Copper Heart

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I threw one last ladleful of water onto the rocks and continued to ruminate. Now Johnny had appeared in my life out of nowhere. Johnny and Tuija were getting divorced. I didn’t want to think about that either.

  After scrubbing myself clean and dumping a bucket of well water over my head to rinse off, I went to the cellar for some of my uncle’s suspiciously strong home-brewed mead and then flopped down on the couch to watch a cop show about land speculators bumping each other off in Northern California.

  The following day I had lunch with Ella in the city cafeteria midway between our places of work. We ate together a couple of times a week.

  Ella was gushing about the upcoming opening gala for the recently renovated Old Mine complex.

  “Have you received an invitation?” she asked in concern. Good old Ella. Ella had always been there—we had lived next door to each other when we were kids and had been in the same classes all through school except for one year in junior high. However, we didn’t become good friends until high school. Neither of us really fit the mold of small-town girls. One boy in our class, who didn’t even like me, once said that there were only “two chicks in the class who aren’t chickens too, Ella and Maria.” I was still pretty flattered by that.

  Ella was a different kind of tomboy than me though. She was significantly taller, with broader shoulders and smaller breasts, and she almost always dressed in brightly colored pantsuits. She kept her dark hair cut short and slicked down flat. She had traded her large glasses for contact lenses, which made her brown eyes shine softly in her round, rosy-cheeked face. Ella was practical and sensible without being motherly. She was artistically talented but not one bit bohemian. She was basically born to be the cultural affairs administrator for a small town, and had been working as such for a couple of years now after having realized she needed to get active in Social Democrat politics to secure the job. Ella’s husband, Matti Virtanen, was a painter.

  “Yes, I have. Kivinen’s secretary invited me when she came to get the permit for the fireworks. Is Kivinen really the godsend for the city he seems to be? Where is he getting the money for the lease on the Old Mine anyway?”

  “Don’t you read the papers? Mostly it’s money from a couple of good business deals he made with his wife’s inheritance. He’s from here, and I guess he feels some freakish affection for the place.”

  I had read a few articles about Seppo Kivinen—the main shareholder and CEO of Old Mine Ltd—and my father had told me a little about him too. When Arpikylä Travel, which was owned half by the city and half by a local entrepreneur, was headed for bankruptcy, Seppo Kivinen appeared out of nowhere with an MBA and big plans. He had a detailed analysis of how to make the Old Mine profitable again. After a complete renovation, they would have an amazing network of adventure caves, a renovated Tower, an improved and expanded mining museum, a first-class restaurant, a gold-panning sluice, an alpine slide on the hill, and who knew what else.

  “Aren’t adventure parks like the one he’s planning kind of old news? They used to be all over the place, but it seems like most of them went under.”

  Ella took such a pull on her glass of buttermilk that a white mustache appeared on her upper lip.

  “Kivinen has plenty of ideas—you have to hand him that. On top of all the mine-themed attractions, he plans to convert one of the big ore-processing halls into a javelin practice space for Kaisa Miettinen. And Matti and Meritta are holding a mining-themed art camp in August that’s already booked solid.”

  “But it all takes so damn much money! Is the city backing all the loans or something?”

  “There has been a lot of controversy over that. But Kivinen is employing nearly a hundred people, which means a lot in a town where the unemployment rate is almost thirty percent.”

  Of course I understood that, and I knew that was precisely the pretext Kivinen had used to wheedle subsidies from every source imaginable. There was the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Regional Development Fund. Apparently Kivinen had been pals with an influential government minister. Although nowadays he didn’t mention the connection as often—the politician in question was doing time for insider trading.

  I decided to change the subject. “By the way, guess who I ran into yesterday? Johnny Miettinen.”

  Ella smiled at me pityingly. Although I had gotten over my worst Johnny delirium back in high school, since then I might have forced Ella to listen to me whimper about him a few times when we were drunk.

