from Dad in the USA, a package in the post. A SodaStream!

And a huge box with a BETAMAX VCR and a pile of videos.

Love from Dad.

He still has the SodaStream. It’s down in the basement somewhere.

Doesn’t work any more. But it worked back then. Every kid in Hillevåg was at the front door slavering after home-made fizzy drinks. They could pick and choose who to let in. Those were the days. Won’t ever throw it out, that SodaStream is a trophy.
They were over in Houston a few times, him and Chessi, travelled halfway round the globe on their own; she was so small the first time he had to hold her by the hand for hours. Jan Inge can still remember how clammy their hands got, but forget about trying to let go, then she just wailed as though the plane was going to crash.
No, Janinge.
Those were some trips. Just him and Chessi. Just him and her up in the clouds.
Are we flying now, Janinge?
Yeah.
Are we flying into the sun, Janinge?
It’s a great country, the US, free and easy; Dad took them to burger joints, let them do their own thing, watch films and that, while he was at work. As for going back to Norway; that was never going to happen. He was clear about that, they could come and live in the USA, but he was never going back home to Norway.

And he never did come home.

Jan Inge puts the inhaler back into his pocket. He nods to himself. Looks at the wheelchair. It’s been sitting there for years. It was Rudi who got hold of it when Chessi broke her foot. Typical Rudi. He’d bend over backwards for her.

People like that, thinks Jan Inge, you hold on to people like that.

Bit foggy, the job they were on at the minute. As long as Chessi manages to keep calm. She has to stay in the car. He can’t have her getting under Rudi’s feet while he’s working. She’s too volatile. It’s from Mum, thinks Jan Inge, bad genes. She’s ill-tempered and difficult, you’d be hard pressed to say otherwise. But she is his sister. And she is Rudi’s girlfriend. And that’s how it should be.

Jan Inge lowers himself into the wheelchair. It sinks a little beneath his weight, but it supports him well. It’s easy to control, a nice little contraption. He smiles. A dark lustre comes over his narrow pinhead eyes and he rolls off down the hall.

He trundles into the living room and over to the table, picks up a remote control, presses minus, and the ceiling lights dim. He continues over to the armchair in front of the flatscreen, remains seated while he shoves the armchair over to the window, and then parks the wheelchair in front of the TV. This is ingenious, he thinks, and then glances out the window and sees how dark it has become outside. Good, working in daylight, that’s not for us.
Rudi will manage this. But it’s a good thing Tong is getting out on Friday. God bless that little mole of a Korean. He’s a demon, but it’s been tough without him, been like a football team without a striker, to draw an analogy.

This, thinks Jan Inge, rocking back and forth a little in the wheelchair, this is ingenious.

Then he trundles across the living-room floor. Goes past the hall and manoeuvres himself into the kitchen, where he opens the fridge and takes down a one-and-a-half-litre bottle of coke and a big bowl of chocolates. He opens a kitchen drawer and pulls out a family size bag of paprika crisps, before heaving the goodies on to his lap and wheeling back to the living room.

Jan Inge parks the wheelchair in front of the TV, and takes hold of the remote controls.

No problem having 120 on board with this thing, I’m able to get around like a robot.

God, she was so cute when she was small. Wimpy, awkward and weird. Jan Inge suddenly pictures her as he tears open the crisp bag and arranges the remotes and the goodies in his lap. He’s really looking forward to following up
Carnival of Souls
with
Three on
a Meathook.
Seeeerious grindhouse. 1973. Maximum low-budget. Dirty as a rubbish heap. Brilliant scene when Billy goes into the house and finds the dead girls, and the harmonica soundtrack really adds to the atmosphere.

He could have written a book on horror by now, after all the films he’s seen and studied. It’s doubtful there’re many people out there with a better collection of horror or more knowledge of the genre than him. It’s about time he attended one of the international horror conventions. Show his face. Let them know he exists.

God, Cecilie was so cute back then.

She used to waddle around like a penguin. She’d open that little mouth, her voice all smurfy and nice: Janinge bruuv Cecili sisssa.

Yeah.

