Hell Fire

30

After Erna’s funeral, Bonnie was given a new client. As she waited outside the door, her body filled with a strange anticipation. A man opened the door and held out his hand, and his handshake was so firm that Bonnie almost whimpered. She entered into a large hallway and took off her coat.

“You can call me Alex,” he said. “No one calls me Alexander.”

“I hope I can be of use,” Bonnie replied. “Just tell me what to do.”

She looked at him with curiosity because he was so different from her other clients. He couldn’t be more than twenty-something. He was wearing a black T-shirt, and her first impression was that his upper body was very muscular, especially his upper arms. He must have been training for years. Otherwise, he had fair hair and an earring in one ear. Even though it was only March, he was a healthy color. He rolled his wheelchair into the living room, and she noted that he was obviously financially well off because he had good furniture and an impressive flat screen on the wall. There were large speakers in every corner of the room and a lot of green plants.

“Do you play chess?” Alex asked.

Bonnie had to confess that she didn’t.

“I’ll teach you,” he said, without hesitation, and rolled over to the table. He got the black and white pieces out of a drawer under the tabletop, and then explained to Bonnie how they could move across the board.

“We’re at war,” he said. “You have an army and I have an army, and we’re both out to capture each other’s king. The point is that you constantly have to think ahead. If you move the knight like this, or this, what space does that leave for my king? Does that make sense?”

She nodded. “I should really use my time on other things,” she said cautiously. “You see, we have to follow regulations. So in terms of what you need, why did you apply for a home health aide?”

“Sod the regulations,” Alex said sharply. “It’s me who decides. You take the white pieces, which means you start.”

Bonnie moved a piece. She had no idea what she was getting herself into. She looked around the room, and her eyes stopped at a photograph of Alex and a beautiful girl with red hair. Alex was standing on his own two legs in the picture, no wheelchair to be seen.

“My girlfriend,” he explained. “She comes every day after work. And with a bit of imagination we manage to do most things.”

He smiled at Bonnie and she smiled back. She was always happy when people didn’t let each other down, in the way that she’d been let down.

“How did you end up in a wheelchair?” she asked.

“Car accident,” he told her. “Head-on collision with a Polish truck.”

“Oh,” Bonnie said, horrified, as Alex moved his first black piece.

“Whose fault was it?”

“Mine.”

“Were you driving too fast?”

“Eighty-seven.”

He waited for her to make the next move. Bonnie found it hard to concentrate.

“What about the guy in the truck?” she asked. “Was he injured?”

“No,” Alex replied. “Truck drivers are pretty safe. But if he had been injured or killed, I don’t know how I would have managed to live with the guilt. He didn’t even break a finger. He came to visit me in the hospital. And now, Magnus Carlsen, it’s time for you to play.”

Before she left, she was allowed to run the vacuum cleaner over the floors in the adapted, easy-to-care-for apartment. He rolled out into the hall with her to say goodbye.

“What are you doing this evening?” she asked. “Is Elisabeth coming?”

“Yes. We’re going to the Apollo gym. We go there every other day. You should start training too,” he said. “It makes you better equipped, you know, for life and things.”

Bonnie shook her head. “Will you babysit for me then?” she said. “I’m a single mother.”

“I think you should get yourself a man,” Alex told her, because he saw that she was beautiful and thought that wouldn’t be hard.

“A shame you’re taken,” she retorted and opened the door. “I can hardly beat Elisabeth.”

They both laughed. And she knew that her days with Alex would be good days.

That night she had a terrible dream.

She dreamed that Olav came to get Simon, and he wanted to take him out to Gullfaks. The father and son sat close together in the helicopter and the sea below was gray and stormy. She stood on the quay and waved as the helicopter lifted, and then she sank into despondency. And as she stood there watching, it plummeted into the sea, and Simon disappeared forever into the churning water. She woke with a gasp and lay there for a while with a hand on her racing heart. A while later, she went into Simon’s room and stood at his bedside for a long time. She stroked him gently on the cheek and then crept back to her room. She often went to bed in the evening with an enormous sense of relief that nothing bad had happened. It could not be taken for granted that they were both healthy and well. She read in the papers every day about catastrophes that had struck other people’s lives, and she offered a quiet prayer to God that she and Simon would be spared.