“Because I am Finnish. From Finland. Little town called Kumpunotko. You may even have heard of me, Peter Eksell, given that we went to the same high—”
But he didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence because I’d flung my arms around him in the biggest hug of the day so far.
“Mikke!”
“Peter!”
We jumped around in a big bear hug for what seemed like ages.
And then he let go of me and, aware that the whole room was watching, we both stepped apart awkwardly and said, “Yes, well, great to see you . . .”
“This is awesome,” he said eventually, making wild arm gestures. “Absolutely brilliant. I can’t believe you now own the Atlas! It’s the dream, man!”
“Oh, please, other people want to get in too,” somebody said in a loud voice.
“Shut up,” Mikke yelled back. “Some of us flew seven thousand kilometres to be here, okay? Sorry,” he added, pressed his palms together and bowed his head a little bit.
“Let’s talk later,” I said, “I need to hurry up here.”
“I’m back!” Mikke yelled, and walked in with his arms raised.
The line crawled inside, one handshake at a time. I began to speed up the process, and when there were only about a dozen people left, I stepped outside.
“Get in, everybody, just get in,” I yelled. “You’re all super-welcome! Some of you might have to stand—just don’t tell the fire inspector.”
And there she was, at the back of the line, radiant and elegant, beautiful and smart.
I grabbed her by the hand and started to run.
I needed a moment with Jennifer all by myself, and I knew just the place.
Thankfully, it was next door.
Chapter 42
I Think We’re Alone Now
HEY!” WAS THE only thing she got out of her mouth when I took her by the hand and started to run. But when she realized we were only running about twenty metres, she started to laugh.
I opened the door and showed her in, then followed her to the counter.
“Two hot chocolates, please,” I said.
“Make mine a skinny one,” Jennifer added, which struck me as odd. She used to order extra whipped cream.
“Well, here you are,” I said.
She was smiling, looking bemused.
“Here we are.”
We climbed the stairs to the fancier part of the shop. I waited for Jennifer to sit down first. Our table was by the window, and outside, I could see snow coming slowly down. The first of the year.
“So . . .” I said.
“So . . .” she said.
“Here we are.”
“We’re here.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, you know.”
“Oh, please. See these,” she said, and pointed to the crow’s feet around her eyes. “They’re not just from laughing. But look at you! You haven’t changed at all. Not at all. That’s almost scary.” She glanced at my hair.
“Oh, this?” I said, and flicked my mullet.
“I think it looks good on you.”
“So . . . you’re back in Kumpunotko?”
“I moved back a few years ago when my parents fell ill. And it felt right. I’d been out there for a long time,” she said.
The waitress arrived with our drinks.
“Out there?”
She sighed.
“Well, remember how I left for that French art school?”
“Do I remember?” Now it was my turn to sigh, but I wanted to keep things light. “Yes, I remember. I always expected to read about you in the paper. Big-time Finnish artist in Paris.”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly Paris. It was Granville, and despite the name, that’s not a big city; it’s more like a French Kumpunotko.”
“But better coffee shops, I imagine.”
She smiled. “True.”
“Anyway, to make a long story short, let’s just say it’s not easy making a living as an artist. Looking back, I suppose I’m glad I went. But at the time it was kind of tough, and scary. I was broke, in a foreign city.” She chuckled. “Hey, I was young!”
“But at least you followed your dream. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Yes, but one day you have to wake up. Dreams change, Peter, especially when you learn how tough it is to make a living as an artist. I moved back to Helsinki, packed up my brushes, and went back to school.”
“A doctor . . . ?”
“No! I can’t stand the sight of blood, you know that. I’m a speech-language therapist.”
“You’re . . . you’re a wh-what?”
“I help people with speech impediments, such as a stutter,” she said, and winked. “What have you been up to?”
“Well, I left Kumpunotko right after high school too. Went to the University of Helsinki, got a job in web design, and blah blah blah, and now I’m back here running a movie theatre.”
“I suspect the blah blah blah may be the most interesting part of the story.” She lifted her hot chocolate to her lips, but didn’t take a sip.
“It was mostly just blah blah blah, actually.”
Jennifer looked around the coffee shop and sighed.
My heart was racing so hard I was sure Jennifer would be able to see it thumping against my chest from the inside.
“It’s really good to see you, Peter. I spent so long thinking you must have hated me.”
That came out of the blue. “What?” I squeaked. “Why would I hate you?”
“The way I just left like that, like our friendship meant nothing. Didn’t even say goodbye. I thought I’d wait until I got settled and then write and explain, but by then I thought it was too late. I’d burned that bridge. I don’t think you know quite how important you were to me in high school. I had a lot going on at home I couldn’t really talk about, but having you there—at school, in the library, sitting at the edge of my front lawn. You really meant so much to me.”
I cleared my throat.
I wasn’t going to let the moment pass again.
“And you don’t know how long I’ve—”
Right then, the waitress came up the stairs, carrying a tray. “Just so you know, we’ll be closing in five minutes,” she said. She started to pick up glasses and coffee cups from the tables.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Five to nine,” she said.
