Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

Jan Inge sees his face reflected in the door of the bus as it swings open. It looks how it looks, he has the time to think, before ascending the steep steps and paying a bus driver with a hearty Stavanger grin and a large moustache. Never been anything he could do about his face. He’s always had those tiny, little dark eyes. Always had those short, chubby fingers. Always felt there was no getting away from himself.

As the bus sails out on to Hillevågsveien, he settles into one of the seats down the back. Low centre of gravity. Chin resting on his chest. Shoulders hunched over. He takes a quick glance out the window. No one sees him.

A little over a quarter of an hour later, Jan Inge alights from the bus on Randabergveien. At the stop near the filling station, close to that woman Åse’s antique shop, right next to Toril’s Clothes. Nice, that Åse one. Always a smile and a story to tell. He’s been in there a few times. Bought a couple of things. Jan Inge heads into the petrol station. Bending down to the red plastic bucket by the newspaper stand, he picks out a bouquet of flowers.

‘That’ll be sixty-nine, please,’ says the young man behind the counter, a Turk or an Indian or something like that. Jan Inge has never seen him before. There’s usually a woman with a blotchy face behind the till.

‘Sixty-nine it is,’ Jan Inge says, placing a hundred down on the counter.

Five minutes later he’s making his way up the hill behind Tastaveden School. Jan Inge feels hot, but not from sweat or physical discomfort, the warmth is due to other things. Because when all is said and done, this is the high point of his week. Even the street names make him feel happy, as though he were from here, as though he were in the wonderful vale of his happy childhood; Sjoveien, Granlibakken, Soltunveien, Fredtunveien, Høgeveien. So snug, so cosy.

And cosy is underrated.

Within certain circles, at least.

Within metal circles, criminal circles and horror circles, for example.

Maybe not within choir circles, tupperware circles or tweed-cap and waxed-jacket circles.

But in our group. We do underrate it.

Jan Inge has views on the matter. He’s a firm advocate of the fact that cosiness is important, and he’s reminded of that every week as he walks the streets in this area, which he ranks as his favourite in Stavanger. Tasta. Now this is Stavanger, Jan Inge thinks, feeling the warmth in his body, his thoughts flowing fast and philosophical and a firm pounding in his stride. All these ordinary houses. All these ordinary cars.

Jan Inge stops a few metres from the house. In order to swallow.

Will he come closer to his goal today?

Less than a minute later, his podgy index finger releases the doorbell and he hears it chime loudly in the hallway. He smiles to himself as he looks at the wavy glass in the panels running alongside the door. He smiles too at the rosemaling on the nameplate hanging under a painted garland: B. HINNA. He smiles again as he looks at the beautiful, flowery mat beneath his feet, and again when he sees the ceramic pot next to the mat with the colourful plants inside. And a shiver passes through him when he hears the familiar footsteps from inside, making such a wonderful shuffling sound, as though they belonged to a domestic angel, and don’t they, after all?

Jan Inge straightens up. He clears his throat. Sucks in his cheeks and runs his tongue over his teeth and gums. Adopts what he thinks of as a handsome, positive and slightly teasing smile — the kind Dad wears so well — and the door opens.

‘Jan Inge! So nice of you to come,’ she says in broken Norwegian. ‘Always nice. Look at you, fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked and darn fine. Come in. Oh now, did you bring me flowers? Oh, the gentleman caller, you didn’t need to do that, bringing flowers along to old Beverly—’

‘You’re not old,’ he says, as she steers him into the hall, which is bursting with the fragrance of perfume and flowers.

She clicks her tongue and bats her eyelids at him, takes his coat and slips it over a coat hanger. ‘Fifty-four next year, and this girl don’t lie about her age, you know that.’

‘I know,’ he says, looking at her admiringly.

It’s unbelievable.

Every time Jan Inge sees Beverly Hinna, he’s struck by an indescribable feeling of awe. He thinks he’s standing at the gates of Heaven, the way he imagines it must be. He can hardly breathe. It’s like he becomes a different Jan Inge as he walks down the hall on the middle-aged woman’s heavily decorated carpet past her baroque-filled walls.

Her big hair, lending her a glorious Elizabeth Taylor style. Her full lips, always looking like they’re anticipating something to eat, or have just eaten. The heavy golden earrings hanging down alongside her neck. Her eyes, with their listless intensity, accentuated by that purple eye shadow. And her outfit? Never easy to predict what Beverly will be wearing when they meet on Wednesdays. He can sit on the bus with his eyes shut and salivate at the mere thought of what kind of exciting ensemble she’ll have on. The woman is a surprise package. On certain days she might open the door in a pair of tight jeans and an elegant blouse, usually with gold sequins and big shoulder pads that are almost lifting her off the ground, other times she’ll stand there in a gorgeous dress and red high-heels, while sometimes there’s the off-chance she’ll turn up in what she’s wearing today. A pink dressing gown with embroidered motifs: pelicans.

‘Well,’ says Beverly, laughing, and speaking in equal parts Norwegian and English, ‘you’ll just have to excuse me, but I have not gotten round to fixin’ myself this mornin’, you’ll have to take me as I am.’

He lets out his reedy laugh but can’t think of anything to say. Beverly reaches out her right hand, the one with big rings on all the fingers and leads him into the richly furnished living room. The deep red sofa with the large flowery pattern and a full skirt, the genteel rugs on the floor — what kind could they be? Persian, Oriental … who knows what a woman will come up with. The beautiful table lamp with the fringe, all the wonderful pictures on the walls; a cosy painting of a typical garden on the south coast, a picture of a girl plucking flowers in a meadow, the framed poster with the image of Jesus and the inscription ‘Lo and Behold! Our Saviour Cometh! Presbyterian Church of Poplarville’. On the corner table, lots of interior design magazines, a novel with a photo of a broken vase on the cover, and little bowls here and there with sweets, Belgian chocolates, small caramels, marzipan and he can only guess what else. Everything is so, it’s…

It’s so…

LOVELY.

LOVELY AND SEXY.

AND FEMININE.

AND COSY.

It makes him want to screw.

To say it straight out.

Not out loud.

But within.

He says it within.

That the combination of all these things — a buxom, plump woman nearly fifty-five years old, with heavy make-up and long painted nails, on both her fingers and her toes, with a lovely twang to her accent, in these ample surroundings, filled with patterned sofas, snacks, interior magazines, pictures of gardens and Jesus and flowers; that the combination of all these things give him an enormous urge to screw. Jan Inge isn’t the type to go around all week thinking about sex, as he has the impression a lot of guys do. He’s been aware of that since he was small, that it’s like that for a lot of boys. Just look at Rudi. He says as much himself: ‘Hell, yeah, I pretty much feel like just one big cock. And I like it.’ But for Jan Inge? All this sex in society today. He thinks there’s something undignified about it. That we, in many ways, live in a society of screwing. He’s sceptical. He wonders if it can be a good thing. In the long run. What about the people who fall outside this society? What about his own milieu, where there’s no shortage of creativity but there is a distinct lack of cosiness. Isn’t there way too much sex in that, too?