“You said I could count on you.”
Sten’s voice was low and tense, without any suggestion of the little fooling-around laugh that had accompanied everything he’d ever said before Lise had disappeared. It wasn’t only his body that had become lean and hard. We pulled our bikes along one of the newer suburban streets behind the school, where the newly built gardens were naked. The trees were still too small to give shade, the grass on the lawns thin and pale and filled with fresh, green dandelion shoots.
“Ah, dammit, Sten . . .”
“What is it? Are you scared of her?”
“No, but why can’t you do it yourself?”
I thought of Laurel, of how she’d looked when I’d met her at the bridge a couple of weeks ago. Ash gray in the face, with her long, tangled hair hanging down over her bright eyes. I wasn’t afraid, but I certainly didn’t want to talk to her. And definitely not about Lise. I was pretty sure there was an imminent risk of her crying. And what was I supposed to do then? I didn’t know how to handle crying girls.
Sten ran his hand through his hair, which sat in greasy strips over his scalp, as he gave me a furious look over his shoulder.
“Because she hates me, and you know that. She won’t tell me shit.”
His nails audibly scratched against his scalp again. And I caved. Because I didn’t want to get into a fight with him, and because it was true. Laurel hadn’t spoken to him since that time she’d forgotten to lock the door to the upstairs toilet and he’d come barging in the second she was sitting with a protruding abdomen and was wiping her bottom. It was a picture he’d painted for me at least a thousand times. The spread legs, the glimpse of something pink in the mousy pubic hair and Laurel’s furious attempt to slam the door with both hands while Sten remained paralyzed halfway into the bathroom.
He must have jerked off an infinite number of times to that image. I myself had done it a few times, but fortunately she knew nothing about that. According to Sten, Laurel had a memory like an elephant and was quite good at bearing a grudge, but she was always kind to me. Even used to smile at me if I met her on the main street.
A good start, said Sten.
We threw the bikes into the hedge in front of the detached house and stood for a minute, staring at the drawn curtains and the closed door. The garden was neat, half-barren and newly sown like all the others on the street. There were raised flower beds, greenhouse boxes and parsley and carrots in twisting rows, but light-green weeds had begun to wind their way among the newly planted saplings.
“Her parents have gone camping, but she didn’t want to go with them. She’s been hanging out at Crazy Horse in Hornslet and at the bar every single night since they left. Stupid cow. Most girls are smart enough to stay in at night at this point.”
“Well, yeah.” I stalled for time. “But you can’t keep doing that, Sten. And maybe she needs to be with her friends, too.”
“Friends?”
He spat on one of the smooth, light-gray tiles and nodded toward the front door. “I’ll wait out here while you talk to her. She has to confess that it was her. The alcohol, everything. And she has to say it to the police, too. I won’t stand for her going around and saying rumors about Lise.”
“We don’t know if she is.”
He shook his head, furious.
“But you know how she is. I’ve told you! She just can’t tell anyone . . . and I want to know what men were staring at Lise. Every single one of the sick bastards.”
Of course, I already knew what he was thinking. He had repeatedly found beers and schnapps and cigarettes and used condoms down near the bush by the road. Really disgusting. According to Sten, the condoms could only be Laurel’s because she was a prostitute, and I’d tactfully failed to point out the obvious. That Lise—at least in theory—could also have had something to do with those used condoms. It was fine with me if Sten didn’t want to think that.
“That’s all she has to say,” he said. “That it was all her.”
He was so different, I thought. There was no longer even a hint of the boy who’d blushed his way through the German accusative masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral forms two months ago. He’d aged a thousand years since they’d found Lise, had retreated from the rest of us. From school, from trading cards, and cycling to Kalø. I understood what had happened, but not quite what it meant. What was going to become of him?
“Fine.” I shrugged and walked reluctantly up to the door, throwing a last look at Sten before ringing the bell. He hid on the other side of the hedge, staring at me with burning eyes. Feverishly scratching his scalp.
“What?”
Laurel had opened the door and was glaring vacantly at me. She was taller than I remembered. At least six feet, with long, pale arms and legs. And despite her pulling down her T-shirt, which was the only thing she had on, I managed to get a glimpse of her fluffy pink underwear and a bit of pubic hair sticking out underneath. It was impossible to keep my eyes from it, even now, when the circumstances were so serious. I silently cursed at myself.
“I came because I’m trying to find out . . . something about Lise.”
Laurel’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
I glanced back briefly, but Sten was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m friends with Sten,” I said. “And he . . . We’re trying to find out something.”
“Okay. Jacob, right?” She stepped aside, waving me toward the kitchen, and didn’t seem angry or hysterical. Just tired.
“Yes.”
Laurel nodded and went to the kitchen sink to fill the kettle with water. Her feet were bare, and there was a swarm of little birthmarks on her white legs.
“You can have a beer, too, if you feel like it,” she said, nodding toward a box standing in a ray of sunlight on the floor by the fridge. Half the bottles were already drunk.
“No, thanks,” I said. “It’s fine. I won’t be that long.”
The kettle rumbled faintly on the stove, and Laurel sat down at the small four-seater by the window. She rubbed a thumb over a tabletop full of crumbs and began to diligently split a hunk of bread into pieces with a frayed polished nail. Her fingers were long and red, and her knuckles bent the wrong way, rubberlike, when she pressed them against the surface. There was something about her that reminded me of a creeper plant. Like she had to lean against and seize creatures with more vitality to remain upright. Her not-very-big breasts were two pointed tops under the oversized T-shirt, and she smelled of night and sweat and sleep, even though it was only late afternoon.
“What would you like to know?” she asked, blinking her long, colorless lashes.
“Lise . . . Sten doesn’t want you going around saying all sorts of things about her. That she was with a lot of men.”
