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The scratches, the smell of her genitals on his shirt, the marks around his neck, and the fact that he came home so late spoke for him. Jessica would not believe a single word of his invented explanations, that only a few minutes ago had seemed so reasonable. There was simply nothing to say.

Did he love Jessica? He thought so, or wanted to believe it. His life was the firm and Jessica. When he thought about his life, she and the future of the company were the same thing.

“I wish I could step ashore,” Laura said softly.

There was no desperation left in her voice.

“And where are you now?”

“On a stormy sea.”

It was a good image. Stig had no trouble imagining Laura surrounded by a screaming sea with waves that crashed threateningly onto the deck and tugged on everything living.

“I always dream about a little harbor with a restaurant, you know, one of those charming little harbor pubs, where I can settle down.”

“Then you should go there,” he whispered.

Laura kissed his throat and pressed herself against him. He held her and felt great tenderness when he touched her frail back with ribs running down like a grate and the thin pillar of vertabrae he slowly traced with his finger all the way down to her buttocks.

“I’ll stay for a while,” he whispered. “So we can talk a little.”

When they shortly thereafter sat on each side of the kitchen table, Laura with a cup of tea and Stig with a beer he had opened but not drunk, it was as if the intimacy from the bedroom and the feeling of shared vulnerability had been replaced by distance and silence. Stig tried to imagine them making love again but shielded himself. He looked at her. She looked naked, even though she had draped a robe around her.

He thought Laura looked as if she was constructed out of the most delicate glass and the fear that she was about to shatter made him hold back his words. He was not the protective harbor she was looking for. Not now, and most likely never. He intercepted himself weighing the possibility. Jessica would perhaps forgive a transgression, but he would have to break all contact with Laura. That would be the wisest course of action but at the same time he was tempted by the closeness they had felt for a brief moment.

Laura smiled suddenly and said something in Italian. Stig took a sip of beer.

She was something outside the norm, definitely something other than Jessica. He knew that a relationship between him and Laura was an impossibility, almost a laughable abnormality, but still he chose to stay in her presence.

She had lived with her father in this house for thirty-five years, now he was gone and she could breathe easily. Stig knew enough about Ulrik Hindersten to know that she must many times have been living in a hell. Laura seldom complained but there had always been an imprisoned animal’s sorrowful and desperately wild look to her eyes. Now her father was gone, probably forever, but how free was she?

He caught himself staring at her throat and the breasts that peeked out from inside the robe. Laura smiled again and her beauty was like pain. She put down the teacup and laid her arms on the table. The open hands formed a bowl, a gesture that Stig had once seen a holy man do in a little village in the vicinity of Angkor Vat. That was before Jessica, before everything. The emaciated prophet rested with folded legs and by his side there was a little rice on a banana leaf. His loincloth was dirty, the legs extremely thin, and the stomach appeared glued to his spine.

Stig reached for the beer bottle and drained the rest of it, contemplating the bottle’s elongated shape. He visualized Jessica’s face against the dirty-yellow wall paneling. Her hair pulled back, the mouth open.

The desire to stay with Laura disappeared and left a bitter taste of grief paired with relief. It was as if he was saying good-bye to part of himself. He wiped some drops of beer from his chin. He tried to smile, but the more he managed the more the smile left Laura’s lips.

Stig