Johanna, Samppa, Kristian, Esa, Minttu K.
Everybody arrives at the Curly Cake shortly before ten. Juhani came to the park a little earlier, we had a short negotiation, and he signed the papers I’d drawn up for him. And now he’s having difficulty staying in his chair. Johanna has been working in the kitchen since eight o’clock and came into the café’s seating area a moment ago. Minttu K’s cup of morning coffee smells like she’s had a recent visit to a vodka distillery, and she is holding two unlit cigarettes in her hands, one in her right and one in her left, while adjusting the position of her peroxide hair. In his camouflage jacket and with his aviators lifted onto his forehead, Esa looks like he is awaiting deployment to the front, and Samppa has already made several suggestions about how we could make this meeting more interactive, more conversational, regardless of what we are planning to discuss.
I haven’t taken him up on these suggestions, and besides I haven’t revealed to anybody why we have gathered in the café this morning. I suspect Juhani’s body language might give them a good idea: his cheeks are bright red, and he is clearly trying to find a position in his chair that gives him a little more authority. I thank everyone for attending and get straight to the point.
I tell them the truth.
The park finds itself in a difficult situation. Our customer numbers are dropping. There is less money coming in. Our whole survival is on a knife-edge. I have cut back our costs and tightened the budget in every department. I haven’t paid myself any salary at all. I have tried my utmost to make good investments at a reasonable price, all while maintaining a period of financial austerity. All this I have tried to do, so that the park and its jobs will thrive and still exist in five or ten years’ time.
My words hang in the air for a moment. If I’m reading the room correctly, people seem to have been listening, I think they have heard me. All except Juhani, that is. He looks like he is about to burst with anticipation.
‘It’s time to try something new,’ I continue. ‘And so, today we are going to change manager at the park. I’m going to step aside and help during the transition period. Juhani will be taking over the park again. Juhani, please.’
Juhani no longer has to hold himself back. He jumps to his feet, smiles and spreads out his hands as though he were sending beams of sunlight out in all directions.
He speaks.
At length.
What’s most important isn’t that Juhani is being a little economical with the truth. Most important are people’s faces. They are listening to him. And they seem excited. To an extent. But unless I’m mistaken, their enthusiasm isn’t the same as when Juhani first came back, when he first painted these images of a glorious, fantastic future. This time their reactions are more subdued, more reserved.
Naturally, this doesn’t apply to Juhani, who has always had a knack of making himself the most excited person of all.
Which leads, either accidentally or on purpose (for a variety of reasons, I suspect the former), to the bit in Juhani’s speech that I’ve been waiting for most of all.
He promises Johanna a bistro, Samppa a therapy centre, Esa a minesweeper unit, Kristian a seat on the board of directors, and Minttu K collaboration with a world-renowned influencer to help with marketing. I watch their expressions as each promise appears, flies into the air and lands at their feet.
Their expressions are different from what they were only a short time ago.
My new office will be in the storeroom. Behind the tall piles of plywood, I set up a small desk with enough room for a computer and pull up an old bouncy seat originally taken from Caper Castle. The seat was supposed to work like an ejection seat in an aeroplane, but setting it up properly proved impossible: the seat sent our young customers flying far too fast, and after one final bounce that knocked out two milk teeth, the seat was moved to the storeroom. It’s a very nice chair and perfectly supports my back.
I work for several hours. Juhani has asked me to take care of the park’s finances and bookkeeping until he has – in his own words – got the park’s balls rolling. I manage to finish several matters I haven’t had time to concentrate on. At the same time, I start another project that I simply haven’t been able to pay any attention. Or rather, I didn’t realise I needed to pay it any attention. Now I can see and think more clearly than for quite some time.
At some point I hear the storeroom door open and close, but there’s no rattling, no sounds of dragging or lifting or placing anything on the floor. From this, I conclude that whoever has come down here isn’t on normal storeroom business. The footsteps get closer. Samppa peers from behind the wall of plywood.
‘Five?’ he asks.
Nowadays I know that this monosyllabic question means, do I have time for a short conversation?
