Call Me Princess (22 page)

“It’s Lina.” His evasive eyes finally fixed on her. “I’m really sorry, but I’m in love with her.”

Louise pictured Peter’s co-worker’s face enlarged and projected onto the living-room wall as though by a slide projector. Sales meetings. Overtime. Business trips. Louise finally noticed the nausea, but she still couldn’t discern any sadness or anger. Her emotions were locked away in the block of ice that had settled in her gut.

“I tried to end it,” he continued.

The image of the blond sales rep faded from the wall. Louise’s memory was blocked—suddenly she couldn’t remember the girl anymore or picture her face. She thought of her as a girl, but knew she must be somewhere in her thirties. Maybe a couple of years younger than she was, but definitely no more than that. Louise wasn’t being dumped for some hot young thing, but for Peter’s co-worker.
Which, it turns out, is every fucking bit as pathetic and heartbreaking,
she thought, noticing that her brain was slowly starting to function again.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Peter repeated.

The block of ice started to break up, but Louise didn’t feel like she was about to dissolve into tears. She felt cold and hard. She matter-of-factly acknowledged in her mind that things hadn’t been right between Peter and her ever since he had come home from Scotland. Well, actually, not while he was living in Scotland either, or even really before he had gone. They had made it this far because they had both been working toward the same general things, and they wanted to succeed. He had grudgingly accepted her decision to stay in Denmark. And she had visited him in Scotland as often as she could, even though they had spent most of her visits sightseeing and eating out, not really doing anything that could count as spending quality time on their relationship.

Then when he came home, she had given in and let him move in with her, even though she would have been just as happy if he hadn’t. And they had both struggled to live up to each other’s expectations, to prove that moving in together was the right decision. She had lost herself in her work, and he had apparently found a more lascivious outlet, she thought, finally feeling a wave of anger. The winter frost had lost its grip on her insides, and now the full intensity of her feelings came thundering to the surface.

“You’ve been sneaking around screwing her this whole time you had me thinking you were working so hard? What in the fuck is wrong with you?” she yelled.

She should have known, she thought at the same time. He knew she would believe he was pouring his heart and soul into his work, and she had no reason to doubt his need for so much overtime, given her own workaholic tendencies.

“I totally understand that you’re pissed at me,” Peter said. “You’ve got every right to chew me out. But I just want you to know that I didn’t do it to hurt you.”

Louise went ballistic.
Oh no, do not tell me he is fucking sitting there feeling sorry for me.
Infuriated, she rose, pointed her index finger toward the bedroom, and said with as much composure as she could muster:

“You will go in there now, pack your things, and get out. I don’t want to hear another fucking word about you or what you ‘understand.’”

She was shaking and gasping for air as sobs overwhelmed her body.

“Out!” she yelled.

He got up slowly, walked over and put his arm around her. She tried to pull back, but her body wouldn’t obey. She sobbed into his shoulder, noticing the smell of beer, and let him lead her over to the couch and sit her down. She hid her face in her hands as she tried to regain some semblance of composure. She slowly caught her breath, breathing deeply several times until she thought was able to speak again without crying.

“I saw you guys in Tivoli last week,” she said as the image of them at the window table popped into her head. He sat a moment before responding.

“That was the day I broke up with her. I never meant for it to keep going. I’m not cut out for affairs,” he said, trying to laugh. “I get paranoid.”

Louise thought bitterly that he would probably get by just fine in life if that was his biggest problem. Glad you figured that one out, she thought, recalling all those nights he had come home late.

“I didn’t think I would end up missing her so much,” Peter said. “But this past week made it clear to me that I made the wrong choice. She’s dwelled in every cell of my body since we broke up in Tivoli.”

Louise thought about the duty sex they had had up at her parents’ house, cursing at him in her mind and wishing every cell of his body were far away from her, especially the sperm cells that had ended up inside her.

“And I suppose she’s ready to welcome you back even though you dumped her?” Louise asked.

Peter nodded and reached for her hand, which she quickly yanked back. “She wants to have kids and a real home life,” he added.

As though that explained everything
, Louise thought, staring at him incredulously.
He did not seriously mean he was trading her in for another woman who was willing to tend his house and bear his children. She would have borne his children... or child,
she thought, correcting herself.
One would probably have been plenty.

“We’ve got the same outlook on life,” he continued.

Louise wasn’t listening anymore, but heard him anyway when he said that at least Camilla had understood him when they had talked about it in the kitchen the other night.

“You told Camilla that you were seeing someone else?” Louise exclaimed in surprise.

Peter looked at her, confused. “Of course I didn’t. But what we were talking about was making room in our lives for love and our dreams for the future, and doing what feels right.”

He paused, as though weighing whether he dared continue.

“You never really accepted... or maybe you just never really understood, how much Camilla really wants to find a man and have another kid.”

Now Louise was doubly hurt. Her best friend had never told her she wanted more kids, and had chosen to confide in Peter instead. Now she knew where that barbed comment about her not wanting Camilla to be happy came from. “You should go now,” she said, standing. “I don’t feel like talking anymore.”

She went into the kitchen and stood there a moment, listening to his footsteps as he left the living room. She heard him pull the big suitcase down out of the closet and open a drawer. It felt like a dream. She had no sense of time, no sense of how she was actually feeling. A confused mess outside of time and space. She sat down at the kitchen table and stared into space. She wanted to go outside for some fresh air, but the muscles in her body didn’t respond when she tried to stand.

Peter stopped in the kitchen doorway. He was holding his dark-brown suitcase in his hand, and suddenly she was afraid he might decide to kiss her good-bye. There was a limit to how much schmalz she was willing to put up with.

He stood for a moment, swaying back and forth, and finally said “I’ll call you.”

