Erotic Refugees (7 page)

He realised that Rob was still
talking and turned back to him.

“
So just use my system,
right,” Rob was saying. “For example, let's see, that one
there—”

Rob waved his fork towards a
random female who was turning a few vegetable kebabs on a nearby
barbecue. “Now, ye might look at her, and ye might think, well,
she's yeah, you know? Are ye with me?”

Eoin grunted in agreement as he
took a tiny sip of his beer. “And this has something to do with the
system?”

“
Oh yeah, right, the
system! Sure. Now ye need to have about four on the go at the same
time. Okay, not on the go, exactly, but four main ones. Other ones
will pop up, sure, and can be judged on their merits—”

Eoin suddenly saw something
that caused Rob's voice to fade out to a mildly irritating buzz.
Sitting on the grass not thirty metres to his right was none other
than the woman he'd seen in the park a few weeks earlier. It was
Middle Mum, in all her black-bobbed, lean-muscled glory.

He stared until he realised
that his jaw was hanging open and then pulled his gaze away. Then,
slowly and secretly, he peeked back in her direction and performed
a desperation analysis.

She didn’t have her kids with
her, but there was no man in sight either, which suggested that
both man and kids were at home. It might also have suggested many
other combinations, such as the kids being with their dad this
week. This was not an unusual arrangement in Stockholm, where there
were so many kinds of family structures that it required a whole
slew of words that didn't really exist in English to describe
them.

With her were five other
people, two couples and a single friend, and around their heels
bounced a small dog. Eoin kept staring at her, aware that he should
do something but completely unable to decide what that something
might be.

“
Eoin, aren't ye
listening?”

“
No,” Eoin said
distractedly.

Rob was quick off the mark and
followed Eoin's gaze to its target. “Who, that one there? Behind
the grill with the dog? So who is it, an old squeeze?”

“
No, just someone I met
in the playground. Forget it.”

Rob's face lit up. “Listen
Eoin, 'sno problem, I'll fix it, I will. I'll just toss over a
frisbee, right—”

“
What? No! And we don't
have a frisbee!”

“
It's a feckin' park,”
Rob said. “Can't be hard to find a frisbee, can it? Or just a paper
plate then. Anything instead of just drooling!”

“
Forget it, I'm sure I'll
see her some other time—”

Rob struggled to his feet.
“Look, let me take care of this, I'm a professional. Ye'd call a
plumber for your toilet, and ye'd call me for romantic, umm,
repairs. With a money-back guarantee and all. So that leggy one
there, with the dog, yeah?”

“
Right,” Eoin said. His
heart was pounding, and his mouth was dry. It couldn't be as easy
as that, could it? Just send over a cheerful friend and have him
sort everything out? It felt like a cheap and simplistic way to
meet somebody, but maybe that's what people did? Maybe they just
got to the point as efficiently as possible and didn't waste energy
in fretting?

Either way, it was now too late
for second-guessing as Rob was moving in their direction, nosing
out the trail. Now all Eoin could do was watch.

Rob walked by the group and
changed direction when he caught sight of their dog. Then he petted
the dog and started chatting to them as if it were the most natural
thing in the world. Eoin watched as Rob was offered something on a
paper plate, which he accepted, still chatting away as if he had
known them forever. And he watched as Rob took the woman a few
steps to the side, got her to look over in Eoin’s direction, and
pointed.

Eoin's heart clenched. Oh no.
Was it possible? Could he have, the blithering idiot?

He had. He so had. It was the
wrong woman. The wrong one entirely.

Eoin could see it happening in
slow motion, like a slab of glacial ice crashing gracefully into
the ocean, but he could do absolutely nothing to stop it. He waved
to catch his attention but Rob was unstoppable, a force of nature,
as he plied this woman with bullshit and poured praise on Eoin. She
was looking over, peering at him with her hand shading her eyes,
obviously taking all of it seriously.

