Yesterday's News

by Kajsa Ingemarsson

  For the first years after Agnes left town, she’d scorned all that. Her classmates who stayed behind. The predictability. But as the years had gone by she’d started to change her mind. The town formed its inhabitants, just as it had formed her. She’d also dismissed Stockholm as over-hyped and stuck-up. The truth was that she’d been afraid to go there. Afraid of not finding her way around. Afraid of all the violence she’d read about. Afraid of not knowing how to travel on the subway. Afraid of not knowing which shops were the “right” ones and which were lame.

  On the odd occasion, she and Camilla would throw caution to the wind and ride in to Stockholm to go shopping. They would make their way from the central station up to the shopping district, through which they would wander back and forth for a few hours. They would then eat hamburgers and drink Coke at McDonald’s before going home. Often clutching a cluster of shopping bags, clothes from shops that were probably not at all “right.” It was fun going to Stockholm, exciting even; but it was always nice to leave it.

  Just how she’d ended up moving here she could hardly explain herself. One day she’d suddenly found herself fed up with her home town. Nothing had happened. On the contrary; everything was exactly as it always was. But maybe it was just that that had made her realize that she had to get away. The fact that any one day was interminably identical to all the others.

  She’d left school and worked as an au pair in Minnesota for a year. What was meant to have been her life’s adventure turned out to be stagnant family life in a dump not much larger than Länninge. When she came home, she took a full-time job at Gullan’s Grill. On a temporary basis, she told herself, but the months went by and nothing happened. She’d just turned twenty when she made up her mind to move.

  Of course, Gullan was upset to hear that she was going to leave her little café, and her mom and dad shed a few tears – though no more than they, no doubt, would have shed had she moved to a rented apartment in the center of town. She’d also broken up with Håkan, the guy she’d been with since she was sixteen. Neither of them had cried. It was no fairytale romance; it was more like they’d been together out of habit. Håkan had looked almost relieved when she announced her decision. “What, from now on? Or what do you mean?” he’d asked, and then realized that that would mean he’d be able to join his buddies in Gotland for midsummer.

  Once she’d decided, it was all very easy. She rented a room in an apartment on Hornsgatan. It boasted one hotplate, but according to the contract it could not be used for cooking. The toilet was in the corridor outside, but she had it to herself. Showering, on the other hand, had to be done in the landlady’s bathroom. It wasn’t the best of situations, but it served its purpose.

  She’d found work almost immediately. Times were still good, it was the early nineties, and formal qualifications were seldom asked for. It was at such a job that she’d met Lussan, who was working as a waitress while studying at the School of Economics. Agnes had been impressed, but Lussan had dismissed it, said that it was a tedious nursery for twenty-somethings with pearl necklaces. Be that as it may, Lussan graduated and found a job in real estate. Agnes stayed behind on the restaurant floor. Despite this, they continued to get together and their friendship had proved of the uncommonly durable kind.

  And so it went, with different jobs and different sub, sub-sub, and sub-sub-sub-letted apartments. Until she bought her own little one-bedroom apartment in Aspudden. And met Tobias. Tobias of the sinewy legs and the green eyes.

  Madde arrived at around five. Her eagerness to “do the town” was written all over her face. She seemed happy and expectant, and had dolled herself up for a night out. A tight white t-shirt, white boots, and turned up jeans. The two ponytails that bobbed on either side of her face made her look younger than she was. Agnes wondered if she’d even be able to order a beer without having to produce proof of age.

  “So what was Jonas up to today?” asked Agnes while she started on their dinner.

  “He went to a party at Dojan’s.”

  “And you didn’t want to go along?”

  “Are you joking? Being with Dojan and his friends is about as much fun as climbing into the trunk of a car to see what happens. And anyway, what kind of idiot calls himself Dojan? I honestly don’t understand what Jonas sees in those guys. No one speaks, they just sit there grunting. But, of course, they’ve known each other since preschool. Maybe they don’t need to talk to socialize. And anyway, they see each other every day at work.”

