The End of Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  Irma and Siiri exchanged horrified glances. Was Ritva already this inebriated? Or suffering from dementia? Ritva was their sole lifeline to the world of robots, and nothing would come of their war-mongering if she cracked up on their hands in a pub in broad daylight.

  ‘She gets a little confused sometimes,’ the man at the neighbouring table said, the one who had lent Siiri the chair. He had collected his sparse, long hair into a rat’s tail at the nape of his neck and was wearing nothing but a jeans jacket on the frigid winter day. ‘Give her a minute, she’ll be all right.’

  ‘I see, thank you,’ Siiri said. ‘I suppose we’ll just . . . wait, then.’

  ‘You could throw darts,’ the man suggested, rising unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘Goodness, isn’t that dangerous . . . in that condition?’ Irma hesitated but then stood, as her game of Words in a Word was winding down with words she wasn’t sure were real words, such as pliate, clints and fapple. They left Ritva to her muddled mutterings and followed the scrappy fellow towards the dartboard at the back of the bar. It was the English kind, not like the one Irma’s darlings had hung on the door of the woodshed at the villa. She and Siiri could make neither head nor tail of the man’s instructions. There were sections and pies and multipliers, but they gathered that the smaller the area they hit, the better. Their denim-clad tutor offered them a demonstration, and every one of his darts missed.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said to Irma, who enthusiastically accepted the handful of darts and asked the man to hold her handbag.

  ‘Why, they’re all sticky,’ Irma said with a laugh, and the man suggested they throw from a shorter distance than him, because they were women. Irma peeled her foot from the equally sticky floor and took a step forward. Then she aimed, closed one eye, stuck out her tongue, and threw all five darts into the target with ferocious speed. The man guffawed loudly, making the rat’s tail at his neck waggle.

  ‘Goddamn, lady, nice score!’

  People started to collect around them. Beckoned by the commotion, pensive philosophers wandered over to lurk around the fringes of the dartboard. Irma’s points were totalled, and a short man with a big belly wrote the result on the chalkboard. Irma laughed her falsetto laugh and jubilated in her success.

  ‘You go now, Siiri,’ she said, placing the tacky darts in Siiri’s hand. ‘It’s easy.’

  Siiri concentrated. Left foot forward, legs in a sturdy straddle. She waited for her breathing to steady and raised her right hand to her face. She tried to close one eye but accidentally closed both. A violent wrench and a toss. The first dart hit the upper part of the target, to enthusiastic applause, as Siiri had struck a square worth a lot of points. She closed her eyes again, actually squeezed them shut, threw the rest of the darts and received even louder ovations from the daytime drinkers than Irma had. Everyone was delighted that two old women were lobbing darts into the board better than Ukko-Munkki’s regulars did after years of practice.

  ‘This is a lot more fun than flailing about with the fitness console,’ Siiri exclaimed, and let the big-bellied fellow give her a hug.

  ‘I’m buying the winner a round,’ the man in the jeans jacket slurred, staggering over to the bartender. Siiri and Irma tried to stop him, as they had no intention of getting inebriated, and their first drinks still stood on the table, nearly untouched. But he was persistent. He had never seen a hundred-year-old throw darts before, and he wanted to make the most of the moment.

  ‘Why don’t you offer ölyt to our fans. You can’t set an athletic record without the support of a good crowd,’ Irma said as if she were a modern, media-savvy top athlete.

  The men at the bar cheered, everyone got a drink, and after that the crowd moved back to the dartboard to beat Siiri’s and Irma’s scores. Gruff cursing and good-natured laughter echoed from the dartboard, but Ritva had disappeared from her table.

  ‘She left an unfinished beer here. She’ll be back,’ Irma said confidently, reclaiming her spot on the sofa. And before long Ritva materialized, her normal self. She had gone to the restroom and been confused when she hadn’t found her friends there.

  ‘I thought you went to the toilet. It’s pretty filthy here, maybe not what you’re used to.’

  ‘Oh dear, Ritva – if you only knew the sorts of thickets and bogs we’ve had to do our business in when it was cold enough to freeze our behinds,’ Siiri said, and laughed cheerfully. ‘But where were we? You were talking about the Holy of Holies, weren’t you?’