I can live with this all right, a cold dark September night in 2012, with coke, treats and a horror movie ready, snuggled up in a wheelchair. It’s a starry night outside. After a few harsh autumn
weeks, a bright warm day turns up out of the blue. It’s a sign, but of what? Joy or the apocalypse? Your best mate is out trying to clarify a slightly foggy job, and it may be twenty-five years since you soared through the clouds with your little sister’s hand in yours, but you can still feel the imprint as you sit there in front of the flatscreen, as though she is still clinging to you while you cross the Atlantic.

Yeah.

The fog needs to clear.

Snow flickers on the screen. The old VHS player whines. A woman dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved sweater walks across a yard, over towards a shed. She has shoulder-length hair. Just before she is about to unbolt the door, she turns and looks around. Then she pulls back the bolt, opens it, and goes inside. She screams. Three women hang impaled on meat hooks.

Jan Inge smiles and rocks a little in the wheelchair.

It would be nice to see Dad again.

GOOD MEMORIES.

The door slams behind her and Sandra runs off. That daft-looking run of hers. Her right arm under her tits and her tottering legs. Tiril goes into the backroom and grabs a marker from the Spar cup on the break table. She pulls the top off with her teeth and stretches her fingers out in front of her. Which way? Her fingers are thin, her skin is clean and her nails are painted black and bitten down to the quick. They’ve always been told off for that, both her and Malene; do the two of you have to bite your nails?

Tiril sits down on one of the chairs, sets her jaw, concentrates and begins to write. Letter by letter, going over each twice and making them as decorative as she can.

She clenches her fist, closes her eyes:
This pain is just too real.
Then she hangs up her work clothes and walks into the empty, semi-darkness of the shop. She hears her own footfalls, they resound upon the newly washed lino. Over to one of the tills. Nobody has noticed anything so far. Tiril opens the cabinet with the little key. Not many packs of Prince left. Lots of Marlboro Gold. She fetches out a ten-pack, puts it in her pocket, exhales.

The front doors are locked, she walks into the backroom again, stopping at the bottle deposit belt and tapping the pocket of her jeans to check if she’s got the lighter, the little black one. She looks around one last time. Everything is okay. She switches off the ceiling light, turns on the alarm, 8789, and goes out.

Tiril sits down on the loading ramp in front of the deliveries door, half hidden behind the large wheelie bins. Her feet dangling over the ground. Dad is probably out taking a walk, she thinks, while trying to get her blunt nails underneath the plastic wrapping
of the cigarette packet. He’s probably out with Zitha, she thinks, giving up, bringing the packet to her mouth and tearing the plastic with her teeth.

She sniffles, pulls out a cigarette, puts it between her lips, spins the wheel of the lighter, watches the flame grow and lights it.

There’s just so much that time cannot erase.

The worst thing would be if she was standing in front of the whole school, with Thea on the piano, and everything’s going well, everything’s perfect, and then she forgets the words. Not that she thinks that’ll happen, she knows them backwards, but still she worries about it. She just needs to think that she is Amy Lee. That she actually comes from Little Rock, Arakansas, she hasn’t grown up here, she doesn’t live this pissy life in a little suburb in a stupid oil town in crappy Norway.
Shitty Stavanger doesn’t exist
. She has woken up every day of her life and looked out at the Arkansas River, skyscrapers and the big American sky.

‘Jesus, Tiril, have you started smoking now as well?’ Malene – shit, where did she come from? – is standing in front of Tiril shaking her head. Her arms folded, she rolls her eyes.

Tiril’s eyes flash angrily. ‘What’s it to you?’

Malene assumes a neutral expression and shrugs.

‘Yeah, yeah, no surprise there. Jesus, Tiril, you’re fourteen. Smoking is lethal.’

Jesus. She’s such a bloody old
biddy
.

‘Yeah, so? It’s lethal to live, in case you didn’t know.’ Tiril takes a long drag and blows the smoke into her sister’s face. ‘Are you following me or something?’

Malene sits down beside her on the loading ramp. She shoots a glance at Tiril’s hands. ‘Jesus. What have you done?’

I knew it, thinks Tiril, I
knew
she’d comment on the tattoo.

‘None of your business,’ she says, letting the cigarette hang between her lips as she squints her eyes and stretches her hands out towards her sister.

L O V E

H A T E

‘Lol,’ says Malene. ‘That’s so tweenie. Are you actually going to walk around with that?’ Tiril takes a good drag of the cigarette.
Whatever, she couldn’t be bothered replying. ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘why has Dad never actually found himself a girlfriend?’