  “Are there any girls at all?”

  “No. I think that one of them, apart from Jonas, has a girlfriend, but she doesn’t go either. I find it hard to believe that any girl would put up with them.”

  “By the way, how’s it going with Jonas’s job?”

  Madde mumbled something. “Not too well. He can work for six more weeks but then he’s got to quit.”

  “Has he been looking for anything else?”

  “No. I don’t think he knows how. He’s never looked for a job in his entire life. And anyway, what would he work with?” Madde threw her arms out, answering the question herself. “Nothing. There’s no work out there. Not in Länninge at least. He’ll have to go on unemployment until he finds something.” She shrugged her shoulders as if to indicate that there was no more to be said on the matter. Agnes could understand. This was no doubt all that they talked about at home. The factory and the closure. They’d probably gone over and over it ad nauseum.

  “So where do you feel like going tonight?” asked Agnes instead.

  “I don’t know! That’s something you should know. You’re the one who lives here. I want to have fun!”

  “I’d never have guessed. What do you say to starting with a drink at Kalle’s, at the restaurant?”

  “Sounds good. If we can also go somewhere else later.”

  “Sure. Shall we find out if Lussan wants to join us?”

  “Do that, she’s totally wild. Remember the last time we were out? When she tried to get me to hit on that old geezer in the suit?”

  “He wasn’t an old geezer. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five.”

  “No, exactly. An old geezer!”

  She dialed the number to Lussan’s cell phone. No reply. Agnes left a message, telling her about their plans. She hadn’t spoken to Lussan in a week and didn’t know how things had gone for her. Paolo had waved away her question, said there was nothing going on. So Agnes had relaxed.

  Agnes made chicken fajitas for herself and Madde and opened a bottle of wine. White. Madde didn’t drink red – or white either for that matter, but it went down all the same. Then they got ready to go out. Agnes put on a skirt, made herself up and rubbed a little wax into the ends of her hair. Before leaving, she changed back into pants. They were only going out on a bar crawl.

  Pernilla and Henrik greeted them hastily. The restaurant was full and the pace seemed unusually fast, which pleased Agnes. They poked their heads into the kitchen and said hello to Kalle and Filip, who were both sweating away. Kalle laughed at her, and said that he ought to bar her from the restaurant so that she kept out of sight on her nights off. Agnes laughed back and said that that was probably a good idea. Then she took Madde to the bar and mixed two gin and tonics, making sure to enter the exact amount into the register. Not because anyone would check, or even take offence that she’d treated herself and her sister to a free drink, but out of principle.

  After their visit to The Yellow Lemon Tree, they went to another bar nearby. Inside it was crowded and smoky. A popular place, crawling with musicians and actors. Tobias used to hang out here, of that Agnes was well aware. She looked around nervously as soon as the door was opened. In the end, she suggested moving on. They took the subway downtown and hit two more places. The lines started to grow outside the trendy bars on Stureplan, and Agnes said that she guessed their bar crawl had come to an end. Otherwise, there was a big risk that they’d have to spend the rest of the night in some sort of line limbo. It was, after all, Saturday.
Saturday after payday, no less, and there were a lot of people out and about.

  The third place at which they ended up was a little off the beaten track and it was still relatively uncrowded. They found a seat at the bar and looked out over the eating area.

  “Look!” said Madde suddenly. “There’s Lussan!” Agnes turned around quickly so that she faced the same direction as Madde. And true enough, there was Lussan; and opposite her, with his back to the bar, sat Paolo. They were engaged in deep conversation, and neither had noticed Agnes and Madde.

  Agnes gritted her teeth. Not because she had anything against Lussan meeting Paolo, she’d given her the go-ahead after all, but somehow she felt betrayed. Why couldn’t Lussan have told her, as she always did whenever she had something going on?

  “Wait a sec,” she said to Madde. “I’ll be right back.” Agnes went over to their table. “Well, look who’s here.…” she said, looking at them both. Lussan gave a start.