Middle Mum glanced over too,
with an expression Eoin couldn't read. He felt an urge to charge
over there and clear things up, maybe have a little chuckle with
them about the whole silly misunderstanding. Maybe he could sip
some wine with Middle Mum and watch the sun slide down (with his
hand squeezing her knee). But the situation was now so complicated
it would require nothing less than a full UN peacekeeping force to
sort it out, and Eoin would have preferred to stab himself with his
own plastic fork than venture anywhere near it.

Luckily he didn't have to,
because the situation was now coming to him. Rob was heading back
in Eoin's direction, roaring with laughter, and the woman was
walking along beside him. Eoin felt close to fainting. He climbed
unsteadily to his feet and hoisted his mouth into a smile as he
observed his approaching doom.

She may have been one of the
women from the park, one of the other mothers, but he wasn’t quite
sure. She was short and thin, with very short blonde hair. She wore
brilliant red lipstick, far too bright for her pale face, and her
nose had a strange turn-up at the end. All in all she wasn't bad
looking and, from what he could hear, she had a nice honest
laugh.

But that wasn't the point at
all—she was simply the wrong one.

She came to a halt in front of
Eoin. “Hello,” she said politely. “Rob tells me you know me from a
park, but it's against your religion to come over. I am anyway
Anja.”

Rod stood behind her, beaming
as if he'd just plucked a golden egg from beneath the goose's arse.
He gave Eoin an enthusiastic nod, completely unaware of the carnage
he had just wrecked in his emotional universe.

Eoin stuck out his hand, even
though it was probably as cold and clammy as a slice of yesterday's
pizza. And as the midsummer sun crawled its leisurely way towards
the horizon he was sure that this day would turn out to be the
longest, and most embarrassing, of his entire life.

Chapter
9

"Hi there Eoin, wait up!"

Eoin, with his hand on the
lobby door, turned to see Alice emerging from the elevator. She
waved, he waved back, and in a few loping strides she was standing
in front of him. She gave him a stern look.

"You're leaving work early,
mister. Hot date with Park Girl perhaps?"

Eoin stepped through the door
and Alice fell into step beside him. “No, I haven't. I'm off to
pick up Damien. There's nobody in work anyway, they're all away on
their boats or playing golf or whatever."

"It's the same upstairs. I've
been the only human in human resources since lunch. But Eoin, why
not Park Girl? You did call her, right?"

They paused at a pedestrian
crossing, waiting with some other people for the green man to
appear even though the road was empty.

“
Look,” Eoin said. “I
can't call her, because I'm into her friend. And I also can't not
call her, because then she'll think I'm a bastard and so will her
friend, you see?”

“
Oh just call her! Work
the rest out later.” Alice reached out and patted him on the
shoulder. “Everything you do doesn’t have to be so deep, you
know!”

The green man appeared and they
crossed the street, heading for the subway station just up the
hill.

“
Anyway, I meant to ask
you something,” Alice said. “I have my mother's summer house on
Gotland for a few weeks in July. You should come along! We'll get
some people together, made dinners, play kubb, go fishing. It'll be
great!”

Eoin frowned. People? What
people? Was she trying to set him up with somebody? Was this some
new trick of hers?

“
I suppose,” he said
carefully. “It's be away with Damien in Ireland for one week, then
I'll have one week where I'll be off and he'll be with his
mother—”

“
So that's when we'll do
it! Week twenty-nine would be good for me, but twenty-eight is
also—”

“
Alice, come on, nobody
really understands those week numbers. You don't either, you have
to look a calendar yourself just to work them out. Just tell me the
dates.”

“
Middle or end of July.
Ask that Rob guy to come along, he sounds fun. There's a big house,
and a little guest house, so there's lots of room.”

They came to a halt outside the
subway station.

“
Rob?” Eoin said. “I
don't know, he'll probably have plans.”

Alice raised a finger and
pointed it at him, in school-mistress style. “Bring him, Eoin.
That's an order. And call that woman, okay?”

