“It’s totally sick. He remembers everything. In perfect chronological order. No wait, you’ve met him, he came to the New Year’s party.”
“That big guy?”
“Right. Vandad.”
“He does not have a photographic memory, I can promise you that.”
“What about you—what kind of memory do you have?”
“I don’t know. A pretty good memory, I think. I remember what I need to remember. I don’t panic when I forget something.”
“I do. I don’t know why. It’s always been that way. That’s why I make lists.”
Samuel reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, hesitated for a second, and then pulled out a notebook.
“What do you write in that?”
“Everything I need to remember.”
“Like today: ‘Meet Laide at Petite France’? And then: ‘Pour water on myself’?”
“Exactly. For real, I used to do that when I was little. The first time I was going to call someone I had a crush on I had a long list of suggested topics of conversation. I was terrified that we wouldn’t have anything to say.”
“Do you still have the lists?”
“I save everything. That’s why I don’t write them in my phone. I still have the lists and the funny thing when you read them is that I had this terrible lack of imagination. Question one: ‘Do you have any plans this summer?’ Question two: ‘What did you do last summer?’ Question three: ‘Do you like summer?’ Question four: ‘Any plans for Christmas?’”
“Didn’t you ask me that?”
“Sure did. Thank God for the list!”
*
We sneaked into a bedroom, scattered fireworks unfurled in the sky like flowers, occasional volleys of bang-snaps rang out. Panther took out a putty-like lump wrapped in tinfoil paper, she heated it up with a lighter, she divided it into four pieces, stuck the biggest one back in her pocket, gave us each a little ball, and swallowed hers.
“What is it?” Samuel asked.
“A postcard from Berlin,” said Panther.
We swallowed them and when we came out the party was one hundred percent more fun. The music was better, the people more beautiful, even Laide seemed pleasant. Panther threw on a bathrobe from the bathroom and let it liven up the dance floor, I put on three songs in a row, Panther instructed the party people to imitate the bathrobe’s movements as if the bathrobe were a personal trainer, and no one questioned it, Panther shouted that this was what they should do and people caught on, the Iranians grinded on the university chicks, the university chicks hit on the South Americanos, the South Americanos raised their glasses for viva la revolución, the bass vibrated, the floor swayed, Samuel threw himself into the rhythm with that style of dancing that made it difficult to imagine that he worked at the Migration Board by day. He turned his hands into little birdies and pretended to be surprised when their beaks bit him on the nose. He stood perfectly still and tried to wiggle his ears. He waved his hands in the air as if he were directing an airplane to park. Sometimes I saw Laide beside him, she was trying to talk, twice I saw her pull his arm to try to make him stop dancing, but both times a new song he couldn’t stand still to came on and ten minutes later Laide was gone. “Did you see where she went?” Samuel asked when the buzz started to wear off and the party was almost over.
“I think she went home,” I said, without sounding happy about it.
*
As we left the cafe I felt confused. I had gone there with a clear goal in mind. I was going to be honest and straightforward: I’m sorry, but this isn’t working. It’s not even an option. You’re too young. Your friends are too druggy. Your cohabitant is too creepy. Your job is political, but in exactly the wrong ways. Your clothes are too disheveled. Your cheeks are too smooth. You’re too short. You’re too skinny. Your head is too big. Your beard is too nonexistent. Your eyes are too naïve. Your hair is too well-trimmed. So thanks but no thanks, I know where this is going so we might as well break it off now, it was short and perfectly fine while it lasted, let’s shake hands and say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. I stopped walking. We kissed. A taxi honked.
*
The guests had gone home, the music had been turned off, the girl whose party it was had come out of her bathroom with her toothbrush and said:
“Listen, you can stay if you want but you have to stop fucking smoking indoors.”
We promised. Panther put out her cigarette. But we stayed there, we didn’t want the night to end, not yet. Laide had taken off. Samuel checked his phone every five minutes, mumbling:
“I don’t get why she took off.”
“Maybe she’s a psychopath who gets off on making people fall in love with her and then enjoys disappearing?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s just one theory out of many.”
“You don’t know anything about her.”
“I know her type.”
Panther nodded but I don’t know if it was because she agreed with me or with Samuel or because she was dancing to the music in her head.
*
We walked along Scheelegatan in silence. We passed Rådhuset, the shoemaker, the bus stop, the pizzeria. We walked arm in arm like an elderly couple and I didn’t understand what was happening, how this could feel so right, despite my attempts to come up with reasons why it ought to feel wrong.
Some bellowing soccer fans were outside O’Leary’s, cheering at a match that was showing on the TV screens inside. A bus stopped by the hotel and dropped off a group of pensioners who were carrying programs from a musical. We arrived at the escalators at the entrance to Rådhuset Metro stop.
“Did you guys do what you did at that party because you wanted to be remembered?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember? In the kitchen?”
“Oh, that. No. We just thought it was a good idea in the moment. Something to fill our Experience Banks with. Something that made us remember the night.”
We smiled at each other.
“It was nice to see you,” he said.
“It sure was.”