Malene looks at her. ‘Well, don’t know really … why do you ask?’

‘No reason, am I not allowed to talk now, not allowed to have independent thoughts?’

Malene rolls her eyes. ‘Sure, Sure.’

‘I mean, Mum got herself a man before she left Dad.’

‘You don’t know what you’re on about,’ Malene says sharply.

‘Jesus.’ Tiril plants her forefinger in her sister’s shoulder: ‘Listen, you know that Sandra one?’

‘In my class?’ Malene looks up. ‘The one you clean with?’

‘Mhm.’

‘What about her?’

‘Nah, you probably already know. So…’

‘Give it a break, what do you mean?’

‘Do you know what she’s up to?’

‘No … up to? What do you mean?’

Tiril makes a fish-face and blows a perfect smoke ring. ‘She’s off screwing Daniel William in the woods.’

Malene’s lips slowly part. ‘What!?
Daniel William?
’

‘Mhm.’ Tiril nods assuredly. ‘Tears out of here after work. Straight over to the woods. Screws.’

‘Je-sus.’ Malene shakes her head. ‘I knew something was up.’

‘Yeah, just ask Tiril.’

‘
Daniel William.
’ Each syllable of his name escapes her mouth slowly. ‘That’s just … I mean he’s … Shit. Je-sus.’

The sisters remain sitting beside each other. They smile and shake their heads. Tiril loves the feeling of knowing more about people and what they’re up to than Malene, and that she’s the one who’s clued in, the one who’s a tweenie and pissed off all the time.

‘Tiril,’ says Malene, after a while.

Her tone is stern. She’s always talked like that. As if she thinks she’s my mother, thinks Tiril. Come on then, out with it, since you’re so bloody grown-up, such great mates with Dad and think you can lick your way in everywhere, sitting there smiling saying
yeah, fine
, whenever Mum calls. Come on, out with it, since you
think you’re such a good judge of who’s tweenie in their head and who isn’t.

‘Tiril,’ Malene says again, as though she has a fly in her mouth.

‘Yeah? Christ. I’m right here. Are you blind?’

‘It’s just,’ Malene hesitates, ‘do you know if there’s anything wrong with Dad?’

Tiril turns to face her.

‘With Dad? What do you mean?’

‘No, I don’t know.’ That E.T. expression comes across Malene’s face. She shrugs. ‘No, I don’t know. Just seems like something’s up.’

‘Oh,’ says Tiril, taking a last drag of the cigarette before flicking it off the loading ramp and taking a pack of gum from her jeans pocket. ‘That’s just Dad,’ she says, ‘he’s always been like that.’

‘So, you haven’t seen him then?’

‘Tonight?’ Tiril takes a piece of chewing gum and feels the fresh taste spread through her mouth. ‘He’s never around here anyway. Do you think I’d be sitting here smoking if he was? He’s off in the woods. Or in Sørmarka. Or up on top of Limahaugen looking out over the fjord. Him and Zitha.’

‘Mhm,’ says Malene. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

She looks at Tiril.

‘You should get a haircut,’ she says, reaching towards Tiril’s hair. ‘You’re getting split ends.’

‘Don’t,’ Tiril says, pulling away.

Malene’s gaze is still fixed on her.

With that look.

Can you please stop, don’t give me that look.

‘You’re so cute,’ says Malene, ‘it’s going to go great on Thursday.’

I’m going to start crying if you look at me like that.

‘You don’t know anything about it,’ says Tiril. ‘It might go really badly.’

‘No it won’t,’ Malene says, getting to her feet, ‘I’m coming to watch, Dad’s coming to watch and everyone’s going to be there. Mum would probably be there too if she could. Everyone in the gym hall is going to love you, you’re going to be great.’

Tiril looks askance at Malene. The nice gymnastics body.
The supple movements. Malene, you walk like you were royalty, Grandad says. Tiril liked it when she injured her ankle last year. She didn’t say it, but she did. Miss Perfect Gymnast had to limp. Poor beautiful bitch.

‘Hey. Malene?’

‘Mhm?’

‘Do you think you can choose, I mean, between light and darkness?’

Tiril sees Malene lift her troubled gaze. Sees it drift over the school, the woods, up towards the telecom tower and the top of the hill, and it almost looks as though she’s muttering something.