“Hallå?”
Brittany jumped when a brunette the size and build of Eva materialized from nowhere. She stared at Brittany, seemingly enamored, until Jonny introduced her.
“This is Louise, my assistant.”
“Of course.” Brittany reached out to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Eva told me how pretty you are.” She beamed as she turned to Jonny and shot into a barrage of Swedish before Brittany could acknowledge her compliment. After about three minutes, she turned to Brittany to inform her of their arrangements.
“You must be so tired from your trip, so you just take it easy. We’ve ordered an early dinner. Is there anything you’d especially like?” Louise studiously inquired.
A new feeling started crawling up from within Brittany’s depths. If this was what being taken care of by a man several levels wealthier than Beaufount was like, she was beginning to find it suffocating. With Jamal, she had taken the lead with everything, and he’d pulled out money as needed. He never made her feel like she wasn’t independent enough to thrive without him and make her own decisions. Jonny had two pixies who were grooming her as if she were engaged to a crown prince.
She decided she didn’t like them doting on her.
“Jonny thinks fish might make you sick,” Louise continued. “So, a light pasta dish might work?”
“A salad is fine.”
“You need to eat,” Jonny whispered, wrapping his arms around her from behind. He ran his palms over her stomach and kissed her cheek. The gesture caught Louise by surprise, blood rushing to her cheeks, flushing them red. Brittany caught her change in color and disposition. This extravagant display was probably unlike Jonny when he was in boss mode in front of his staff, so Brittany tried to wiggle out of it.
“Stop,” Brittany whispered back, turning toward his exploring mouth. He kissed her. “Stop doing that.” Louise was smart and would figure it out if he kept running his hands over her belly. He stopped and pulled back.
A flustered Louise took her leave to go organize their dinner while Jonny pulled Brittany back into his embrace.
“Is this all we are?” Brittany asked before his mouth sought hers again.
“What do you mean?” He stopped midtask.
“I mean, this. Everything. Us…” She wasn’t sure what she was trying to say. “Would we still be together if we stopped having sex?”
His brows knitted together, confused at her words. Then he crushed a kiss on her to stop her from talking.
When Louise arrived an hour later, it was to Jonny and Brittany, arms intertwined, sleeping on his couch with a thin blanket barely covering their naked bodies.
MUNA
Muna stood half-hidden by the wall, observing the Black African sister with the American accent. She was sitting in a corner, hunched over a laptop, studying something intently on the screen. On her desk was a takeaway latte cup from Espresso House. Muna studied her. She wasn’t sure if she was feeling envy or pride. She banked closer to the latter. This woman seemed to be important here. Muna felt her heart swell. She had to say something to her.
Propelled by admiration, Muna fully stepped out from behind the wall and slowly walked over to the woman. She was wearing crochet braids in loose curls and beneath her smart, camel-colored blazer was a forest-green pencil dress.
“God morgon,” Muna greeted. She couldn’t speak English, but she could pick out a few words in conversation. The woman’s head shot up, and she regarded Muna with kind eyes and deep dimples. Muna guessed she was excited to see another Black face.
“God morgon!” she threw back before taking in Muna’s uniform and the cleaning cart she had been pushing. Muna wasn’t sure what came next after “Good morning.” She just introduced herself.
“Jag heter Muna.” She patted her chest. The woman patted her chest as well.
“Jag heter Kemi,” she said in bastardized Swedish that Muna instantly pitied. Muna wanted to hug her. To tell her more. That she was so happy to see her sitting there. That her colleagues were backstabbers. That Kemi was beautiful and confident. That her mere presence was giving Muna hope. That she wasn’t going to be resigned to a life cleaning toilets.
But all Muna could manage was “Tack så mycket,” Thank you very much, and a short wave, before running off shyly with her cleaning cart as the woman stared after her.
A few hours later, it was time for their lunch break. Her cleaning crew had already disbanded and would reconvene in an hour. Azeez and Qasim were probably off smoking outdoors somewhere, and Huda always went to the same Lebanese buffet restaurant a few blocks away.
