Jonas Khemiri - Everything I Don’t Remember

*

We were interrupted by two students from the school. Samuel nodded their way and asked who had made this awesome piece of art. The students laughed.

“This furnace belongs to the glassmaking workshop.”

I swallowed and braced myself. But there was no attack. No scornful smiles. No sense of standing there naked. Samuel didn’t deflect the blame, he didn’t say that I was the one who’d come up with such an idiotic thought. He just blew on his hand, laughed, and asked if there was an after-party. When the students moved on, Samuel and I stayed in the room, the fire crackled, it smelled faintly of something I thought might be burned hair or sulfur.

“This is still the best thing here,” Samuel said, and I nodded.

He had my back. He didn’t let me fall. I thought, I will always do the same for him.

*

Panther looks surprised and maybe a little disgusted. Are you joking? What do you mean, “relieved”? I was totally crushed. Part of me died along with Samuel. There is nothing, not the tiniest atom in my body, that felt “relieved” when I heard what had happened. No offense, but anyone who comes up with an idea like that must be pretty disturbed.

*

After the art party we went into town. There was a line to get into East, but Ibbe from the gym was manning the door and I mimicked Hamza, I tried putting two fingers up in the air, and Ibbe waved us in.

“Wow,” Samuel said after we found a table in the corner. “Did I just see two blackheads get into East at one thirty in the morning on the Saturday after payday?”

“Should we call the Guinness Book of World Records?”

We had a toast, we drank, we ordered more, we moved toward the dance floor.

“Baller culo.”

“Check out her booty.”

“Look at that sweet ass.”

“Damn, baby’s got back!”

“Nice humps.”

But we said it more to ourselves than to the girls. When a song Samuel liked came on, he vanished onto the dance floor. He was dancing in that way that made people point and shake their heads. He transformed his arms into a sunset and roared along with the chorus. He crouched down and whispered secrets to the broken glass on the floor. He shook his ribcage side to side like maracas. When he came back to have a drink I could smell his hardworking deodorant.

*

Panther shook her head. I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer for that. Maybe he forgot to take it off? It’s not impossible. Or he could have been driving so fast that he knew the speed would be enough and that no seatbelt in the world could save him.

*

We had drunk more than usual. The sink in the bathroom was rocking like a rowboat. I had to max out my concentration in order to grab the door handle. When I came back I found Samuel leaning into a corner, his legs planted wide as a tripod. The music stopped and the bouncers drove people out with arms like side-boom trucks.

“Home?” I said.

“Soon,” said Samuel.

It was chaos at McDonald’s. Two drunk Stureplan brats were lying on the floor and pointing at the spitballs on the ceiling as if they were comets. A teenage girl had thrown up on the window. A homeless guy with a raincoat and plastic bags on his feet was sitting at a table and reading a newspaper and looking like the most normal person there. An old lady in a gray coat was in front of us in line. She was swaying, she was taking a long time, there was some problem with her card. Samuel looked at his wrist (even though he didn’t have a watch) and said:

“How about this weather?”

Then the old lady turned around and gave him a surly look. We discovered that she wasn’t an old lady at all; she was a girl about our age or a little older. She had a strangely bell-shaped coat and some gray streaks in her hair. She muttered something and walked toward the street. I saw that she was wearing a gold brooch shaped like an owl on her coat. The girl was Laide. And as I walked up and ordered for myself and Samuel, we can establish that this was the first time Laide and Samuel saw each other. There were no strings playing from the loudspeakers. No choirs of angels. No random car went by on the street with its windows down, blasting D’Angelo’s “Lady.” The sky outside did not fill with nighttime fireworks. Samuel and Laide were at the same McDonald’s. He saw her. She saw him. It was late at night or early morning, and life just went on. As if nothing had happened. This was their first meeting. Even if I seem to be the only one who remembers it.

*

Panther says that after the phone call she got a text from Samuel. He wrote that the streets of Sweden were safe because his grandma hadn’t passed the test and now they were going to eat lunch and go back to the home. Then he wrote: Thanks for calling. It meant everything to hear your voice. Fuck everyone else. I don’t know exactly what he meant by “everyone else.” I had a hectic afternoon, I had a working lunch and then a studio visit and to be completely honest I forgot about his text. I never responded. I didn’t really know how to answer so I just didn’t and then it was too late.

*

We stood on Kungsgatan. Empty cabs zoomed by us, one, two, four, six, ten of them. We just laughed.

“Hi, Guinness Book of World Records,” Samuel said. “It’s us again.”

“Don’t bother sending anyone over.”

“Stockholm is the same as ever.”

We walked up toward Sveavägen to test our luck there. There were two beggars lying under the bridge. Samuel stopped and read their signs. Then he placed two gold tenkrona coins in one’s mug and put a fifty-krona bill in the other’s. He just did it, without checking whether anyone was looking, without seeming proud. I looked at him and thought that he was a very unusual person. Not because he gave money to beggars, but because he did it there and then, in the middle of the night, when no one was looking. Except for me.

*

Panther is quiet, thinking back. Just so you know, that last text sounds more dramatic now that I’m telling you about it. But I definitely should have responded. I could have written, like, Take it easy bro, I’m here for you, you’re not alone, everyone has felt the way you’re feeling at one point and you’ll make it, don’t worry, don’t let go, hold on. But of course I didn’t [pausing, looking out the window]. Okay, damn it, that’s enough, would you stop looking at me like I’m so guilty? [Standing up, walking to the bathroom.] What the hell is with you, what the hell do you want, I didn’t have time [slamming the bathroom door].

*

Twenty minutes later. Still no taxi. Or — an awful lot of taxis zoomed past us with their signs lit and picked up other customers further on. In the end we decided to go for a solo wave. I went to stand near a shop window with my phone to my ear, Samuel stood alone on the sidewalk. A taxi stopped, Samuel opened the door and said where we were going and when the taxi driver accepted, I pretended to end my call and jumped into the backseat. The driver saw me and swallowed and moved the passenger seat forward so I would have room for my legs. We drove south in silence. Samuel was low on cash and I said it was fine.

“I’ll get it.”

“Thanks, I’ll get the next one,” he said, as usual, and clapped his hand to his wallet-slash-heart.

I shook my head to say it didn’t matter and I would never let money come between us. The taxi drove on. We dropped Samuel off in Hornstull and continued toward Örnsberg. When we turned off Hägerstensvägen I leaned forward and showed my cash to the driver.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have money. I’m not going to rob you.”

The driver gave a nervous smile, he tried to hold the wheel a bit more loosely but I noticed how relieved he was when I unfolded my body from his backseat and the car recovered its usual center of gravity.