Anxious People

by Fredrik Backman

  The thought delighted her so much that she accidentally elbowed Roger, who seemed to wake up from being deep in thought. He looked up.

  “What?”

  “Pizza!” Ro repeated.

  “Pizza? Now?” Roger snorted and looked at his watch.

  The bank robber, who had been struck by another thought, in turn sighed in resignation: “No. To start with, I haven’t actually got enough money to order pizza. I can’t even manage to take hostages without them starving to death…”

  Roger folded his arms and looked at the bank robber, for the first time not judgmentally, but more curiously.

  “Can I ask what your plan is? How are you thinking of getting out of here?”

  The bank robber blinked hard, then admitted without bothering to dress it up: “I don’t know. I didn’t think this far. I was just trying… I just needed money for the rent, because I’m getting divorced and the lawyer said they’d take my children away otherwise. My girls. Oh, it’s a long story, I don’t want to bore you with… sorry, it’s probably best if I give myself up. I get it!”

  “If you give yourself up now and go out into the street, the police might kill you,” Ro said, not altogether encouragingly.

  “What a thing to say!” Estelle said.

  “That’s probably true, they see you as armed and dangerous, and people like that tend to get shot on sight,” Roger added informatively.

  The ski mask suddenly looked rather moist around the eye holes.

  “This isn’t even a real pistol.”

  “It doesn’t look real,” Roger agreed, based on his almost breathtakingly total lack of experience in the subject.

  The bank robber whispered: “I’m an idiot. I’m a failure and an idiot. I haven’t got a plan. If they want to shoot me, they might as well. I can’t get anything right anyway.”

  The bank robber stood up and walked toward the door of the apartment with newfound determination.

  It was Ro who went and stood in the way. Partly because the bank robber had talked about having kids, of course, but also because at this point in her life Ro could sympathize with the feeling of getting things wrong the whole time. So she exclaimed: “Hello? You’re just going to give up now, after all this? Can’t we at least order pizza? In hostage films the police always provide pizza! Free of charge!”

  Estelle folded her hands over her stomach and added: “I’ve got nothing against pizza. Do you think they’d send some salad, too?”

  Roger grunted without looking up: “Free? Are you serious?”

  “Serious as kidney stones,” Ro swore. “Hostages always get pizza in films! If we can just think of a way of contacting the police, we can order some!”

  Roger stared down at the floor for a long, long time. Then he glanced over at the closed door of the closet at the other end of the apartment, trying to sense his wife’s presence through it. The skin beneath his eyes kept twitching spasmodically. Then it was as if he’d made up his mind to act, because in Roger’s experience nothing good ever came of him thinking things through for too long, so he slapped his hands down firmly on his knees and stood up. He was seizing the initiative. And just doing that made him feel warm inside.

  “Okay! I’ll organize pizza!”

  He marched toward the balcony. Estelle scuttled quickly into the kitchen to find plates. Ro in turn set off toward the closet to ask what sort of pizza Julia wanted. The bank robber was left alone in the hall, clutching the pistol and muttering quietly: “Worst hostages ever. You’re the worst hostages ever.”

  42

  Jack and Jim turn the entire closet upside down without finding any trace of the bank robber. The chest at the back is empty, apart from a collection of mostly empty wine bottles—and what sort of drunk hides wine bottles in a closet? They pull out all the clothes, men’s suits and some dresses that seem to have been made before the invention of color television. But otherwise they find nothing. Jim gets so sweaty while he’s searching that he doesn’t notice the cold draft in there. It’s Jack who stops and sniffs keenly at the air like a bloodhound at a music festival.

  “It smells of cigarette smoke in here,” he says, tentatively feeling the bump on his forehead.

  “Maybe one of the prospective buyers had a sneaky smoke, that would be understandable in the circumstances,” Jim speculates.

  “Okay, but then it ought to smell MORE of smoke. There’s no smell of it anywhere else in the apartment, so it’s almost as if someone has… I don’t know, aired the closet somehow?”

