The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ he says. ‘It was like this in the summer too, right?’

  Klara glances at him and starts walking again. ‘I feel better now,’ she says.

  ‘You know what I mean.’ His voice is louder now, and carries a touch of annoyance, and he’s grabbed her elbow again, turning her towards him. ‘You had a panic attack at Ralph’s, Klara. You’ve been drinking like a fucking sponge. You think you can fool me?’

  She turns her eyes away, but after what he saw at Ralph’s she knows she can’t hide from him. ‘Can we just go home now?’ she says. ‘I can’t talk about this now. I’m sorry.’

  She turns her eyes up the street, in the direction they just came from, mostly to avoid looking at George. There are only a few people hurrying through the drizzle, maybe headed to the movies or to get a beer. But her eyes settle on a man leaning against a doorway next to a souvenir shop fifty metres further up the street. He looks like he might be of Middle Eastern descent, has a short, neatly trimmed beard, is wearing tracksuit bottoms and a dark puffy jacket of some glossy material. He looks like he’s waiting for somebody while staring at his phone. A completely unremarkable situation in other words. But something about him makes her heart beat faster, despite the alcohol and beta blockers. There are a thousand strangers who look like him. But she can’t help noticing he’s dressed in the exact same style as the men in Bromma and Zaventem, and she starts to tremble.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s get going.’

  *

  George lives in a small one-bedroom on Rue Berckmans, just behind the legendary Hotel Conrad, which has been renamed something long and German-sounding since Klara left. They step into his hallway, and she’s surprised by how ordinary and impersonal the apartment is. George’s personality – or at least his former personality – promised something more spectacular.

  ‘It’s only temporary,’ he says apologetically, hanging up Klara’s jacket. ‘I had a sweet place down by Place Lux, but I bought a two-bedroom in Stockholm to get ready for the move. Renovating the kitchen now. Gaggenau, a wine fridge. The works.’

  It’s clear that his old, flashy personality isn’t completely gone, and Klara smiles a little as she walks past him into a living room that looks out over the street. ‘Nice to know that deep down inside you’re still the same superficial arsehole I used to know.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ George mutters behind her. ‘Am I supposed to live like a Social Democrat just cos I got a government job?’

  Klara turns back to him and smiles more widely.

  ‘No offence, of course,’ he adds. Klara used to work for the Social Democrats in Brussels. ‘You know what I mean.’

  He walks over to the window and turns on a small lamp and soft light fills the room, then he takes out his silver lighter again and lights a few candles on the coffee table.

  ‘This place is nothing special,’ he says. ‘I just rented something furnished until I was ready to move. Just one month left.’

  Klara sits down on the sofa and looks at him. He’s so much softer, she thinks. It’s done him good to let go of his slick persona. He looks nice. His eyes used to seem so impatient and restless, but now she thinks they look mostly worried and a little nervous. It seems like his attention-seeking, childish self-confidence was only a mask, and he’s let go of it. Not completely, but enough to see what’s behind.

  He settles down beside her on the sofa, so close that she catches a whiff of his cologne: citrus and wood. It smells expensive.

  ‘Damn,’ he says, rising halfway. ‘We should eat. I can go out and grab something. Don’t really have much at home. Cooking’s not my thing.’

  Klara nods and leans back. She gently grabs his arm and pulls him back down. She feels so safe here, in his company. All of the stress of Brussels is flowing out of her on George’s sofa, in George’s company. It’s confusing – she barely knows him, after all. But she didn’t imagine it. Maybe there’s always been something there, something that she has tried to ignore?

  ‘Can’t you wait a minute?’ she says. ‘Can’t we just sit here for a while?’

  Without really knowing how it happens, she’s leaning against his shoulder, and he’s hesitantly putting an arm around her.

  She turns her face cautiously up towards George’s throat and lets her lips run along the skin just above his collar. She feels his skin tense under her lips, and he changes his position on the sofa, twisting towards her. Suddenly, his hand is beneath her chin and their faces are just millimetres apart. She raises her hands and runs her fingers through his thick hair. She gently takes hold of it and pulls him close.