She nodded without a word, and her mind kept reeling even after the door shut behind him. She considered calling Camilla, but she realized that she needed to sit for a while by herself. She wasn’t convinced that the whole thing hadn’t just been a figment of her imagination. She stood up and got a glass from the cupboard, reached for the bottle of calvados, and poured herself a very full glass. She took a swig, swallowed, and drank again until her throat was burning.
So long, asshole,
she thought. Here she was struggling, compromising, and adapting, and he just goes and throws in the fucking towel and takes the easy way out. He was off taking care of his own needs, while she was making sacrifices. She took another big swig, pushed her chair back, and marched out into the hallway for her purse. She ran down the stairs and over to the newsstand to buy a pack of Prince Lights.

The whole way back, she kept thinking how pathetic it was to start smoking again, but, really, if getting dumped didn’t make it okay, she couldn’t fucking imagine what would. When she got back to the apartment, she poured herself another half glass of calvados and lit her first cigarette. She waited impatiently for the dizziness to hit her. People had been telling her for years and years how dizzy you get when you haven’t smoked in a while. She was looking forward to that sensation now, letting herself be carried away in a soothing fog. But nothing happened. It tasted just the way she remembered, but her body wasn’t responding in any discernable way to the nicotine flowing through her. The whole thing with Peter probably short-circuited her pleasure centers or something, she thought rationally.

The ring tone from her cell phone was just audible in the kitchen from the pocket of her jacket in the hallway. She was about to get up, but guessed it was Peter wanting to make sure she was okay, and she didn’t have the energy for his concern. She lit another cigarette and finally did get up, driven by an unhealthy curiosity to check the display on her phone to see what she had missed. The call was from a number starting with 35, so it was a land line in Copenhagen. It might have been National Hospital. She contemplated whether it would be wise to call back, considering the frame of mind she was in. She thought about Susanne and sat back down heavily as she pulled up the call log and had the phone dial the last number back.

She was about to cancel the call when she heard Flemming Larsen’s voice. She sat for a moment without saying anything, listening to the coroner say, “Hello?”

“This is Louise Rick,” she said. “Sorry, I was away from the phone.”

“I thought you were always at work,” Flemming teased.

She was about to say defensively that she was not, but he had already started talking again, apparently not having noticed from the tone of her voice that something was wrong.

“I just finished the autopsy report, which has been signed off on and will be on your desk in the morning. But there was one thing that struck me....”

She listened, but his words washed over her and faded away, and she couldn’t manage to stop the sob that forced its way out.

Flemming fell silent abruptly, listening patiently as she began without any preface to apologize and explain in staccato phrases that Peter had just left her. In the same breath, she assured him that she was okay, although she heard how ridiculous that sounded since there was a little burst of sobs between each sentence.

“I’m coming over now,” Flemming said. “Give me your address, and I’ll be right there.”

She told him where she lived, even though she didn’t feel like company. They had good chemistry, but even in her frazzled frame of mind she knew that there was no way their work relationship would benefit from his seeing her at a time like this, when her world was falling to pieces.

She quickly hid her cigarettes in a drawer and drank a glass of water before brushing her teeth, in the hopes of getting rid of her tobacco breath before he arrived.

Peter had forgotten his toothbrush and shaving things. She grabbed a big paper bag and started raking all of his things into it. Once she had stashed all that on the back steps, she lightly dabbed some powder on her face and ran her fingers through her thick, dark curls. She pulled her long hair back into a ponytail, annoyed that she hadn’t told Flemming not to come.
Pull yourself together
, she told herself as the intercom beeped. She went over and buzzed him in.

From the depths of the stairwell, she could hear him bounding up the stairs as she stood in her doorway, waiting to receive him.

“Hi,” she called with all the cheer she could muster.

Flemming leaned forward and pulled her into a hug, and they stood for a moment swaying back and forth before he let her go.

“I brought these,” he said, tossing a pack of Prince Ultra Lights onto the table, even though he knew she didn’t smoke.

Louise looked at him surprised, guessing he had categorized her as the kind of smoker who has only just managed to fight her nicotine addiction.

She was just about to decline, to avoid revealing her weaknesses to him, when he beat her to it and said, “It helps to have some kind of bad habit you can beat yourself up about. It takes the edge off the other stuff. Plus, then there’s something else going on in your life besides just being that poor thing who got dumped,” he said, smiling at her.

She smiled back and took one. She had always liked people who could smile openly while breaking rules. It was liberating. Plus, Flemming knew what he was talking about. His wife had left him about two years ago now. Not that Louise had noticed people feeling sorry for him because of it, but it did seem like he probably knew what he was talking about.

Once she had lit the cigarette, she decided she didn’t need to hide her misery from him. She relaxed and started telling him about how she had found Peter sitting in the living room when she came home. His empty beer bottles were still in there, she noticed. She sighed and stood up to clear them away. She only wanted to see the fallout from her own sorrow and misery.

“When you’re in the thick of it, you may not be able to imagine something better waiting on the other side,” Flemming said when she returned to the kitchen.

She listened without admitting she didn’t understand what he meant.

“People have to hit bottom before something new can take root,” he continued, “and maybe that new thing is what will make you truly happy.”

He fidgeted a little in his chair before awkwardly conceding that he was sure this wouldn’t be much help to her right now, but still maybe it would bring her a
little
comfort now when things seemed bleakest. Anyway, it had helped him.

She sat for a moment staring into space and then asked him if he was happy again.

“That’s the whole problem with you, you know,” Flemming said. “You’re always so sensible and matter-of-fact; you won’t let anyone squeak by with anything less than a concrete answer or hard-and-fast data. I guess, no, I’m still working on it. Give me time. But I have no doubt it’s coming—and I’ve got a better life now living on my own than I did there at the end with my wife. It’s hard to admit that when you have kids, but that’s how it is.”