Laurel wrinkled her forehead and leaned back a little. Crossed her arms. “I haven’t said anything about Lise.”
“But that she had boyfriends . . . and drank and stuff. Was screwing someone. Sten says you were.”
She laid her head back, watching me from under half-closed eyelids. “What sort of shit is that to say?”
I shrugged, not daring to meet her eyes.
I’d heard Laurel was smart. Smarter than all the boys, and even smarter than Professor Anton, who had moved to Aarhus to study physics. Laurel had had the highest average in class when she and Lise had graduated from the ninth grade. She had gotten a job at Carletti, and was apparently happy with it.
“Okay,” she said. “I can promise Sten that I won’t say anything about any boyfriends. As far as I know, Lise didn’t have any. That was one of the reasons why we were hardly ever together in the spring. We were fighting because of something that happened down at the bar.”
She got up and poured boiling water from the kettle into a dark-blue mug. She dipped an already-used teabag into the water and reached for a packet of cigarettes on the windowsill. She remained standing with her arms and legs crossed in the not-quite-long-enough T-shirt. Lit her cigarette and continued to click the lighter.
“We were supposed to meet a couple of guys from the agricultural school, Søren and Ladefoged. But it ended up being awkward, because they only talked to me.”
“Why?”
She lifted her eyebrows and flashed me an innocent smile, obviously thinking there was no need for further explanation. And there wasn’t. Laurel wasn’t pretty, but there was something lazy and shameless about her that made you think dirty thoughts. The appraising look from under her fine, thin eyelids and the fact that she was moving around the kitchen so freely, despite her T-shirt being too short and the hair that was still visible under her bikini line.
Lise, forever uptight and with a downward-set mouth, wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on in a competition. And maybe it had been. Part of it, at least.
“She got angry, and it wasn’t the first time. She had trouble with guys, because . . . well, you know how she was. It was a shame, but it was kind of her own fault, if you ask me, because she was always so angry. Guys don’t like that! I told her plenty of times. But at least the police have checked out Søren and Ladefoged, and they had nothing to do with it.”
“So no men?”
“She probably wasn’t a virgin, if that’s what you’re wondering. There are men who like ugly girls. Loads. All you could wish for. But it’s usually the older ones, isn’t it? The ones who are satisfied as long as the flesh is smooth and the tits are stiff. They were the ones who would buy beer for her at the bar. The over-thirty-fives. If you danced with them, they’d just stand up and sway in the polka position while they tried to rub a hard-on between your legs.”
I looked down at the floor to hide that everything was hot and wrong in my head. She was shameless. Evil.
“Yeah, sorry,” she said, squinting exhaustedly. “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
“What?”
“B.B. King. Blues.”
There was something catlike in the way she was looking at me. A hint of lazy irritation.
“I always say no when I get asked by those kind of men, but Lise always said yes. Afterward she was ashamed, but it was better than nothing. I think she screwed a couple of them, but I don’t know for sure. And that’s what I’ve said to anyone who’s asked me. I’m sorry if it’s hurt Sten.”
She opened the kitchen window a little and puffed out smoke through the tiny crack. Narrowed her eyes.
“The police have asked me about all this, too. And if there were any girls she was unfriendly with. Big idiots. All men are, of course. They know that someone killed her, but that’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what the hell do I know? I was nearly always drunk when I hung out with Lise. But when it comes to what happened to her, girls don’t matter. Do you know why?” The glow from her cigarette circled dangerously close to my eyes, and I shook my head.
“Because what happened to Lise stinks of man. Men kill, not women. Take it from someone who’s done a good bit of fieldwork out there in reality. Men can get so completely insane because we have a hole they want to stick their cock in. And if they’re not allowed—”
She raised a knowing eyebrow.
“You don’t believe me?”
She joined her hands in front of her, pushing her small, pointed breasts up at the same time so her nipples were clearly drawn under the T-shirt. I tried to stop staring as the hint of a triumphant smile spread over her face. Then she grew serious again.
“Would you like to touch them?”
I didn’t answer. My ears were ringing, my heart loudly skipping beats.
“Go ahead.”
The wind tore at the sparse weeping birch on the lawn, and the sky was packed with drifting gray clouds. The blackbird outside was singing like crazy, and the kettle had boiled dry on the hot stove and was panting, exhausted, under its range hood.
“Yeah.”
She came and stood before me while I remained paralyzed in the chair. I pictured her pink panties as I slowly stretched my hand and lifted up her T-shirt a little. Her navel and a pair of sharp white hip bones appeared, and I let my hand slide farther up and grab something at once soft and hot and bumpy, which wasn’t comparable to anything I’d ever touched before. The nipple contracted, becoming hard between my fingers, the second before she pushed away my hand, laughing.
“Now, now,” she said. “That’s enough.”
I thought about Ellen. About how real her breast had been under her blouse that night by the fire. And how much I’d wanted to get closer to her. Laurel was making me confused and uncomfortable. As if I’d left my body and was looking at it from somewhere up near the ceiling.
Painting of a boy with a strange woman’s breast.
I could no longer remember why I’d come, but I collapsed under my humiliating, defeating horniness. And an anger that I didn’t know the source of.
She caught my eye. “So,” she said calmly. “Men can get extremely upset when things go wrong. She met some gross dog or other.”
Laurel tugged a little at the edge of her T-shirt and was normal again, but I could no longer meet her gaze. Instead, I looked obliquely at her thin white thighs, where fine light-blue veins twisted beneath her skin like a microscopic river estuary on a map.
“You’re really very nice, Jacob Errbo. Come back when you’ve grown up. There’s a good boy.”
I felt like I’d betrayed Ellen, when I—like an idiot—shook her hand in farewell.