ELON MUSK’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT was across from the lake promenade along one of the city’s finer streets. In look, feel, presentation, decoration, and even menu it was generic in every aspect. It even had a generic name like Elon Musk’s Il Colosseo, and showed his rather large, football-like head wearing a Roman imperial helmet smiling down on a miniature version of the Colosseum. In a rather stuffy and lacklustre backroom, Mr. Musk sat forking spaghetti into his mouth and crunching numbers with a small calculator. His eyes were bloodshot, he was wearing a plaid shirt open at the collar and Musk hadn’t had a shave in three or four days.
Musk was surrounded by women of various provenances and ethnicities, one of whom was rubbing his shoulders. He was in no good mood because his Italian venture was losing business to a competitor across the lake, one who had come up with the ingenious idea to open a combined laundromat trattoria. “This punk, who does he think he is?” said Musk. “And do you know what he was selling before, do you?” Musk nodded to another one of his women who brought in a box of what looked like yellow tide pods. “Detergent! He was selling laundry detergent. Then he goes and opens a trattoria next to his laundromat. He’s a rag man, I’m telling you!” said Musk. The woman who was rubbing Mr. Musk’s shoulders rubbed harder.
“I have to go there,” I said in a meek voice.
“Why?”
“I musk.”
Elon Musk glared at me.
“I mean I must,” I cleared my throat. “I needed to get some shirts dry-cleaned.”
“Oh.” Musk tapped some numbers into his calculator. “You know, that’s good. I want you to go there, over the lake, feel the place out. Get a good look around, tell me what’s really going on, see if you can get in the office, any closer to Mr. Chew. Find out everything about Mr. Chew. Even what kind of pasta he likes.”
“Do you want me to put tide pods in his linguine?”
“Not just yet.”
I walked down to the end of the lake, to where one descended a series of steps and walked through an underground before stepping out onto the other lakeside promenade. There were no lights on in the underground tunnel, and I became aware of a man walking in my direction from the opposite direction. He was a black man but with something white around his neck.
As he passed, I could see it was his collar. He was a priest.
***
EARLIER, I HAD BEEN in my apartment some ways away from Elon Musk’s Il Colosseo. It was near the central train station in a postwar building. The apartment was a mess. There were plates piled up in the sink. Clothes were piled up in every corner. Flies nipped at the remains of week-old meals. Almost every lightbulb in the apartment had failed. I was trying to make coffee. I was supposed to bring coffee to the Estonian woman when she arrived on the train. But I couldn’t get the Moka maker to work. For one, it was in several white pieces that when put together resembled something like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat. There was the head, there was the tail, I put the coffee in but, but I couldn’t find the stove top either. It was all so dirty.
There was just too much clutter in the apartment, and as I was trying to make the poor girl a cup of coffee, I began to hear noises from behind the stove. There was a wooden barrier erected there, made of a thatched material, like bamboo. You know what I am talking about. It had been painted different colors. From behind it, I heard a man’s voice say, “Hello, this is so-and-so, we have an interview scheduled. Yes, I just wanted to talk about your annual report.”
“What the hell is this?” I shouted out.
The man, who looked like Henry Rollins, startled, emerged in a white t-shirt and underpants, holding a rotary phone. Another came out from behind a door. He looked like he was Japanese and was wearing sunglasses. “These are the offices of the Reuters News Agency,” he said.
“They are?”
“They are.”
“Then how does a reporter go about getting himself a cup of coffee for chrissakes?”
“Beats me,” said Rollins. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take this. It’s really important.”
***
AFTER THAT, I shuffled over to the train station with my daughter to meet up with the Estonian woman, sans coffee. But we got lost in the old town. I now realized that I was in Stockholm, but a different Stockholm. All of the houses in the old town of Stockholm, the Gamla Stan, were connected by staircases and hallways. In one house, I met an old man who claimed to have a metal orb with magical properties. He claimed that it had been acquired from Eistland, now Estonia, long ago during some Viking-era raid. Another residence forced us to remove our shoes. And this is how I got separated from my daughter. There were so many shoes piled around that I couldn’t find my own. I had to walk through Gamla Stan in my socks and my feet were soon cold and wet. My daughter, still having her shoes, ran far ahead of me.
No longer could I keep up.
Back through the Gamla Stan, up and down the ancient leaning wooden staircases, beneath the dangling chandeliers. I finally got over to T-Centralen and procured a coffee for the Estonian woman at Pressbyrån. Which I should have done in the first place. By that time, it had snowed so much in Stockholm that we had to ski home, which apparently was over next to Elon Musk’s Il Colosseo along the lake promenade. As we were skiing, the Estonian woman’s ski boot came loose, and she attempted to seal it with raw honey. She just happened to have a jar.
“Didn’t you know,” she said, with the wind in her flowing curls, “that honey fixes all problems?”
“It’s not going to fix a broken ski boot, you crazy bitch!” I cried through the snow. I really called her that. Things had been going haywire all day, and now a ski boot covered with dripping gobs of raw honey? I fixed her boot and in the process got the honey all over my new clothes.
“I’m sorry,” said the Estonian woman.
“It’s okay, I know a good laundromat over the lake,” I said. “They also serve decent Italian food.”
“Sounds like a nice place.”
Later, when we were back at my apartment and I had handed the clothes over to Mr. Chew’s Laundromat Trattoria, we reclined on the floor. The carpet had been installed in the 1970s, it seemed, and was shaggy. She had on a white shirt with buttons, which I tore open, spilling her white breasts into the evening light. She smelled of lingonberries and other forest aromas.
“What the hell do you think I am?” the Estonian woman said as I began to lick her. “Elk pâté?”
“Oh yes,” I said to the Estonian woman. “You’re my elk pâté, honey. You are my elk pâté.”
north! 