Arild Eivind Bryn was a demon at selling encyclopedias.
* * *
Arild Eivind Bryn was success in its purest and rawest form. Put it this way, Bjarte Bø said, the man’s handshake leaves its mark. He was young, free, had it all. A job with a salary that fed itself fat on the way to heaven, a nippy little Italian model with four idolized wheels, and a huge flat in one of the best parts of town. He had a legendary serve that had helped him smash his way to the top of the company’s tennis tournament, in summer he went climbing in Switzerland with the boys’ club, Conquistadors of the Mound of Venus, and if someone had decided to tap Arild Eivind Bryn’s heart, it would have pumped out the finest chateau wine. The only thing that might detract from the Bryn phenomenon was his first name, a somewhat unusual combination that was the result of a fierce patriarchal fight. But even the name Arild Eivind was a success, it was a personal gimmick. His friends liked to hear themselves say it. It was as if they were part of something then. Part of it. There.
* * *
And what’s more, Arild Eivind was nice, damn nice, Bjarte Bø said. Bjarte Bø looked up to Arild Eivind Bryn. Damn, he thought, when he thought of Arild Eivind. Tone didn’t like him swearing so much, you never did before, she often said, and Bjarte would reply: I don’t swear that often, damn it, and so got Tone to laugh it all off.
* * *
Tone was the one area where he felt he had the better of Arild Eivind. It was an area that Arild Eivind had not yet explored. Not even surveyed. Where he had not yet become chairman of the board, no distinctions here, no trophies. Bjarte, on the other hand, would soon have the papers ready, and gold around his finger to prove it. That is, until the moment when Arild Eivind had looked over his shoulder at him, on his way to a lunch meeting, file tucked under his arm, swinging out through the office door, his hair flopping slightly to the right as he turned toward Bjarte:
“Better to have a girl on every floor than to be stuck with one in the elevator.”
After that, Bjarte always took the stairs.
* * *
“Damn,” Bjarte muttered, savoring the sight of Arild Eivind’s nippy little Italian parked by the curb.
“The man muttered under his breath,” Tone said, half irritated, half to the wind, which partly swallowed her voice that took off, took flight toward the end of the sentence. “Hmm?” said Bjarte.
“Just a quote,” said Tone. “Joyce,” she added, but she knew it was needless, pointless, hopeless. A sense of duty, perhaps, on her part, maybe, to tell him something he didn’t know, and that he didn’t care he didn’t know.
“You and your quotes,” Bjarte said, and for a moment was proud, she could impress with her quotes, he thought, at the table. He looked at the car again. When his wallet was fat enough, he was going to get a car like that, just like that: a lively, little lean machine. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted more.
“Bad parking,” Tone said and pointed at the front wheel that was on the curb. “Looks like a dead-drunk man propping himself up with his elbow.” She laughed. Bjarte decided not to be offended. Nothing was going to ruin his state of elation. Today his friendship with Arild Eivind would climb another level. They had been invited for a Sunday meal. Arild Eivind was going to make it himself, he was a master at Italian, he said. And he wanted to meet Tone. Bjarte was ecstatic. “Wear the black dress, you look great in that,” he said, as Tone stood in front of the mirror, studying her face, with two lipsticks in her hand. He put on the blue shirt he’d just bought, which he was particularly pleased with. Curled his toes against the floor.
* * *
Tone walked beside him, she looked great and annoyed. She had a headache, there was northerly wind blowing, it licked her neck with its icy, greedy tongue. She didn’t like that kind of wind. She didn’t like that kind of car. That kind of parking. It symbolized something she couldn’t stand. Attitude. A way of being. She saw Bjarte’s face tense in anticipation as they got closer to the door, it was five o’clock, and the wind was blowing up the split, the long split in her dress, up and around her knees. “Damn,” Bjarte said and rang the bell.
* * *
No response.
* * *
“We’re not too early, are we?” Bjarte said, and Tone could see on her watch that they weren’t. They were on time. “Must be something keeping him at the stove,” he said, and liked what he’d said, Tone would think this man was a conscientious cook, a man who didn’t just leave his pots at the most important point in the process, a good quality, he thought, and put his arm around her, he was friends with a man of good qualities, it had to rub off, make him even better in her eyes, Bjarte would never leave his pots at the most important point in the process either, just to open the door. He stroked his thumb over her shoulders.