I knew I had to leave immediately if I wanted to make it back to the Atlas in time, but I didn’t want my moment with Jennifer to end.
Here we were, drinking hot chocolate, catching up, talking about our high-school days—it was everything I’d wanted. She was opening up to me. I’d been important to her. She hadn’t contacted me because she’d felt bad, not because of something I’d done—or not done.
In my mind, I was back outside her house, sitting on the rear rack of my Crescent, listening to her talk about movies, or art. And once again, I was overwhelmed by that familiar warm feeling inside me.
“Should we be going back?” she said, and I snapped out of my dream.
“Yeah, one more minute. I haven’t finished my drink. Hey, Jennifer. Have you ever thought what might have been if you hadn’t left Kumpunotko? Or had sold a painting in Paris, or, I don’t know, had a different dance partner at the school dance?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “I thought of it a few weeks ago. I got this funny letter from our old English teacher, Hanna. She sent me a letter I’d written to my future self.”
“Inspiring, right?”
“Mostly hilariously stupid, actually. I don’t even remember most of it. We were supposed to write about current affairs or something, but I just went on about the beauty and importance of Wham!’s lyrics. I feel bad because I don’t remember Hanna that well, and she wrote that she had such high hopes for me.”
We both threw back our heads and laughed.
“Too funny. But . . .” She tapped her watch.
“You’re right. We’re late for the show,” I said, and
got up in a hurry.
We ran down the stairs. Outside, the snow had thickened, and I was glad it wasn’t a long run back to the Atlas.
When we got back, I saw Dad standing on the steps, yelling to a group of people still outside waiting to get in. “Sorry, there’s no more space left, but come back tomorrow and you’ll get in for free!”
I took Jennifer by the hand again and walked her through the lobby. I gave Rexi a nod and mouthed “Two minutes.” He nodded back and headed upstairs.
I walked with Jennifer directly to the two seats I’d reserved for her—reserved for us—the only reserved seats that night. The ones by the pillar, the best in the house.
To my shock, I saw a man sitting in one of them. I walked briskly toward him, ready to give him an earful. Who did he think he was, sitting in a reserved seat? Jennifer was still a few steps behind me, and I heard her say, out of breath, “Peter, you madman.”
“Listen,” I said to the man, “I don’t think—”
When he got up and turned to me, I saw who it was. That moustache. Sami. The jerk from school who’d always belittled everyone. The guy who’d shouted at me in the street the other day, accusing me of denying young people the right to decent housing.
“Peter,” said Jennifer, behind me. “You remember my husband, Sami, from school?”
My jaw dropped.
Impossible.
“Hey,” he said, holding out his hand. “Love what you’ve done with the place. Why don’t you sell beer?”
My lips moved but no words came out.
“If you needed a licence, you should’ve just asked me; I’m on the council.” He laughed loudly.
I shook my head in disbelief.
“I’m needed in the projection room,” I mumbled. “Excuse me.”
At the auditorium’s door Tina stopped me.
“I think you should just take this in for a moment.” She gestured toward the full auditorium. A loud chatter filled the theatre, and I saw people shake hands with each other and then sit down, hanging their winter coats on the seat-back hooks we’d added.
“Look at this! People are loving it,” she said. “And, Peter, you did this. You should be proud.”
I turned around and walked out the door.
Chapter 43
Every Time You Go Away
MY MIND WAS as dark as the Atlas when the house lights went down. I walked around the block with my hands in my pockets, going over the events of the last ten minutes—from the heaven of sitting at a coffee shop with Jennifer, just her and me, to the hell of meeting her husband.
And not just any husband.
It had to be Sami, of all people.
Big-mouthed, obnoxious Sami, with his belittling nicknames and stupid moustache.
In school he’d been the self-appointed class leader, and now he was walking around Kumpunotko in a pinstriped suit like he owned the place. He was a big fish in a small pond. He wasn’t worthy of Jennifer. She got the feminist message in Supergirl. She could read the message hidden between the lines of Wham!’s “Freedom.”
Imagine how George McFly felt when he opened the car door and saw Biff pawing at Lorraine.
Worse: this was like in Back to the Future II, where Marty discovers that in the parallel timeline, his mother has married Biff.
And it’s all his fault.
I had half a mind to go back inside and knock Sami’s block off, but I knew that wasn’t going to help.
This wasn’t Back to the Future. This wasn’t Hill Valley. This was my life. And everything in it had just fallen apart.
In my head, Jennifer had always been my Jennifer, but I’d forgotten that she had also been other people’s Jennifer. And now she was officially someone else’s.
I knew that her life hadn’t stopped unfolding just because I wasn’t there, but it was a fact I had chosen to overlook. Deliberately. Stupidly.
Destiny? Oh, please.
But Sami?
That moustache?
I turned another corner and found myself back in front of the Atlas’s main doors. I crossed the street and headed toward the market square, throwing my four-point plan into a trash can as I went. Yeah, I’d completed it. And what had it gotten me? Broke and broken.