  “Agnes! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m out with Madde, on a bar crawl. We tried to call you.”

  “Oh right. I’ve got my phone switched off, for once in my life.” She laughed a little nervously.

  “I know, sometimes you want to be private. Don’t you?” Agnes looked inquiringly at Lussan. Paolo got up and excused himself. He was just off to the restroom. A blatantly transparent pretext for leaving the two ladies in peace to conduct their private discussion. “I see, so you’re out with Paolo? Couldn’t you have said something?” This last question sounded more catty than she’d meant it to. Lussan was actually under no reporting obligation. She could meet whomever she wanted, whenever she wanted. Yet still Agnes could not rid herself of the feeling of mortification that struck her when she first caught sight of them.

  “I know, I thought maybe that I should’ve called and told you, but… then I kind of thought that there was nothing to tell. We’re out eating together, that’s all. As friends. Having a glass of… er, Ramlösa.” She held up the bottle of mineral water in front of her.

  “Are you out drinking Ramlösa on a Saturday night?” Agnes was on the point of asking what was wrong when Paolo returned. He looked at them with raised eyebrows. Agnes took a step back and said that she should go back to the bar where Madde was waiting for her. They’d have to move on again. They couldn’t stay here. Not with Lussan and Paolo having a tête-à-tête a few feet away. “See you,” she said and smiled a little stiffly.

  “I’ll call you,” she heard Lussan call as she headed for the bar. Yes, well, she might very well do that. Or might not. At that very moment, Agnes didn’t really care.

  CHAPTER 23

  “A FRIEND OF YOURS was in last weekend.” Kalle was having trouble concealing his curiosity.

  “What friend?”

  “He said you knew each other.”

  “He? What did he look like?”

  “Hard to say. Medium height, brown hair. Pretty normal, I’d say. I only saw him from a distance. It was Pernilla he spoke to. He’d been here before, he said.”

  Agnes gave a groan. “Could it have been my neighbor?”

  “It’s possible. His name was like a liquor, she said. Galliano, Campari.…”

  “Kummel.” The news didn’t please Agnes. Had she been saddled with some kind of stalker? Hadn’t she bumped into him at some point in the subway, too? Maybe he’d been standing around waiting for her. “Did he seem a bit creepy?” she asked Kalle.

  “Creepy? No, I don’t think so. Pernilla said that he seemed nice. Lussan called, by the way. She said she might come by this evening.”

  “I see.” Agnes dropped David Kummel from her mind. She couldn’t help it, but she still felt hurt by Lussan’s sneaking around. It was a childish reaction, she knew that, but secretly she hoped that Lussan would apologize.

  After the weekend, the evening was once again calm. By nine o’clock they’d had no more than eight guests. Not even Agnes’s reassurances could be of much use when she saw Kalle’s despairing face peering through the kitchen door window. What could she say? That things would pick up? Because of that eventuality she had absolutely no idea. With the odd exception, like Saturday, their clientele had not increased. It didn’t seem to matter how good their food was. The problem lay elsewhere. Perhaps the street wasn’t a good one after all. Maybe there were simply too many restaurants in this part of town. It wasn’t inconceivable.

  By the time Lussan arrived, six of the eight guests had left. Two remained, murmuring softly over their cappuccinos. They looked in no hurry to go, so Agnes sat down beside Lussan at the bar after having first served her a glass of red.

  “I realize it all looked a bit strange on Saturday,” began Lussan cautiously before taking a sip of her wine. “But it was just like I’d said – we were out together as friends.”

  “So why couldn’t you tell me that?”

  “Well… what can I say? It all felt so weird, I didn’t know what to tell you about it. He wanted us to go out and get a bite to eat and.…” Lussan faltered, as if she didn’t know how things continued herself. Agnes remained silent for a while. In truth, she didn’t want to pry, and if Lussan didn’t want to tell her then fine, but she couldn’t help being inquisitive.

