Jonas Karlsson - The Room

She raised one of the glasses and sipped the wine.

‘Would you like a glass?’ she asked, passing me the other.

I shook my head and reached for the large bowl of Christmas sweets instead. I fished out a toffee, which I toyed with for a while.

I recalled a man from Denmark who took me on a pub crawl once, and insisted on us drinking spirits all evening. I felt sick for two whole days afterwards.

‘Come with me instead,’ I said, putting the toffee in my pocket and pulling her gently but firmly with me towards the little room beyond the toilets. Somehow it felt like she appreciated the initiative, maybe even the energy behind the decision and its implementation, by which I mean the firm way of taking a decision.

We slid round the corner behind the wall holding Jörgen’s fairy-lights. I flicked the light switch outside and she giggled like a little girl who was being allowed to follow the naughty boy into his secret den.

We entered the room just after half past ten in the evening, and I’d guess it was half past eleven by the time we emerged. What happened in between is in many ways still unclear.

Not that I was drunk. I still know what happened, but I’m not entirely sure how to interpret it.

We stood for a long time in front of the mirror. She touched me. I touched her back, but it was like she pulled my arms and hands to her, showing me round. Like a dance. I didn’t have to move a muscle. She did it for me. Naturally it was erotic, but never sordid the way it can so easily be when a man and woman meet. She smiled at me but I can’t remember us saying anything.

She had big, beautiful eyes and shiny hair. It was lovely. I was enchanted.

When we kissed it was as if she was me. I was me, but she was me too.

When we came out again she stood there looking at me for a long time. Charged. Changed. As if I’d shown her something entirely new. Something big. Something she hadn’t quite been prepared for, and didn’t know how to handle. She turned on her heel and walked away. As far as I was aware, she went straight home.

As for me, I stayed for a while sucking the sweet.

Someone had made a snowman in the courtyard below my window, but it wasn’t very good at all. The two bottom balls were roughly the same size, and the top one was only marginally smaller, which meant that it didn’t have anything like the traditional snowman-shape that a snowman ought to have. And it didn’t have a nose. Whoever had made the snowman hadn’t bothered to find a carrot or anything else that would have functioned as a nose, and had just left it as it was. Maybe they had lost interest halfway through? Such is life, I thought.

That night I lay in bed and went through the evening, moment by moment. Over and over again. From the frosty greeting and Hannah’s strange comments, via the encounter with Margareta from reception, to my strong sense of having been master of the situation. In some ways it was a novel experience. A feeling of power.

Stupid people don’t always know that they’re stupid. They might be aware that something is wrong, they might notice that things don’t usually turn out the way they imagined, but very few of them think it’s because of them. That they’re the root of their own problems, so to speak. And that sort of thing can be very difficult to explain.

I got an email from Karl the other day. It was a group email to the whole department. The introduction alone made me suspect trouble: We will be putting staffing issues under a microscope.

Anyone with even a basic understanding of the language knows that you put things under ‘the’ microscope, with the definite article. (Sadly, this sort of sloppiness is becoming more and more common as text messages and email are taking over.) I let it pass this time, but knew that I would have to act if it happened again. I wondered what suitable comment about the proper use of language I could drop into the conversation next time I spoke to Karl.

The morning after the party I got to work early.

A lot of the signs were still there. There was a sour smell, and plastic glasses and napkins on the floor. I wondered what preparations they had made for the clearing up.

‘Things don’t just clear themselves up, do they?’ I said to Hannah with the ponytail when she arrived, still looking sleepy, a couple of minutes later. She glanced at me with annoyance, and I know she was impressed that I was there first, even though I wasn’t part of any cleaning team. I sat down on the sofa by the kitchen and looked at a few newspapers, so that she would realise I had chosen to come on my own initiative rather than because I was told to.

After a while I noticed that she had chosen to start clearing up in a different part of the office, rendering my presence pointless. I folded the newspaper and went over to the lift.

I went down to reception and caught sight of Margareta hanging up her outdoor clothing in the little cloakroom behind the desk. I stopped beside the plastic Christmas tree and waited. From the other side of the counter I could see her standing in the little cloakroom adjusting her hair and clothes in a small mirror. Her skirt was nice, but she was wearing a dull-coloured blouse that wasn’t at all attractive. I’d have to remember to tell her not to wear it when she was with me if the two of us were going to get together, I thought. She must have felt she was being watched, because suddenly she started and turned towards me.

‘Goodness, you startled me,’ she said.

‘Did I?’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

She gathered her things and came over to the counter.

‘Early,’ she said, meaning me.

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking that she seemed a little odd. She was being snappy in a way that I didn’t appreciate at all.

I wondered whether I should say anything about events in the room the previous day, but decided that it would be best to maintain a certain distance at first, and simply ride the wave of the impressions I had been given yesterday. I tried to remember what we had said to each other. What kind of agreement we had reached, so to speak. Eventually I said: ‘You too.’

We stood there in silence for a while. She was arranging some papers on her side of the counter. Opening a large diary. Pulling a page off the calendar. People started to stream in. Margareta greeted almost all of them in an equally warm and friendly way, which put me in an even worse mood seeing as she really ought to realise that she was devaluing the impact of her smile if she used it on everyone. Didn’t she know that she ought to hold back a bit?

I tried to look as though I had business down there. Started to leaf through a trade magazine that was on the counter, and after a while I went over to the coffee-machine and pressed the button to get a cup. I stood there for a long while waiting for the coffee to start trickling down into the cup. I pressed the button a few extra times, and had managed to get fairly annoyed by the time I realised that I hadn’t put any money in.

I couldn’t help noting how much better the organisation worked down here, where you had to pay for coffee, compared to the lax coffee-drinking that pertained up in my department where anyone, at any time, could scuttle off and get coffee without any restrictions at all.

When I was putting the coins in I realised that I was a couple of kronor short. I went back to Margareta and asked if she could lend me two one-krona coins. She was standing talking to a woman in a suit and didn’t answer me at first, so I asked again. Slightly louder. Then she turned towards me with irritation and said that she could. She went into the little cloakroom and got her handbag, took out her purse and passed me the coins. I thought it impractical to keep her handbag containing her purse so far from the counter, but said nothing. Partly because I didn’t think her behaviour deserved to be rewarded with my advice, and partly because I didn’t want to appear too superior to her at such an early stage of our relationship. Instead, I merely smiled and decided to counter her irritation with a forgiving, worldly attitude.