“I’m going to remember this.”
“Me too.”
“When will we see each other again?”
“Soon?”
“Soon.”
The sun was going down. We went our separate ways. We kissed, we said goodbye, we kissed, we said goodbye, we kissed, we said goodbye, we said that it really was time to say goodbye, we kissed, we thanked each other for the date, it was awesome to see each other, now we have to say goodbye. I have to go home, me too, I have work tomorrow, me too, we said goodbye, we kissed. Forty-five minutes went by before, with a tired tongue and shaky legs, I finally started going down the stairs, into the chilly evening air of the Metro system. Samuel was still standing in the slanting sunlight, with his several-meter-long and thirty-centimeter-wide shadow. He waved when I turned around.
*
There we sat, the kitchen was total carnage. A battlefield of wine-box corpses, piles of plates, mountains of cigarettes, shards of glass, massacred beer bottles, empty liquor bottles, wine bottles full of cigarette butts. Panther had yellow chip crumbs in her downy mustache. It was almost five o’clock in the morning and it was still dark out. Everyone had left but the boyfriend of the girl whose party it was, he was out cold, snoring on the hall floor.
We should have gone home, it was time to go home, we had no choice but to go home. Then Panther looked up from the cigarette she’d just lit and said:
“We should do something insane.”
And my first thought was, of course. We should eat up the last of what’s in your breast pocket, so I nodded and smiled even before I heard what she said next.
“We should clean the shit out of this kitchen.”
We didn’t need a reason. We just did it. Samuel found the Ajax and soap and window cleaner from the cleaning closet, I took out a dustpan, and we had at it. We fixed the clog in the sink, loa
ded glasses and plates into the dishwasher, emptied the leftover pasta salad into plastic bags. We wiped off tables and swept and mopped and aired things out and I didn’t try to stop Panther until we were finished and I noticed that she was sneaking looks at the kitchen fan filter.
“That’s plenty,” I said.
“We can’t make it any better than this,” said Samuel.
The kitchen looked like an IKEA catalog, the counters were as sparkling white and bare as the inside of an elbow, the garbage bags were lined up in the hall like an army, next to the sleeping boyfriend.
*
I was sitting on the train on the way home when I got a message from Samuel. “A picture of a water glass.” Written out in words. I saw my smile in the reflection in the train window. It was almost as big as his.
*
We were just about to leave, we were finished, we felt proud and satisfied. Panther gave us a thumbs up, took two steps to the side, and puked her guts up into the shiny clean sink. Tiny red specks splashed onto the white tile walls and she threw up one more time and then stood up and said:
“Shit.”
Then she puked again and then we just stood there in this weird kitchen that still could have been in a catalog, as long as the photographer chose the correct angle and ignored the specks and the smell. We looked at each other and headed for the stairwell, left the garbage bags in the hall, stepped over the boyfriend, and ran for the Metro. We just managed to catch a morning train into the city, we sat in an empty group of four seats, as the train approached Gullmarsplan we started laughing, the laughter started way down in our knees and we laughed all the way across the bridge into the city. Some Spanish-speaking ladies turned around and smiled at us and when we said goodbye to Panther at Skanstull I thought that there was no reason to worry. Some friendships can survive anything.
*
I think I loved him. Take out think. I loved him. I loved him in a way I’ve never loved anyone else. I loved him even though we hadn’t slept together yet. I loved him because he whooped like a little boy when he laughed and shed a tear like an old lady when it was windy, because his pointy canine teeth made him look like a cat and because his big head balanced so regally on his thin shoulders and because his shabby clothes made him look like a person who had more important things to think about than laundry or sewing on buttons and because he smelled like a human and not a cologne factory. I loved him because he transformed all my earlier relationships into random asides and sometimes I felt a strong urge to call up my old boyfriends and say that I had to take back a few things: when I said I was in love I wasn’t in love and when I said I enjoyed our conversations I was exaggerating and when I said you were funny I was lying and when I said I loved you I didn’t know any better and when I ended it and said it wasn’t you it was me that wasn’t true either, because it wasn’t my fault, I wasn’t the broken one, there was something wrong with you. I just hadn’t met the right person and once I did it didn’t start with a storm of emotions that slowly weakened into a calm breeze that later turned into a stiflingly calm everyday life with nail-clipping in front of the TV and arguments about missing phone chargers. My relationship with Samuel was the exact opposite. We started with daily life, with long conversations between friends, which later, several months later, turned into kisses and closeness and an intimacy that. I don’t know how to describe it. But yes. I loved him. I truly did. What’s wrong? Are you okay? Yeah, sorry, I just got the sense that you disappeared for a minute there. Should we take a break? Are you hungry?
*
Then it was January. Panther went back to Berlin. During the next few weeks, or months, really, I hardly saw Samuel. We still lived together and our toothbrushes were still next to each other in the mug in the bathroom and Samuel’s spring coats and summer sneakers were still in the closet and his notebooks were stacked on his white bookcase. But he himself had vanished.
