The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [15]
“When can you start?”
“Today,” Eva said quickly, without a second’s hesitation.
She ran her hands quickly down her legs.
“And the hooligans?”
“They’ll manage.”
“You’ll have to fix your hair. Armas, call Elizabeth!”
Eva swallowed and unconsciously touched her head.
She biked back through the city streets like a madwoman. The sun was shining from a clear sky and the traffic signals appeared synchronized to give her all green lights.
Above all she longed for Patrik and Hugo. The night before they had talked about the waitress job, or rather, Eva had talked about it while her sons had silently evaluated her chances at around zero. Finally she was the bearer of good news.
The only downside were the hours. She was going to work the lunch shift twice a week, as well as an evening shift three times a week and every other weekend. The salary, eighty-five kronor an hour to start, was worse than she had been expecting, but she accepted it without protest. Slobodan had implied that it could perhaps improve after a while. How much the tips added, she did not ask, but Slobodan had explained that everyone shared alike. That meant the entire kitchen crew, including those lowest on the rung, the assistant chefs and the apprentices from the Ekeby School.
Tiredness hit her at the Ultuna commons and she stepped off her bicycle. A combine harvester was moving across the field, leaving golden brown stalks of straw in its wake. Through the dust billowing across the broad header that was devouring the stalks and grain heads, she caught sight of the driver. Eva waved, and he waved back, smiling. A feeling of solidarity with the harvest worker gripped her. The wheat that the chefs and bakers would turn to food, and that Eva would serve at the table, was being harvested right here and now.
A bus swept past on the road. Soon she would be sitting on it on her way to and from her work.
“A job!” she cried, and she pedaled past Kuggebro.
When she came home, Patrik was sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich. Hugo was at the computer.
“He’s been sitting there for two hours,” Patrik complained.
“I’m doing my homework!” Hugo yelled.
“You’re kidding me,” his brother muttered.
“Come here, Hugo,” Eva said and sat down at the table. He immediately appeared in the doorway, leaning up against the doorpost, prepared to do battle for computer time.
“I got the job,” Eva said.
Patrick gave her a quick look, before he cut another slice of bread.
“Then we get to eat at a restaurant every day,” Hugo burst out.
It took a long time before the boys went to bed. They wanted to know everything about Drakar and Eva felt that she wanted to promise them something, so they could get a more immediate advance on the lottery win she had scored. That was how she felt: an incredible and unexpected triumph. No one had expected her to get a real job, least of all Helen. The first thing Eva was going to do tomorrow morning was call her.
The clock in the living room sounded twelve times. She should have called her parents in Ekshärad, but it was too late now. Perhaps she should wait a couple of days until she had started at Dakar and grown into her work.
As she was pulling the bedspread from her bed, she decided she would shower and change the sheets, despite the late hour.
Afterward she carefully applied her citrus-scented lotion. She looked at her body in the bathroom mirror and the feeling of being chosen was mixed with the longing to have someone to share the happiness with. The boys were pleased, of course. Hugo had already had time to count up everything she should buy, while Patrik had mostly been silent. Eva sensed that his pleasure lay more in the knowledge that they now had a mother who had a real job.
But sharing this joy with her sons was a controlled joy, one where she constantly had to apply a realistic view: the job at Dakar did not mean she was embarking on a dizzying career track. It was just a job, and not an especially well-paid one at that. Not a lottery win or a ticket