  There was no longer any trace of Ritva’s confusion. She mused on the role the Awaken Now! Association played in Sunset Grove’s infrastructure and reflected it was possible a cloud service existed somewhere that some select group of the association’s members could access.

  ‘You’re saying they can’t all get to heaven? Do you need a code to get in?’ Irma asked.

  Ritva jabbered on about server interruptions and fibre optics. Siiri didn’t fully understand and wanted to know what electricity had to do with this. According to Ritva, the entire world ran on electricity, which was why the electricity outage had paralysed Sunset Grove, down to the robots that carried out all the commands.

  ‘When there are no commands, the robot doesn’t do a thing. That’s why we ended up with a body count. It’s completely obvious, but I doubt the Finnish justice system cares.’

  ‘This is worse than awful,’ Siiri said. ‘You’d think it would be easy to discover the culprits, since everything is being recorded somewhere. These breadcrumbs and sensors, they’re gathering information incessantly.’

  ‘Sure, but the question is where. There’s a router somewhere, maybe in the basement, but the server could be anywhere, even the Ivory Coast.’

  ‘So we can’t just follow the cable and pull the plug?’ Irma asked, and then sighed in disappointment. She drowned her sorrows in a couple of sips of cider and grimaced, pressing her upper abdomen. ‘I must say, this is terribly bitter. It’s making my stomach lurch.’

  But Ritva was on a roll. She ranted about international security breaches, the twin towers in Manhattan and data gathering in the United States.

  ‘Thousands of computers are gathering information on everyone, not just American citizens, because you don’t have to be an American citizen to be a terrorist.’

  Siiri couldn’t grasp what some monolingual bureaucrat in Tulsa would do with her nightly sleep report. Irma constructed ever-wilder visions of top-secret meetings where the mashed balls printed for her consumption and the path she trod each day were presented to the US Minister of Defence through the mediation of interpreters. A team of lieutenant colonels analysed the series of images of her sticking her bum out at the camera and sticking her tongue out at the smartwall.

  ‘I certainly feel safe now!’ Irma found this so funny that she had to dab the tears from her eyes with her lace handkerchief. Siiri started to laugh, too, and their hilarity didn’t cease until Irma cried: ‘And now I’ve wet myself!’

  The men at the dartboard turned to look at the old women and burst out guffawing. Pints were raised in a toast and Ritva wondered why the men were calling to Siiri and Irma with such familiarity. They couldn’t be bothered to explain how masterfully they had dived into the pool of pub-dwellers while Ritva regressed into her own thoughts. They had to proceed quickly, while Ritva was still clear-headed.

  ‘I’m sure data collection is a serious matter, but it’s not our problem,’ Siiri said.

  ‘It’s not just that,’ Ritva continued. ‘Finnish law doesn’t apply to servers located elsewhere.’ She stood lazily and slouched over to her bartender friend to fetch a fresh bucket of beer, by Siiri’s count her fourth. Ritva had to be rather intoxicated by now. Siiri had only managed to take a few bitter sips of her own brew. She hadn’t remembered beer tasting so foul.

  ‘But this is all guesswork, right?’ Siiri finally said. ‘We don’t know how Sunset Grove has decided to handle this cloud box, do we?’

  ‘There has to be a cable somewhere. We’ll foll
ow it!’ Irma said, raising her fists like a classic political agitator.

  ‘There must be a backup system, unless those religious fanatics are really stupid,’ Ritva noted, draining half of her pint in one greedy gulp. She was already slurring badly.

  ‘But all cables lead to the basement,’ Irma said. ‘Or Rome.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Siiri asked.

  ‘I have this funny intuition.’

  ‘The board of directors is wrong!’ Ritva’s gaze started to wander. ‘So goddamn wrong it’s not even funny. No one listened to me again. They didn’t care. The teachers didn’t even know my name, even though my grandma had the best carrot patch. Rows as straight as arrows and all the kids’ teeth were weeded on time, goddammit.’