  “Does he still give you the chills?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “He is a looker,” Ella said, laughing. “Even out here in the boonies we deserve a little eye candy every now and then. Goodness knows there isn’t much of it.”

  I shoved the last forkful of mashed potatoes into my mouth and glanced at my watch. Lunches with Ella tended to stretch longer than expected, and this one was no exception.

  “I have a date with the president of a hunting club in fifteen minutes,” I said, standing up. “Apparently they had some poachers last fall. Fingers crossed that I don’t make a complete fool of myself. Before he shows up, I should probably speed-read the hunting act that parliament just overhauled.”

  Sheriff Jussi had painted a rosy picture of his work: hardly any crime—mostly little break-ins and drunks on mopeds—and some light administrative work, issuing licenses and the like. Maybe the job was easy for someone who had been living here the past ten years. But I didn’t really know the marching orders around city hall or who any of the local muckety-mucks were anymore. So I had to work twice as hard. In Finland, the offices of small-town sheriffs are a sort of local government dumping ground for all sorts of legal administration from simple debt recovery and permit issuing on up to leading the police department and acting as public prosecutor.

  As I was walking back to the police station along the main drag, a familiar-looking woman strode toward me. I recognized her and I almost said hi, even though we didn’t know each other. After winning the silver medal in the women’s javelin at the World Championships in Athletics the previous summer, Kaisa Miettinen had become a permanent celebrity. I knew she was Johnny’s cousin, six years younger than me, and an outrageously talented javelin thrower. A lot of people were betting on her taking the gold medal at the European Athletics Championships later in the summer.

  To my surprise, Kaisa said hi. Her smile was shy and fast. I smiled back and walked the final few yards to my workplace. The new civil service building, an addition to the old police station, had been built a few years earlier. The sheriff’s office was bright and spacious. On the wall still hung a portrait of Mauno Koivisto, the previous president. I wondered whether I should change the picture. It seemed pretty stupid that the president’s picture was mandated to hang on the wall of every office of every petty bureaucrat in every tiny burg in the country. Was it to serve as a reminder that Big Brother was watching? Maybe back in President Kekkonen’s time during the Cold War that had been true.

  I survived the hunting meeting with my self-respect intact. Fortunately the principal of my old high school had been a hunting nut who regularly played hooky on the opening days of the duck and moose seasons. The school looked the other way when students also cut class on those days, so I remembered the dates perfectly. And besides, the hunting club president didn’t even have a real complaint. I got the feeling he only wanted to see what having a woman sitting behind the sheriff’s desk looked like.

  After our meeting, the office clerk, Hilkka, the only permanent female employee in the police station, brought in a stack of passports and drivers’ licenses for me to sign. No one in the stack looked familiar; the kids getting licenses now were more than ten years younger than me and complete strangers. Now it was their turn to cruise proudly up and down Main Street, stopping in front of bars to gawk at passersby. Twelve years hadn’t done anything to change how teenagers got their kicks around here.

  The phone rang shrilly.

&nbs
p; “Hey, it’s me—Koivu. You remember that string of cabin break-ins last month? You had a few too, south of town out near the lake. Well, we nailed the guys. Do you remember who was handling those cases on your end?”

  “No, but I could get it in two guesses,” I said. The Arpikylä police department had only eight full-time cops—two detectives and six uniforms. I flipped through my binder of duty logs from the previous month. “Guy by the name of Antikainen. He should be in his office now.”

  “Send me over to him in a minute. One other thing first though. Um…well…Do you know what size Anita would be in those British sizes that have numbers like ten and twelve?”

  “Koivu, what are you up to?”

  Pekka Koivu was my old partner from my days in the Helsinki Police Department Violent Crime Unit. We had kept in touch after I left, and I was sad when he decided to move to Joensuu with his girlfriend, Anita. Koivu was clearly tired of the increasingly chaotic situation at the Helsinki PD and of his alcoholic boss, who for some reason no one could fire. Now that I was in Arpikylä though, we had reconnected; Joensuu was the county seat.

