Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“I have a sinus infection. And I took a weird cough syrup. And I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to come home to you and the kids. And I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

I started sobbing into my cell phone.

“OK. You’re going to go to bed now and sleep. And you’re not going to call me again until you’re sober. We have a history of people from your side of the family calling other people when they’re drunk and then regretting it later. You know this.”

“Yeah, but we have to be able to answer—”

“Call me back when you’re sober. Go to sleep now.”

“OK. Sorry.”

“Stuff your apologies in a sack and go to bed. Enough.”

When I woke up the next morning, my first impulse was to take more cough syrup. But I felt cold and clammy and had a disgusting metallic taste in my mouth, as if I’d been sucking on a handful of loose change all night.

Enough, I repeated to myself as we found ourselves in a busy hallway outside what I assumed was the university president’s office. People hurried past in all directions, with books and papers and bags and umbrellas. We sat completely still. Peter’s face was ashen and Ingvill was checking her e-mail on her phone. I felt dead inside.

Sorry, I texted Bjørnar. Sorry about everything.

The preschool teacher contacted me, he texted back. She said you’ve been acting weird at drop-off and pickup, and that one time you smelled like alcohol. We have to discuss this when you come home.

I put my phone back in my pocket.

“What did you guys tell them yesterday?” I asked Peter and Ingvill, noting that it hurt to speak.

“Who?” Peter asked.

“Who do you think?”

“All you said was them . That could be anyone!”

“You are such an idiot,” I said. “I mean Pretty Put—Artemis and Irina! And Ivan.”

“Nothing. You told me I shouldn’t say anything!”

Ingvill’s cow face slowly looked up from her phone.

“What wasn’t Peter supposed to say anything about?”

“Nothing.”

“Ingrid,” Peter said, “I think we should tell her.”

I put my face in my hands and rubbed my forehead as hard as I could.

“Fine,” I said. “He wasn’t supposed to say anything about how he took the icon because he thought it was a present and how I hid it.”

Ingvill got that expression on her face that suggested there wasn’t much going on in her head.

“Icon,” she repeated slowly.

“The dean’s icon.”

“What do you mean?”

“The icon that disappeared from the dean’s office that everyone’s been looking for. We have it.”

“Why do we have it?”

“Because we were scared to give it back. We were scared it would ruin our chances of reaching an agreement.”

“What agreement?”

“With the Russians.”

“With Ivan?”

“Yes, Ingvill, with Ivan. We’re all pinning our hopes on him. He’s Mr. Internationalization.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Oh! You know you’re not allowed to roll your eyes at me!” Ingvill exclaimed. “I’m making a note of that right now, and I’m going to report you to the chair when we get home. And then we’ll see!”

“Maybe you could add that I mindfucked you by using difficult words that you didn’t understand—like internationalization .”

“This is no joking matter, Ingrid,” Peter said. “Who knows what they’re going to do to us now? I did say you should return it. And this whole time I’ve been trying to convince—”

I slapped him in the face.

“Now you listen up, you British eel! All I’ve done is protect you! I didn’t even need to touch that stupid icon. But I helped you, and hid it for you. I was on your team. And this is the thanks I get?”

I stood up, raised my hands in the air, and yelled, “PEOPLE SUCK!”

A hush came over the busy hallway. People turned to see where the outburst had come from, the outburst that had echoed from the outermost corners made of plaster slathered with layers of asbestos-ridden paint, the outburst that appeared to have come from an almost forty-year-old woman wearing her best black outfit with her hair up and mascara and lipstick. Why was she wearing that? Not because she wanted to look pretty, because she needed a suit of armor.

Because I was scared. Scared of the past, of the future, of the other people, that love would end, that I would be alone, that death was something dreadful, and that I would never, ever, ever have a home.

That this was the end. My own true, final, and completely personalized apocalypse, which I’d been waiting for all along.

But they couldn’t see any of this.

Partially because of the suit of armor, which guaranteed me a semblance of normality.

Partially because right at this moment, in this brief instant in the infinitely long time span of the universe, I didn’t feel scared, but angry.

Which in turn scared me even more since I remembered the end of Star Wars Episode VI and knew that anger is a step toward the dark side, which made me even angrier. Because I was also tired of movies scaring me. Tired of worrying that someday I would wake up in a Matrix pod. Tired of remaining vigilant, on the lookout for men who might be walking around wanting to make a woman suit out of my skin. Tired of being afraid of suddenly realizing that for years I’d been repressing the murder of my family.

Tired of being afraid of feeling all right in the event that not feeling so all right might be what created the magical shield that would protect me from things really going downhill, in which case doing fine would sadly open me up to all kinds of horrible and awful occurrences and experiences that the universe could decide to fling at me.

“MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLES!” I screamed so loudly it felt like my jaw might snap.

And that included the movies, books, comics, the universe, Tehom, and myself.

I was sick of it!

So terribly and infinitely sick of it all.

Someone took me by the arm.

“LET GO OF ME!” I yelled, turning around.

“Be quiet,” Pretty Putin said through his teeth.

“You be quiet.”

He slapped me. Not hard, but enough to sting, and the shock of it brought tears to my eyes. I tried to hit him back, but he grabbed my arm.

“You have to be faster than that if you’re going to hit anyone other than the cowboy there,” he said with a nod in Peter’s direction.

“It’s not a cowboy hat, I told—”

As usual Pretty Putin waved the words away with a hand gesture.

“The president is ready now.”

We slowly rose and marched in, Ingvill first, then Peter, then me, and finally Pretty Putin and Irina.

As we crossed the threshold, I gasped.

This whole time I had envisioned the meeting taking place in the president’s office.

But what we were looking into now was very clearly a courtroom.

Row after row of benches. Two long tables next to each other. A raised desk at the front, with two witness boxes on either side and along the wall to the right. Incontrovertible.

Indisputable.

A cage.

A trap.

And I realized that if I walked into it, I would never come out again.

So I took an automatic step back, which resulted in my walking smack into Pretty Putin.

I turned around to face him.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

He gestured with his hand that I should move farther into the room.

“Peter did it,” I said. “It was him the whole time.”

Irina took my arm and shoved me into the room.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“ I don’t want to go to Omsk,” she said, nudging me in farther. She kept going until they signaled us to take a seat at the oval table at the very front.