I kept looking at his diagram without saying anything.
“Is bad cop the same as fall guy?” I finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I get that we’re all on the same team, of course, but to me it looks like the bad cop is the most inflammatory of the roles, and I would assume that the one who’s always objecting to everything and being difficult isn’t going to get all that much sympathy from the administration and could pretty quickly end up being the one who finds herself reorganized into the preschool-teacher education program. If you’re actually right that that’s the real purpose of the course revision plan.”
He laughed a little too loudly and ran his hand down my arm.
“You don’t think I’d do something like that to you, do you?”
“Maybe not, but then I don’t get why I can’t be the hard-liner and Ingvill could be the bad cop.”
He pulled his hand through his hair.
“That’s how I had it! But then I talked to her first. She threatened to put me out on a leave of absence if I listed her as the bad cop, so then I had to amend the diagram. Sorry.”
He sighed heavily and made puppy-dog eyes at me. I sighed at least as heavily.
“I can’t promise anything,” I finally said.
“Marvelous,” he replied and circled my name. “Marvelous. I knew I could count on you.”
Then he disappeared out the door, leaving me with my thoughts.
I considered going to the chair to inform her that Peter was losing his marbles, but didn’t really have the energy for that. Besides, I had to write that paper on Tehom for the conference and save my energy to form a protective shield around the children and make the phone ring with the news that somebody wanted to buy our house.”
But first of all I was going to the break room to make myself a cup of coffee. We didn’t have any left at home, and I hadn’t been able to face buying more. But as I walked down the hall, I felt like my head was getting too much oxygen. I shook it to try to let some of the air out, without success. It was like walking on a ship in a raging storm, and I saw the floor rising toward me. I clung to the wall.
Someone took me by the arm.
“What’s wrong?” asked the chair.
“Dizzy.”
“Have a seat.”
She pulled me into her office and pushed me down onto an uncomfortable chair that had probably been manufactured to encourage whoever sat there to get up and leave as soon as possible.
“I’m going to call your husband,” she said. “What’s his number?”
I enunciated what I thought his number was.
“He’s on his way,” she informed me a moment later. “I have to go to a meeting with the dean, but you can just sit here until your husband gets here. If you have to throw up, I recommend you do it in this trash can.”
“I don’t think I’m going to throw up.”
“No, but I think we’ll put it right here, anyway. Take a sick day tomorrow.”
I nodded.
“Fine,” she said and gave me a firm pat on the shoulder.
She was hardly out the door when I started vomiting. It came out like a projectile and landed in the trash can with a splash. Then it happened again. The third time, I could hear people swarming in the hallway.
“Is someone not feeling well?” I heard them wondering.
“I think it’s Hildegunn,” another chimed in, and an instant later at least three people burst in on me at the same time.
“Hi.” I smiled wanly. “It’s just me. I’ve got a little touch of something, but my husband is coming to pick me up, so it’ll be fine.”
“Does Hildegunn know you’re in here?” a woman from the Religious Studies Department asked, her face skeptical.
“Yes.”
“Oh, really?”
I could feel her eyes on me until she and the others abruptly withdrew and shut the door. Out in the hallway people were clearly still gathering.
“What’s going on?”
“I thought I heard someone being sick.”
“Is Hildegunn sick?”
“Relax,” the religion lady said loudly. I could picture her holding up her hands to ward off all the comments. “It’s not Hildegunn. It’s only that . . . What’s her name again?”
Several people suggested names.
“Nygaard?”
“Larsen?”
“Andersen?”
“No . . . the other one . . . Winter! It’s her.”
Someone mumbled, “Oh, right.” And then I heard feet shuffling away and doors closing along the whole length of the hallway, and I closed my eyes. I could have been dead and none of them would have cared.
But Bjørnar cared. He drove me straight to the doctor, who stated that this was what happened when you didn’t eat enough meat and developed a B12 deficiency.
“I don’t eat meat,” I mumbled with my eyes closed, “because of the turtles.”
“What?”
“She said she doesn’t eat meat because of the turtles,” Bjørnar repeated.
“What?”
“We visited a turtle hospital last summer,” he explained, and I noticed that he sounded tired. “And she saw one of them being operated on and it looked so much like a human that she decided to become a vegetarian.”
“It looked like my grandmother,” I added.
“What?”
“It looked like her grandmother.”
“OK, but grandmother or not, you have to make sure you’re getting enough vitamins. Do you want to feel like this for the rest of your life?”
“No.”
“Then you have to eat meat. And we’ll step up your B12 treatments.”
Bjørnar got me home and into bed, and when I woke up the next morning, he was sitting on the edge of the bed watching me.
“Every morning is gray,” he said.
“I know that.”
