Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

‘Thank you!’ he hears from behind him.

‘ Kein problem !’ he shouts back. ‘Shit, it is a mess down here, we need that clean-up now! Hey, Chessi? Are you puking? Bit too much coffee and too long a pole, eh? Felt those ovaries getting poked right up to your throat! Heh heh! Nice guy … Pål, Pål … I’ll give you nice all right. You just stick close to Rudi, that’s what you do, and I’ll make sure it’s nice . Christ, we really need to tidy up this house. Nah, listen, I liked that Pål guy, two daughters and a woman problem, a time-honoured classic comes sailing in. L.O.V.E., all I need is my love machine! Skirting boards, come to daddy. Are you puking? Heh heh! Just ring Doctor D. Ick! Did I say I’m meeting him again tonight? Did I tell you that? Jani? Did I tell you? Jani? Wasn’t that crowbar down here someplace? Crow … no problem! Found it! The metal cock crows! It was under the balaclavas!

Daniel hears the front door open and close, Inger’s steps growing fainter as she descends the stairwell.

He’s been through two foster homes. He goes ballistic when people pester and nag, and he knows what he is. He knows he’s a bastard to have in the house when he first gets riled

He hooks his bag off his shoulders. Sets down his moped helmet. Takes off his shoes. Throws off his jacket. He hears the sound of the shower from the bathroom and not for the first time is about to call out — ‘Veronika! Don’t use up all the towels!’ — but he stops himself; she can’t hear him.

He just can’t stand people getting on his back. The last foster father was a right pain, breathing down his neck all day long, forever hassling him about homework and timekeeping, and always going on about him not being allowed to behave this way or that. Shut your fucking hole, or do you want a taste of the poker?

Hm?

Would you like to feel the bleeding iron, foster father?

I know how much money you make on me. I know what you’re at when no one sees you, when your wife’s asleep, when you think all the lights in this city built on oil are out, when I’m lethal and painful; I’m the poison that’s poured in your ear.

He was a real asshole. Was carrying on with a woman living three streets away. Daniel William heard him clear his throat, saw him put down his paper, and caught him saying he was heading out to take a look at a sofa he’d found on the net. He watched him go out the door, out into the stinking darkness, and walk three streets down to where the slapper spread her legs and he put it up her.

I saw you, you horndog. I saw you.

He had said it and all. During the last meeting. Child Welfare, him and the foster family sitting in that pathetic living room where they were supposed to sort everything out or some shit. He had got to his feet, the god of true darkness, and said: ‘I know where you’ve been putting your dick, you randy bastard.’

Then Daniel William Moi left. Because if there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s leave. If they nag at him, get on his case, then he knows exactly what he’ll do: Give them a taste of the poker. Put the sword to the forehead. Leave.

And no chance in hell of him ever going back.

Daniel enters his room, closes the window that’s been open all night. He sits down behind the drum kit. Takes hold of the sticks.

He’s tackled living with Inger and Veronika so far. Not that they ought to feel too secure, he knows there’s no point being naïve: Inger’s nice, she’s kind and friendly, but she makes money on him. Same as the rest. No fucking matter how nice she is. Veronika knows that too. That her mother earns good money having him in the house. But it’s gone well so far. Not much nagging. Not much fussing. He’s actually gone as far as staying home with them some evenings. Even at the weekends. At least up until he met the Christian girl anyway. That’s the thing about Inger and Veronika, they need him. Daniel can notice it, how they need a man in the house, because they’re not that strong. That’s what Inger says, it’s good having a real man around . She laughs when she says it, those dimples showing, and she signs it at the same time, making Veronika break out in that laugh of hers, but neither of them are picking on him, neither of them bugging him: they mean it.

Daniel starts hitting the drums. As hard as he can. ‘Battery.’ That was really mad in the woods yesterday. Stupid about that with Sandra, but he straightened things out. And the guy with the dog. What the fuck was that. I’ll go back to my people. You go back to your people. I’ll see what I can come up with. And I’ll see you tomorrow. Dad of that girl in Sandra’s class. Your people, the tall guy said. Your people. Who was he talking about? My people, he said. And who are they exactly?

Daniel’s room is soundproofed. It was the only condition he set out when Inger turned up as a possible foster mother. He was so pissed off that he wasn’t bothered who was put in front of him; he’d gone through two foster families, he was ready to tear through a third, but she looked all right, that deaf daughter of hers looked all right, kind of pretty in an off-the-wall way. ‘But there is one thing,’ he had said, sitting there with arms folded in the social worker’s office, ‘I want a drum kit in my room.’

‘There’s not much of a chance of that,’ they said, ‘we live in a block of flats, it wouldn’t be allowed.’

‘Well then, that’s that,’ he said, ‘I can’t’. So Child Services coughed up the money to get the room soundproofed. Fucking idiots. They’re understaffed, there’s stories in the paper every second day about how stretched they are, yet they still have the money to soundproof a room.

Cannot kill the family, battery is found in me, battery.

On the one hand it’s like he knows Sandra and she knows him. On the other hand it’s as though she has no idea who he is. None. But she was good at screwing. Felt just like it ought to, like diving into eternity. Manage to hold out in time. Was just some sort of shock to the system was all. No problem. Just wait, soon be banging away at you for hours on end.

He’ll have been marked absent by now. Daniel can’t face going to school today. The upshot will be them ringing Inger, then ringing Child Services and after that there’ll be a parent-teacher meeting. They’ll sit down in the guidance counsellor’s office. The student-teacher liaison, the maths teacher, and no doubt that Sivertsen guy, going on about how if Daniel doesn’t buck up then he won’t pass his maths exam, and then he’ll fail his finals, and then … he’s been listening to it since he was in first class. Your attendance rate, Daniel, that’s what they’ll start on about.

Yeah, he’ll say. What about it?

He’ll soon be eighteen. They won’t be able to touch him then.

The handle on the bedroom door turns slowly and the door opens. Daniel hits the drums as hard as he can, the Metallica lyrics whirling round his head, and then he looks up.

Veronika comes into the room. She has two towels around her. A big baby-blue one, fastened above her big tits and reaching down to below her hips and a smaller, pink one, done up on her head like a turban.

She’s often in his room, there’s nothing peculiar about it. At the start it was a bit weird. For the first few weeks he didn’t know how to behave round the girl with the hollow-sounding voice and the strange hand gestures, but then he realised she was just like everyone else, only deaf, and the reason she was a little shaky was that idiots had treated her like an idiot. All she actually needed was someone who saw her for who she was. Is that so hard to grasp? After a while he began to enjoy the silent attention she gave him, so he allowed her to come in. He let her sit on the floor in her Buddha posture and listen — yeah, listen — to him as he played the drums, as well as allow her to sit in his room and do homework.