  His lips taste like beer and tobacco and peppermint chewing gum, and at first it feels almost too surreal to even register what’s happening. She’s kissing George Lööw! It would have made her laugh out loud if it didn’t feel so natural, if it didn’t feel like letting go of something she’d held in check far too hard, for far too long.

  He runs a hand over her hair now, grabs the back of her neck and pulls her even closer, going from careful to hesitant to intentional. She pushes him back so that he’s half lying on the couch, but she doesn’t stop kissing him, she just straddles him. Now he moans into her mouth, and she can feel his hands on her back, running down towards her butt. She fumbles with the buttons of his shirt, without letting her lips leave his, without letting anything come between them. It feels if she were to pull back for even a second the magic would be broken, and reality would flood over them again.

  He has a hand on one of her breasts now, inside her bra, and she feels that he can’t hold back either, that he’s caressing it with a desperation that would hurt if she wasn’t so unbelievably turned on.

  ‘We should go to the bed,’ he gasps.

  But Klara pushes him down on the sofa while pulling at his belt, unbuttoning and pulling down his trousers and suddenly he’s in her hand. He’s smooth and hard, and Klara pulls down her own trousers, her underwear, and then she pulls back for a second and looks deep into his eyes.

  *

  Afterwards she lies with her cheek pressed against his warm chest, her hands still in his hair; he’s still inside her. She can feel his chest falling and rising beneath her. Maybe she should say something, but she doesn’t know what, and honestly doesn’t know if her voice will hold.

  Somewhere in the distance a siren is approaching, and when she opens her eyes she can see flashing blue lights shining on the wood floor as a police car drives by outside. Gently, she turns onto her back, lying next to him on the sofa. She glances at him as he stares up at the ceiling.

  ‘Well well,’ she says finally. ‘You sobered me up.’

  She turns towards him and sees a little smile on his lips. He glances at her, then turns his eyes away nervously. ‘This…’ he begins. ‘I wasn’t expecting this.’

  She laughs. ‘Really? I thought you were a player? A hawk among the sparrows down at Place Lux? Was I completely mistaken?’

  She glances at him and can swear he’s blushing. ‘This… is a little different.’

  She’s sitting up now, has found her underpants between the cushions of the sofa. She fishes them out and pulls them on. ‘Is it?’ she says, smiling provocatively. ‘How is it different, George? Do tell.’

  She sounds tougher than she feels. Or she doesn’t know at all how she feels – just that she liked what just happened. That she likes George’s lips and breath, his hands on her skin. That she feels so safe suddenly. And she doesn’t want it to end.

  George has pulled on his chinos now and is standing up. His hair is dishevelled, almost wild, and Klara likes the way he runs his hands through it, trying to get it back in place.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly. ‘Just different.’ He looks at her and grins. ‘Well, are you hungry now?’

  She nods. She actually is. The beer has given way to a weak headache. But the pressure in her chest is gone. When has she felt this light lately?

  ‘There’s a Lebanese restaurant d
own on the street,’ he says. ‘I can go pick some food up. I think they have a lot of vegetarian stuff, too.’

  ‘You know I’m not a vegetarian, right?’ she says, looking at him with amusement.

  ‘Really? Could have sworn you were?’ He holds out his arms. ‘You’ve got that kind of aura, you know.’

  *

  She wants to take a shower but she can’t let go of what happened, so she settles down on the sofa again. What the hell is this? Did she really just have sex with George?

  She stands up and walks over to the door of the balcony. Carefully draws the curtain and looks down onto the street.

  He just left to get food, but she already feels a little empty and lonely and warm and raw. She misses him. It’s crazy. George Lööw? The original Brussels playboy? She must be even more fucked up than she knew.

  She glances down at the street bathed in a hazy, yellow light. She’ll just stand here and wait for him to come back.

  The street is empty now, and she looks up towards the intersection where the restaurant is located.

