Jens Lapidus - Never Fuck Up

They kept talking. Benjamin went on about the shooting club, about some chick he was going on a date with later that night, about some business he had up his sleeve. Sometimes he asked Niklas a lot of questions. About how often he’d been under fire in Iraq, how you reload in the dark, if you could grease a gun with olive oil, when you used dumdum ammunition. The theater of war, like make-believe. But overall, Benjamin was a know-it-all—thought he knew everything about weapons he couldn’t even spell the names of. Niklas told him stories from Iraq. He left out details like names, but he could feel how much he loved to describe life in the sandbox. In actuality, though: no one who didn’t have operational experience of combat in war could ever really know what it was about. You couldn’t read your way to stuff like that or watch movies or play video games to understand it.

Something was happening by the entrance to the bar. They looked over. A fifty-year-old guy was engaged in a loud discussion with a bouncer in charge of the coat check.

The guy was holding a liquor-store bag in each hand. Apparently wanted to check them and still be allowed to bring a bottle inside. Niklas and Benjamin looked at each other again. Laughed. But it was a fake laugh. The man reminded Niklas of darker times.

Two large men sat down next to them. Ordered a beer each. Benjamin eyed one of them. Leaned over. Spoke to Niklas in a low voice, “Check out his jacket. Looks like he’s in the same shooting club as me. Cool.” Niklas wasn’t as impressed.

Benjamin started to ask him questions again. Niklas thought he was raising his voice. Did he want the men at the table next to them to hear? He couldn’t care less. Started telling his story.

“You know, we were lugging around so much equipment that we sounded like a wandering junkyard when we left base camp. Battle rattle, that’s what we call it. Call radio, flak jackets, night-vision equipment, at least twenty magazines apiece, grenades, med kits, helmets, sleeping bags and tents in case we weren’t coming back that night, food boxes, maps, everything. We thought it’d take three hours there and three hours home, same route. The only good thing about dragging all that junk around was that the beer would be six hours colder when we got back.”

Benjamin laughed out loud.

Niklas continued, “In and out, none of our boys were gonna get hurt. That’s the rhythm of missions like that. The Red Crescent or Amnesty International can tally the points when we’re done. Honestly, we’re not the ones turning those villages into targets. They turn themselves into targets. Give food and shelter to suicide bombers and the suicide bombers’ brains. They only have themselves to blame. No matter what happens, no way we could kill more people than they did with their car bombs all over Bahgdad.”

Even though Niklas was speaking loudly, Benjamin wasn’t really listening. His eyes danced. Kept glancing at the man wearing the shooting club’s emblem at the table next to them. Finally, Niklas stopped himself.

“If there’s something you want to say to that guy, just say it.”

Benjamin nodded. Turned to the guy at the table next to them.

“Hey, I just gotta ask. Are you active in the Järfälla Gun Club?”

The man turned his head slowly. Like he was thinking, Are you stupid, or what? Interrupting me in the middle of a conversation? He eyed Benjamin.

But what came out wasn’t aggressive.

“Yes, I’ve been a member for over twelve years. Are you interested in joining?”

“I’m already a member. Joined a few months back. But I gotta say, it’s awesome. How often do you shoot?”

Niklas eyed the man. He actually looked interested in the conversation. The guy had short blond hair. Close to forty. A striped shirt unbuttoned at the neck and blue jeans. Maybe it was the focus in his eyes, maybe it was the fact that he looked so put together but still hung out at Friden. The man had to be a cop.

They chatted. The guy told them about the shooting club. About the number of members. About what guns he owned. Benjamin absorbed it all like a sponge. The shooting club guy’s colleague joined in. Told them about his firearms. Turned out, they were both cops. Right every time—Niklas’s eye for people never failed him.

An hour later. More gun talk than he’d ever experienced among the boys in the barracks down there. The two cops were nice. The bar was nice. The conversation was decent.

Benjamin got up. He had to go meet his date. Was apparently already late. Shook hands with the cops. Niklas and he decided that they’d be in touch later that week. Was Niklas making a friend?

One of the policemen, the one who wasn’t a member of the shooting club, also got up. Had to go home to his family. Niklas and the cop who remained seated looked at each other. Really, it was weird to stay with someone you didn’t know—but what the hell, why not?

They ordered another round. Kept talking guns. Niklas was getting drunk.

The cop ordered Salisbury steak with pepper sauce. “A classic,” as he called it. “This place has really great, classic grub. Might be hard to believe, but.”

Niklas ordered more peanuts.

When the gun talk ran dry after fifteen minutes or so, the policeman asked him, “So, what do you do?”

“I’m looking for employment.”

Niklas’d learned that that’s how you said it. Not “unemployed”—that was not a dynamic state of being. Instead you should be on your way, in motion, on the hunt—for a job. Bullshit. He was unemployed. And he was fine with that for now, but the money would run out at some point.

“Okay. So what kind of job do you want?”

“I could imagine doing some sort of security guard job. Maybe in the subway. But not just sitting still somewhere guarding a building. That’s too dull.”

“That’s good. We need more good security guards. And people who have the guts to roll their sleeves up, if you catch my drift.”

Niklas wasn’t completely sure he understood. The cop sounded bitter somehow.

“Yeah, sure. I’d roll my sleeves up. I’ve worked hard in my day.”

They looked at each other.

“What kind of work’ve you done?” the cop asked.

“I’ve been in the armed forces. I can’t really talk about it.”

“That’s understandable. We need people like you. Do you understand what I mean? Someone’s got to clean up the trash. The security guards are often too sissy. Not to mention the police. They’ve started to recruit such whiny pussies that it makes you wonder if ordinary men are supposed to be in the minority.”

“You’re right. The police need more authority.”

“Addicts, pedophiles, men who beat up their women. People don’t care as long as it doesn’t affect them. But we’re not allowed to get rough, ’cause then everyone gives us a lot of grief. I’m going to tell you something. You really want to listen to a bitter old cop?”

“Absolutely.” It was interesting. No one could agree more that the cops should be harder on men who abused women.

The cop really got into it.

“I take my job seriously. I really try to stop the rabble that’s taking over this city. So, the other day, they sent me on the beat with a little girl. Fresh out of the Police Academy, no experience at all. Thin, delicate chick. I don’t understand how they recruit these days. Anyway, we got sent to a twenty-four-hour bodega where some drunk’d seen red and started picking a fight with the staff. The problem was, I recognized the guy. He’s an old boxer, strong as hell. Aggressive like a teenager. But my colleague, she was too green, didn’t get what was going on. It got ugly. The boxer-boozer attacked her. She couldn’t stand up to him. It got even uglier. He attacked me too. And when we were trying to bring him down, and it wasn’t easy, let me tell you, it got uglier still. The old guy was mad as hell, strong as a bull, swinging punches like fucking Muhammad Ali. Look at my nose.”