  “Anita’s birthday is next week and I want to buy her this nightgown…”

  “Why don’t you ask the salesperson?”

  Koivu didn’t reply. Gradually, it dawned on me what sort of nightgown he meant. “OK, hold on. Anita is pretty tall but slender…probably a size ten. Are you sure she’ll like something like that?”

  “Well, she’s always complaining that she doesn’t have any fancy lingerie like the women on TV.”

  “I guess you know what you’re doing. But Koivu—don’t buy black. White is more her style.”

  We agreed that Koivu would come over for a sauna the following week. I doubted Anita would be able to make it. She didn’t like me any more than I liked her. Koivu insisted on introducing us, and our hostility was evident the first time we met. Antti and I had visited them at Koivu’s apartment in Helsinki, and Anita had started tut-tutting when we reached just our second round of beers.

  “Pekka, you shouldn’t drink any more. You have work tomorrow. And isn’t alcohol even more dangerous for women than for men?”

  As Koivu served up meatballs, pasta salad, and coleslaw, Anita nibbled a mixture of carrots and cottage cheese; apparently she didn’t eat meat. I found myself spreading unusually large amounts of butter on my bread and starting to swear. Anita’s vegetarianism seemed more like fanaticism than healthy living, and she seemed to want to force Koivu to change his lifestyle too. A sharp remark about the cognac that Koivu served with the coffee—of course, Anita just had herbal tea—made me realize she was jealous. I proceeded to talk loudly about my and Antti’s plans for our future and, completely out of character, snuggled up under his arm. But even that didn’t help.

  Now I was worried for Koivu. The poor guy was clearly head over heels and completely henpecked. Supposedly a wedding was in the offing sometime in August. Hopefully someone would be with me at the church to keep me in line so I wouldn’t shout, “For God’s sake, don’t marry that nag!”

  Detective Antikainen came by my office to announce he was leaving for Joensuu to question the cabin thieves—two Finns and one Russian. Apparently most of the stolen goods were taken across the border. The local papers would have another reason to whip up some good old ethnic hatred for our eastern neighbors. And no doubt the local petty crooks would immediately take advantage of it. Last spring, one convenience-store robber, who had already done two stretches for similar capers, seemed to think no one would suspect him if he left a few rubles on the floor at the scene of the crime. Unfortunately for him, his fingerprints happened to be on them.

  As I was leaving work, I drove a little loop around the Old Mine. I hadn’t been up in the Tower in ages; it had been closed for the past few years. Maybe I would get the chance at the opening party on Friday. The hill glowed copper yellow, and the bright color of the sand made the Tower look even more gloomy than usual. Its shadow loomed behind me for a long time as I drove toward my uncle’s farm.

  2

  I had just run my evening 6K and had managed to change into a nightshirt when I heard the sound of a car in the driveway. It was already eight o’clock, so I hoped whoever was outside wasn’t here on official business. A knock came at the door; before I could respond, Johnny stepped inside.

  “Hi. Are you already headed for bed?” Even after fifteen years, that smile still made my legs wobbly, and I had to pinch myself mentally.

  “No, I just got back from jogging. Sit down. I was just about to make some tea.”

  Johnny sat in Uncle Pena’s rocking chair and started trying to lure Mikko onto his lap. I put the kettle on and then I slipped into my room to put on panties and a sweatshirt that hopefully would conceal my lack of a bra. As I was dressing, I noticed my hands trembling. Nervous dark-green eyes stared back at me from the mirror over the dresser.

  “I thought I’d stop by since we didn’t get to chat for very long yesterday,” Johnny said, looking at me searchingly when I returned to the living room. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Look a little closer and you’ll see all my wrinkles. And what’s in my head has changed quite a bit too, thank God.”

  “Do you still play music?”

  “Mostly by myself. Antti, my boyfriend, plays the piano, and sometimes we jam together. But I haven’t played in a band since my first year of law school. And you? Are the Tigers still together?”

