The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [99]
She told Stig everything. They lay next to each other. He raised himself on his elbow and looked at her.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You found a murdered man.”
“Perhaps it was the animals.”
“Who had stabbed him?”
“It was a young man.”
“How do you know?”
“He had white patent leather shoes.”
“Oh my God,” said Stig and sank onto his back.
He had gone out into the garden, dialed Jessica’s cell and told her that he was at Laura’s, that he had been forced to stay because she was threatening to take her life.
“Have you been drinking?”
“I had a glass of wine to steady my nerves. She’s had almost a whole bottle, at least. She’s in a bad way, I can’t leave her, that’s just the way it is.”
“Call the hospital,” Jessica said.
“I suggested that, but that made her completely desperate.”
“We were supposed to meet.”
“I know, but then I had to stay. She’s really depressed. It wouldn’t be good for the company if she killed herself. Hausmann wants her on part one. We can’t just say: ‘Unfortunately that won’t be possible, she hanged herself last week.’”
“Do you want me to come over?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. She’s calmed down a bit and we have agreed that she will try to cool it and try to sleep tonight. I’m going to get in touch with Severin tomorrow.”
“Severin isn’t a psychiatrist.”
“I know, but he’s a doctor.”
He kept talking and lying so that he believed it himself, elaborating his conversation with concrete details that made Jessica buy it. Or so it seemed to him.
That was three hours ago. Since then he and Laura had made love with such intensity that Stig had never experienced anything like it.
Laura had fallen asleep but woke up after about twenty minutes, told him that terrible story and fallen back asleep.
He had remained awake and stared up at the ceiling. Was this what he wanted?
What had she said as they made love? Something about “Jessica will never fuck you again.” And then that talk about the restaurant by the sea. She had brought it up before and at that point he had thought she had been there before, that it was an experience she was retelling but now he wasn’t sure.
She wanted to escape, that was clear. Her efforts in the house were no ordinary cleanup, that much he understood. Apart from the bedroom, the kitchen, and parts of the dining room the house was basically empty.
Laura was going to escape and she was convinced he was going to come along. He had only realized that now. In a way it didn’t bother him. It was as if their crazy relationship, or rather, their amazing shared ride in her macabre old bed, had pushed him into a landscape where the old, familiar value scale no longer applied.
She fucked for her life with a heat that exceeded all human behavior, as if life itself was the shared movement of their bodies.
Stig liked it. Laura boiled. Jessica’s embrace was so cool he sometimes felt as if he had made love to the freezer box of an old refrigerator.
Laura licked and sucked, rode and bit. Jessica guided him in and made measured, controlled movements.
If that had been the only thing, but Stig had caught sight of the harbor with the little restaurant, that was on its way to sliding into the sea and splintering into firewood in the first big fall storm, and with a waitstaff that smiled and took you for granted and never asked you if you wanted the check.
Laura woke up and stared at Stig in confusion.
“Did you dream again?”
He felt more than saw how she waved this away with her hand.
“Were you really a virgin?” he asked, “I mean before . . .”
She smiled, and he was happy at her smile.
“I was,” she whispered, almost inaudibly
“How can that be?”
He rolled onto her. The room was so dark he could only make out the contours of her face.
“I didn’t want to,” she said finally, “but with you it’s different. Am I good?”
“You are fantastic.”
He saw her eyelids flutter and after a few seconds she fell back into sleep.
Stig Franklin stood outside Laura’s house. The effect of the wine had faded but he still felt cut off from himself as if he wasn’t really standing