“It didn’t used to be like that.”
“No.”
“I’m scared it’s always going to be like this.”
“Yes.”
“You need to pull yourself together. All these . . . quirks of yours. You can’t always live them out so intensely. When you start buying houses for eight million kroner and walk around talking about heart attacks and urinary tract infections and stress cancer and have dizzy spells—then it’s not OK anymore. You have to think about the kids. And about us as a family. Everything is revolving a little too much around you right now.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to work now. And I won’t be home until late. I’m preparing for a trial.”
“OK, have a good day. And sorry.”
He got up and walked out of the room. I thought about calling out, “To be or not to be,” but it didn’t feel like I had permission. Besides, I wasn’t up to it. And I certainly wasn’t up to getting out of bed and taking care of the kids. I wished the doctor had admitted me to the hospital and not just sent me home again. If only she could have given me morphine or anesthesia or something that would let me lie totally still in bed and sleep. Or put me in a coma. Just for a few days or a couple of weeks. Until all this was over.
14
Saturday morning Bjørnar took the kids to the library, while I stayed home to get the house ready for yet another open house.
The doorbell rang twenty minutes too early. I was still squatting over the mop bucket. I cursed private showings in general and mopping in particular and then stashed the bucket behind the washing machine and opened the door with my widest smile.
But it wasn’t the people for the showing.
It was a man, scruffy and odd, with long, greasy hair and wearing the world’s widest tie. He stood there smiling back at me. I realized right away that he could easily be a serial killer, and decided not to let him in under any circumstances.
“Tjenare,” he said, greeting me in Swedish. “Or hello.”
“Are you here for the open house?” I asked.
“Yes
. . . maybe?”
“Either you are or you’re not.”
“It’s a nice house. But maybe it’s missing something?”
He took a few steps toward me, and I clutched the doorknob harder. I didn’t like this. He had crazy eyes. Plus he was Swedish.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have an alarm?”
“No.”
“Fabulous! Then I can cut you an amazingly good deal. It’s so good that, strictly speaking, I’m not allowed to go this low. But we’re making a few exceptions only in your neighborhood, for people like you.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Let me ask you this: How many pairs of shoes do you own?”
I didn’t answer right away, trying to remember where I’d put my cell phone. Wasn’t there a serial killer who had collected his victims’ shoes? Jerry Brudos?
“One,” I lied.
“You only have one pair of shoes?”
“Give or take.”
“My point exactly, give or take.”
“What is your point exactly?”
“Most people simply don’t know how much they own. May I come in?”
“No.”
“It would be easier.”
He put his foot on the threshold. I held on to the doorknob even tighter, ready to close it.
“Do you have children?”
His breath smelled like cigarettes. I pictured his black lungs, with scarcely any openings for the oxygen, decaying a little more each day from the toxins. I wondered if he knew that cigarettes contain a substance that numbs your throat so you don’t feel how much it hurts when you inhale the smoke.
“I have children, yes.”
“How old are they?”
“They’re . . .” I took a breath and plucked up my courage. “You know, now’s not a good time. Perhaps you could come back another time?”
“They all say that,” he said, sounding irritated. “Well, let me just jot down your name and phone number, because this is an offer you’re not going to want to miss!”
“Actually there’s no point in your calling, because we’re selling the house. I’m actually having an open house now, so it’s as good as sold. You’ll have to talk to the new owners.”
He laughed and shook his head.
“You haven’t sold it yet. We’ll just see how that goes.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’ve heard of the housing market crash, right?”
He made an explosion sound with his mouth and illustrated with his hands everything being blown to smithereens.
“I hope for your sake that you haven’t bought a new place yet.”
“I have to go,” I said and tried to shut the door, but his foot was in the way.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“It’s . . . Anne Undheim,” I told him.
“Uh-huh. And your phone number?”
I made up one of those as well.
“Great. I strongly recommend that you get an alarm system. You know what happens when someone breaks into your home? They don’t just steal, you know. They make a mess and ruin your stuff. They urinate on your walls. They stick your toothbrushes into unmentionable orifices.”
“What?”
He winked at me.
“You can avoid all that with an alarm system. I’ll give you a call on Monday! But then I’ll expect to come inside. It’s really outrageous to be left standing outside like this!”
He gave me a slightly accusatory look and only slowly removed his foot. Once his foot was out of the way, I pushed the door shut with all my might and hurriedly locked it. My heart was racing. I had survived, but only just.
The people for the open house didn’t arrive until a good while after the appointed time. I had planned a few choice remarks about unpleasant Swedish alarm salesmen, but opening the door, I became distracted by how tall they were. They were so tall that I actually suspected them of being replicants. Especially since the male looked suspiciously like Rutger Hauer, and the female had a particularly meticulous hairdo that I had only ever seen in ads. Her short black hair stood straight up in a sort of a swoop to the left, which until I saw it I would have doubted was even possible to pull off in real life.
