See You Tomorrow

by Tore Renberg

  This, thinks Jan Inge, rocking back and forth a little in the wheelchair, this is ingenious.

  Then he trundles across the living-room floor. Goes past the hall and manoeuvres himself into the kitchen, where he opens the fridge and takes down a one-and-a-half-litre bottle of coke and a big bowl of chocolates. He opens a kitchen drawer and pulls out a family size bag of paprika crisps, before heaving the goodies on to his lap and wheeling back to the living room.

  Jan Inge parks the wheelchair in front of the TV, and takes hold of the remote controls.

  No problem having 120 on board with this thing, I’m able to get around like a robot.

  God, she was so cute when she was small. Wimpy, awkward and weird. Jan Inge suddenly pictures her as he tears open the crisp bag and arranges the remotes and the goodies in his lap. He’s really looking forward to following up Carnival of Souls with Three on a Meathook. Seeeerious grindhouse. 1973. Maximum low-budget. Dirty as a rubbish heap. Brilliant scene when Billy goes into the house and finds the dead girls, and the harmonica soundtrack really adds to the atmosphere.

  He could have written a book on horror by now, after all the films he’s seen and studied. It’s doubtful there’re many people out there with a better collection of horror or more knowledge of the genre than him. It’s about time he attended one of the international horror conventions. Show his face. Let them know he exists.

  God, Cecilie was so cute back then.

  She used to waddle around like a penguin. She’d open that little mouth, her voice all smurfy and nice: Janinge bruuv Cecili sisssa.

  Yeah.

  I can live with this all right, a cold dark September night in 2012, with coke, treats and a horror movie ready, snuggled up in a wheelchair. It’s a starry night outside. After a few harsh autumn weeks, a bright warm day turns up out of the blue. It’s a sign, but of what? Joy or the apocalypse? Your best mate is out trying to clarify a slightly foggy job, and it may be twenty-five years since you soared through the clouds with your little sister’s hand in yours, but you can still feel the imprint as you sit there in front of the flatscreen, as though she is still clinging to you while you cross the Atlantic.

  Yeah.

  The fog needs to clear.

  Snow flickers on the screen. The old VHS player whines. A woman dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved sweater walks across a yard, over towards a shed. She has shoulder-length hair. Just before she is about to unbolt the door, she turns and looks around. Then she pulls back the bolt, opens it, and goes inside. She screams. Three women hang impaled on meat hooks.

  Jan Inge smiles and rocks a little in the wheelchair.

  It would be nice to see Dad again.

  GOOD MEMORIES.

  16. INDEPENDENT THOUGHTS (Tiril)

  The door slams behind her and Sandra runs off. That daft-looking run of hers. Her right arm under her tits and her tottering legs. Tiril goes into the backroom and grabs a marker from the Spar cup on the break table. She pulls the top off with her teeth and stretches her fingers out in front of her. Which way? Her fingers are thin, her skin is clean and her nails are painted black and bitten down to the quick. They’ve always been told off for that, both her and Malene; do the two of you have to bite your nails?

  Tiril sits down on one of the chairs, sets her jaw, concentrates and begins to write. Letter by letter, going over each twice and making them as decorative as she can.

  She clenches her fist, closes her eyes: This pain is just too real. Then she hangs up her work clothes and walks into the empty, semi-darkness of the shop. She hears her own footfalls, they resound upon the newly washed lino. Over to one of the tills. Nobody has noticed anything so far. Tiril opens the cabinet with the little key. Not many packs of Prince left. Lots of Marlboro Gold. She fetches out a ten-pack, puts it in her pocket, exhales.

  The front doors are locked, she walks into the backroom again, stopping at the bottle deposit belt and tapping the pocket of her jeans to check if she’s got the lighter, the little black one. She looks around one last time. Everything is okay. She switches off the ceiling light, turns on the alarm, 8789, and goes out.

  Tiril sits down on the loading ramp in front of the deliveries door, half hidden behind the large wheelie bins. Her feet dangling over the ground. Dad is probably out taking a walk, she thinks, while trying to get her blunt nails underneath the plastic wrapping of the cigarette packet. He’s probably out with Zitha, she thinks, giving up, bringing the packet to her mouth and tearing the plastic with her teeth.

