Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

He’s mucked about a lot with tits, he’s stuck his fingers into plenty of girls, stuck them in and rubbed. He likes it and all, but sometimes he feels he’s lying there rubbing away like you’d scrape at some candle wax stuck to a table. He’s kissed a girl between the legs, in a bedroom at a party, but that was a disaster. She was shitfaced, and even though he wasn’t that drunk it was no good, she smelt rank, tasted rank too. It’ll get better with time. He’s going to be a world-beater. Requires practice. A steady relationship. Figure out where to find the right spots, do it the right way.

Daniel balances the cigarette between his lips while he tosses the moped helmet from one hand to the other. Stupid bloody Child Welfare. What’s missing from your life, Daniel? Wha? Missing? Eh, a moped? A moped? We can talk about that, Daniel, if you show yourself deserving of the trust placed in you . Three months later: Ha fucking ha. 20,000 kroner on eBay. Suzuki AC50 from 1978. A sweet second-hand moped at Child Services’ expense. Newly overhauled engine, new tyres, wiring, wheel bearings, battery, rebored barrel and a new piston. The red paintwork was just a little worn, but he fixed that himself.

The ladies like a dude with a bike.

Compared to his mates he’s lagging behind when it comes to women. He’s the only one in the band who hasn’t gone all the way. Dejan has so many women on the go it’s nuts, probably because he’s a Serb, looks dangerous and has scars across his back and his face. Should see Dejan rolling dice, he looks seriously Mafioso.

Still though, it’s strange, because Daniel is popular. He’s good-looking, he knows that. But it’s just never quite worked out; does he scare the women away?

Daniel takes a drag of the cigarette and leans his head back against the corner of the substation wall while he fiddles with the strap on the helmet. He’s getting closer to it with Sandra. Maybe because he’s able to behave in a different way with her than with other girls. Maybe he’s learnt a little from living with Veronika? It’s different when you live with them, you pick up on things, see what girls like and what they don’t like. She’s okay, Veronika. Bit weird, maybe. All right, so she’s deaf, so what? He knows exactly what he’d do to anyone who said a bad word about her, they can just go ahead and try it, if they want their eyes cut out of their heads.

A lot of things have been different with Sandra. He feels he can be more of a man. He can tell her stuff like how sexy she looks in those jeans, and she lights up and beams like a funfair. Same with that facial expression she gets. When her dimples show and the wings of her nose expand and her mouth kind of begins to twitch. Jesus, she’s cute when she does that.

Girls.

That’s what life’s all about.

Bollocks to all that other shit and bollocks to the past, that’s for sure.

Play the drums. Work out. Drink beer. But above all, girls.

20:56. She’ll be here soon.

It was mental yesterday.

It was as though a glowing light came rolling over the gravel. She came running across the football pitch, her forehead sweaty, small, sexy, shy and sure of herself all at the same time, scared someone might see her. So they went into the woods and got up to a bit of the usual stuff. Hugging and kissing, he put his hand on her ass, both inside and outside her jeans, felt her thighs, placed his hand on her crotch, but only through the jeans, and he pressed himself against her, he always does that, because he gets such a hard-on he doesn’t know what to do with it. And then he said the things that make her light up, how sexy she is in those jeans, how cute she looks when she makes that face and that he likes how her lips glitter. And he felt her tits, obviously. You can’t be with girls without getting the tit, that’d just be weird. He pulled down her top a little, so he could kiss her nipples. And then.

It was fucking mental.

She stopped and looked at him. When they were tonguing, or maybe when he was trying to work his hand further down her ass. No, it was when he was feeling her tits. They’re amazing, he doesn’t like big tits, they’re too much, big jugs screw up the whole mood, and he doesn’t know what to do with really small ones, even though they’re sexy in a dirty sort of way. But Sandra’s tits, they’re amazing. They just sit there looking dead good. So there he was, busying himself with her tits, and then, out of nowhere, she stops and almost pushes him away. She practically had tears in her eyes, they were moist and glistening anyway, and he didn’t understand a thing, shit, is she crying? But then, all of a sudden, she puts her hands behind her back, while Daniel just stands there thinking okay, okay, what’s going on, keep cool, and then: Holy fuck.

She starts taking off her bra. In the middle of the woods.

She has her hands round her back and she unhooks the bra, and then, quick as a flash, performs some sleight of hand where she jiggles the strap and pulls the bra out her sleeve, so that her tits are actually just dangling there behind that grey cotton top, and Daniel just breathes, gulps and says Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus , and he has no idea what the fuck he’s going to do, but he doesn’t need to do anything, because this is happening by itself, this well fit girl is standing in front of him taking off her top. Is he in heaven? Are there angels in the air? He’s got such a hard-on he thinks he’s going to croak, but he just remains standing there, because he needs to take this in, needs to take a photograph and glue it to his brain, if there’s one scene from life that he wants to remember every pissy little worthless day, then it’s this: Sandra taking off her top in the woods.

Then she stands there.

Just her and her tits.

Some girls. They can look like buttercups. But then. Then they get warmed up. Then something else emerges. Then the floodgates open. They can be some randy little hornbags, so they can.

Oh sweetfuckingjesus, so nice. Almost make you believe in God. It’s precisely those kinds of things, like what he experienced there, that happiness is made off. Of course it is.

But a steady relationship?

Daniel’s fingers are cold. He feels the urge to scratch them against the rough surface of the substation wall.

Watch yourself, Daniel.

That kind of thing brings about ashes and devil’s treasure. Eventually the ground opens up beneath your happiness, and fangs start snapping at you from below.

He puts the chaos out of his mind and flicks the cigarette into the gathering darkness.

20:58.

‘Hey, baby? You not going to say anything? Eh? Come on, screw napping, darling, youandme? Youandmeandyourbody? Europe, eh?’

The Volvo is approaching Gosen Forest, and the darkness around them is deepening. Rudi’s voice fills the car and it’s so intense it reeks like a compact stench. Cecilie catches her breath. She rests her neck against the back of the seat, puts her hand in her pocket, takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights up a new one. Europe? She loves Europe, but this isn’t about Europe.

His eyes. She sees them in the rear-view mirror. His pupils are zipping round like rubber balls.

Cecilie closes her eyes, inhales the smoke and feels her body relax. I could have had a life, she thinks, I could have had something that was mine, but I don’t.

‘Eh? Ride on the joycock? Metal up your ass?’

Sometimes she’s so tired of that rasping voice, of him going on, that she feels like throwing up just being in the same room. But she loves him as well. In a screwed-up way. It’s been like that for as long as she can remember. She loves his blabbermouth, loves his stupid lips that look constantly swollen, and she loves his flapping hands, but she doesn’t understand why any more.