Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [16]
“Erika, the girl’s seventeen and has a mental age of ten, and I may be erring on the generous side.”
“She’s just impressed. Probably a little hero worship.”
“At 10:30 last night she rang the entry phone on my building and wanted to come up with a bottle of wine.”
“Oops,” Berger said.
“Oops is right. If I were twenty years younger I might not have even hesitated. I’m going to be forty-five any day now.”
“Don’t remind me. We’re the same age.”
The Wennerström affair had given Blomkvist a certain celebrity. Over the past year he had received invitations to the most improbable places, parties, and events. He was greeted with air kisses from all sorts of people he had hardly shaken hands with before. They were not primarily media people—he knew all of them already and was on either good or bad terms with them—but so-called cultural figures and B-list celebrities now wanted to appear as though they were his close friends. Now it was the thing to have Mikael Blomkvist as your guest at a launch party or a private dinner. “Sounds lovely, but unfortunately I’m already booked up,” was becoming a routine response.
One downside of his star status was an increasing rash of rumours. An acquaintance had mentioned with concern that he heard a rumour claiming that Blomkvist had been seen at a rehab clinic. In fact Blomkvist’s total drug intake since his teens consisted of half a dozen joints and one experiment with cocaine fifteen years earlier with a female singer in a Dutch rock band. As to alcohol, he was only ever seriously intoxicated at private dinners or parties. In a bar he would seldom have more than one large, strong beer. He also liked to drink medium-strong beer. His drinks cabinet at home had vodka and a few bottles of single malt Scotch, all presents. It was absurd how rarely he indulged in them.
Blomkvist was single. The fact that he had occasional affairs was known both inside and outside his circle of friends, and that had led to further rumours. His long-lasting affair with Erika Berger was frequently the subject of speculation. Lately it had been bandied about that he picked up any number of women, and was exploiting his new celebrity status to screw his way through the clientele of Stockholm’s nightspots. An obscure journalist had once even urged him to seek help for his sex addiction.
Blomkvist had indeed had many brief relationships. He knew he was reasonably good-looking, but he had never considered himself exceptionally attractive. But he had often been told that he had something that made women interested in him. Berger had told him that he radiated self-confidence and security at the same time, that he had an ability to make women feel at ease. Going to bed with him was not threatening or complicated, but it might be erotically enjoyable. And that, according to Blomkvist, was as it should be.
Blomkvist’s best relationships had been with women he knew well and whom he liked a lot, so it was no accident that he had begun an affair with Berger twenty years earlier, when she was a young journalist.
His present renown, however, had increased women’s interest in him to a point that he found bizarre. Most astonishing were the young women who made impulsive advances in unexpected circumstances.
But Blomkvist was not turned on by teenagers with miniskirts and perfect bodies. When he was younger his women friends had often been older than he—in some cases considerably older—and more experienced. Over time the age difference had evened out. Salander had definitely been a step in the other direction.
And this was the reason for his hastily called meeting with Berger.
Millennium had taken on a media school graduate for work experience, as a favour to one of Berger’s friends. This was nothing unusual; they had several interns each year. Blomkvist had said a polite hello to the girl and rapidly discovered that she had only the vaguest interest in journalism beyond that she “wanted to be seen on TV” and that—Blomkvist