  She sniffles, pulls out a cigarette, puts it between her lips, spins the wheel of the lighter, watches the flame grow and lights it.

  There’s just so much that time cannot erase.

  The worst thing would be if she was standing in front of the whole school, with Thea on the piano, and everything’s going well, everything’s perfect, and then she forgets the words. Not that she thinks that’ll happen, she knows them backwards, but still she worries about it. She just needs to think that she is Amy Lee. That she actually comes from Little Rock, Arakansas, she hasn’t grown up here, she doesn’t live this pissy life in a little suburb in a stupid oil town in crappy Norway. Shitty Stavanger doesn’t exist. She has woken up every day of her life and looked out at the Arkansas River, skyscrapers and the big American sky.

  ‘Jesus, Tiril, have you started smoking now as well?’ Malene – shit, where did she come from? – is standing in front of Tiril shaking her head. Her arms folded, she rolls her eyes.

  Tiril’s eyes flash angrily. ‘What’s it to you?’

  Malene assumes a neutral expression and shrugs.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, no surprise there. Jesus, Tiril, you’re fourteen. Smoking is lethal.’

  Jesus. She’s such a bloody old biddy.

  ‘Yeah, so? It’s lethal to live, in case you didn’t know.’ Tiril takes a long drag and blows the smoke into her sister’s face. ‘Are you following me or something?’

  Malene sits down beside her on the loading ramp. She shoots a glance at Tiril’s hands. ‘Jesus. What have you done?’

  I knew it, thinks Tiril, I knew she’d comment on the tattoo.

  ‘None of your business,’ she says, letting the cigarette hang between her lips as she squints her eyes and stretches her hands out towards her sister.

  L O V E

  H A T E

  ‘Lol,’ says Malene. ‘That’s so tweenie. Are you actually going to walk around with that?’ Tiril takes a good drag of the cigarette. Whatever, she couldn’t be bothered replying. ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘why has Dad never actually found himself a girlfriend?’

  Malene looks at her. ‘Well, don’t know really … why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason, am I not allowed to talk now, not allowed to have independent thoughts?’

  Malene rolls her eyes. ‘Sure, Sure.’

  ‘I mean, Mum got herself a man before she left Dad.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re on about,’ Malene says sharply.

  ‘Jesus.’ Tiril plants her forefinger in her sister’s shoulder: ‘Listen, you know that Sandra one?’

  ‘In my class?’ Malene looks up. ‘The one you clean with?’

  ‘Mhm.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Nah, you probably already know. So…’

  ‘Give it a break, what do you mean?’

  ‘Do you know what she’s up to?’

  ‘No … up to? What do you mean?’

  Tiril makes a fish-face and blows a perfect smoke ring. ‘She’s off screwing Daniel William in the woods.’

  Malene’s lips slowly part. ‘What!? Daniel William?’

  ‘Mhm.’ Tiril nods assuredly. ‘Tears out of here after work. Straight over to the woods. Screws.’

  ‘Je-sus.’ Malene shakes her head. ‘I knew something was up.’

  ‘Yeah, just ask Tiril.’

  ‘Daniel William.’ Each syllable of his name escapes her mouth slowly. ‘That’s just … I mean he’s … Shit. Je-sus.’

  The sister
s remain sitting beside each other. They smile and shake their heads. Tiril loves the feeling of knowing more about people and what they’re up to than Malene, and that she’s the one who’s clued in, the one who’s a tweenie and pissed off all the time.

  ‘Tiril,’ says Malene, after a while.

  Her tone is stern. She’s always talked like that. As if she thinks she’s my mother, thinks Tiril. Come on then, out with it, since you’re so bloody grown-up, such great mates with Dad and think you can lick your way in everywhere, sitting there smiling saying yeah, fine, whenever Mum calls. Come on, out with it, since you think you’re such a good judge of who’s tweenie in their head and who isn’t.

  ‘Tiril,’ Malene says again, as though she has a fly in her mouth.

