Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [18]
And then I suddenly stopped myself. Hope’s older brother used to snort sugar off our pancakes with a curly straw, flinging his rangy frame around the kitchen, banging his body into countertops and appliances in imitation of a crazed, coked-up SNL cast member. Six months after the last time I remember him doing this routine, Heath was dead from mainlining a bad batch of heroin. Had it been insensitive for me to so casually mention the sugar? Did the memory of her dead eighteen-year-old brother leap to Hope’s mind at the time? Of course, it’s too late to undo a conversation from four months ago.
And if the memory had stung, she didn’t let on. She stopped humming “Dancing Queen” only long enough to correct my mistake.
“My mother made German pancakes.”
She was perched on the bottom step like a frog on a lily pad, her long legs bent and splayed out wide as she hunched over the ever-present sketchbook resting between her feet. Her hand never stopped moving, her eyes didn’t lift from the half-finished sketch of a homemade rain-smeared sign taped to the nearest corner stoplight. In the sketch, as on the sign that inspired it, the central image was blurred beyond recognition. Only one word was legible: LOST.
“Really?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“Ja,” she replied.
“How are German pancakes different from Swedish pancakes?”
“I have no idea,” she replied, tapping her pencil. “Maybe they don’t have as many sex partners?”
“And they’re really bureaucratic….”
Memory is a strange thing. I distinctly remembered those pancakes as being Swedish. Why would my mind randomly swap Swedish for German? After we discovered that our landlord was, in fact, Swedish-German, there was a brief, embarrassing moment where I thought my memory slip might really be evidence of an underdeveloped form of ESP. And then I literally smacked myself on the forehead for being suckered into one of the human brain’s most common contrivances, one that gives deep significance to mere coincidence.
“I think that if we get to live here, we need to be more respectful of the many contributions the Swedes have made to our culture,” I said seriously.
“We will sing ‘Dancing Queen’ and other ABBA songs,” Hope suggested.
“And Ace of Base….”
“And we will eat many Swedish fish….”
And so it went. The apartment had already become a part of our history.
Instant inside jokes were reason alone for renting the place, even before we found out that our basement apartment had served as the bowling alley for the Swedish American Men’s Sporting Society, which explains why it’s very long and very thin. And also very dark, since Swedes are genetically accustomed to getting little sunlight.
Sammy comes completely if unimaginatively furnished by the Swedish geniuses from IKEA. Behold our overstuffed Olga couch with the celery green Fjeliin slipcover! Our Nökskaagen steamer trunk/coffee table and stainless-steel Måkdorrpvat bookshelves! And Sammy boasts a washer and dryer stacked on top of each other and located in the bathroom in what would normally serve as a linen closet. I don’t have to subject myself to the indignity of dragging my dirty duffels to the Laundromat! Imagine! Who knew such luxuries could be afforded to someone so desperately in debt?
The only possible downside to our apartment is the neighborhood. In this overwhelming, real-estate-obsessed metropolis, you are your neighborhood. People make instantaneous assumptions about who you are based solely on your address. Everyone does it. It’s a necessity in this city of eight million, an instant ID badge that defines you as a member of a more select community among the masses teeming in anonymity.
It reminds me of what I’ve heard about huge public universities, where first-year students feel pressured to rush a fraternity or sorority because it’s the easiest way to develop an on-campus identity. (Well, easy if you don’t mind consuming grapes that have fallen out of your pledge brother’s ass crack.) You get a bid from Sigma Whatever