  “No, we gave up years ago, but we still get together occasionally. Jaska plays guitar with us sometimes. But we’re getting old, and my voice isn’t that great after all the yelling I do leading aerobics classes at the rec center.”

  Johnny was four years older than me, but he didn’t look the slightest bit middle-aged. His movie-star jawline was more prominent than ever, and the ten pounds he had put on seemed to be pure muscle. I wondered how Johnny had never noticed the crush I had on him fifteen years earlier, since even now I was completely useless around him.

  I poured the water into the teapot, and we gossiped about our common friends and talked about books and music. Gradually, my nervousness dissipated, and I remembered why I liked being around him so much. I guess that was why I had been so infatuated with Johnny; it had never been only about how handsome he was. Yes, he was beautiful, but he had a brain too. He was just plain nice to hang out with. That was a rare combination in a town the size of Arpikylä.

  “Have you and Antti been dating long?”

  “A little less than two years.”

  “And you aren’t getting tired of him yet?”

  “No. I do panic every now and then though. I’m not really the mate-for-life type.”

  Johnny didn’t say anything but kept stroking Mikko, who had finally condescended to being petted. The cat purred lazily. The scent of the summer evening wafted in through the open window. A blackbird trilled on the roof of the sauna and the wind murmured softly through the birch trees in the yard. I didn’t want to say anything. All I could see of Johnny, backlit by the natural light, was his strong-jawed profile and his hands slowly caressing the cat.

  The telephone interrupted the silence. I started, and Mikko jumped out of Johnny’s arms onto the floor. It was my sister Eeva.

  “I have a guest,” I said after listening to Eeva give a five-minute report on her son Saku’s first words. Eeva’s stories about motherhood always made me vaguely uneasy. I didn’t know anything about little kids. Was there something amazing about a child walking at eleven months and figuring out how to open a tube of toothpaste?

  “Oh, a guest? You do sound a little strange. Who?”

  “Do you remember Johnny Miettinen?”

  “Oh, that kind of guest…” Eeva said, amusement creeping into her voice. “Do you still blush every time he talks to you?”

  Flipping Eeva. Of course she had known about my crush; not noticing would have been hard for anyone. Except Johnny.

  “Hi, Eeva,” Johnny said loudly just before I plac
ed the receiver back in its cradle.

  In my mind’s eye I could see perfectly a summer night just like this one but fifteen years earlier. I had come home clutching a single of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” I had borrowed from Johnny.

  Eeva had immediately noticed the name written on one corner of the record sleeve and laughed cruelly to my other sister. “Maria is stuck on Johnny, but he has a girlfriend…”

  Over the following three days, I nearly wore that record out and slept with the cover under my pillow; at least I had the sense not to shove the record under there too.

  “Does your other sister have kids already too?” Johnny’s question snapped me out of my thoughts.

  “In four months she will. It’s good both my sisters are having them so my parents can get off my back about grandkids. How old are yours?”

  “Tuomas is seven. He’s starting school this fall. Vilma is five.”

  I remembered noticing Tuomas’s baptismal announcement in the local paper, which my old roommate Jaana used to have mailed to our apartment in Helsinki. I had been dating Harri the Birdman at the time, but after seeing the baptismal announcement, Johnny had haunted my dreams more often for a while. Why the hell didn’t I ever dream of my other old crushes or boyfriends? Not Harri or Pete the Bum, who I mooned over for two weeks after we broke up, or even Kristian, who had such a brilliant legal career ahead of him. Reminiscing about them caused only a slight nostalgia, perhaps some mild amusement. But Johnny…

  As if he had read my thoughts, Johnny said, “I’ve wondered a lot over the years how you were doing. A couple of years ago when there was that murder and then a cop shot the killer and made her fly through a second-story window, I saw your name in the paper. It seemed like you were really living the fast life. I remember thinking that I hoped I would see you again before some drug runner capped you.”

  There was amusement in Johnny’s voice, but his eyes were not laughing.