  “How would that be possible?”

  Jack doesn’t answer, just moves through the space hunting for the draft he initially thought he had imagined. Suddenly he picks up a stepladder that’s lying on the floor, shoves a pile of clothes out of the way, climbs up the steps, and starts hitting the ceiling with the flat of his hand until something gives way.

  “There’s some sort of old air vent up here!”

  Jim doesn’t have time to respond before Jack sticks his head through the hole. Jim takes the opportunity to shake the wine bottles he found in the chest, and takes a swig out of one that isn’t quite empty. Because wine doesn’t go bad, either.

  Jack calls from up the ladder: “There’s a narrow passageway up here, above the false ceiling, I think the draft’s coming from the attic.”

  “A passageway? Big enough to crawl through and get out somewhere else?” Jim wonders.

  “God knows, it’s very narrow, but someone slim could probably… hold on…”

  “Can you see anything?”

  “I’m trying to shine the torch to see where it leads, but there’s something in the way… something… fluffy.”

  “Fluffy?” Jim repeats anxiously, thinking about all the animals Jack probably wouldn’t want to discover dead in a ventilation duct. Jack doesn’t like most animals even when they’re alive.

  * * *

  Jack curses, pulls the thing out, and tosses it down to Jim. It’s a rabbit’s head.

  43

  Roger glanced over the balcony railing at the police, then took a deep breath and shouted: “We need supplies!”

  “Medical? Are you hurt?” one of the police officers called back. His name was Jim, his hearing wasn’t great, and he hadn’t experienced many hostage situations before. Or any at all, if we’re being strictly correct.

  “No! We’re hungry!” Roger shouted.

  “Angry?” the policeman yelled.

  There was another police officer, a younger one, standing next to him. He was trying to shut the older one up so he could hear what Roger was saying, but of course the older one wasn’t listening.

  “NO! PIZZA!” Roger yelled, but because he had cotton stuffed in both nostrils unfortunately it sounded more like “pisser.”

  “MELISSA? SOMEONE CALLED MELISSA IS INJURED?” the older police officer shouted.

  “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!”

  “WHAT?”

  “BE QUIET, DAD, SO I CAN HEAR WHAT HE’S SAYING!” the younger officer shouted at the older police officer down in the street, but by then Roger had already left the balcony in frustration. He hadn’t actually sworn that much since a group of damn activists had changed the name of his favorite chocolate bars because the old name was regarded as insulting to someone or other. He stomped back inside the apartment and waved his notepad and IKEA pencil in the air.

  “We’ll make a list and throw it down,” he declared. “What sort of pizza does everyone want? You first!” he demanded, pointing at the bank robber.

  “Me? Oh, I don’t really mind. Anything will do,” the bank robber piped up feebly.

  “Are you hard of thinking or something? Just make a decision for once! No one’s going to respect you otherwise!” Zara exclaimed from the sofa (where she had only sat down after first fetching a towel from the bathroom to put between her and the cushion, because heaven only knew what sort of individuals had sat there before her. They probably had tattoos and goodness only knew what else).

  “I c
an’t decide,” the bank robber said, which were probably the truest words the bank robber had uttered all day. When you’re a child you long to be an adult and decide everything for yourself, but when you’re an adult you realize that’s the worst part of it. That you have to have opinions all the time, you have to decide which party to vote for and what wallpaper you like and what your sexual preferences are and which flavor yogurt best reflects your personality. You have to make choices and be chosen by others, every second, the whole time. That was the worst thing about getting divorced, in the bank robber’s opinion, the fact that you thought you were done with all that, but now you had to start making decisions about everything again. We already had wallpaper and crockery, the balcony furniture was almost new, and the children were about to start swimming lessons. We had a life together, wasn’t that enough? The bank robber had reached a point in life where everything felt… complete, at last. Which means that you’re in no fit state to be thrown out into the wilderness to find out who you are all over again. The bank robber tried to make sense of all these thoughts, but didn’t have time before Zara interrupted again.