  ‘Yeah? Christ. I’m right here. Are you blind?’

  ‘It’s just,’ Malene hesitates, ‘do you know if there’s anything wrong with Dad?’

  Tiril turns to face her.

  ‘With Dad? What do you mean?’

  ‘No, I don’t know.’ That E.T. expression comes across Malene’s face. She shrugs. ‘No, I don’t know. Just seems like something’s up.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Tiril, taking a last drag of the cigarette before flicking it off the loading ramp and taking a pack of gum from her jeans pocket. ‘That’s just Dad,’ she says, ‘he’s always been like that.’

  ‘So, you haven’t seen him then?’

  ‘Tonight?’ Tiril takes a piece of chewing gum and feels the fresh taste spread through her mouth. ‘He’s never around here anyway. Do you think I’d be sitting here smoking if he was? He’s off in the woods. Or in Sørmarka. Or up on top of Limahaugen looking out over the fjord. Him and Zitha.’

  ‘Mhm,’ says Malene. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  She looks at Tiril.

  ‘You should get a haircut,’ she says, reaching towards Tiril’s hair. ‘You’re getting split ends.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Tiril says, pulling away.

  Malene’s gaze is still fixed on her.

  With that look.

  Can you please stop, don’t give me that look.

  ‘You’re so cute,’ says Malene, ‘it’s going to go great on Thursday.’

  I’m going to start crying if you look at me like that.

  ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ says Tiril. ‘It might go really badly.’

  ‘No it won’t,’ Malene says, getting to her feet, ‘I’m coming to watch, Dad’s coming to watch and everyone’s going to be there. Mum would probably be there too if she could. Everyone in the gym hall is going to love you, you’re going to be great.’

  Tiril looks askance at Malene. The nice gymnastics body. The supple movements. Malene, you walk like you were royalty, Grandad says. Tiril liked it when she injured her ankle last year. She didn’t say it, but she did. Miss Perfect Gymnast had to limp. Poor beautiful bitch.

  ‘Hey. Malene?’

  ‘Mhm?’

  ‘Do you think you can choose, I mean, between light and darkness?’

  Tiril sees Malene lift her troubled gaze. Sees it drift over the school, the woods, up towards the telecom tower and the top of the hill, and it almost looks as though she’s muttering something.

  17. IT’S A SUN BULLET (Daniel William)

  If you kill someone, you cross the line.

  If you never kill anyone, you never cross the line.

  If you love someone, you cross the line.

  If you never love someone, you never cross the line.

  If you cross the line, the earth opens its jaws and swallows you.

  Love?

  Daniel throws the moped helmet back and forth between his hands.

  He tilts his head to both sides, stretches his neck and tramps his feet restlessly.

  If the fact that he needs to have her is called love, then that’s fine. That’s what we’ll say: I love you. Shit, he’s nervous now.

  Typical. Just before something’s going to happen, it comes, that feeling. The cold and nausea in his stomach, the flashing behind his eyes and that freezing sensation in his temples. He tried to talk to the Child Welfare Officer about it once, told him about how he sometimes got cold and nauseous and felt he was losing control. He said he felt a crackling in his head and a flashing behind his eyes. He said he grew angry, lost the plot. The guy from Child Services was understanding, put his head to one side and asked him how he felt and what he thought and how he wanted to deal with it himself. Just like that psychologist with the stupid glasses, he talked like that too: And what do you think about it? Is that all they can do, ask questions and look sympathetic, is that what they learn at university, is that what they get paid for? Do they not bloody well have a solution? Haven’t they been studying for forty years in order to give him a solution?

  Daniel continues throwing the helmet back and forth. If she doesn’t come soon then he’s going to have to go. It can get too much. He knows where the danger lies. No matter how caveman horny he gets, it’s like it just tips over, and everything is all fucked-up and cold. Then he needs to jump on his bike and ride and ride and ride until his head is like an empty room with all the windows open.

  Do you hear me, Sandra?

  Get a bloody move on, I can’t take this here.

