Page 8 of The Happiness Blueprint
•NEW TASK:Dig for money to cover car repayments (don’t ask Dan to bail out)
•NEW TASK:Exercise (walk around the block)
Jobcenter has me gripped as always. Doors are heavy and squeak, get stuck midway on the built-in doormat. It’s like they have designed the door to make us work at entering, an extra obstacle in order to get that check. Which I desperately need. The waiting area is full, and I nod at them all as I lean against the wall. Like to see them as my peers, not my competition. I imagine the house burning down and us all pulling off some sort of rescue attempt of bored staff and thick files. In it together.
Susanne talks to me today. She is blonde and permed and reminds me of an ’80s pop star. Probably was one: this is exactly the type of place they end up. Behind a worn wooden desk on a nylon-clad chair ticking boxes with Bic pens. No neon in sight.
“What did a handsome guy like you get up to this weekend?” she says to me as if I’m some sort of pet or first grader. The fuck? Usually play along with flirtatious middle-aged women but, you know,depression.
“I was job-searching.”
“Oh.” She looks in utter disbelief. As if it’s the one thing she wouldn’t expect a job-seeking individual to do. Maybe she sees through me? Maybe I should give Susanne more credit. I mean, Icouldget a job. If I really wanted to. It felt like the right step to take. After four months of sick leave—essentially being unable to cope after the untimely death of my brother, my best friend, my favorite person in the world—signing up for employment felt better than extending the leave into eternity. Had every good intention. It’s just that when the emails come in and I scan them, the job descriptions give me a big fucking ball of stress in my abdomen and it’s just easier to delete them and spend my time with the Susannes of the world.
Home an hour later, and it’s so fucking dark and cold I’m curling up on the sofa with an actual throw. Didn’t even realize I had one, but someone, at some point, must have gifted me the light blue knitted blanket. My feet stick out at the end.
It’s okay to struggle, Alex,Dr. Hadid had told me earlier.I can’t hold it off any longer, today is not going to be the first day, is it? I go to my Inbox and then Drafts, pulling up what is already a forty-four-page email. Been writing for close to six months now. The draft is wedged between two other email procrastinations: a request to defreeze my gym membership and an inquiry regarding a cheaper monthly broadband provider. Who writes an email knowing they will never get an answer? Know I’m a loser, but I still don’t stop. Can’t stop.
SAVED TO DRAFTS
Dear You,
Sorry if these emails are starting to bore you to death (double sorry for the pun—you and I always did have the weirdest, darkest of humor). I can’t say your name. You aren’t here so I’m not sure what your name should be. If cheese ceased to exist on planet Earth, surely we wouldn’t all still run around puttingcheesein our sentences? Saying your name reminds me of the fact that it’s just a name now. Your person doesn’t belong to it anymore.
Am now triple sorry: I don’t have anything cheery to tell you.
The ring is tight on my finger. The ring I shouldn’t even be wearing because it’s not mine, is it? It’s getting warmer now, and it doesn’t fit as well any longer. I’m not even sure it will come off now. When I push it up, there is a trace, like a road map, blood rushing to its place. I can’t help but feel ever so slightly free when that happens, as if life rushes back into my finger. And me. Then I slide it down again, and I’m trapped in this grief. But I wonder, if I take it off, will you be gone? If the pain isn’t there, then what is? Nothing?
No name, no pain.
I’m not ready to accept that.
Hours later I’m still thinking about the email. Grab the car keys off the table. I throw my sweater on, zip it closed and pull the hood up over my head.
Time for a midnight drive.
In the car. Fucking angry. Wish I weren’t, but it hits me sometimes. The anger. Perhaps if I knew who to hate, it would be easier. If I didn’t just hatesomeone. But somehowsomeonemanaged to get a protected status, despite this being Sweden and not America. No idea how it happened unless they are an actual judge. Have already checked all judges in Lund. Obviously. Someone is not my issue right now, though; he’ll be there on the twenty-second of April. The problem is who willnotbe there.
There was an appeal for witnesses. One came forward and said that there was a second witness on a street corner. In a red jacket with a dog on a leash.
“I’m sorry, Dan. Alex, Mr. and Mrs. Berg. Without the second witness, there is no prospect of a conviction. No deciding evidence. I suggest you get your heads around the fact that there’ll be damages, but the more serious charges will be dropped.” Fuck all. As if I could let the charges drop like keys falling on the floor. I don’t drop things.
Someone in a red fleece jacket saw what happened that night, and I’ve spent months trying to find them.
My Nikon is on the seat next to me, my last 100 kronor in the gas tank.
The rain blurs the world until the wipers start up. It’s 12:53 a.m., and exactly six months ago someone with a red fleece was here. Realize how sick that sounds, looking for a person in fleece. But there is a chance they’ll be back. They may live close by, may have walked home from work at that particular time. That was my first hope: that they would appear with their red coat and perhaps a backpack or a dog in tow that needed an evening pee, so I could pull up and, well,find them. As the weeks and months passed, I changed my theory. It could be a relative of an elderly resident. The old people don’t often get visits, everyone knows that. Swedes aren’t like the Mediterranean or Middle Eastern families who open their homes to their parents and grandparents when they arrive at the end of independence. The state is our parent, and it looks after senior citizens while we get on with life. All this is speculation. Truth is I have no idea who this woman is. No lead. Hate to admit it.
There is a large dog in a harness coming around the corner. Its owner loud on the phone. Hand gestures.Listen up, Phil, the price is already down...Yeah, yeah, I know...I KNOW.I wonder if the dog minds. Do dogs mind? Like I do when someone is texting at the dinner table. It’s his one highlight of the day, out with an owner who’s been at work all day, and he doesn’t get his full attention. This man looks like he’s not the type to own a red fleece, not the sporty type, so I drive slowly on and find a parking spot next to a loading bay.
It wasn’t an accident. Everyone knows that, but only one personknowsit. My eyes are stinging: it’s like I can feel the small red veiny threads appearing by the minute. The city is starting to wake up, and those in charge of its morning routine are starting to appear. Street cleaners, newspaper-delivery guys, along with a family with luggage, obviously heading for a painfully early flight. The two small boys yawn and hold on to tablets as they walk down the street. More dogs walking their sleepy owners. The next lot of people will come at six, the runners in bright, windproof gear, bankers and doctors and CEOs in suits heading in early to work. Even before I started driving I knew the city well, haven’t really lived anywhere else. My friend Paul went to Stockholm for his studies, but I stayed around. Always happy and content. Who needs challenges when you have a fine life?
Somehow it’s already 5:02 a.m. I pass the cathedral, nine-hundred years old and majestic, towering over the university where half this city seems to either study or work. The windows are dark and sleepy. I wonder for a second if the doors are open. Churches are supposed to always be open, aren’t they? And then I wonder what it would feel like to sit alone in the space of a fourteenth century structure.
It will take me ten minutes to drive home, onto the highway and into Malmö’s industrial area with its IKEA and soft-play center. Apart from a few trucks, I won’t have any traffic. The world starting to wake up is my cue to return home. I think about the fact that no one seems to have recognized me during all these months. I see the same people on the same streets, yet no one has ever seen the blond guy in a new BMW hovering on street corners staring at jackets. No one has knocked at my window and saidHey, man. All good? Been seeing you around. It’s easy to be invisible at night: it’s the time when people prefer to ignore who and what is right in front of them. I’m like a shadow, moving around the city.
Shadow Man is going home for the day.
KLARA