  “You need to make demands!”

  Roger agreed. “She’s actually right. If you don’t, the police will get nervous, and that’s when they start shooting. I’ve seen a documentary about it. If you take hostages, you have to tell them what you want so they can start to negotiate.”

  The bank robber replied unhappily and honestly: “I want to go home to my children.”

  Roger took this under consideration for a while. Then he said: “I’ll put down a capricciosa for you, everyone likes capricciosa. Next! What sort would you like?”

  He was looking at Zara now. She seemed to be in a state of total shock.

  “Me? I don’t eat pizza.”

  When Zara went to a restaurant she always ordered shellfish, and made it very clear that she wanted them served with the shells intact, because then she could be sure that no one in the kitchen had touched the insides. If the restaurant didn’t have any shellfish, Zara ordered boiled eggs. She hated berries, but liked bananas and coconuts. Her idea of hell was a never-ending buffet with her stuck in the queue behind someone who had a cold.

  “Everyone’s having pizza! Besides, it’s free!” Roger clarified, with a badly timed sniffle.

  Zara wrinkled her nose and the rest of her face followed suit.

  “People eat pizza with their hands. The same hands they use to renovate apartments.”

  But of course Roger didn’t back down, just looked in turn at Zara’s handbag, shoes, and wristwatch, then scribbled something on his pad.

  “I’ll say you want whatever the most expensive one is, will that do? Maybe they’ve got something with truffle, gold leaf, and some sort of endangered baby turtle on it, like some ridiculous stuck-up marinara. Next!”

  Estelle looked worried about having to decide so quickly, so she exclaimed: “I’ll have the same as Zara.”

  Roger peered at her, then wrote “capricciosa” on his pad.

  Then it was Ro’s turn, and her face took on an expression that only a mother or a manufacturer of defibrillators could love.

  “A kebab pizza with garlic sauce! Extra sauce. And extra kebab. Preferably a bit charred. Hang on, I’ll go and see what Jules would like!”

  She banged on the closet door.

  “What is it?” Julia yelled.

  “We’re ordering pizza!” Ro cried.

  “I want a Hawaiian without pineapple and without ham, but with banana and peanuts instead, and tell them not to cook it for too long!”

  Ro took such a deep breath that her back creaked. She leaned closer to the door.

  “Can’t you have a pizza from the menu just for once, darling? A nice, normal pizza? Why do I always have to call and give them a set of instructions like I’m trying to help a blind person land a plane?”

  “And extra cheese if it’s good cheese! Ask if they have good cheese!”

  “Why can’t you just have something off the menu like a normal person?”

  It wasn’t entirely clear if Julia had failed to hear what Ro said, or if she was ignoring her, because she yelled back from inside the closet: “And olives! Not green ones, though!”

  “That isn’t a Hawaiian,” Ro muttered very quietly to herself.

  “Of course it is!”

  Roger did his best to note all that down. Then the closet door opened and Julia peered out, then said out of the blue in a friendly voice:

  “Anna-Lena says she’ll have the same as you, Roger.”

  Roger nodded slowly, looking down at his pad. He had to go out into the kitchen so that no one saw him write a new note, because the first one was impossible to write on when it was wet. When he got back to the living room the rabbit raised his hand timidly.

  “I’d like a—” the voice said from inside the head.

  “Capricciosa!” Roger interrupted, blinking away the tears and giving the rabbit a look that said this wasn’t the time to be vegetarian or any other crap like that, so the rabbit just nodded and mumbled: “I can take the ham off, no problem, that’s fine.”

  Then Roger looked around for something heavy enough to attach the note to, and eventually found a round object that seemed just the right density. That was how the police came to hear someone shout from the balcony again, and when Jack looked up, a lime hit him on the forehead.

  * * *

  From that distance, that makes one hell of a bump.

