You (54 page)

Taja says she’s got to pee, suddenly you all have to pee. You stop at the side of the road and you find a place behind the bushes, squat down, and pee. You can’t help grinning. Four girls in a circle, panties around their knees and butts sticking out. Nessi passes tissues around, you wipe yourselves and drop them on the ground. You know Nessi’s thinking about picking them all up.

“It’s cellulose, it’s biodegradable,” says Taja and pulls her trousers back up.

“Says you.”

“Knows I.”

In the car Nessi’s supposed to be taking over. You show her how the clutch works, and feel cocky. You’re in a floating state as if nothing can happen to you as long as you keep moving. But what sort of lie is that? Ruth’s death caught you totally unprepared even though you were in motion. For a while you even wanted to give up. Lie down on the ground and never get up again, never breathe again, just disappear. Taja and Nessi were ahead of you on that one. When you saw them both crying, you knew that giving up wasn’t an option, because there was only Stink and you to keep you all together. Lying down on the ground and giving up breathing wouldn’t have been fair to Stink.

“Let’s drive on,” says Taja.

She’s nervous, she keeps looking back, because who knows what Marten will do when he works out that you aren’t planning on coming back.

“I feel really mean, he was so nice.”

Stink pats Taja’s arm.

“Next time we’ll find somebody who’s a total asshole.”

“Next time we’ll all stay at home,” you say.

Nessi smells her rain-soaked T-shirt and says she needs some fresh clothes. Stink asks her to bring a sweatshirt. Nessi goes to the back of the car. The trunk opens, you hear her rummaging in the bags. In the meantime you do something sensible and fiddle around with the navigation system and ask Taja what that funny place is called again.

“Ulvtannen,” she says.

“Spell it.”

Taja spells it; she’s lying down on the backseat with her legs in Stink’s lap. All that’s missing is a hot tub and a minibar. The navigation system indicates the route and you’re about to tell your girls that you’re right on course when Nessi shouts from the back, “Stink, you’re the biggest asshole of all time!”

Taja and you freeze and look at Stink.

Stink pulls a surprised face.

“I haven’t done anything,” she says.

“Could everybody please get out of the car,” says Nessi.

You get out of the car and go to the back. Two of the backpacks are open. In one of them is a yellow sports bag. Nessi is holding a white package in her right hand.

“No way!” says Taja.

“Come on, Stink!” you yell and try to sound angry, but your tone gives you away. It’s incredibly hard to be angry with Stink.

“How could you?” Nessi wants to know.

Stink shrugs.

“I was sure Darian would fuck me over, so I packed two bags. There were books in one. It wasn’t so stupid, was it? Imagine the look on their faces when they took the wrong sports bag out of the safe-deposit box!”

Nessi gets a weird gleam in her eyes, and then she throws the package at Stink, who steps casually aside. The heroin flies past her head and lands in the road, where it slides across the tarmac with a slithering noise. The plastic wrapping tears open. The white powder immediately turns gray on the wet road surface.

“Yeah, great,” complains Stink. “Just keep chucking our retirement money around.”

You see Taja making big eyes. She is probably wondering whether it’s worth licking the wet powder off the road. You don’t understand why Nessi is making such a fuss. It doesn’t matter how Stink managed to get the drugs into her backpack now, because the stuff’s here and not in Berlin, so you should really be celebrating the fact.

Nessi doesn’t look as if she wants to celebrate anything.

“No wonder they won’t leave us alone,” she says. “And now you’ve fucked over Neil too.”

“What? How have I fucked him over?”

“You stupid cow, he gave Taja’s uncle the key to the safe-deposit box, he was trying to protect us, and now—”

“Now we’re safe and in Norway,” Stink interrupts. “No one needs to protect us anymore, Nessi, we’re protecting ourselves. Neil will be able to talk his way out of it, he wasn’t born yesterday. If you like, we’ll stop at the next post office, package it all up, and send the whole shitload back to Taja’s uncle. I don’t care.”

“Great idea,” says Taja, “as if customs doesn’t check packages coming from abroad. My uncle will dance with joy when he sees the cops standing at his door and asking him who his dealer is.”

“He’d have deserved it.”

“He’d definitely have deserved it,” Taja agrees, “but that’s not the point.”

Cease-fire. No one asks what the point is. Taja buries her hands in the front pockets of her jeans and asks if you could now please, please drive on. Nessi thinks she’s misheard.

“What? Is that all? Stink idiotically brings the drugs along without saying a word, and you just want to drive on?”

“What else are you going to do?” you ask. “Are you going to punish her now, or what?”

“Just try it,” says Stink, and assumes the boxing posture, both fists in front of her face so that only her eyes can be seen.

“You’re such a jerk,” says Nessi, and there’s no humor in the insult, it’s meant seriously. Stink lowers her fists and tries to sound sincere.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Okay, I’m not really sorry, but it’s happened now.”

Nessi nods, yes, it’s happened now, then she says something none of you wants to hear.

“You know what, girls, I’d like to go home. I’m fed up. I’ve had enough of this chaos. We’re lying to each other, we’re fucking with people who are kind to us, and we’re making more and more of a shitstorm with every passing minute, and we’re not even there for Ruth’s funeral. Is that really what you want?”

You all look away; of course you don’t want that.

“No one wants that,” says Taja, “but we can’t turn back now.”

“I know that. I just wanted you to know. You’re my girls, but I’d really like to be back in Berlin.”

Nessi throws Stink a clean sweatshirt and says you can drive on now. You haven’t got a good feeling, something is different, right now you don’t want to put an axe in Nessi’s hands. You get back into the car. Stink nudges you and whispers that it’s all going to get a lot worse when Nessi’s got a belly on her.