“Welcome,” I said, compensating for my lack of height and my limp hair by squeezing their hands extra hard during my handshake.
“Thank you,” they said and removed their shoes.
Despite their potential replicant status, I was happy to see that they were my age. Plus they both had steady jobs in the financial sector, so surely they also had actual money. The last private showings had been to two young couples currently renting basement apartments who should have been touring a “spiffy town house with sunny patio.”
All I had to remember in order to land this was that replicants weren’t the easiest to communicate with. Because their memories had been implanted, not experienced firsthand, it was hard for them to understand the emotional aspects of human life. Irony also wasn’t their forte.
But beyond a doubt they were equipped with an interest in interior design, because I could hear them talking about knocking down walls, building a loft, and putting in recessed lighting. They stood for a long while debating the purpose of the owl decals that adorned Alva’s bedroom wall. They concluded that they’d been put there to spruce up the space and give it the feel of a child’s bedroom. They also agreed the owls could probably be removed.
Easy peasy, I thought.
“Are you guys always so tidy?” she asked as they came back downstairs.
“We like to keep the place clean,” I said. “It gives us peace of mind.”
“But surely not as clean as this?”
“No, maybe not exactly this clean, but it’s not so far off.”
She stared at me as if she were trying to read my mind.
“I hardly believe that,” she finally concluded.
“Suit yourself.”
“Who put the owls on the wall?”
“I did.”
“I don’t like owls. Can they be removed?”
“Of course.”
“Can you prove that?”
“They’re decals. They come off.”
“Can you prove that?”
She stood and watched while I tried to remove one of the owls without damaging the paint. The hard edges of the decal cut in under my fingernails, but I held on to a straight face. When I was done, she ran her hand over the wall.
“No damage, right? No marks that I can see, anyway.”
She moved her head slightly and I chose to interpret that as a faint nod. Standing like that, she actually reminded me of an owl herself.
“Do you have any children?” I asked.
They exchanged glances, as if they didn’t understand my question.
“Children aren’t compatible with our lifestyle,” Rutger Hauer finally said.
“We’ve never considered it,” she added.
“Would you like to take a look at the outside?”
“Could we see how the gas fireplace works?” he asked.
I picked up the remote control and turned it on.
“Can’t you make the flames any bigger?”
“Yes.”
I opened the panel and turned up the dial that controlled the heat.
“Is that the highest?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t get it any higher?”
“No.”
“Can you see the flames from the yard?”
“When you’re sitting on the patio?” I asked confusedly.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“Let’s do that now, then,” Rutger Hauer said.
“Sure.”
They went outside, and I opened the panel and turned the heat all the way up. I peered out at the two of them standing side by side in the yard. It was hard to tell if they were satisfied or not, so I gave them the thumbs-up with a question
ing look. They made a vague hand gesture that could mean anything from “very nice” to “far below average.” Maybe they were replicant models that didn’t come with the hand-gesture package preinstalled, or maybe they had not had much of an introduction to empathy.
I was crying as I walked downtown to the library, but luckily it was raining. In response to Bjørnar’s question about whether it had gone well, I told him they were replicants, which made it hard to relate to them and also made them impossible to read.
“Remind me what replicants are again?”
“Humanlike cyborgs with implanted memories, who can only be detected with questions that elicit their fundamental lack of empathy.”
“And the movie we’re talking about is . . . ?”
“Blade Runner.”
“Exactly. And you think they’re replicants because . . . ?”
“I guess they just gave me a replicant vibe.”
He nodded and was quiet for a minute, and I hoped his silence meant that things were looking up between us and that he didn’t think it mattered that I thought they were humanlike cyborgs.
“Are replicants allowed to own property?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I kind of hope so.”
I didn’t mention my suspicions to the real estate agent, but just said I thought the showing had gone well. When she called them, though, they denied having ever seen the place and said they weren’t interested in buying a house, anyway.
“Strange,” she said.
“Manufacturing glitch,” I said.
15
The following Monday the chair of the department summoned me to the meeting room.
“I’m going to be honest with you,” she said after I sat down in the same chair I’d been placed in the week before. “I hear you’re planning a mutiny, and I don’t like it.”
“Pardon me?”
She pulled out a sheet of paper with some scribbling on it.
“Do you deny writing this?”
“No. I mean . . . yes.”
“I’ve been informed that you’re the one behind this document,” she said, tapping her finger on the sheet of paper accusingly as she watched me expectantly.
The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter (The Ingrid Winter Misadventure Series) Page 8