THE KITCHEN
Are you ready? Shall we continue? I don’t remember much from January to the middle of March. We entered some sort of fog where it suddenly became inconceivable that we wouldn’t sleep together every night. When we weren’t working, we shared every waking moment. But what did we talk about? Why did we giggle incessantly? How could a regular old visit to the laundry room turn into a laugh-fest? How come everything we touched became so magical? I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s all kind of a blur. We explored each other’s bodies with tongues and fingers, we slowly and methodically inventoried scars and birthmarks, ticklish spots and pleasure zones. We talked for so long that there was no time left over for sleeping, which didn’t matter because sleeping was for normal people and we weren’t normal, we didn’t need sleep or food, we only needed each other. Sometimes we went to work with unruly hairstyles and cheek colors that made our colleagues or clients smile and sometimes we stood at lunch restaurants waiting to pay and discreetly scratched our cheeks just to smell the scent on our fingers and remember the previous night. Sometimes we went to movies and plays and dance recitals and poetry readings and no matter what we saw it was too long because the time we had to spend sitting there in the dark, unable to talk to each other, went too slowly, but when we finally walked out into the night air whatever we had just seen turned out to be pretty good after all because we had the ability to elevate it, no matter how we had felt at the time, whatever we had experienced became really good, a work of fucking genius whether it was a TV show or a hockey match, because it wasn’t thanks to the actors or directors or poets or hockey players, it was thanks to us, we were the ones who imbued everything with meaning, we were the ones who breathed life into corpses. We were the ones who could transform all that was mediocre and ordinary into something else, something greater. We became so dependent upon each other that the very thought of not being together was unthinkable.
*
Things seemed a little empty. I have to admit that. I saw him when he came home to pick up some underwear or drop off dirty laundry, and each time I suggested that we hang out, have a few drinks, go out and take the pulse of the city. But Samuel didn’t have time, he always had to take off, he packed plastic bags full of shirts and underwear, shouted bye, and then he was gone again.
*
What do you mean “try being a little more concrete”? What is it you want to know, exactly? How often we fucked? Which positions we used? Whether I had single or multiple orgasms? Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to give you many more details. We hung out in bed ninety percent of the time, but we slept like three hours per night because there were endless amounts we had to say. The threads of thought of all those conversations formed a finely meshed net that tied us together and every time we started talking about a new subject there were ten links back to something we’d talked about before breakfast and twenty links to something we would talk about later that evening and even though we shared all these words it feels totally bizarre to realize how little I actually remember of our conversations. One evening we couldn’t agree on whether Japp bars and Mars bars were the exact same kind of candy with different names, or different kinds of candy with similar ingredients, so we ran down to the kiosk and bought one of each and arranged a blind taste-test. Why do I remember that in particular? Out of all those first intense conversations about parental conflicts and generational anxiety and childhood fears and sibling envy and hopes for the future, I remember that taste-test, how we sat there naked in my bed with the pieces of chocolate in front of us, immediately unsure which kind was which.
*
No, I didn’t feel lonely. I didn’t feel deserted. I was glad for Samuel. He seemed happy, and his happiness made me happy. It was just sometimes, if we happened to run into each other at home and I asked how it was going and he replied that it was absolutely fantastic and he had never experienced anything like it in his life and he really hoped I would one day get the chance to feel the power of being really, really in love, of loving someone in a way that made you go completely
limp at the thought that something might happen to the other person, sometimes, for a brief moment, I would feel a little bit like an outsider.
*
Yes. There was a difference. One is a little fluffier, the other tastes more of caramel. But I don’t remember which is which.
*
Around the time Samuel vanished, I started having trouble getting hours at work. Blomberg said that it had to do with a lack of customers, that there was an economic crisis and fewer people could afford to hire a moving company. But at the same time we figured something was up because the moving trucks were just as busy as usual. There were new last names in the schedule binders, non-Swedish names that weren’t listed in the salary binders. The owners of these names came in early and worked late and the only difference between us and them was they didn’t have T-shirts with the company logo, they didn’t have lifting belts, and they had to bring their own work gloves. At the end of the day, they received their pay in cash, just like we did.
*
One weekend we were sitting in my courtyard. It was five in the morning, we had flipped day and night, we were wrapped in blankets, everything had that special gray dawn light with haze in the air and frost on the grass and we were whispering so we wouldn’t wake the neighbors. We had been talking about our family backgrounds, I told him how my mom fled here, how she and my sister had been given a spot at the camp outside Borås, how they had waited there hoping that my dad would arrive before I was born but everything took a long time, there were papers and political issues that had to be dealt with and when Mom had me my sister stayed with a Nigerian family they had gotten to know at the camp and some kid in that family thought I should be called Adelaide, but I’ve always used Laide when I’m in Sweden. The only place that nickname doesn’t work is in Francophone countries. I was three when Dad finally came to Sweden and he had changed, he wasn’t the man Mom had left behind, he had grown thin and hard and they stayed together for several years anyway, they divorced when I was twelve, Dad moved to Malmö and Mom still lives here, she’s with a Swedish man now, they live in a terrace house in Tullinge.
Everything I Don't Remember Page 11