Eoin didn't answer and watched
as Alice unlocked her bicycle and dropped her bag into the basket.
“See you tomorrow then,” she said, and winked. “And you'll have
lots of gossip for me, I'm sure!”

Eoin watched as she cycled away
up the hill, her long legs moving her effortlessly along. It didn't
sound too bad actually—a week on Gotland with sun, food and Alice.
But also Rob.

He shook his head. Rob would
never be interested in that, he was just too … too Rob. He fished
out his wallet and headed for the subway, wondering if it finally
was time to do what he'd avoided doing his entire adult life. That
one thing that would turn him Swedish for good.

And that was to buy a sensible
pair of sandals.

Damien went to one of the few
English-speaking nurseries in the city. They taught the kids to say
please and thank-you, and armed them with all of the important
nursery rhymes. They even took them out to a park every November to
celebrate Guy Fawkes and it was always entertaining to watch the
Swedes hurrying by and pretending not to notice the mob of foreign
children who were cheerfully burning a large voodoo doll while
stuffing themselves silly with hotdogs.

Eoin was a minute away but
already he could hear the kids charging about in the yard outside
the day-care. The sun was warm on his face, his jacket was slung
over one shoulder and he felt especially sharp in his new
sunglasses. If his luck was in he might even spot one of the
attractive single mums. There were quite a few of them, most of
them around thirty and clearly on the lookout for a stylish
Irishman to while away the summer months with. Or if not with, then
maybe under.

As he pondered these tingly
thoughts, he slipped through the gate, hooked it closed behind him
and turned to watch the kids. They were, as always, sparkling with
energy and good cheer. It always improved his mood, watching them
racing about, throwing sand and encouraging each other to eat ants.
Although he suspected that actually working here would quickly
reduce him to a gibbering wreck.

There was no sign of Damien and
his gaze drifted to the moms, two of whom were in the yard. As hot
as they were, Eoin knew that that dating a single or half-time
mother would be complicated by several factors, the main one being
the issue of child weeks. In fact, there was probably no point in
even making the effort if their child-free weeks didn't match up,
and that cut out fifty percent immediately.

It was, of course, always
possible for one of them to swap their child-free week with their
kid's other parent, but that would be complicated by all the other
parents in this system and their interlocking cycles of child
weeks. In fact, a small change by one person would ripple
throughout the whole fabric of Stockholm's single parents,
disturbing lives and dinner plans and copulation schedules far and
wide. It was a heavy responsibility, and one that Eoin didn't
really want.

He was deep in thought,
watching the kids chase each other around the old birch tree, when
a voice he recognised snapped him back to reality. Coming through
the door from the nursery, babbling ten to a million, was Damien,
in his brown cord pants and his Spider-man rucksack on his back.
With him was Jenny, the one person Eoin really didn't need to see
right now. His jaw dropped and panic gripped his chest as he tried
to work out what his ex was doing here.

Jenny saw him standing by the
gate, and her face hardened. Eoin locked eyes with her and wondered
how those eyes, which had brought him across half of Europe, were
now just something he wished to avoid.

“
Pappa!” yelped Damien
and gave an enormous wave. Eoin waved back, forcing a smile. He
knew he should do something, like walk over there and say some
words, but if Damien was with Jenny then maybe he shouldn't
interrupt.

But hang on a second! She was
the one who shouldn't be here! What gave her the right to show up
on the wrong day? Well he'd find out soon enough, because she was
on her way over, being dragged by an enthusiastic Damien.

“
Eoin,” she said in a
painfully neutral voice. “What are you doing here?”

“
Picking up,” he said,
hoping he sounded determined.

She gave that irritated
half-grunt, half-sigh that Eoin had heard far too often.

“
Eoin. We changed. I
would get him today because we are going to that party, and you
have him until Tuesday next week. Remember?”

Eoin nodded, although for the
life of him he couldn't remember having agreed to that change.
Maybe he'd just been agreeing with her in general and hadn't
listened to what the actual details had been.

“
I told you to write it
down,” she said. “Now Damien's doesn't know who he's going to. Well
done.”