* * *
Still no reaction.
* * *
“Damn,” Bjarte muttered, starting to feel uneasy, and he forced himself to ring the bell several times in succession, which he immediately regretted, so finished off with a long, reasonable, and manly ring. Suddenly the door opened, and a pair of eyes squinted out from under a mop of blond hair. Arild Eivind was in his underpants and scratched his chest, he couldn’t see anything, he said, his eyes were full of sand: he rubbed them, opened them, saw them, and said, “Fuck.”
“Is it Sunday today?” he asked, then noticed Tone, and nodded and smiled: “Hi!”
“Yes,” Bjarte said, as Tone mumbled hi.
“Late night last night,” Arild Eivind said, and shook his head, and Bjarte said, “Ah,” in an understanding way. “Ah,” Bjarte said again, and Arild Eivind nodded, then slapped his forehead as he turned.
“Sorry, welcome, dear guests, come in,” Arild Eivind said.
When their host was dressed, Tone saw where Bjarte had gotten the idea of blue shirts. And following a trip to the bathroom: the clean-shaven jaw. “Oh, that won’t do,” Arild Eivind said when he realized that both he and Bjarte were standing there in blue shirts, with fair hair cut in more or less the same style—Bjarte had more gel in his. Then he laughed and clapped Bjarte on the arm. “I’ll go and put a white one on.” Bjarte curled his toes against the floor.
* * *
They sat in the living room for a while, and Arild Eivind apologized and Bjarte said that it was fine, and a new plan was hatched: Arild Eivind would take them out to a restaurant. He had given them a glass of mineral water, shared a painkiller with Tone, and let them listen to a new recording of Satie’s three Gymnopédies that he’d just bought, and that he was particularly pleased with. Tone remembered one of the pieces from a series that had been shown on children’s TV in the summer, it made her sad. “Yes,” Arild Eivind said, “so deliciously melancholy.”
* * *
“I’ll call for a taxi,” Arild Eivind said, “the car’s parked about half an hour away.”
Bjarte was taken aback. “But your car’s parked right outside.”
“Huh?” Arild Eivind exclaimed. “Are you sure?” He went over to the window, looked down, and started to laugh. “Did I drive it? I can’t remember that at all, at all, fucking hell,” he laughed, and Bjarte laughed with him. “Jesus, Arild Eivind,” he laughed, and slapped him on the back. “Jeeez-sus,” and Tone thought to herself in exasperation that Bjarte was taking in Arild Eivind like a leaking boat and she wasn’t sure she wanted to carry on bailing.
* * *
“Yes, really good,” Bjarte repeated.
The lighting in the restaurant was dim, the small tea lights in the tea light holders made of glass cast a warm flickering glow over the small-check tablecloths whenever someone spoke or laughed. They had talked a little more about Satie, and then Tone had said something about “poetry,” and Arild Eivind had pointed at the tea lights in the glass holders and said: “I remember reading somewhere that someone said poetry was like the glow of a flame under glass.”
Tone looked at him, suitably impressed. “And when glass itself is in a flame?” she asked.
“That would be creation itself, then, wouldn’t it?” Arild Eivind said.
They looked straight at each other. Said nothing. The waiter appeared with more mineral water, and Bjarte, with too much wine in his blood, who had dropped out of the conversation a while back, sat with a fixed smile that hovered above the tablecloth. Fumbling and mumbling, he wanted to talk about encyclopedias and sex. “Fuck’s sake, Tone.” He said it too loud and she asked him to be quiet.
“Why do you have so much to talk about, I don’t remember you even knowing each other,” he muttered. “Resonance,” Arild Eivind replied, and once his left hand had put down the licked-clean fork on his plate where the steel prongs could cool, it slipped under the table and stole up the long split in her dress and she was more conscious of her body than she had been for a long time. She looked over at Bjarte and gave him a brittle, reassuring smile, his breathing was labored, like hers, and it dawned on her she could not remember, she couldn’t even remember what his face had looked like.