Misterioso

11

The scent, just the scent of ordinary female skin. Tiny, tiny hairs tickling his nose. Nothing else.

He needs absolutely nothing else.

She grumbles when he touches her. He’s still cold.

“There’s a stranger in my bed,” she manages to say, seventy-five percent asleep.

“No, no,” he says, pressing closer. “There’s a stranger in my bed.”

It’s like a formula. They’ve said the same thing hundreds of times.

It is a formula.

“Open, sesame.”

Sesame hesitates. Does she feel like it? Only a couple more hours of sleep left. To do it while half-asleep. As if dreams themselves were forcing their way in, she once said. That was a long time ago.

He instantly gets an erection. Click. And he thought he was too tired. It just said click, he thinks drowsily. The rest of him is asleep. The blood has collected in one place. That part isn’t asleep.

He warms up his hand as best he can by sticking it under his armpit and then tentatively touches her bare hip. She doesn’t push it away. She doesn’t react at all. She’s asleep. He makes one last attempt, slipping his hand under her T-shirt. He cups his hand around one breast. Slowly he starts to circle the nipple. She’ll think either that the tickling is annoying and push him away, or that it feels lovely and let him continue. Or else she’ll just keep on sleeping. Anything is still possible.

The nipple stiffens. She stirs. She lets him continue.

He loosens his underwear and runs his penis lightly along her backbone and down over her buttocks. At the same time he circles his finger over her nipple, squeezing it gently. His penis softly moves down her hip, past the waistband of her panties, and down to her thigh. There it turns and moves upward, then farther down, rubbing softly along her panties, slowly across her anus, and up to her backbone again. Circles.

She turns onto her back and arches up onto the soles of her feet. He tugs off her panties and can smell the scents. He tugs off his underwear, and she grabs hold of him with both hands, guiding him inside.

His tongue on her lips. She sticks out her tongue. They touch each other. He sinks slowly inside her, opened wide, and is enveloped in moistness. They lie there for a minute without moving. Fulfilled. Their skin touching everywhere.

Then he pulls out, almost out, and plunges back in, all the way.

It’s not over yet, Hjelm.

He had put down his helmet and was Paul. Simply Paul.

Breakfast. Paul and Cilla and Tova were sitting at the table. He blearily scanned the morning paper. Tova gulped down the last of her orange juice and jumped up to look in the mirror.

“Ohhhh,” she groaned.

She pulled the rubber bands off her pigtails and ruffled her hair, frantically dragging a comb through her tresses.

“That looks great,” Hjelm said. “Come here.”

She dashed over to the table, gave him a quick hug, and ran back to the mirror. She grabbed her shoulder bag just as the doorbell rang. She opened the door, and Milla came in.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” said Hjelm.

“Come on, let’s go!” yelled Tova. “We’re already late!”

The door banged shut.

Danne came downstairs and gave them a sullen look.

“You’re home?” he said to his father, then left. The door rattled for a while after he slammed it behind him.

Cilla sighed deeply and said, with half a piece of liverwurst sandwich in her mouth, “So the whole thing went to hell?”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Oath of confidentiality,” he said, giving her a droll look.

“Oh, right,” she said, her expression exactly the same as his. That happened frequently. He recognized his own facial expressions in hers and could never figure out which of them had influenced the other.

“We were at the wrong place. It was as simple as that.”

“Do you think something happened somewhere else?”

“I’m absolutely convinced it did. You’ll probably be able to read about it in the noon edition of the evening paper. At any second, that phone is going to ring,” he said, pointing at his cell on the table. He finished his coffee, went out to the coat rack in the hall, and took down his denim jacket with the sheepskin collar. He was holding it as he went back to the table and gave her a little kiss. “Are you working tonight or are you off?” he asked.

She shook her head, playfully admonishing him. “I’m working tonight.”

He pulled on his jacket, blew her another kiss, opened the door, and stepped outside, heading for his unmarked Mazda. Before he closed the door, she cleared her throat. She was holding his cell between her thumb and index finger, her expression slightly disgusted. It was ringing. She dropped it onto the table.

With a chuckle he picked it up and answered. He didn’t say a single word during the entire conversation.

“Exactly as I said,” he told her, slipping the cell into his jacket pocket. She blew him a kiss as he stepped out into what looked, strangely enough, like a midsummer day.

No wind. Bright sunshine. Only in the shade was it possible to feel that it was still a hesitant spring.

Love, he found himself thinking, to his surprise. Love and daily life. Daily life and love.

He turned the key in the ignition and drove out toward Norsborg.

It was time, once again, to exchange the southern suburbs for the north.