Thomas Enger: Burned

Neat.

Henning waits for the receptionist to notice him. She doesn’t. He moves closer and says hello. At last, she looks up. First, she stares at him as if he had struck her. Then the inevitable reaction. Her jaw drops, her eyes takes it in, his face, the burns, the scars. They aren’t large, not embarrassingly large, but large enough for people to stare just that little bit too long.

‘It looks like I need a swipecard,’ he says with as much politeness as he can muster. She is still staring at him, but forces herself to snap out of the bubble she has sought refuge inside. She starts rummaging through some papers.

‘Eh, yes. Eh — what’s your name?’

‘Henning Juul.’

She freezes and then she looks up again, slowly this time. An eternity passes before she says:

‘Oh, that’s you.’

He nods, embarrassed. She opens a drawer, riffles though more papers until she finds a plastic cover and a swipecard.

‘You’ll have to have a temporary pass. It takes time to make a new one and it needs to be registered with the booth outside before you can open the gate yourself, and, well, you know. The code is 1221. Should be easy to remember.’

She hands him the swipecard.

‘And I’ll need to take your picture.’

He looks at her.

‘My picture?’

‘Yes. For the swipecard. And for your by-line in the paper. Let’s kill two birds with one stone, right? Ha-ha.’

She attempts a smile, but her lips tremble slightly.

‘I’ve done a photography course,’ she says as if to pre-empt any protest. ‘You just stand there and I’ll do the rest.’

A camera appears from behind the counter. It is mounted on a tripod. She cranks it up. Henning doesn’t know where to look, so he gazes into the distance.

‘That’s good. Try to smile.’

Smile. He can’t remember the last time he did that. She clicks three times in quick succession.

‘Great. I’m Solvi,’ she says and offers him her hand over the counter. He takes it. Soft, lovely skin. He can’t remember the last time he felt soft, lovely skin against his. She squeezes his hand, exerting just the right amount of pressure. He looks at her and lets go.

As he turns to leave, he wonders if she noticed the smile which almost formed on his lips.

Henning has to swipe his shiny new card no less than three times, going from the reception area to the second floor. Though the office is where it always was, there is nothing to remind him of the place he had almost settled into, nearly two years ago. Everything is new, even the carpet. There are grey and white surfaces, a kitchenette, and he would bet good money that there are clean glasses and mugs in the cupboards. There are flat screens everywhere, on the desks and on the walls.

He checks out the room. Four smoke alarms. Two foam extinguishers, possibly more. Good. Or good enough.

It is a large, L-shaped room. Work stations by the windows, tables and chairs behind coloured glass partitions. There are tiny individual cubicles for when you want to conduct an interview without an audience or any background noise. There are lavatories, disabled ones as well, even though he can’t actually see anyone even mildly infirm. He imagines there are rules about such things. They have always had a coffee maker, but now they have the state-of-the-art version, which takes twenty-nine seconds to make a fancy cup of black coffee. Not four, like the old one.

Henning loves coffee. You’re not a proper reporter unless you love coffee.

He recognises the buzz immediately. Foreign TV stations, all reporting the same news over and over. Everything is breaking news. Stock exchange figures scroll along the bottom of the screen. A collage of TV screens show what NRK and TV2 are reporting on their strangely antiquated, but still viable text TV pages. The news channel runs its features on a loop. It, too, has a ticker which condenses a story into one sentence. He hears the familiar crackle of a police radio, as if R2D2 from the Star Wars movies intermittently makes contact from a galaxy far, far away. NRK News 24 can just about be heard from a radio somewhere.

Bleary-eyed reporters tap on keyboards, telephones ring, stories are debated, angles suggested. In a corner by the news desk, where every story is weighed, measured, rejected, applauded, polished or heavily edited, lies a mountain of newspapers — new and old — which the newly arrived reporters seize upon while they sip their first coffee of the day.

It is the usual controlled chaos. And yet, everything seems alien. The ease he felt after years of working in the streets, of being in the field, of showing up at a crime scene, knowing he was in his element, has completely disappeared. It all belongs to another lifetime, another era.

He feels like a cub reporter again. Or as if he is taking part in a play where he has been cast as The Victim, the poor soul everyone has to take care of, help back on his feet. And even though he hasn’t spoken a single word to anyone, except Solvi, his intuition tells him no one thinks it’s going to work. Henning Juul will never be the same again.

He takes a few, hesitant steps and looks around to see if he recognises anyone. It’s all faces and fragments from a distant past, like an episode of This Is Your Life. Then he spots Kare.

Kare Hjeltland is looking over the shoulder of a reporter at the news desk. Kare is the news editor at 123news. He is a short, skinny man with messy hair and a passion which exceeds anything Henning has ever known. Kare is the Duracell bunny on speed with a hundred stories in his head at any given time and an arsenal of possible angles for practically anything.

That’s why he is the news editor. If it had been up to Kare, he would have been in charge of every department and worked as the night duty editor as well. He has Tourette’s Syndrome, not the easiest condition to manage when you’re trying to run a news desk and have a social life.

However, despite his tics and various other symptoms, Kare pulls it off. Henning doesn’t know how, but Kare pulls it off.

Kare has noticed him, too. He waves and holds up one finger. Henning nods and waits patiently, while Kare issues instructions to the reporter.

‘And stress that in the introduction. That’s the hook, no one cares that the tent was white or bought from Maxbo last March. Get it?’

‘Maxbo doesn’t sell tents.’

‘Whatever. You know what I mean. And mention that she was found naked as soon as possible. It’s important. It plants a sexy image in people’s minds. Gives them something to get off on.’

The reporter nods. Kare slaps him on the shoulder and bounces towards Henning. He nearly trips over a cable running across the floor, but carries on regardless. Even though he is only a few metres away now, he shouts.

‘Henning, good to see you again. Welcome back.’

Kare extends a hand, but doesn’t wait for Henning to offer him his. He simply grabs Henning’s hand and shakes it. Henning’s forehead feels hot.

‘So — how are things? You ready to chase web hits again?’

Henning thinks earmuffs might be a good investment.

‘Well, I’m here, that’s a start.’

‘Super. Fantastic. We need people like you, people who know how to give the public what they want. Great. Sex sells, coffers swell! Tits and ass bring in the cash!’

Kare laughs out loud. His face starts to twitch, but he carries on all the same. Kare has coined a lot of rhyming slogans in his time. Kare loves rhymes.

‘Ahem, I thought you could sit over there with the rest of the team.’

Kare takes Henning by the arm and leads him past a red glass partition. Six computers, three on opposite sides of a square table, are backed up against each other. A mountain of newspapers lies on a round table behind it.