‘By all means,’ I say, and close the lid of my laptop.
‘That was a brave speech,’ he says. ‘You looked deep inside. You really took off the mask, made yourself vulnerable. You came out of the shadows and demonstrated that you really want to put yourself out there, you want to show us your true self, live your best life. There’s a quiet power in vulnerability. Weakness is still a taboo, but when love makes some cracks in it, it bursts like a dam. Bravo, man. Respect.’
I’m not entirely sure what Samppa is talking about, so I wait for him to say something I can latch on to a little more easily. Samppa checks the tension in his ponytail, then shakes his copious bracelets into place.
‘I can talk openly, right,’ he either says or asks. I’m unsure which.
‘It’s probably for the best,’ I agree.
‘You probably don’t think about things like this,’ he continues. ‘You’re focussed on leadership, and you’re more of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. But I’m out there in the field, as it were; I engage with people face to face. So, you and I have quite a different approach to things. You look at everything from your ivory tower – and I don’t mean that in a bad way – while I’m right at the coalface getting my hands dirty. Esa might say you’re the general far away in his headquarters, and I’m the cadet thrust into the line of duty.’
‘I think I understand what you’re saying,’ I nod. I don’t plan on telling Samppa that in the course of my adventure-park career I have been shot at, stabbed, chased, almost run over, beaten up, threatened, blackmailed and very nearly dropped into a pond wearing a pair of concrete boots while he was holding fairy-tale rhythmic gymnastics classes and processing his break-up in animal fables – the orphaned zebra and the bloodthirsty lion, the fragile butterfly and the clumsy donkey – with which he entertains our younger customers.
‘So, you know better than most that I’m not afraid of confrontation,’ Samppa continues. ‘Anyway, I made it clear my days of spying on people are over.’
I don’t think my face gives anything away. I’ve learnt that Samppa likes to talk, especially when he feels he can talk on his own terms, his own turf.
‘It was brave of you to step up like that,’ I say, channelling his own jargon.
Samppa nods and looks perhaps a little agitated. ‘I came out,’ he says. ‘As myself.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I am what I am.’
‘This is true.’
‘Once was enough,’ he says.
I don’t know what Samppa is referring to, but I have to keep this conversation going.
‘You defended your lived experience,’ I say, grasping for all the buzzwords in the lexicon. ‘You embraced your vulnerability.’
‘See, from what you said back there, I knew you’d get it,’ he says. ‘It was a few weeks ago. I was supposed to hide in front of the park while you were working late, then make a call when you switched the lights off in your office. I was hiding in the bushes over by the car park, the lights went out, I made the call, then cycled home.’
Samppa’s words bring back vivid images of the night I was attacked by the loading bay. I remember thinking about the bicycle left at the edge of the car park, the one I’d seen from the window. The same bicycle that had disappeared by the time I walked past the very same spot a moment later. And how, another moment later, my forehead was being battered against the steel steps. And how…
‘Juhani asked you to spy on me. Is that right?’ I ask in as neutral a voice as possible.
Samppa nods. ‘I thought, what harm could it possibly do?’ he says. ‘And, of course, in the end there wasn’t any harm done, right? But when I listened to you today, and because this has been bothering me, then I thought I could share it with you in a spirit of friendship, and we could deconstruct it together.’
‘Consider it … deconstructed.’
Samppa pauses for a moment. He is watching me carefully, and I can see he is thinking things through.
‘Burnout?’ he asks.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Burnout. That’s why you’re taking a back seat, right?’
I feel I should be honest with him, because he has been honest with me. ‘Sometimes business life can be full of … rough and tumble,’ I say.
‘If you ever need to talk,’ he says, raises his hands, gives me the thumbs up, then points his thumbs at himself.
It takes a moment before I understand what he is saying. I’m about to thank him for the offer when I remember something else.
‘Samppa, one more thing. Don’t tell Juhani that you and I have … deconstructed this together.’
‘Everything is in absolute confidence,’ he says, then taps the left side of his chest. ‘It’s all in here.’