Читать книгу Justine - Iben Mondrup - Страница 19

You’d almost think nothing had happened. Kluden is right where it’s always been and Kelly is behind the bar. She’s working the night shift, just like the night before.

She opens a beer as soon as I walk in, sets it down in front of me, and pronounces a name that could be mine, I recognize it in any case.

“Well now,” Per Olsvig says, “you again?”

He’s sitting at the end of the bar.

“He hasn’t gone home,” Kelly says.

“Sure I have,” Olsvig says. “I went to my fucking job.”

It’s the same conversation about paid work, which is a necessity, even if you’re an artist. In a moment he’ll tell us everything he can’t recall saying before. That’s memory-slinging for you. They land on Kluden’s linoleum floor, back in the corners and beneath the bar stools, where they stick.

“I was doing my thing at the grocery store,” Olsvig says. “See, that’s honest work with honest people. None of that pretentious piss you all go around and do.”

Olsvig drains a shot and orders another on tab. He’s so gray. No. Now he shifts slightly and the light from the lamp over the bar falls red onto his face. In a moment I’ll buy him a beer. I feel like I’ve missed him, even though he’s so crass. There’s an open place right beside him.

“Do I know you?” he asks. “Nah, I’m just ribbing you, Justine, come here and sit next to me.”

We know each other as well as the song pumping through the room: “Stairway to Heaven.” The sound is like the smoke was massive. Searing. His hooded jersey is thick with grime and old paint, but I can’t detect an odor, and my head rests comfortably on his shoulder. He sucks heavily on his cigarette, then stubs the rest into the ashtray, taps the rhythm with his finger on the counter. The door opens, we don’t see who comes in, if they know us, it’ll happen. Olsvig lights a new cigarette.

“Ahh,” he says, “what a day.”

The beer is cold and curative. Right now I need Kelly, Olsvig, and “a Tuborg Gold,” I say, “no, two!”

He kisses my forehead. Now I want his short arms around me.

“Forty-two,” Kelly says.

“Put in on my tab,” Olsvig says.

His cheeks are lightly swollen with scattered stubble. I couldn’t care less, I want to be inside his body, behind the bluster and gestures, back behind it all, away.