Muna pulled her bag closer as the elevator doors slid open. She glided in and punched the button for the ground floor, slowly watching them close. Suddenly, a large, strong hand wedged itself to stop the elevator. A tall man with bright, blond hair forcefully pushed himself in, while holding a smartphone in his free hand. Muna backed up until she was pressed against the wall. The man turned his back to her, standing in front of her, his shoulders completely blocking her view. She knew almost everyone in this building but had never seen this man before.
He lifted the smartphone back to his ear. The insect-like shrilling of the person on the other end kept on and on. The man simply listened, not saying a word. The voice on the other line kept talking, and then the man disconnected the call abruptly midconversation. She watched him slide the phone into his pocket. The elevator became silent once more, and she prayed the tall man didn’t hear her breathing nervously.
He must have heard her though, because he turned to look at her over his shoulder. Muna inched back into the wall, but she was already pressed up against it. The man’s light eyes took her in intensely. They roamed over her face as if they were lasers scanning her. She couldn’t read his expression. If he was angry or curious. She didn’t know what he wanted from her. He gawked at her, pinning her with his gaze until the elevator beeped its arrival on the ground floor.
Once the doors opened, the tall man dashed out with long strides. He seemed to be in a hurry. He must be very hungry for lunch, Muna thought as she padded behind him. He pushed the front doors in haste, not bothering to hold them open for her, and poured out onto the sidewalk where a tall Black woman was waiting, leaning against a fancy-looking car.
Muna slowed down her steps as she got to the door. Wow, she thought, as she saw one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen. A real-life model in a soft-looking, purple summer dress. The color reminded her of ripe plums.
The tall, hungry man stopped in front of the woman. She smiled at him, and then he grabbed her and kissed her, leaning her against the car. Muna had seen men kiss women like this on TV with such vigor and passion, but to witness it in person was unsettling and embarrassing.
She stayed hidden behind the front door, watching the two beautiful human beings paw at each other in broad daylight. She wasn’t the only one disturbed by it, it seemed. A few passersby kept rubbernecking as they moved along the sidewalk, including an old man with a walker who simply froze.
Who was the blond man? Muna wondered. And that Black woman? It was clear they truly loved each other, because only love would make them do this in public with no shame.
* * *
When she got back to Tensta that evening, she detoured to a small restaurant right in the square, where Gunhild was waiting for her. The older lady pushed to her feet and pulled the younger one into a tight hug.
“Muna, dear,” she said in Swedish. “How are things going? If it’s okay, I’ve already ordered us a kebab pizza. Don’t worry, the meat is halal.”
“It’s okay,” Muna thanked her. Gunhild peered at the girl through thin glasses, eyes warming.
“How is the job going?”
It had been at least four weeks since Muna had started cleaning at von Lundin. Yagiz had not rotated her to other properties be
cause he was fully staffed. He dedicated the four resources to that office while he shuffled the rest of his staff. Muna had sunk comfortably into her routine. On the days she wasn’t working, she was taking back-to-back Swedish SFI classes out in the suburbs in Tensta. If she didn’t clean, she would never be in town.
“It is going well.” This was her chance to confide in Gunhild about Ahmed, but she kept quiet. Telling her about him meant dredging up memories from Solsidan she wasn’t ready to face. Like Ahmed’s gut-wrenching cries as he burned. She wanted her last memories of Ahmed replaced by his smiling photo, carrying a sheep, eyes twinkling. Not his face being carved open by fire and the smell of his charred flesh.
“That is good.” Gunhild paused to sip hot coffee as Muna watched her. “So, have you considered going to school to study something?”
“Study?”
“Yes, study. What would you like to be when you grow up?”
Those were words she hadn’t heard since Mogadishu. When her economics teacher in high school had handed her an A as her final grade and beamed at her, he’d asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. That was barely a week before her house had crumbled into pieces, taking her bedridden father with it.