I stopped at Kim’s place and looked at myself in the reflection of the store window. It reminded me of Back to the Future. Depending on where I focused my eyes, I either saw Marty or saw through him, saw the crates of records inside. I could see through me. I was fading.
But I didn’t want to fade away.
Fuelled by anger and disappointment, I sprinted full speed to the first intersection, and then jogged alongside the market square, which was empty and dark, just like the Two Pines Mall parking lot had been in the movie. A car full of guys was driving slowly along Main Street—probably some high-school kids hanging out.
It had stopped snowing, and I could run a little faster without having to worry about falling down. I glanced at the big clock on top of the bank building across the square. The screen was now showing the temperature: zero degrees. Not too cold, but cold enough for my breath to show in the air. I kept on running.
I made a sharp right turn, ran for a block, and then slowed down. On Maple Street, I jogged past Mikke’s old house, where we used to hang out after school, and suddenly realized where my feet had been taking me.
I was going back to square one, to the scene of crime, to the place where the wheels had been set in motion. I hadn’t planned it this way, but it made perfect sense: it was meant to be.
I was going to our old high school, where Jennifer and I had met and become friends, and where she’d once given me a kiss. Perhaps if I waited there she would come and find me?
When I turned the last corner, I saw that the building was completely dark, not a light in any of the windows. There was certainly no dance tonight. The massive stone structure still commanded my respect, and without even thinking about it, I stopped to admire it from afar.
Across the street from the school, I could see the swings and the playground where Mikke and I had met Jennifer that time, before the false-alarm air raid.
I walked slowly to the schoolyard. I let my gaze wander from window to window, and at each one, I muttered the name of the subject and teacher I’d had there.
“English: Hanna,” I said. “Art: Siri. Science: Seppo.”
I looked at the physics classroom window and thought instead about chemistry—about a particular chemistry that I’d tricked myself into believing existed, even when there was no evidence to support it.
On the other side of the schoolyard was the entrance to the bomb shelter Jennifer and I had run to that day so long ago. I pulled the handle, but the door was locked.
I walked to the main entrance and tried to get a peek through the glass doors, but all I could see were lockers, some pieces of paper on the floor, and a couple of jackets and lonely shoes lying around, like in a house whose owners had left it in a hurry.
I spotted my old locker among the many. Four doors to the right was Jennifer’s.
Everywhere I looked, I could see signs of Jennifer.
Except right in front of me, the only place that mattered.
I wondered if I was being missed, back at the Atlas.
I wondered if anyone might come looking for me.
I wondered if Jennifer might wander around the corner.
Yes. That would be the perfect final scene. I’d be standing in the middle of the schoolyard, in the pouring rain. Jennifer would see me, and—
No.
It was never going to happen.
I wondered when I was going to stop being so stupid.
I sat down on a bike rack, not knowing what to do next. What I really wanted to do was cry. So I did. And when the tears came, they came in a flood.
I sat outside the school crying for thirty minutes, but it felt like thirty years. Crying didn’t change anything—the tears didn’t magically rewind time and stop me from making so many stupid mistak
es—but God it felt good.
When my teeth began to chatter in the cold, I got up and started to walk—very slowly—back to the Atlas.
“Goodnight, school,” I said and gave it a salute.
When I got to Mikke’s old house, I saw that the lights were on in the kitchen, and I could already smell his mother’s freshly baked apple pie—but the scent disappeared as quickly as it had come when I saw a young couple sitting at a table with wineglasses in front of them.
I kept walking. I noticed that the shoe store where I’d gotten a pair of cowboy boots (that I’d only worn once because they gave me blisters) was no longer there. In its place was a cellphone and game store. The grocery store where the school kids had gotten their candy was also gone; the low building now housed a computer repair shop. The real estate agent was a sushi bar. The fabric store was a coffee shop franchise. The bank had been turned into a health food and supplement store. When I looked at the buildings more carefully, I noticed two new apartment buildings in downtown, and that at least two of the old commercial buildings had been knocked down and replaced with shiny new offices. The old car dealership was now a children’s activity centre, with trampolines. Even Video 2000—my home away from home, my film school, my first office—had been turned into its exact opposite: a twenty-four-hour-access gym.
Kumpunotko had changed. The skeleton was the same, the main grid was the same, but the town was a living organism that grew and changed, aged and regenerated itself.
Like a faraway star that has already imploded by the time its light reaches the Earth, Kumpunotko had been radiating ancient light to me, and while I’d been receiving the old signal, it had already become something else.
At the market square I looked at the clock again. At least that was still the same. The digital numbers glowed in the dark to show the time. It was 00:00, which I thought was fitting.
The countdown had stopped. I had reached the end.
Game over.
I looked at the four big zeroes watching over me and felt like just another big fat zero myself.
I wanted to hit my head against a wall. Any wall. The harder the better. I wanted to feel physical pain because at least I knew that would pass. This was not the way things were supposed to go. This was not in the screenplay. The hero was supposed to get the girl.
Someday Jennifer Page 27