  And there, leaning against one of the leafless trees, a man stands in slacks and a dark, shiny puffy jacket. With her heart pounding, she draws the curtains again.

  Somebody is still watching her.

  15 November

  Beirut

  Jacob sees the men through the window. One of them has stopped halfway to the bookstore; the other three move towards the door with their hands at their waistbands, which are partially covered by their short jackets. Who are they? Americans? Does it matter?

  They’re here for him. They’ll find the chip beneath his skin. And then?

  All he can imagine is orange overalls and small cells. That was what awaited Chelsea Manning after she gave information to WikiLeaks. At that very moment, the bookstore owner touches his elbow and startles him. He turns, and the small man is stretching out his hand, taking him by the elbow again, this time more brusquely. A cigar smoulders under his moustache, his eyes narrow, and he nods towards the depths of the store.

  ‘Come,’ he says in English. ‘You don’t have much time.’

  He pulls Jacob between the tables and the shelves that sag under the weight of books, and further through a jingling curtain of glass beads, into a small room with drawers stacked up to the ceiling, a vacuum cleaner in the corner.

  ‘Wait,’ he says, placing the cigar on a plate on the floor. Then he bends down and starts to fiddle through one of the stacks. ‘Help me,’ he says roughly. ‘We have to move this.’ He has grabbed one of the boxes at the bottom and draws it outwards, bringing the whole stack along.

  Jacob sees a doorframe behind it. He squats down next to the bookstore owner to help him pull.

  Behind them, the door chime rings in the store. He can hear several people rushing inside. Hear them making their way through the aisles towards the small room.

  The boxes are heavy and the piles are unsteady, and for a second he thinks they might overturn, but the bookseller steadies the boxes.

  They’ve shifted the stack enough that the bookseller can reach the knob and turn the lock. The door springs open into a dark and silent alley.

  ‘Hurry now,’ he hisses, pushing Jacob out of the doorway.

  Jacob steps out into the shaded, dirty alley and turns back towards the door, looking at the bookseller’s face, sees him holding something through the gap. A thick, white envelope.

  ‘Take this,’ he says, shaking the envelope urgently towards him.

  Before Jacob can say more, the owner has closed the door, and he’s alone in the tiny alley.

  He thinks he hears the boxes being pushed back in place on the other side of the door, then he runs off towards the alley’s entrance. He hears traffic again, and that feels like his only salvation. A taxi. Somewhere to disappear.

  He exits on to the street, turns back, and sees the alleyway door bursting open and one of the men in black storming out, followed closely by another.

  They scream something and he sees their hands at their waistbands, sees them stop and pull out black steel and hold their arms up in front of them. Aiming for him.

  ‘Stop! Get down!’ they scream in what sounds like American English.

  They’re twenty feet away from him now, and he holds up his hands to show he’s unarmed, still with the thick, white envelope in one hand. He should lie down on the ground, should admit to himself he’s not made for this. He should give up. But something inside him hardens. He feels a core now that wasn’t there before.

  And then it’s as if time is standing still again. Like in the garden, as if the entire universe freezes. He turns his head, and sees an empty taxi right behind him.

  ‘Wait!’ he shouts at the men further down the street and takes a short step towards them.

  They seem surprised that he says anything at all, that he’s making the first move and they answer something that he can’t hear. He turns around and tears open the door of the taxi that has just pulled up behind him and throws himself into the back seat.

  ‘Just drive,’ he screams in English. ‘As fast as you can.’

  The driver turns around and looks at him, sees it’s serious and nods as if he understands. There’s a gap in traffic ahead of them, and he steps on the gas and the twenty-year-old Mercedes roars in protest, but finds some kind of power and speeds eastward as if it were brand new.

  Jacob turns around and sees the men are out on the street now. One of them stops and waves for a taxi, the other stands wide-legged, with his gun in front of him. The rear window of the taxi explodes into a thousand crystals. Jacob throws himself down on the worn vinyl of the back seat, feels glass falling all over him. He hears the driver screaming and turning onto a side street, away from the guns and bullets and violence, and then the car stops. The driver turns around with wild eyes.