Muna bent her head low, trying to collect her emotions and prevent tears from falling. It was a simple question that didn’t need tears. She sniffed, composed herself, and looked back up at Gunhild.
“I want to be an accountant.”
“If you want to be an accountant, then you will be an accountant.” Gunhild forged on, saying she cared about Muna too much for her to be swallowed up by Tensta and never spat back out. That she was too duktig to be resigned to cleaning toilets for the rest of her life. She was only eighteen, and the world needed her to blossom.
Muna gave Gunhild a weak smile, and a warm feeling spread over her chest. A feeling of importance. What if she actually did become an accountant? Being an accountant would make her an important person. Then she would be able to find a good job or open her own business. Maybe she could buy YSR from Yagiz.
She needed a little power. Just a tiny drop so she didn’t have to feel so helpless every day.
KẸMI
By her first few months in Sweden, Kemi realized there was one thing she could get away with that she could never attempt in the U.S. Her crochet braids could stay in three to four weeks longer and get matted beyond recognition, because no one noticed.
But by her third month there, Kemi desperately needed a professional’s touch. Her hair had evolved into a wretched mess, and she was still inept at crocheting hair despite watching countless videos on YouTube. The next time she went to her Swedish class, her hair was hidden beneath a silk scarf, and the task of finding a decent African hair salon weighed heavily on her mind.
Meanwhile, Malcolm the Afro-Swede and their teacher, José, quickly became mortal enemies. They went at it for the most trivial reasons, setting out to trigger each other. If Malcolm pronounced something incorrectly, José harped on it until the rest of the class begged him to move on. Malcolm was quick to let José know that his least favorite word was “duktig” and its variation: “Vad duktigt!” How smart! He expressed his hatred for that phrase, essentially handing José the ammunition he needed.
“Sweden definitely doesn’t reward you if you disagree with it,” Malcolm said as José was discussing the country’s political structure and parties compared to the fiery American system.
“How so?” José took the bait, switching to English. The guys were going at it again over random shit in Kemi’s Wednesday night class, and frankly she didn’t care.
The weeks after Bearded Brawn refused to sit at her table had been brutal. Right after that botched date, she strolled over to Slussen station to take the red line home. She briefly stopped by a kiosk inside the station to buy two stale cinnamon buns, which she quickly scarfed down once inside her apartment.
Licking the last few pearls of sugar off her fingers, she made herself a mug of tea to digest the guilt away. She watched a period romance movie and cried herself to sleep. The rest of that weekend, she barricaded herself in her apartment.
On Sunday night, she gave Kehinde a call to check up on the family.
“What’s wrong, Kemi?” Kehinde casually inquired as soon as they exchanged pleasantries.
Kemi stayed silent on the other end.
“How is Sweden?”
More silence. Kehinde gave her sister time.
“I don’t know how I feel yet,” Kemi said softly, sniffing. “I mean, it’s been just a few months. Autumn is here, and I’m not sure I’m looking forward to winter.”
“Are you having doubts?”
“No, no…it’s just that…I don’t know.” Kemi couldn’t quite put into words what she was feeling, but her twin sister already knew.
“You’re lonely.”
Those words broke Kemi, and she let her cries out. No one had invited her to meet their friends and families so far. Her colleagues had firm boundaries between work and play, and she was placed squarely in the work box. She complained about making friends. Those in her Swedish class didn’t seem interested in making new friends or inviting classmates home. The only person who had extended an invitation was Malcolm to come watch him play saxophone in a jazz club in Gamla stan. She had barely seen Jonny since she’d arrived, and Ingrid had switched to full-on boss mode.
Kehinde listened to her sister cry until her sniffing faded away.
“You know, you’re going to have to be patient. It hasn’t been that long,” Kehinde tried reasoning with her.
“I know, I know,” Kemi agreed. Kehinde must have realized the tears were due to the fact that she had no one else close by to confide in. Zizi was no longer in her life, and she found herself missing Zizi’s voice and her faux frustration at Kemi’s indecisiveness. Zizi was supposed to have celebrated this major win with her. Yet Kemi was still having a hard time unpacking what had combusted between them. A stick of dynamite buried between them that Kemi didn’t know her news would inadvertently light.