  Irma and Siiri wanted to take Ritva home with them, but they had trouble helping her up, and she was incapable of standing on her own. Irma called over to the dartboard crew for assistance, and the fellow with the rat-tail and his big-bellied friend grabbed Ritva under the arms with a familiarity that suggested this wasn’t the first time.

  ‘Would you mind walking Ritva home with us? We can’t do it,’ Siiri asked.

  ‘Sure, no problem. Never leave a friend behind,’ the big-bellied man said.

  The bizarre little band proceeded carefully down the grey February ice crusting the pavement. First came the two beer-guzzlers lugging Ritva, who was in such bad shape her feet refused to work and dragged limply behind her in the sand the city’s maintenance crews spread to prevent slipping. They were followed by Siiri and Irma trudging arm in arm, each leaning on her cane in the other hand. Irma was hiccupping horribly, and they nearly toppled over every time she hicced. The sun had nearly set beyond the bay. The entourage advanced slowly, but as there was no rush, arrived without incident. The rat-tailed fellow and his big-bellied friend were incredibly sweet and promised to escort Ritva all the way to her flat.

  Chapter 27

  Loud swearing echoed from outside the door to the guarded caregiving facility known as Sunset Grove. Siiri glanced over to see who was trying to enter, but was unsuccessful in the attempt, because it was dark outside and brightly lit indoors.

  ‘Quite an unusual action point, trying to get in here,’ she said to herself and smiled, until she reached the door and saw that the big bald fellow cursing foully outside the door looked familiar. ‘Is it possible? Oh, for heaven’s sake . . .’

  She opened the door a little anxiously with the fob she kept on her watchband like the bells berry-pickers used to ward off bears. It actually would be rather practical if each fob came with a little bell that indicated where its wearer was roaming at any given moment. She had to fight with her fob for a moment before the automatic door smoothly opened in the incomer’s face.

  ‘Goddammit!’

  ‘For goodness’ sake! It really is you! Oh, Mika, you don’t know how much I’ve missed you.’

  Mika Korhonen, motorcycle enthusiast, occasional taxi driver and Siiri’s personal guardian angel, stepped in from the blizzard, bedraggled and irate. He looked grimmer and weathered, but his sky-blue eyes were still as mild as Siiri remembered. For a moment it seemed as if Mika had no idea who Siiri was, but when she held out her hand, the familiar smile spread across his face. The handshake was as manly as it had been so many years ago, and it seemed to Siiri as if her friend might have bulked up a bit. His head was still shaved, but the ever-present leather jacket with its skulls and yellow wings had been replaced by a black parka. Siiri would have loved nothing more than to throw her arms around Mika’s neck, but something in his demeanour repelled any sort of nostalgia.

  ‘It’s been a long time, Mika. I was starting to think I would never see you again. Where have you been?’

  ‘In prison,’ Mika said gruffly and without further explanation. Siiri was stunned. She hadn’t had the slightest clue about what Mika had been up to, and she started to fear the worst. What on earth had happened?

  ‘Oh, a bunch of little stuff,’ Mika said vaguely.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. But now you’re a free man and you finally came to see us, is that it?’

  ‘What? No.’

  ‘I know, I didn’t seriously think you were here to see me. You’re carrying that enormous box, too, and it looks very important. No one comes here unless ordered to by the authorities.’

  Siiri tried to laugh a little, so Mika would understand the moment wasn’t so serious. She felt a lovely warmth in her stomach, gazing at long last at her angelic Mika Korhonen, whom fate had thrown into the role of their saviour when the beautiful boy in the kitchen died under ambiguous circumstances. How many years had it been? It felt like an eternity. Chance was probably pulling the levers this time, too.

  But Mika was remarkably glum and didn’t appear the least bit delighted by their reunion.

  ‘I’m here to kill,’ he said, and paused. ‘Rats. Community service.’

  ‘Bless you! You’re the one they settled on to solve our rat problem? Or did you request to be sent here yourself, seeing as how you already know the place? Although I suppose Sunset Grove has been renovated beyond recognition since your last visit. Would you like me to show you around?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Mika shoved a paw into his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, some sort of floor plan of Sunset Grove. He slammed his heavy box down on the floor so violently that Margit, who had drifted off in her massage chair, started, but then her resonant snoring continued.

