John Lindqvist - Let The Right One In aka Let Me In

Friday night at the Chinese restaurant. It's a quarter to eight and the whole gang is there. Everyone except Karlsson who's at home watching the TV quiz show Nutcrackers and just as well. No great loss there. He's the sort who'll probably roll in when everything's over and tell you how many questions he knew the answers to.

In the corner table for six nearest the door there's Lacke, Morgan, Larry, and Jocke. Jocke and Lacke are talking about what kinds of fish can live in both fresh and salt water. Larry is reading the evening paper and Morgan is swinging his leg in time to some song other than the Chinese Muzak softly piped in through the hidden loudspeakers.

On the table in front of them are some more or less full glasses of beer. Their faces are hanging on the wall above the bar.

The restaurant owner was forced to flee China in conjunction with the cultural revolution, on account of his satirical caricatures of people in power. Now he has instead transferred his talents to his regulars. On the wall there are twelve tenderly drawn felt-pen sketches of them.

All the guys. And Virginia. The pictures of the guys are close-ups, where the irregularities of their physiognomies have been exaggerated.

Larry's lined, almost hollowed-out face, and a pair of enormous ears that stick straight out from his head, make him look like a friendly but starving elephant.

In Jocke's picture it is his large eyebrows that meet in the middle that have been emphasized and transformed into a rose bush and a bird, perhaps a nightingale.

Because of his style, Morgan has been given features from the young Elvis. Big sideburns and a "Hunka hunka burnin looooove, baby" expression. The head is perched on a small body holding a guitar, in Elvis-pose. Morgan is more pleased with this picture than he wants to admit.

Lacke looks mostly worried. Here the eyes have been enlarged and given an intensified expression of suffering. He has a cigarette in his mouth and its smoke has gathered into a rain cloud above his head.

Virginia is the only one who appears in full body. In an evening gown, shining like a star in her sparkling sequins, posed with outstretched arms, surrounded by a flock of pigs gazing at her in bewilderment. At Virginia's request the restaurant owner has made a duplicate of this picture that Virginia has taken home.

Then there are a few others. Some who aren't part of the gang. Some who have stopped coming. A few who have died.

Charlie fell down the stairs in his building on his way home from the restaurant one night. Cracked his head on the mottled concrete. The Gherkin got cirrhosis of the liver and died of an internal hemorrhage.

One evening a few weeks before he died he had pulled his shirt up and showed them a red spider's web of blood vessels branching out from his navel. "Damn expensive tattoo," he said, and he died soon thereafter. They had honored his memory by putting his picture on the table and making toasts to it all evening.

There is no picture of Karlsson.

This Friday night is going to be the last one they will ever have all together. Tomorrow one of them will be gone forever. One more picture will be nothing more than a memory. And nothing will ever be the same.

Larry lowered the newspaper, put his reading glasses on the table and sipped some beer from his glass. "I'll be damned. What's going on inside the head of a person like that?"

He showed them the paper with the headline children in shock above a picture of the Vallingby school and a small inset of a middle-aged man. Morgan glanced at the paper, pointed.

"Is that the guy?"

"No, it's the principal."

"Looks like a murderer to me. Just the type."

Jocke stretched a hand out for the paper. Let me see.

Larry gave him the paper and Jocke held it at arm's length, studied the snapshot.

"Looks like a conservative politician to me, guys."

Morgan nodded.

"That's what I'm talking about."

Jocke held up the newspaper to Lacke so he could see the photograph.

"What do you think?"

Lacke looked at it reluctantly.

"Ah, I don't know. I get creeped out by that kind of thing."

Larry breathed on his glasses and polished them against his shirt.

"They'll get him. You don't get away with something like that."

Morgan tapped his fingers on the table, stretched his hand out for the paper.

"How did Arsenal do?"

Larry and Morgan switched to talking about the currently pathetic state of English soccer. Jocke and Lacke sat quietly, nursing their beers, lighting cigarettes. Then Jocke started in on the whole cod thing, how the cod was going to die out in the Baltic. The evening wore on.

Karlsson didn't turn up, but just before ten another man came in, someone none of them had ever seen before. The conversation was more intense at this hour and no one noticed him until the man was sitting alone at a table at the far end of the room.

Jocke leaned toward Larry.

"Who's that?"

Larry looked over discreetly, shook his head.

"Don't know."

The new guy got a big whisky and quickly emptied it, ordered another. Morgan blew air out through his lips with a low whistle.

"This guy means business."

The man did not appear to notice that he was being observed. He simply sat motionless at the table, studying his hands, looking like all the trouble in the world had been stuffed into a backpack and strapped onto him. He quickly downed his second whisky and ordered a third.

The waiter leaned down and said something to him. The man dug around in his pocket and showed him a few bills. The waiter made a gesture as if to say that wasn't what he meant, when of course that was exactly what he had meant, and then he walked off to fill the man's order.

It wasn't surprising to them that the man's credit had been in question. His clothes were wrinkled and stained as if he had slept in them, in some uncomfortable place. The ring of hair around his bald spot was straggly and hung halfway to his ears. The face was dominated by a large pink nose and a jutting chin. Between them were a pair of small, plump lips that moved from time to time as if he were talking to himself. His expression didn't change at all when the whisky was placed in front of him.

The gang returned to the subject they had been discussing: if Ulf Adel-sohn would be worse than Gosta Bohman had been. Only Lacke looked over at the lone man from time to time. After a while, when the man was on his fourth drink, he said, "Shouldn't we… ask him if he wants to join us?"

Morgan glanced at the man, who had sunk together even more. "No, why? What's the use? His wife has left him, the cat is dead and life is hell. I know it all already."

"Maybe he'll offer to buy us a round."

"That's a different story. Then he's allowed to have cancer as well." Morgan shrugged. "It's OK by me."

Lacke looked at Larry and Jocke. They made small gestures of assent and Lacke got up and walked over to the man's table.

"Hello."

The man looked up at Lacke, bleary-eyed. The glass in front of him was almost empty. Lacke rested his hands on the chair on the other side of the table and leaned down toward the man.

"We were just wondering if maybe… you wanted to join us?"

The man shook his head slowly and made a befuddled, dismissive gesture, brushing the suggestion away.

"No, thank you, but why don't you sit down?"

Lacke pulled the chair out and sat down. The man drained the last of his drink and waved the waiter over.

"You want something? It's on me."

"In that case. Same as you, then."

Lacke didn't want to say the word "whisky" since it sounded presumptuous to ask someone to buy you something expensive like that, but the man only nodded, and when the waiter came closer he made a V-sign with his fingers and pointed to Lacke. Lacke leaned back in the chair. How long had it been since he had last ordered whisky in a bar? Three years? At least.