  He swallows and begins knocking his helmet against the brick wall of the substation. Looks around. What a shithole. Really disgusting, tall weeds and thicket, are they going to lie down and screw here? It’s not on, screwing in all this kak, probably wino piss and whatnot. It’s just not on.

  Daniel lets the helmet in his hand come to rest and takes out a fresh cigarette. He shouldn’t smoke so much before she gets here, his breath will smell bad, but bollocks to that, he needs something to settle the nerves.

  There’s lots of oil money round here. Loads of big houses, specially down by the fjord, not least on the road where Sandra lives, on Kong Haralds Gate, all filthy rich down there. Daniel always feels ill at ease when he walks into houses like that, may as well face it, he doesn’t belong in them. But then they hardly belong there themselves, the money is just an oil fluke. It’s not money they’ve worked for, it’s a windfall, money that rained down upon them like hell can rain down on other people.

  Sandra Vikadal.

  Imagine if the two of them end up together. Maybe he’ll inherit heaps of money. He’s a lawyer, her dad, rolling in money those lawyers. Her mother works at the church, plenty of money there too, in that church system.

  Daniel inhales the smoke. He hears a dog bark in the distance. A car passing on the road behind the woods.

  He’ll own a car in any case, a car to drive round with his lawyer-daughter wife, who’s always in good humour and who he sleeps with once a day. That’s what his last foster father said. You’re not a man if you don’t have your own garden to piss in and a car you can drive whenever you like. Daniel wants an American car. A Buick RAM. If he gets rich, he’ll buy Veronika a car too. Wonder what kind of music Veronika would like if she could hear. There’s nothing to stop deaf people from driving, is there? She’s totally kickass when she sits in front of him smiling in her Buddha position while he’s hammering away on the drums. Veronika will get to be around, that’s for sure. He’ll take bloody good care of her, she can sit in the Buddha position for the rest of her life, listen to him play the drums, break out in that deaf laughter of hers and be as weird as she wants. She can live with him and Sandra, no problem. He just needs to make a shitload of money so they can all live well. Veronika can have a whole Buddha floor to herself. It’s just a matter of raking in the money. Good thing he writes songs, that means royalties. Daniel knows he needs to write some new lyrics soon. Dejan is on at him the whole time, come on, songsmith, come on with the poetry shit. Yeah, yeah, he says, I’m working on it. But he isn’t. Everything has been blocked lately.

  He lifts his head as he hears a sound.

  There she comes. Running across the football pitch.

  Is it a sun bullet?

  Wow, she’s slightly
knock-kneed. He hadn’t noticed. She runs like that and all, knees banging together, one hand under her tits, her head sort of dancing from side to side, her other hand swinging out as though it had a mind of its own, alive, free from the rest of her. Christ she looks gorgeous, looks super sexy running along, God, so fucking foxy, those wobbly legs make her whole body kind of dangle like a doll or something.

  Daniel straightens up, he feels a wild electron fire up in his head, he flicks the cigarette out on to the road in front of the kindergarten and runs his hand through his hair, exhales as much as he can and inhales as much fresh air as he’s able, feels his face break into a silly smile, feels a rush through his body. He gulps.

  Look at that.

  Look at her.

  Look at her run.

  Oh Christ she is so fucking gorgeous.

  And just then as he watches her surge towards him, the sentences discharge in his head, like the report of rifle shots, and he knows that soon he’ll write some lyrics, true lyrics, real lyrics about the strongest light any person’s ever seen: girl light, Sandra light. The eternal light from a muzzle, lyrics nobody needs to bury 1,000 kilometres under the ground.

  Yess.

  Candyfloss.

  18. HOLY DIVER (Pål)

  A light cleaves its way between the black tree trunks, flashing through the woods. Pål gives a start, he turns his head in the direction of the road and catches a glimpse of a car disappearing down towards the shop.

  He tries to regulate his breathing, follow Zitha as nimbly as possible, allow her to traverse the forest floor, not upset her. Zitha isn’t a meek dog, but she’s never liked cars. Yeaaah, Zitha, yeaaah, good girl. Can’t have her barking like she did a while ago, mustn’t draw any attention to ourselves, that’s not on.