HALFWAY THROUGH THE NIGHT the hallway closet dissolved. This was more like a built-in storage space, with hooks for hanging coats and some shelving above and below. There had been too many old jackets there and too many old boots, but these had been replaced by a glowing substance, part gauze, part spiderweb, part marshmallow. Cotton candy, if you will.
Through the cotton candy door, I could see Linnéa in her bedroom.
She was trying on different dresses, standing there before a mirror. A yellow polka dot dress, a purple dress. She smoothed out the fabric, turned from side to side, singing gently to herself as she went, lyrics to songs I had never heard of, or whispering comforting phrases. Yes, the blue dress! This was the one! Her hair was a brilliant yellow. Her lashes were plump and long.
Then she noticed me watching her and climbed through the doorway. “We have to talk,” she announced, taking me by the arm. “It’s time that I told you everything.” She hoisted herself up onto my white, queen-sized bed, and stretched out as if she was doing the backstroke. She was a sight. Her long bluestockinged legs stretched out before me like soothing Atlantic horizons. “It’s been too long, it’s been too long since I told you everything,” Linnéa said.
But soon her boyfriend Peeter would be back. Linnéa was now in a serious relationship and I was expected to blend like all other men into a dim gray background, to melt into the anonymous crowds. Such bedside confessionals were strictly verboten. Peeter then entered through the cotton candy door. He was youthful and had a princely moustache. Peeter was wearing a fur vest and had white war paint across his cheeks. He said, “Hello, I am Peeter.”
“I know,” I told him. “And who are you?” He asked. “I am who I am,” I told him. We stood there looking at each other for a while. I was waiting for him to put the hatchet into me. But Prince Peeter did no such thing. Instead his eyes softened a bit. “It’s good of you, it’s good of you to be a friend to Linnéa,” he said. Then he began to talk of more trivial things, like his job, and politics and trade policy, and other things in which I had no real interest. But there was no revenge and there was no heartbreak and Linnéa had selected the exactly right-colored dress.
north! 