  ‘Now you listen here, Mika Korhonen,’ Siiri said, raising her voice, heart pounding. She felt the colour rise to her cheeks and her cane-holding hand tremble, but she meant to say what was on her mind. ‘You’re behaving as if we’d never laid eyes on each other, and you’re my legal guardian, and Anna-Liisa’s, too, if my memory serves me. You sat in our flats and had us sign papers after you made head nurse Virpi . . . Virpi . . .’

  Awkward in the extreme, that suddenly the surname of Sunset Grove’s former monstrous head nurse escaped her. The idiotic pause dulled the keenest edge of her anger and turned her into an addled old lady. She rapped the floor with her cane as if restarting her degenerated receptors to find the right keyword.

  ‘Hiukkanen,’ Mika suggested indifferently.

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ Siiri laughed off her disconcertion and continued her jeremiad. ‘My brains probably wanted to forget the whole woman. But when you convinced Virpi Hiukkanen to pay back the money she swindled from us, we made you our guardian, Anna-Liisa and I. You remember that, don’t you? Anna-Liisa could use your help now, because this place is teeming with grasping religious fanatics who are trying to transfer Anna-Liisa’s property over to a revivalist association. We have to do something. Irma intends to start a war, and it doesn’t make the least bit of sense, but I can’t think of any wiser course of action. And then you appear at the door to our prison with your strongbox as if someone had sent you to save us. We need you, Mika, and I sincerely hope you’ll stop scowling and be a good boy and come to my place for a cup of coffee.’

  Mika grunted and scratched his bald pate. When he raised his arm and turned to look at the box on the floor, his shirt hiked up, revealing a massive tattoo on his belly, some sort of snake surrounded by impressive flames.

  ‘Siiri,’ Mika finally said, looking her in the eye so beautifully that she forgot the last of her vinegar and smiled tenderly. ‘Things aren’t going so great for me. Community service and an ankle bracelet, see? It reports everything. I’m here to kill rats, and that’s it. So stop blubbering, OK?’

  ‘Mika, I’m not blubbering. I want to talk with you; I’ve missed you and was actually quite concerned with you disappearing like that.’

  ‘No more about that, all right? Now it’s rats. Where have they been seen?’

  Siiri told Mika about the rats, how the same perky one visited her apartment every morning in anticipation of being fed. She really wasn’t very enthusiastic about Mika killing her sole living daily contact. She started off tow
ards her apartment, and Mika followed reluctantly, dragging his strongbox. It contained his extermination equipment, various poisons and traps. Mika couldn’t believe Siiri was feeding a rat, even though an urgent report had been made to the municipal Department of the Environment because the rats had been causing such a disturbance at Sunset Grove.

  ‘You’re saying you don’t even want the rats to leave.’

  ‘A lot of people have complained, including Irma. But I don’t have anything against the rats myself.’

  ‘This place is nuts.’

  Siiri explained to Mika that he didn’t need to fret about his anklet. Everyone was being watched these days, it was the latest, and it was impossible to take two steps without it being recorded in the United States. She showed Mika her fob and tried to remember all the information hidden in it, but couldn’t get the list to sound as impressive as Sirkka the Saver of Souls had on that one occasion at the ATM.

  ‘At least I can use it to withdraw money, drive a car and travel abroad.’

  ‘Yup,’ Mika said, stepping into Siiri’s apartment in his big, grimy boots. He went straight into the kitchen and opened the door to the cabinet beneath the sink. He didn’t find a rat there, or even any rat droppings, just a yellow saucer holding the morsel Siiri had set out that morning.

  ‘It looks like he doesn’t care for blue cheese,’ Siiri said, a little disappointed.

  Mika unpleasantly pushed Siiri out of the way and pumped a foul-smelling, bluish mist under the sink with a device that resembled a fire extinguisher. The fog quickly spread everywhere.

  ‘Oh dear! What are you doing? You’ll poison us both, and there’s not a rat in sight.’

  ‘Mild stuff. Keeps rodents and bugs away.’

  Mika rose to his full handsome height and clomped back into the living room looking for the next corner to aim his poison at. Siiri followed him in concern, and felt her circulation stirring again.