Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“What about your bikini line, then?”

“Well, that’s not going so well…”

Penelope pulls aside her sarong and Viola laughs out loud.

“Bjorn likes it,” Penelope says with a little smile.

“He can’t talk, not with those dreads of his.”

“I imagine you shave everywhere you have to,” Penelope says sharply. “Just to please your married men and your big-muscled idiots and-”

“I know I have bad taste in men.”

“You have good taste in most other areas.”

“I’ve never amounted to much, though.”

“If you’d just finished school, gotten good grades…”

Viola shrugs. “I actually got my equivalency.”

The boat plows gently through the water, green now, reflecting the surrounding hillsides. Seagulls follow overhead.

“So, how did it go?”

“I thought the exam was easy,” Viola says, licking salt from the edge of her glass.

“So it went well?”

Viola nods and puts her glass down.

“How well?” Penelope nudges her sister in her side.

“One hundred percent.” Viola looks down modestly.

Penelope laughs with happiness and hugs her sister hard.

“Do you realize what this means? Now you can be anything you want! You can go to whichever university you want and study anything you like! You can pick anything at all! Business, medicine, journalism!”

The sisters laugh and their cheeks flush. Penelope hugs her sister so hard that the cowboy hat falls off. She smoothes Viola’s hair and pats it into place just as she used to do when they were small. She removes the clip with the peace dove from her hair and slides it into her sister’s, smiling contentedly.

With roaring engines, Penelope steers toward the bay. The bow arches up; white, frothy water parts behind the stern.

“You’ve lost your mind, girl!” Viola yells as she pulls the hair clip loose, just as she used to do when she was little and her mother almost had her hair done.

Bjorn wakes up when they stop at Goose Island for an ice cream. Viola insists on a round of miniature golf, too, so it’s late in the afternoon when they set out again.

On their port side, the bay spreads out like a grand stone floor. It is breathtaking. The plan is to anchor at Kastskar, a long, uninhabited island with a narrow waist. On the southern side, there is a lush cove where they’ll anchor the boat and swim, grill, and spend the night.

Viola yawns. “I’m going below to take a nap.”

“Go ahead.” Penelope smiles.

Viola walks down the companionway as Penelope stares ahead. She reduces the speed and keeps her eye on the depth sounder as they glide in toward Kastskar. The water is shoaling quickly from forty meters to five.

Bjorn enters the cockpit and kisses Penelope’s neck.

“Would you like me to start dinner?” he asks.

“Viola needs to sleep for an hour or so.”

“You sound just like your mother right now,” he says softly. “Has she called you yet?”

Penelope nods.

“Did you have a fight?”

Tears spring to her eyes and she brushes them from her cheeks with a smile.

“Mamma told me I wasn’t welcome at her Midsummer celebration.”

Bjorn hugs her.

“Ignore her.”

“I do.”

Slowly and gently, Penelope maneuvers the boat into the innermost part of the cove. The engines rumble softly. The boat is so close to land now that she can smell the island’s damp vegetation. They anchor, let it drag, and go in toward the shore. Bjorn jumps onto the steep, rocky ground holding the line, which he ties around a tree trunk.

The ground is covered in moss. He stands and looks at Penelope. A few birds in the treetops lift off as the anchor winch clatters.

Penelope pulls on her jogging shorts and her white sneakers, jumps on land, and takes Bjorn’s hand.

“Want to check out the island?”

“Isn’t there something you want to convince me about?” she asks hesitatingly.

“The advantages of our Swedish general-access rights,” he says.

She smiles and nods as he pushes her hair off her face and lets his finger run over her high cheekbone and her thick black eyebrows.

“How can you be so beautiful?”

He kisses her lightly on the mouth and begins to lead her inland, until they reach a small meadow surrounded by tight clumps of high wild grasses. Butterflies and small bumblebees flit over the wildflowers. It’s hot in the sun and the water shimmers between the trees on the north side. Bjorn and Penelope stand still, hesitate, study each other with shy smiles, then turn serious.

“What if someone comes?” she asks.

“We’re the only ones on this island.”

“Are you sure?”

“How many islands exist in Stockholm’s archipelago? Thirty thousand? Probably more,” he says.

Penelope slips out of her bikini top, kicks off her shoes, and pulls off her shorts and bikini bottom at the same time so that she’s standing completely naked in the grass. Her initial feeling of embarrassment gives way to pure joy. There’s something remarkably arousing about the cool sea air against her skin and the warmth that simultaneously arises from the earth.

Bjorn looks at her and mumbles that he’s not sexist, but he does want to just look at her for another second. She’s tall; her arms are muscular yet still have a soft roundness to them. Her narrow waist and sinewy thighs make her look like a playful ancient goddess.

Bjorn’s hands shake as he pulls off his T-shirt and his flower-patterned swimming trunks. He’s younger than she is. His body is still boyish, almost hairless.

“Now I want to look at you,” she says.

He blushes and walks over to her with a smile.

“So I can’t look at you?”

He shakes his head and hides his face in her neck and hair.

They begin to kiss standing still. They hold each other tightly. Penelope is so happy she has to force a huge grin from her face so that she can keep kissing. She feels Bjorn’s warm tongue in her mouth, his erection, his heart beating faster and faster. They find a spot between the tufts of grass and stretch out. With his tongue he searches for her breasts and their brown nipples. He kisses her stomach, he opens her thighs. As he looks at her, it strikes him that their bodies have begun to glow in the evening sun, as if illuminated. Everything now is gentle. She’s wet and swollen as he licks her slowly and softly until she has to move his head away. She whispers to him, pulls him to her, steers him with her hand until he slides inside her. He’s breathing heavily into her ear and she stares straight up at the rosy sky.

Afterward, she stands up, naked in the warm grass, and arches toward the sky. She takes a few steps and peers between the trees.

“What is it?” Bjorn asks, his voice thick.

She looks back at him, sitting naked on the ground and smiling up at her.

“You’ve burned your shoulders.”

“Happens every year.”

He gently touches the pink spots.

“Let’s go back-I’m hungry,” she says.

“Let me swim for a bit.”

She pulls her bikini bottom and shorts back on, puts on her sneakers, then stands with her bikini top in her hand. She allows her gaze to wander over his hairless chest, his strong arms, the tattoo on his shoulder, his careless sunburn… and his light, playful look.

“Next time, you’re on the bottom,” she says.

“Next time,” he repeats cheerfully. “You’re stuck on me-I knew it!”

She laughs and waves at him dismissively. She hears him whistle to himself as she walks through the forest toward the tiny, steep beach where they’ve anchored.

She stops for a moment to put on her bikini top before she continues down to the boat.