“Shut up,” Taja hisses back, and Stink actually does shut up. Nessi waits until you’re all comfortably back in the car, and only then does she get going. You hear a slapping sound and look out the back window. One plastic bag after the next lands in the road. You like that, you like it when your girls go a bit nuts. They’re not your friends for nothing. And everyone needs a valve for letting off steam, even if that steam is worth several million euros.

Taja curses and jumps out of the car. Stink follows, you come after them, but of course you’re too slow, and before you’ve set foot on the road Nessi’s thrown out the seventh bag and the tarmac looks as if it’s just snowed after rain.

“Don’t come any closer!” warns Nessi.

She’s holding the next bag in her hand. She looks totally insane; if you touch her now, she’ll probably explode with rage.

“You’re insane,” says Stink.

Nessi throws, Stink tries to catch the bag, it tears between her fingers and covers her jeans from her feet up to her knees. It looks as if Stink’s wearing white boots. Nessi chucks the last two bags into the road. One of them stays intact. Nessi goes and stamps it flat. Then she comes and plants herself in front of Stink.

“Where are the pills and the other shit?”

Stink says under her breath that she left them down at the bottom
of the sports bag. Nessi chucks the pills and the other shit into the bushes. When she’s finished, she’s breathing heavily and slams the trunk shut. For a moment she stands behind the car so that you can’t see her throwing up, then she comes back and says, “That was for Ruth.”

Immediately all of you have tears in your eyes. Stink lowers her gaze, she has understood. Nessi walks past you and sits down at the wheel. A minute later you’re on the road again. The mood is gloomy. Stink mumbles that she didn’t mean that thing about the belly. Nessi mumbles back that it’s okay. Silence settles on you again. You look through the CD box from the glove compartment. It’s up to you to save the moment. You choose the CD with the weirdest name. Experimental Pop Band. You put it in the player and hope it isn’t some stupid classical orchestra pretending to be modern and playing Bach sonatas with a chainsaw. Music and lyrics have to be right. You want your girls to smile again, so you put your trust in the gods, and that they’re looking mercifully down on you, as your mother always used to preach to you:
Stay close to your home, and the gods will look down mercifully upon you
. As if the gods had nothing better to do with their time.

The CD player starts, you turn up the volume and close your eyes. For a breath nothing comes out of the speakers and the gods start wondering what’s going on. At last there’s a crackle and a woman’s voice whispers:
Bang, bang, you’re dead
.

Half an hour later you see something pale in the road and brake. You stop six feet away and get out. It’s a sneaker. You pick it up and look round. Lights come toward you from a long way off. You stand there and wait. The lights approach and turn into four motorbikes. They keep accelerating and race past, only a few feet away from you. One of the drivers gives you the finger, then they’re gone. You stand there, holding the sneaker. Every fiber in your body is in flames. You can’t move. You see the skid marks on the tarmac. A car has gone into a swerve here and then stopped on the dotted line.

Right here
.

You look to the right, it hurts, every inch hurts, but you leave the road and look through the bushes. Shoe prints on the damp earth. Further off, a rock. Something keeps you from going over there. You go over there. Blood on the soil, blood on the stone. Someone’s been sitting here. You should get back to the road. You walk around the rock, and there lies your son with his face pressed into the damp soil. His arms are bent and lie close to his body, his hands have clawed into the soil next to his head as if he wanted to cling onto it. Beside his hips you see deep prints made by knees. Whoever was sitting on your son was stopping him from moving.

You turn him over. His eyes are open, his eyes are full of dirt. You wipe the dirt carefully away with your thumbs, you close his eyes. And look at him. And look at him. You sit down on the ground and put the sneaker on him. You make a bow, it goes wrong, you make it again, and only then do you wipe the rest of the dirt out of his face.
Reach into his mouth. Take the soil out. Run your finger over his lips. He’s clean now.

You wait.

You don’t look at the sky, you don’t murmur a prayer. You’re a man whose dead son is lying next to him, and nothing else is ever going to happen in this world. No disaster will be unleashed because of it, no one will set himself on fire, no pop star will write a song.

In the trunk of the Range Rover you find a blanket. You wrap Marten up in it and carry him to the car. After you’ve laid him down on the backseat, you take your jacket off and put it under his head. You want him to be comfortable, it’s his last journey. You close the door and stand beside the car in a T-shirt that belonged to your son. He lent it to you and dared you to wear it for a whole day. Today is that day. A white cross in a circle on a black background. Like you see on ballots. And under that the word
deselected
. You look very silly. Like someone who’s become something he never wanted to be.

You get back into the car and are about to start the engine when the shaking begins. First your jaw, your teeth chatter against each other, then it wanders downward, and within seconds your whole body is shaking so hard that you have to hold on tight to the steering wheel. Your balls contract painfully as if trying to hide in your abdomen, your guts want to spill their contents, you control them, you control yourself, the car rocks, the shaking turns into a hurricane that rushes through your life and drags away everything that isn’t nailed or bolted down. Including your son.

A few minutes later you’re calm and bathed in sweat. The windows are covered with condensation from inside, the car stands still. You carefully peel your fingers off the steering wheel and reach for the ignition key. The peace remains. You start the engine, put the car in gear. The car starts moving. You lower the window, the wind cools the sweat on your face. The monster in the deep jolts awake and rises to the surface. The Traveler is on the road once more.

you think the world owes you

it don’t owe you a thing

Sean Hayes

ROSEBUSH INSIDE