Jensen Beach - Swallowed by the Cold - Stories

“You’re out running,” he said when he felt he was close enough for her to hear him.

“I am,” she said. “You too.”

“I didn’t know you ran,” he said. He rested one of his feet on a root near the edge of the path.

She laughed. There was a teasing lilt to her laugh and he felt at once close to her. “No,” she said. “How could you?”

He breathed in the thick, musty smell of sweat and didn’t know if it was hers or his. “You know runners. I’m surprised you’ve never tried to compare kilometer pace with me.” He smiled at her to indicate he was teasing her back.

“I’m not that kind of runner,” she said. “Not yet any-how. I’ve only just started in the spring.”

“I haven’t been running long either,” he said. This was a lie. He’d been running seriously since his military service. At first he ran to maintain his weight, but it’d long been a compulsion, a part of his life he couldn’t imagine giving up. On average he broke thirty kilometers a week. It made him nervous to try to predict when and in what situations he might need to uphold a lie, and he found himself, without a sense that he could control this action, digging the toe of his running shoe into the dirt in front of him as if he were drawing a line he was daring himself to cross. “It’s something I picked up about a year ago,” he said.

Helle rocked from side to side, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “Do you often run in the park?” she asked.

“Three times a week in good weather,” he said.

“You must live close to here,” she said. “I don’t think I know where you live.”

“Not far. In Vasastan.”

“I had two hours between meetings this afternoon so I decided to take advantage of the sun.” She indicated toward the sky with her hand. After a clear morning, clouds were already moving in over the city again. It’d been a stormy summer. “We live in Enskede,” she said. A breeze came rustling through the woods beside the path, carrying with it the first leaves of fall and, inexplicably, the smell of a public swimming pool — strongly chlorinated yet mildewed air — a smell that triggered arousal in Henrik. He’d always assumed this arousal had something to do with the summer he and Edvin Forsberg discovered it was possible to see inside the women’s locker room at the Blackeberg Swimming Hall from directly to the right of the water fountain opposite the locker room entrance. “We’ve been there for five years,” Helle said.

“Where’s that?” asked Henrik. He felt himself being pulled from the swimming hall back to the path.

“Enskede,” she said and again laughed at him. “Where Peter and I live.” She bent slightly forward and, raising her left foot behind her, away from him, began to stretch her quadriceps. She reached her right hand out toward him and rested it on his shoulder.

He steadied himself against her weight. Her hand didn’t move but still seemed to pull him to her. “I’d be happy to show you some good trails here in the park,” he said. He knew this would require effort on her part. She’d have to leave work or come to the city specifically to meet him. It thrilled him to test her in this way. “If you have the time,” he added.

She dropped her foot to the path and raised the other, this time placing her left hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were level with his lips. “I’d like that,” she said. He knew then he would be unable to keep himself away from her. She was an unknown shape in a dark room he couldn’t help but reach his hand out toward.

The affair went on for three weeks before Helle agreed to sleep with him. Several times he suggested taking a room at a hotel in the city but each time he did she refused, saying she wanted to wait. For what, he didn’t know. They ran together on Wednesdays. He had to slow his pace to keep from running away from her. They spoke openly and intimately on these runs and on occasion they met at the classic rock bar in the city, where it was nearly too loud to talk, but where they were certain no one either of them knew would ever come.

They shared an unhappiness that they’d only met now, after they were each married and not while they were in school and still single. In fact, they’d overlapped at Uppsala for two years. The student organization Henrik chaired had frequently hosted banquets and lectures on campus, and Helle attended many of these. There was a chance they may have met at one. It seemed almost cruel, she told him once, that they had not. When she asked him if he would have loved her had they known each other then, Henrik always answered that he would have even though he believed more in circumstance than in fate. Had they known each other under the right circumstances at Uppsala, yes, he would have loved her, but that he would have loved her then because he loved her now was, he knew, a fallacy.

In early September, Peter was selected to attend a meeting in Copenhagen and Henrik was not. Ordinarily, this would have distressed him, as it might seem to indicate his standing at work was in question, but then Helle called to ask if he was planning on attending the meeting.

“I haven’t been asked to go,” he told her.

“Good,” she said. “Tell Lisa you have been and come to my house at seven. You’ll stay the night.”

He’d expected more from the house. A long crack beneath a second-floor window zigzagged down to a gray mass of dusty concrete where a piece of stucco, roughly the shape of Africa, had fallen from the wall. The flowerbed that lined the front walk needed weeding, and in the far top corner of the garage door, he saw a patch of mold-softened wood that had been sloppily painted over. He checked his watch. At precisely seven o’clock, he opened the front gate and made his way up the walk. The oak in the center of the lawn had dropped many of its leaves and he listened to his shoes grinding the dried leaves into the stones. He looked up at the tree, relieved that it was not his to clean up after. Part of the monthly fees at his apartment building covered what little yard work needed to be done there. He hadn’t mowed a lawn or raked leaves since he was a child at his parents’ house in Eskilstuna. Even at his summerhouse in Elmsta, he paid two local boys, twins, a thousand kronor a month to do the yard work.

At the door, he couldn’t decide whether to ring the bell or knock. He settled on both, which he did in quick succession. Helle was smiling at him when she opened the door. She had on a black dress. Her hair was down. He shifted the flowers and wine he’d brought to his left hand, and kissed her hello.

Inside the house was warm, decorated simply. The walls of the living room were white and the rug in the center of the dark hardwood floor was white. He thought the floor might be walnut. He knew very little about design but the house reminded him of something he might see on television. He felt at home. They moved farther into the house. Helle had already set the table. Various cocktail glasses and bottles had been arranged on a small table near the door between the kitchen and the dining room. She walked past the table on her way to the kitchen. With the flowers, she pointed. “Help yourself to something to drink.”

Henrik poured himself a splash of scotch over a single ice cube. He sipped the scotch, taking care to pace himself, and listened to Helle bring a vase down from a cupboard and run the water. He couldn’t see her but knew by the sound what she was doing. “Can I make something for you?” he said into the kitchen.

“Just wine for me, thanks,” she said. “I’ve already opened a bottle in here.” She came back into the dining room with her wine glass in one hand and the flower vase in the other. She placed the vase at the center of the dining table, adjusted its position once, stepped back from the table, paused, and stepped forward again, moving the vase slightly to the left. “They’re beautiful,” she said.