Kehinde was too far away for weekend visits. Kemi hadn’t lived elsewhere since she arrived in the U.S. almost two decades ago. Besides the disorienting culture shock, the gravity of the situation had started dawning on her. She had rushed in unprepared.
Kemi had tried to build routines into her day, hoping to maintain some semblance of control. Every morning, she stopped by Espresso House to pick up a tall latte. After work, she took a light stroll around Karlaplan or headed out to nearby Gärdet’s green fields—only on evenings when she wasn’t stuffing her face with cinnamon buns.
“Look, it’s normal,” Kehinde said. “You’ll be fine. You’ll make friends. You’ll meet someone worthy. Have you been dating?”
Kemi laughed. Yes, she’d gone on a few horrible dates. Since Bearded Brawn’s rejection, which she kept from Kehinde, she’d gone on four more dates. She worked hard to pry information out of two of them. At first, she’d found both Swedes mysterious and intriguing, lured by their seductive art of measured revelation and one-line answers. It wasn’t until she’d reached their depths that she realized she found them both incredibly boring.
Her third date had been with a first-generation Swede whose Chilean parents had fled Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 1970s for Sweden’s utopia. Their date had ended quickly because he couldn’t stop staring after every blond, ugly or stunning, that walked past their table.
She did skip her fourth date in her report to Kehinde. She had been lured again by the brawny type her body craved, picking him based solely on looks. Halfway through their dinner, though, it had backfired.
“Look.” The guy turned serious. “Let’s just cut to the chase.” He might as well have walked off the set of Vikings for a coffee break. “I know you want to fuck me.”
Kemi had been startled by his frankness. Eventually,
yes. But not on their first date. She searched for words to say while he pinned her with severe, light-colored eyes.
“Why would you think that?” Her rebuttal was weak. In response, his gaze swept down her face to her cleavage and back up, and she knew she’d picked the wrong dress for a serious pursuit.
“So…” His eyes held hers, unsmiling. “Do you?”
They had ferocious sex back in her apartment, and he was gone before she fell asleep. The rest of the week, she felt like crap, and cinnamon buns became her nonjudgmental balm.
Ten
BRITTANY-RAE
Jonny’s palm on the small of her back did nothing to calm her nerves as they strolled into the iconic restaurant, Berns, to meet his parents, Wilhelm and Astrid von Lundin, for lunch. This was the big reveal. He was going to introduce her to the rulers of their family empire.
Brittany had obsessed over what to wear. Less was more around stupendous wealth—this she observed with Jonny and her other premium passengers. She had pulled on a plum-colored chiffon dress and paired it with brown sandals. She spent a long time on her makeup to get that natural, no makeup look. Her hair was parted down the middle and brushed straight. She’d redone her weave before the trip.
The couple turned heads as they strolled hand in hand around Stockholm the previous day. People wanted to know the model Jonny von Lundin was parading around town. Louise had already fended off phone calls from several local tabloids looking for gossip.
Brittany let out a nervous sigh, which moved Jonny’s hand from her back to hold her hand and give it a gentle squeeze.
“You look beautiful,” was all he said as he pulled her along, not giving her enough time to take in the grand interiors holding massive crystal chandeliers with thousands of sparkling faux diamonds and deep-red velvet armchairs from the jazz era of the Roaring Twenties.
Jonny planted them in front of a modestly dressed couple seated in the corner of the large, open dining hall. Brittany was struck by his parents and their youthful exuberance despite being in their seventies. Wilhelm was lean and tall, even while seated. He was wearing a white dress shirt that complemented his full head of silvery-white hair. Astrid had low-cropped, light-blond hair interspersed with white strands, which she wore slicked back off her face. She was dressed in a light-blue business suit. No earrings, but she was fiddling with a strand of white pearls around her neck, staring as they approached, with the same piercing eyes of her son.
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