Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Me too.’

Silence.

She sighed heavily. ‘Maybe this was a mistake,’ she said.

Was. Past tense. Had she said is a mistake it would have meant the wheels were still in motion but was meant that she had already made up her mind.

‘Probably,’ I said, waving dismissively to a waiter whom I recognised and guessed was on his way to offer something from the kitchen, even though it wasn’t open yet.

‘ Faddah-head ,’ hissed Shannon, slapping her palm against her forehead. ‘Roy?’

‘Yes?’

She leaned forward across the table. Laid her small hand in mine and looked me in the eyes. ‘Can we agree that this never happened?’

‘Of course.’

‘Goodbye.’ She gave a quick smile, as though she had a pain somewhere, picked up the laptop and left. I closed my eyes. The clacking of those heels on the parquet behind me reminded me of Vigdis’s footsteps behind me that night in Kristiansand, only those footsteps were approaching. I opened my eyes again. I hadn’t moved my hand, which was still lying on the table. The sensation of the only touch between us since I had entered the room was still there, like prickling beneath the skin after a scalding hot shower.

I went out into reception where the tall, thin man in the red suit jacket smiled at me. ‘Good afternoon, herr Opgard. Nice to see you back again.’

‘Hello, Ralf,’ I said as I stood in front of the counter.

‘I saw you on your way in, herr Opgard, so I took the liberty of reserving the last vacant room we have today for you.’ He indicated the screen in front of him with a nod. ‘So tiresome if someone else were to snap it up at the last moment.’

‘Thanks, Ralf. But I was wondering which room Shannon Opgard was in. Or Shannon Alleyne.’

‘333,’ said Ralf, making a point of not even having to look at his screen.

‘Thank you.’

Shannon had finished packing the bag which was on the bed, and was struggling to close the zip as I pushed open the door to Room 333. She loosed off a few curses that I guessed must be in Baja-English, squeezed the two sides of the bag, tried again. I left the door half open as I walked in and stood behind her. She gave up, her hands went to her face and her shoulders began to shake. I put my arms around her and felt her soundless crying transfer itself from her body and into mine.

We stood like that for a while.

Then I carefully turned her round, dried her tears with two fingers and kissed her.

And, still sobbing, she kissed me, her teeth biting into my lower lip so that I felt the sweet, metallic taste of my own blood mingle with the strong, spicy taste of her spittle and her tongue. I held back, ready to withdraw if she showed any sign of not wanting this. But she didn’t, and slowly I let go of what was holding me back: common sense, the thought of what must come – or not come – afterwards. The image of me lying in the lower bunk with my arms around Carl, the only thing he has, the only thing that has not yet betrayed him. But it slips away, drifts away, and all that remains are her hands pulling up my shirt tails, the nails pressing my body against hers, the tongue like an anaconda round mine, her tears running down my cheek. Even in high-heeled shoes she’s so small I have to bend my knees to pull up her tight skirt.

‘No!’ she groans and pulls herself free, and my first reaction is one of relief. That she has saved us. I take a step backwards, unsteady and still shaking a little, and push one of my shirt tails back under my belt.

Our breaths share the same gasping rhythm. I hear footsteps and a voice speaking on a phone out in the corridor. And as the steps and the voice move away we stand staring watchfully at each other. Not like a man and a woman, but like boxers, like two raging bucks ready for a fight. Because of course the fight isn’t over, it’s hardly even begun.

‘Shut that bloody door,’ hisses Shannon.

‘I HIT MEN,’ I ANSWERED, handed a piece of moist snuff to Shannon and wedged one under my lower lip.

‘That’s what you actually do ?’ she asked, raising her head so I could put my arm back on the pillow.

‘Not all the time, but I’ve done a lot of fighting, yes.’

‘You think it’s in your genes?’

I studied the ceiling of Room 333. It was different from the one Unni and I used to spend our hours together in, but it looked exactly the same and the smell was the same, some mildly perfumed cleaning agent possibly. ‘My father mostly hit a punchbag,’ I said. ‘But yes, I probably get the fighting from him.’

‘We repeat the mistakes of our own parents,’ she said.

‘And our own too,’ I said.

She pulled a face, took the wedge of snuff, put it on the bedside table.

‘You have to get used to it,’ I said, meaning the snuff.

She snuggled into me. The little body was even softer than I had imagined, the skin even smoother. The breasts were slight rises on snow-covered viddas of skin on which the nipples stood up like two burning beacons. She smelled of something, a sweet, strong spice, and her skin was shaded, darker under the armpits and around her sex. And she was glowing like an oven.

‘Do you sometimes get the feeling you’re going round in circles?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘And when you find yourself walking in your own footsteps, isn’t that a sign that you’ve lost your way?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. But right at that moment it didn’t feel like that. Sure, the sex had been more like mating than loving, with more fight than tenderness, more anger and fear than joy and pleasure. At one point she pulled away, struck me in the face with the flat of her hand and told me to stop. So I stopped. Until she hit me once more and asked why the hell I had stopped. And when I started to laugh, she buried her face in the pillow and wept, and I stroked her hair, the tensed muscles of her back, kissed her neck. She stopped crying, began breathing heavily. Then I slipped my hand between the cheeks of her arse and bit her. And she cried out something in Baja-English, pushed me down the bed, lay on her stomach with her arse sticking up in the air. And I was so horny I didn’t care at all that her screams when I took her were the same as those I heard from the bedroom when she was with Carl. God knows, maybe that’s what I was thinking of when I came, distracting me so much that I withdrew a little too late, but in time to see the remainder of my load land on the skin of her back, like a mother-of-pearl chain, greyish white and glistening in the light from the lamp that had been turned on in the car park outside. I had fetched a towel and dried it off, tried also to dry off two dark flecks before I realised they were shading that wouldn’t wipe off. And thought that this too, the things we had just done, was the same, dark patches that couldn’t be wiped away.

But there would be more. And it would be different, I knew that. Lovemaking that wasn’t fighting, not just a meeting between two bodies but two souls. I know it sounds corny, but I can’t think of any other way to express it. Two fucking souls is what we were and I was home now. She was my footprint and I had found it. All I wanted was to be here and go round in circles, in a delirium, quite lost, just as long as it was with her.

‘Will we regret this?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, but knew that I wouldn’t. I simply didn’t want to frighten her, something that was bound to happen if she realised that I loved her so much I didn’t care a damn about anything else.

‘We just have tonight,’ she said.

We pulled the blackout curtains to prolong it and make the most of the hours we had.

I awoke to a shriek from Shannon.