Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

Jan Inge opens the car door. He gets in.

TRAMPLED AND STOMPED ON.

She has a talent for that there. A delicate touch, rhythmic, not too rough, not too hard but firm and sensitive. Dynamic.

Tong comes as the Volvo passes the IKEA in Forus.

When you’re inside it’s not a good idea to think too much about women. But after Tong started having it off with Cecilie in the visiting room it grew impossible to shut out that part of his life. If you have no access to women, you manage to pacify the need after a time. In the beginning it’s hell, you can’t imagine how you’re going to manage a week without a woman. But after a while it calms down. Something happens to your body. At least that’s how Tong’s experienced it. The opposite to how it is when women are plentiful — then your body wants more. And everybody knows how much space women can occupy. At worst they can fill you right up. They can make it impossible to think straight. And the thing is you just get hornier and hornier the more women you get. She doesn’t need to be pretty, doesn’t have to be smart, doesn’t have to be kind. Say what you like about Cecilie, but screw, that she can.

Tong lights up a cigarette. He rolls down the window and looks across at Cecilie, who’s steering with her left hand. He takes a dirty T-shirt from his bag and holds it out to her.

‘Thanks,’ she says and wipes her right hand.

He turns and looks out the window. The mountains in the distance. She did it on purpose. Got all dolled up before she picked him up. She knew well he’d turn into a hyena once he saw her. She knew well he’d be wound up when he walked out of the prison gates. People think sitting inside is stress, but it’s not. It’s monotonous, but it’s a simple life. You soon get used to it. Being outside, on the other hand, that’s stress. The first days of freedom are hard ones. Where are you going to stay, who are you going to talk to — paranoid is what you are, you think everyone’s going around talking about you.

‘Laurel and Hardy,’ says Tong. ‘They home?’

Cecilie tosses the T-shirt on the floor. She indicates a turnoff on the motorway after the Ullandhaug tunnel. Down towards Hillevåg. ‘They’re at Stegas’ place, I think, scoring speed.’

Tong nods. He’ll give speed a wide berth.

‘Cool that you’re going to come,’ Cecilie says, smiling. ‘Along on the job, I mean. The old gang, together again, and all that.’

He continues looking out the window. The mere thought of seeing Jan Inge and Rudi again makes his insides churn. He’s been weak. He had promised himself a new life when he got out. He was to ditch this gang of idiots from Hillevåg. He was going to work with better people. HA maybe. Now he’s sitting here. In this fucking car. With this slut. On his way to those losers.

‘Do you remember anything from your childhood, as a matter of interest?’

Cecilie gives him a quick glance. They’re driving through Åsen down towards Kilden Shopping Centre.

‘I mean,’ she goes on, ‘weren’t you four when you came to Norway? No, you’d be doing well if you remembered that.’

The Volvo trundles down to the junction by the shopping centre and Rema 1000 supermarket. Cecilie stops and puts on the indicator.

‘I just mean, it must be like, strange to think about. That you had a life there. In Korea, like. Parents and, yeah, maybe brothers and sisters and that. But no. You probably don’t remember anything. I mean, I only remember tiny bits myself and after all, I had a mother, a father too, until I was…’

The indicator ticks loudly. The sun hits the windscreen.

‘You haven’t started giving any thought to finding yourself a woman, then?’ asks Cecilie and smiles archly. ‘A woman, a house, even,’ she laughs, ‘a kid, maybe?’

Tong reaches out his left hand and seizes Cecilie’s throat with his fingers. He squeezes as hard as he can. He sees her head bow under the pressure of his hold, sees her grip tighten on the steering wheel.

‘Shut your cunthole,’ he says. ‘Sit up. You’ve got a green light. Drive.’

‘I bruise easily, Tong,’ Cecilie says meekly, as she changes gear and puts her foot on the accelerator.

One of the hardest things, people often say, is to be the father of teenage girls. Bjørn Ingvar Totland goes on about it constantly. How he’s going to get his rifle out the day his girl turns thirteen, how he’s going to be prepared for the ring of the doorbell and a boy outside asking after his daughter. That’s sure to scare the little prick out of his wits. What do you say, Pål? We know all too well what we were like when we were sixteen, eh? Get the rifle out, Pål, eh?

Pål likes practically every person he meets, something Christine always found annoying, but he doesn’t like Bjørn Ingvar Totland. He doesn’t like his car salesman’s grin, doesn’t like the way he winks, and he doesn’t like the way he slaps people on the back. Pål really wants to tell him to quit comparing them. They’re not at all alike. Because it’s never been that way for Pål. Neither when he was sixteen nor now. The fire within Pål has always smouldered rather than raged, burned slow and long. Now that Tiril has a boyfriend all of a sudden, he feels no sense of alarm, on the contrary, he feels relieved, as if the fact a boy has come on the scene will serve to protect her. Is that cowardice? Maybe it is. Now the job passes on to someone else, the job of looking after my daughter.

Shaun, his name is. Tiril’s boyfriend.

American? Irish? Only just happened apparently.

He’s expecting visitors in a few hours. The Hillevåg Gang are going to come through the door. They’re going to beat him. Tie him up? Where exactly? He looks around. Maybe they’ll tie him to one of the kitchen chairs. Will they blindfold him? How far are they going to take it?

What was it he said? That he was going to tidy the house. Get something nice for dinner. That this was such a big day for Tiril that he wanted to make it a little bit special. And then the girls dashed out the door, something about some friend and her boyfriend.

Pål sits languidly in the armchair, the one beneath the living-room window. He has Zitha’s dozing snout under the sole of his foot. He brought her out for a quick walk after the girls left; since then he hasn’t done anything at all. The cheese on the table is soft and warm and the cold cuts of ham are glistening. His jaw is sore.

He’s been grinding his teeth for several hours without being aware of it. He leans over towards the little table beside the armchair and Zitha trots off across the carpet. The remote controls for the TV, the one they’ll probably steal tonight, lie on the table, along with his mobile phone. He scrolls down to a name, rings.

‘Yes, Christine speaking?’

‘Hi, it’s Pål.’

‘Yes, I can see that — listen, I’m in the middle of something here. Was it important?’

This is just a completely normal phone call.

‘No, just that I forgot to let you know that Tiril is performing at school tonight. Kind of a big deal for her, this here, she isn’t expecting you to come or anything and she hasn’t asked me to call you, it’s—’

‘Pål?’

‘Yeah?’

‘This is a bit strange.’

‘Is it?’

It’s just like we’re still married.

‘Yes, Pål. It is.’

We speak to one another the same way we did as when we were married.

‘Well, that might be so.’

‘Well, it is. What are you trying to say? That you’ve just remembered that Tiril is going to perform and that I should be there? And then you call me at — what time is it, half eleven in the morning — and expect me to rush out to Flesland Airport, jump on a plane and make it to her school in, what is it, six hours it begins?