She broke out into a cold sweat. Suddenly she felt how much her knee ached and how tired she was. She sat down and rested a while, observing the stranger looking at her from the mirror. Vera closed her eyes and waited for the pain and nausea to subside.
‘It was Linus. Stupid asshole!’ a guy just outside the changing room said glumly. Vera started. Who is he talking to? He carried on complaining.
‘The teacher went, like, nuts, and now everybody has to write a whole fucking essay about love!’
‘Well, if you call somebody a whore, it’s good that the teacher reacts. I think what he did was exactly right!’ It was Cissi; she had come back with more clothes. Vera realized that the young guy with her must be cousin Freddie. He continued indignantly.
‘But, honestly! Otherwise – no class trip! And there’s no reliable stuff about love that you can pinch from the internet either! I checked – nothing!’
Vera sat and listened as Cissi tried to help Freddie, who was having a ‘mega crisis’, and a smile crept over her face. She and Cissi were so different, but there was still something that felt very familiar. Now Vera realized what it was. Cissi was a problem solver, just like she was. But Cissi had completely different knowledge and skills, and her repertoire of solutions seemed impressively broad. The least she could do was allow herself to be helped. Vera put on the long gloves and got up resolutely. She had guessed that the chocolate brown push-up bra would work but the question was: how would the rust red creation fit now?
The dress was surprisingly heavy with all the silk fabric and the embroidered pearls. Unexpected questions popped up in Vera’s head: Who sewed all these on? I wonder what her life is like? Vera managed to pour the silk over her head and down onto her body, and she got her arms into the dress. After trying unsuccessfully to bend her arms backwards and pull up the zipper, she realized that she needed help. She knocked lightly on the wall of Cissi’s changing room, went out through the swing doors, and turned her back to Cissi. Vera had glanced in the mirror and thought it looked promising; maybe it would work after all?
‘Well, look at you! Oh, hold up your hair!’ Cissi waited so that she wouldn’t catch the zipper in Vera’s chestnut-colored curls. Vera smiled and obeyed, and when Cissi pulled up the zipper she felt the dress settle perfectly across her hips and waist. When Cissi was finished Vera let down her hair and carefully twirled around once. Cissi smiled broadly and nodded in satisfaction, like a sculptress in front of her creation. Then Vera noticed that someone else was looking at her, and she looked in that direction.
At first he looked like an anonymous catalogue model in his relaxed dressiness: shirt hanging out, blazer, long striped scarf and a cap pulled down low over his forehead. After a second, though she realized that it was Peter Stavenius. The weirdest thing was the way he was looking at her. She had wondered about her neighbor sometimes, what he really did to conquer so many hearts. Now she was seeing it with her own eyes.
He looked at her like she was the only person in the whole world, and as if he really liked her. Well, ‘liked her’ was too weak. He looked like he had been waiting for her his whole life and now stood there, completely attentive, ready to do anything for her. God, he’s a good actor!, she thought, impressed despite herself, caught in the confused locking of their eyes. But why are you looking at • • like that?
That was when she realized. He didn’t recognize her, because he had never seen – and even now wasn’t seeing – her. It was all the fakery that he was seeing, and he clearly appreciated it. The new hair color and the shiny Hollywood curls, the fake, painted eyelashes, the lip gloss, the rented dress, and, of course, the well-padded chocolate-brown bra. She had dressed up as a ‘pin-up chick’ and suddenly she was on Mr Sex Machine’s radar. She was suitable prey for the predator.
Then a pretty, dark-haired girl approached Peter with a corset provocatively pressed against her body, obviously flirty and intimate. Vera wasn’t surprised that she had never seen the girl before. The scene illustrated perfectly why Peter’s inappropriate gaze had caused her to have such unpleasant associations. Vera fled back into her changing room and let the swing doors hide her blush of indignation. Safely alone again, she sat down and tried to calm her racing pulse with deep breaths.
‘That one!’ Cissi said, sticking her head into Vera’s changing room. Vera hopped nervously up off the little stool. Shhh, she wanted to say.
‘Ooh la la!’ emphasized Cissi and lifted her arched eyebrows suggestively.
Don’t you recognize Peter? ‘Do you think so?’ asked Vera and tried to look relaxed.
‘Yes! What a heartbreaker!’ said Cissi with conviction.
Vera grimly took off the formal gloves, no longer able to hide what she felt in her heart.
‘Right. Exactly. And that’s nothing worth betting on. It’s really nothing worth having.’
Cissi stared uncomprehendingly at her. ‘What? A girl needs it sometimes, right? It does the trick. Of course you should buy it. No doubt about it!’
13
Jujutsu belongs to the Japanese martial arts family of budo. Ju is translated as soft and responsive, while jutsu means method or technique. The name communicates that it is the art of defeating an opponent using as little physical strength as possible.
Peter’s first book about his martial art
Peter’s eyes had been drawn like a magnet to the reddish brown curls, and to his joy he realized that it actually was the girl from the changing room who was sitting on the bus he climbed onto for the ride home. She was real and she was travelling east on the number 8 bus, just like he was, at the same time! He sat tensely, wondering why she looked so familiar. Had they met when they were out somewhere? He thought that he ought to find out her name. He didn’t want to lose her again, not without knowing something about her.
But then strange things started happening.
The first was that she sat next to Cissi, the hippie lady from the department. Maybe he had seen her with Cissi? But that didn’t feel right. They were talking. He sat diagonally behind them and strained to hear what they were saying. It was then he realized that the voice he had recognized from the left-hand changing room had been Cissi’s. She’s a friend of Cissi! Well then, he could just ask Cissi who she was and needn’t worry about losing her. Cissi said, ‘See you,’ and got up. When she moved to the back of the bus to get off, Peter hurriedly looked away, out through the window, as if he didn’t want her to see him. Afterwards he wondered why he had done so.
Then things got even stranger. As soon as the bus started moving again a teenage boy slunk forward and sat down next to her. Peter recognized him. It was the kid with the jeans and the big unruly hair who had been waiting outside the changing rooms. Peter considered for a brief moment, looked around in embarrassment, and moved lithely and quietly across the aisle to the boy’s now empty seat, only two seats behind her. He listened tensely.
‘You know, she brings up sex all the time. That’s not what it’s supposed to be about!’ the boy complained.
‘Well then all you need to do is explain that to her.’
She sounds kind, Peter thought affectionately and a strange certainty filled him.
‘I’m sure she’ll help you,’ she continued.
‘Yeah, but I think you can help better. You’re like, married and everything!’
She’s married! His heart sank like a stone – he hadn’t thought of that. She might actually be happily married, faithful and forever unavailable.
She looked out of the window, but the youngster looked pleadingly at her, ‘please?’
Peter realized with some discomfort that he himself might not have been fully informed about the ages of all the girls he’d picked up in the