  44

  Jack only manages to slither halfway into the space above the closet. Then Jim has to climb the ladder and pull on both his feet as hard as he can, as if his son were a rat who had crawled into a soda bottle to drink the contents and had become too fat to squeeze out again. When Jack finally comes loose, the two of them fall to the floor, Jim with a crash and Jack with a thud. They lie there sprawled on the closet floor, surrounded by women’s underwear from the last century and with the rabbit’s head rolling around, sending the dust balls fleeing in fear of their lives. Jack embarks upon another verbal demonstration of his knowledge of farmyard anatomy, before getting to his feet and saying: “Well, there’s a very narrow old ventilation duct up there, but it’s sealed at the far end. Cigarette smoke might blow out, but there’s no way anyone could get through there. Not a chance.”

  Jim looks unhappy, mostly because Jack looks so unhappy. The father remains standing in the closet for a while after his son storms out, to give him time to walk a few circuits of the living room and get the swearing out of his system. When Jim eventually walks out he finds Jack standing in front of the open fireplace, thinking.

  “Do you think the bank robber could have got out this way?” Jim wonders.

  “Do you think he’s Santa Claus or something?” Jack answers, with unnecessary cruelty that he regrets at once. But there’s ash at the bottom of the grate, and it’s still warm—there’s been a fire here fairly recently. When Jack carefully pokes about with his flashlight, he fishes out the remains of a ski mask. He holds it up to the light. Looks at the blood on the floor and the furniture around him, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  * * *

  In the meantime Jim wanders about apparently at random, and finds himself in the kitchen, where he opens the fridge (which perhaps indicates that it wasn’t entirely random after all). There’s leftover pizza in there, on a china plate, carefully covered with clingwrap. Who would do that, in the middle of a hostage drama? Jim shuts the fridge and returns to the living room. Jack is still standing by the fireplace holding the partially burned ski mask in his hand, his shoulders slumped in resignation.

  “No, I can’t see how he got out of the apartment, Dad. I’ve tried looking at it from every possible and impossible angle, but I still don’t understand how the hell…”

  Jack suddenly looks so sad that his dad immediately tries to cheer him up by asking questions.

  “What about the blood? How can the bank robber have lost this much blood and still—
?” Jim begins, but is interrupted by a voice from the hall. It’s the police officer who’s been standing guard.

  “Er, that isn’t the bank robber’s blood,” he blurts out cheerfully, picking something from his teeth.

  “What?” Jack asks.

  “Schusssschfnurschulle,” the officer says, with almost his entire hand stuck in his mouth, as if the blood were nowhere near as important as the souvenir from his lunch that had gotten stuck in there. The hand reemerges with a piece of cashew nut, and the newly liberated mouth laughs and looks remarkably happy.

  “Sorry?” Jim says, with rapidly dwindling patience.

  The cheerful police officer points at the dried blood on the floor.

  “I said: that’s stage blood. Look at the way it’s drying, real blood doesn’t look like that,” he says, holding the piece of cashew nut as if he’s unsure whether to throw it away or frame it as a memory of this great personal achievement.

  “How do you know that?” Jim asks him.

  “I’m a bit of a magician in my spare time. Well, to be more accurate, I’m a bit of a policeman in my spare time!”

  His expectation that Jim and Jack are going to laugh at that turns out to be an optimistic prognosis, so he coughs rather forlornly and adds: “I do a few shows, stuff like that. Old people’s homes and so on. Sometimes I pretend to cut myself, and then I use stage blood. I’m quite good, actually. If you’ve got a pack of cards on you, I can…”

  Jack, who has never looked like he just happened to “have a pack of cards on him” at any time in his life, points at the blood.

  “So you’re quite sure this isn’t real blood?”

  The police officer nods confidently.

  Jack and Jim look thoughtfully at each other. Then they each switch their flashlights on, even though the ceiling lights are already on, and start to go through the apartment, inch by inch. Around and around and around. Staring at everything but still seeing nothing. There’s a bowl of limes next to the pizza boxes on the table. All the glasses are neatly placed on coasters. There’s a marker on the floor to indicate where the police found the bank robber’s pistol. Right beside it is a small table with a small lamp on it.