  ‘Leave!’ he screams. ‘Out of my taxi!’

  He’s in shock, and Jacob already has the door open, jumping out. The shards of glass clatter around him, cutting him, but he takes out his wallet and throws three twenty-dollar bills into the back seat and runs as fast as he can over the uneven asphalt and gravel.

  After twenty metres, he turns around, sees the taxi still there, the driver with a phone to his ear. But he doesn’t see his pursuers.

  Another taxi stops beside him. He pulls open the door and jumps in for a moment of protection, security, and the taxi starts to roll forward anonymously, just one among a thousand others.

  He feels dozens of tiny pieces of glass making their way under his collar, his hair still covered with dust. When he turns around, he sees nothing but the normal chaos of traffic here. No guns or the men who wield them hunting him down.

  ‘Just drive,’ he says. ‘Anywhere at all.’

  *

  Beirut is a city to disappear in. People who are from here have their groups, their ethnicity, their religion; they can fall into Beirut as if it’s a black hole and they will never be found again. But Jacob isn’t from here. He’s blonde and terrified and foreign; he’s exposed, a black swan, impossible not to notice.

  Jacob sits on the honeycombed vinyl of the back seat of an ancient Mercedes, and the driver asks where he wants to go. As the taxi rolls eastwards, he turns around and looks out the dirty rear window. Just row after row of cars flowing slowly, slowly through the city. No grey van. Not yet. He has to hide, has to catch his breath, get on his feet.

  Suddenly he’s back on the roof that very first night in Beirut. Alexa’s warm eyes. ‘Shatila is a labyrinth.’ He fumbles in his pocket and takes out her business card again. It’s only a small chance, barely even that. But it’s all he has.

  ‘I want to go to Shatila,’ he says. ‘To a youth centre there.’

  He sees the driver shake his head. ‘I don’t drive to the refugee camps,’ he says in heavily accented English. ‘I can drive to the border, but you have to go the rest of the way yourself.’

  He turns and looks at Jacob.

  ‘But that’s no place for
you.’

  Jacob just nods. ‘Well, it will have to be. Drive me as close as you can.’

  The driver shrugs and mutters something inaudible, but at least he speeds up.

  The envelope is on Jacob’s knee, and he fumbles to get a finger in one corner, under the tab. With a quick flick he opens it, grabs hold of the contents, and pulls them into the light.

  23–24 November

  Brussels

  Klara jumps off the sofa as soon as she hears the key slide into the lock. She knows it’s George, but still she’s so tense, so close to breaking point, that she runs into the kitchen. She’s grabbing a large carving knife from out of the top drawer, when he enters the kitchen bearing two plastic bags full of aluminium containers from the restaurant.

  ‘Hey!’ he says and slowly lowers the bags onto the kitchen floor, then holds his hands up. ‘What the hell are you up to?’

  She’s holding the knife in front of her, pointing it at him. She points it downwards, then drops it with a jangle onto the tile floor. Then she sinks down and looks up at him.

  ‘I’m so fucking messed up,’ she whispers, then lowers her eyes. ‘I don’t know what the hell I’m doing any more. I’m being followed, I see men on every street corner…’

  He also sinks down in front of her and puts a hand on her cheek. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know exactly what it’s like.’

  ‘You know?’ she says sceptically and looks at him again. ‘I honestly don’t think you can imagine how…’

  But he’s not listening; he’s moved his hand from her face to somewhere behind his back and he seems to be pulling something from the waistband of his trousers. When he brings his hand forward again, he’s holding something so big and black and terrifying that Klara scoots back and almost falls backwards onto the floor.

  ‘What the hell!’ she says. ‘A gun? Are you crazy?’

  He holds it in his palm and gently puts it down on the floor between them. ‘You’re not the only one with issues, Klara. Why do you think I’m moving home? Why do you think I’m leaving my fucking dream job? After everything we went through in the archipelago a couple of years ago, then this summer… I didn’t think I’d survive it. And I’m so tired of being afraid.’