Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

The girls slow down when they catch sight of him. Tiril keeps a cool head, a moan escapes Malene’s lips. Crouched in the corner, behind the tables and the benches, is Shaun. He’s wearing the grey top with the hood up. The laces on his trainers are untied, the tongues hanging loose and languid on the insteps. His ripped, baggy jeans are stained with muck and blood. In his hand he holds a grimy rag and a tube of glue. He lifts his head as if in slow motion. Big, black rings under his red eyes, a colourful shiner, a cut on his cheek.

‘Ok-aay,’ he says, grinning, ‘Shaun reporting for duty. Heh heh.’

Tiril plants her feet on the flagstones in front of him and crosses her arms. Malene looks away. It’s not far to the gymnastics hall. It’s right down the hill. Maybe her foot is okay now? Maybe that’s the best thing for it? Just take off, run?

‘Come on, Tiril,’ Malene says sternly, ‘we don’t need this. Enough’s enough. Come on. Let’s go.’

Tiril brushes her aside. She squats down in front of her boyfriend.

‘Jesus, Shaun. What did he do to you?’

‘Tiril.’ Malene feels her irritation mount. ‘Let’s go.’

But Tiril pays her no attention, merely leans closer to Shaun, who sits sniffing: ‘Hey, get rid of that.’ She takes the glue and the rag from him and tosses them over the stone wall. ‘What’s up?’

I could just run, Malene thinks. I don’t need to be a part of this pathetic scene.

‘Heh heh.’ The boy simpers again. ‘I’m like just … heh heh. Shaun reporting for duty, baby.’

‘Come on.’ Tiril takes hold of him, but his body is too limp and she can’t lift him alone. She turns to Malene: ‘Well, you going to stand there all pissed off and thinking of yourself or are you going to give me a hand here?’

Malene shakes her head heavily. A stinging pain in her ankle. She can’t run. She takes a step forward, even though she doesn’t want to, and helps Tiril get Shaun on to his feet.

He sways once he’s standing up. Malene can see that he’s really been given a working over — the cut looks nasty, the bruising even more so, like a lava landscape on his face. What is it with that family?

Shaun leans his back against the table. For the first time he opens his eyes properly, for the first time something akin to clarity appears in them. He looks at Tiril.

‘Have you got a cig?’

Tiril nods and puts her hand in her pocket, produces a packet and her lighter and offers him one. Lights it for him. Lights one for herself.

‘Kenny,’ says Shaun, smoke seeping out from between his lips. ‘Kenny doesn’t stand for snitching, you know.’ Shaun raises his unsteady hands, holding them up in front of his face like a boxer. ‘And he was like: Hey, Shauny! Fuck did you say to that bint of yours! Eh? ’

Shaun launches an inept punch at the air, connecting with nothing except his own memory.

‘Hey, Shauny.’ Tiril takes him by the hands and holds them tight.

‘Yeah?’ He looks at her, eyes clearer now.

‘You’re not your brother. All right? You’re just you. Okay?’

Shaun nods slowly.

‘Can you manage to pull yourself together?’

He shrugs. ‘Dunno. Never been too good at that.’

Tiril tugs at the cuff of her sweater, draws it over her hand and spits on it, then she wipes his face. Removes each mark and blotch while he looks at her.

Jesus, Malene thinks. These two are so far removed from me. She tilts her foot to the side and puts a little weight on her ankle. The stinging pain is still there, like a needle beneath the skin.

‘We’ve got to go,’ Tiril says. ‘If the text Sandra sent is anything to go by, there’s something very screwed up going on but I don’t know what. She’s down by the tower blocks. We need to get all this sorted out and then I can’t deal with any more distractions after that, because I’m going to sing tonight and I need to focus, okay?’

Shaun sniffles.

‘Jesus, Shaun,’ she says, ‘you’re such a loser, you know that?’

He nods. ‘But I have cut back on the porno rap.’

‘That’s good, smurf boy,’ she says and takes a long deep drag of her cigarette. ‘You’ve got me, after all.’

Loneliness is the land I live in, thinks Malene. Where I spit-roast my own squirrels. Where I put my feet in the tall grass. Where Dad lies on his back in the warm sand. But I’m the only one who sees it, all of it. Double backflip tucked.

The waves wash over the ancient beaches with a steady rhythm, the sun, a ball of light high up in a sky that itself seems proud: look at me. Look what I can do, how vast I can be.

Cecilie pulls into the lay-by, not far from the turn-off towards Nærbø. She puts the car in neutral, listens to a few bars of ‘Jump’ by Van Halen before killing the engine. She rolls down the window, feels the briny wind from off the North Sea against her cheek, stretches her hand to the rear-view mirror and tilts it to look at her face.

You could have met a farmer’s son, got married and lived out here. Farmers have whole barns full of money. You could have gone into a byre to milk the cows and been taken from behind right there near the pens by your wealthy farmer, him smelling of manure with soil under his fingernails. Or you could have met a guy in the oil business and lived in a big house in Stokka. Roughnecks, they have money. Just ask Mr Thor. Then you would have avoided your man for two weeks at a time, screwed him every day when he was back onshore, and probably spent your time wondering if he was cheating on you with a woman in the kiosk out there on the rig.

Cecilie looks in the mirror and applies her lipstick.

But you didn’t, she thinks. No farmer, no roughneck.

You got Rudi. And he got you.

Yellow teeth and crooked lips. Not much to cheer about. Looking at it objectively, her hips are probably the only cracking thing about her. Or her ass maybe, that does it for the guys that like them large. That’s the card she can play. Some girls have the legs. Some have the lips. Some have the tits. Well. I’ve got the ass. And there’s no point in listening to what Rudi has to say; according to him she’s a deck of cards where every one is an ace, but she knows that’s just bollocks. She just has to make the best of a bad lot, and lipstick can help draw attention away from what doesn’t shine.

Cecilie cups her hands, brings them to the back of her head and tries to inject a little volume in her hair. She tousles it. Applies some blusher, puts on some eye shadow.

A little bit sexy.

That’s what she’s aiming for today. Slightly sexy. Because she knows. Sexy isn’t about being pretty. Every girl can be sexy. Dirty. Hungry. She realised that long ago, over twenty years ago. She might not have understood it in so many words but she understood it with her eyes. Because the boys came back. She was far from the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood, but they wanted to sleep with her. They needed to have her. Why? Because she was lying there on her back, obviously, but also because she was something the really pretty girls weren’t. Sexy. And if there’s one thing Tong likes, it’s to see her looking sexy. A pair of high heels. A bit of cleavage, even though she might not have that much to put on show. Just the thought of it. That she’s done it. That she wants to look like that. He likes that.

Cecilie lights up a cigarette and starts the engine.

What is it she wants?

Does she want Tong?

She doesn’t know. She just wants to be sexy. She just wants to hear Van Halen. Those synthesisers. Those drums. David Lee Roth. Chessi just wants to drive a car and be the kind of woman people turn to look at.