  “What did you talk about?” she said as nonchalantly as she could.

  Lussan squirmed. “Nothing special. This and that.…” She gave a little forced laugh. “It was just an ordinary dinner.…”

  “With Ramlösa?” She thought Lussan would take it as a joke, but instead she continued to fidget embarrassedly.

  “Yes. It was Paolo’s suggestion. He insisted, kept on going on about it not being healthy to drink wine so often. I mean, Jesus, who is it that takes a swig at the wine bottle every five minutes? Swedes or Italians?” She chuckled lightly as if to ease the mood, but soon grew serious again. “I even had to promise him not to drink anything for a whole week.”

  Agnes looked at the glass in Lussan’s hand. “It’d seem as if you didn’t go along with it.”

  “Oh, I did. But I didn’t say which week.” She laughed and took another sip.

  “So anyway.…” Agnes still didn’t get how things pieced together. “Is there something going on between you, or what?”

  “No, not at all! Not at all!” Lussan’s protest was a little on the forceful side to seem natural. She took another sip of wine. “But he’s cute,” she added with a grin. Agnes couldn’t help smiling back.

  “Yeah, isn’t he?” she said. “Anyway, maybe I should go and get him. He’s in the kitchen.”

  “Get out of here!” Lussan slammed her glass down so emphatically that some wine splashed onto the bar. Her smile had disappeared. “He’s supposed to be off today.” She instinctively pushed the glass away so that it stood closer to Agnes than herself.

  “Relax, I was only messing with you!” The vehemence of Lussan’s reaction had taken Agnes by surprise. “He’s not here. It’s Filip and Kalle in the kitchen.”

  “You sure?” Lussan looked at her suspiciously before slowly pulling her glass back towards her.

  “I’m sure.” She was just about to ask what was really going on when the couple in the corner gestured that they wanted the bill. “I don’t think we’ve finished talking about this,” she added before leaving the bar. But when she returned, Lussan wasn’t in the mood to talk any more. Not about important things, at least. She’d refilled her glass and was sitting telling Kalle an anecdote about a conman who’d sold his apartment to four people and then fled to France with the money. Kalle seemed to find the story funny, judging by how much he was laughing.

  Agnes didn’t get another chance to sort out what was really going on with Lussan. When they parted outside the restaurant, Lussan reassured her that everything was the same as before. Exactly the same, and if anything was to change on that front, Agnes would be the first to know.

  “Don’t worry, hon!” she said at last and stroked Agnes’s cheek. “Go home and get some sleep, you need it. Lussan’s a surv
ivor!”

  CHAPTER 24

  KALLE CALLED HER the very next morning. He was so excited that he was tripping over his words. “Agnes, guess what I’ve found out! Guess!” Despite the fervor of his appeal, he gave her no time to put any guess she might have into words. “You know Johnny, that old journalist friend of mine.…”

  “The one who exposed that porn club scandal?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What about him?”

  “He heard from one of his editors, who’s a friend of one of the editors on the Saturday supplement that Jenny Brink has said that she’s heard from the culture editor that apparently Lola’s going to be reviewing a restaurant.” He paused, as if preparing himself, but Agnes got in there before him.

  “I can’t say that I’m shocked. It’s her job after all.…”

  “I know, but don’t you see? What’s interesting is which restaurant.”

  “Let me guess.…”

  “Exactly. The Yellow Lemon Tree.” Kalle sounded overjoyed. Like a cat that had proudly dragged a bloody mouse onto the kitchen floor and was now meowingly admiring its catch. “This could be it, don’t you see? This could be our break! If we’re reviewed by Lola, we’re set!”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Come on, how do you think Picnic’s made it so big?”

  “Because you served good food and because.…”

  “Because Lola raved about the place. That’s right. I’ve seen the same thing with tons of restaurants. The very same day that the review’s published the phone starts ringing like crazy. Everyone wants a reservation! Believe me, a review by Lola is the closest you get to a blessing in this business.”