Erotic Refugees (16 page)

All the way home on the bus he
kept his mobile off. Honestly, what was he doing? He couldn't just
be sneaking into Anja's for Saturday evening sex, when he was
really more into her friend. What kind of arsehole was he? He
should be giving her a wide berth, and working on Middle Mum
because that was, well, The New Plan.

Anja, though, was nice. She
smelled all sweet and flowery and had great curves on her thin
frame, plus muscles in all the right places. Then she did that
thing with her hips, and that other thing with her teeth…

Eoin groaned piteously. How was
it that he could turn uncomplicated sex into something to fret
over? Anja wasn't nasty or pushy in any way. She had screwed him
hungrily, and then made tea and brought him an extra pillow. She
wasn't forcing him to do any of it either. In fact he'd contacted
her earlier in the day to “go for a walk” in the nice weather
although both of them understood that any walking would be done
strictly within the confines of her bedroom.

He stepped off the bus, picked
up some milk at the local shop, and stomped gloomily up the steps
to his apartment. First stop was the kettle and then he pulled out
his phone and turned it back on, figuring he was safe from further
temptation. Anja wouldn't be able to lure him back, protected as he
was inside his own walls, and she couldn't come in without being
invited. Even if she did, he had garlic ready.

There was a text message
waiting for him and that made his heart jump. But it was just Rob
who was out and wondered what Eoin was up to. It was sent a couple
of hours earlier so there was really no point in replying now. And
if he did, Rob would only convince him to come out and waste the
whole evening. After which he might very well end up at Anja's
place again, if his current record of shallow resolve was anything
to go by.

No, he had better plans for the
evening. There was much to be done, and none of it had anything to
do with packing. He moved his finger to the button that would close
the text but just then, with a startling sound, the phone started
to ring. He gave a yelp and dropped it like a hot brick. It spun
away, avoiding his grasping hands, but luckily struck the mat and
not the hard wooden floor. All he had to do was slide the shell
back on and turn it over, still ringing.

It wasn't Anja calling. It was
Jenny.

Eoin felt annoyance mixed with
panic, as unscheduled phone calls from Jenny were rarely good news.
He took a breath, shook his head to loosen a few shoulder muscles,
and pressed the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“
Eoin,” Jenny said. It
was at this point that people usually asked how the other person
was, but Jenny skipped that part, and Eoin skipped it too. She was
silent for a while and Eoin could hear her breathing and the sound
of a TV program Damien was watching in the background. It felt like
she was deciding what to say next, and that could only be
bad.

“
Eoin,” she said again.
“You are bringing Damien back from Ireland. Because if you
don't—”

“
What? Of course we're
coming back, what the hell?” Eoin couldn't help raising his voice
at this ridiculous idea. “What do you think we'd do over in
Ireland? Run off and, and start a bakery—”

“
Be serious Eoin!” Jenny
hissed. He heard her footsteps, and knew that she was changing room
(in the house partly owned by him) so that Damien wouldn't
hear.

“
I don't know anything
about you any more, Eoin,” she said. “How can I? You do just what
you want, it seems! Whatever is good for you, but nobody
else—”

Eoin grabbed a fistful of his
hair in his left hand and pulled until it hurt. He didn't know why
it always had to be like this when he talked to Jenny. She made him
feel like the nastiest person alive, and he was quite sure that
wasn't the case. Or maybe it was? He didn't feel like a selfish
bastard, but maybe all selfish bastards felt that way?

He sat down on the corner of
the bed and poked at a few wrinkles in the duvet, pulling and
smoothing them until the whole thing was flat and neat. “Jenny, I
don't think it's fair—”

“
His passport is with me,
you know.” Her voice was neutral and she didn't at all make it
sound like a threat. She didn't need to. Eoin got it.

“
Look, we talked about
this, Jenny. He's travelled away with you loads of times, and you
can't stop me, I'm well within my rights—”

“
Your rights! And what
about the rights of that little boy, to have a family, and a home,
din själviska—”

“
Alright now, stop it!
It's decided. I'm taking the kid on holiday to see my family like
we planned.”

There was a pause. “Well maybe
I won't be able to find the passport—”

“
Damn it Jenny!” Eoin
grabbed the duvet with his free hand and pulled at it, messing up
the nice smoothing job he'd just completed. He had more than enough
to worry about right now. He didn't need this too.

”
Listen to me. I am
taking him to see his family, alright? He's been asking about them,
you know he has. About the cat, and that swing in the garden. And
if you want to stop him from going there, fine, do that! Just
remember in the future that it was your decision to break him away
from that part of his family, and not mine.”

Jenny was silent. Eoin heard
her shallow breathing and then her footsteps as she changed room
again. Damien was in the background once more, babbling along with
the TV program in Swedish. Still she didn't say anything. Maybe she
was about to cry. It wasn't like her, but he could imagine it
happening, and he wasn't very far from it himself.

She spoke again and her voice
had returned to being painfully neutral. “I'll bring him over at
five. With the passport. And the medicine in case he gets that ear
problem—”

“
Look!” Eoin took a deep
breath, and tried again. “Look, it’s fine, I have my own medicine,
and a thermometer, and extra socks and underwear. He'll. Be.
Fine.”

“
And if you get it into
your head to not come back I swear—”

“
Jenny! Please. See you
tomorrow.”

“
Right,” she said, and
hung up.

He put the mobile on the bed
and stared at it until the buzzing in his head died away. Nothing
left him more drained than talking to Jenny, especially when she
dragged Damien into the argument just to make him feel that roaring
guilt.

Eoin accepted that she felt bad
about Damien living in two places, and about her life being
shattered, and about every other damn thing she blamed him for.
That didn't give her the right to make him feel just as bad
whenever she could.

Alice had told him countless
times that Jenny's behaviour was troubled and abnormal, and that he
shouldn't let it get to him. He tried to believe that, to hang onto
that thought, and mostly he succeeded.

He wished Alice were around
right now. When things like this happened he missed her more than
ever.

Eoin decided to pull himself
together and stop thinking about it. He got up, moved into the
kitchen and swung himself into his chair in front of his laptop. He
went to Diamond Date and typed in his username irish_clover. Then
he realised what he was doing and shook his head. He erased the
characters, studied the blinking cursor for a moment, and typed in
boo_radley, the username on his other account, the one he'd been
using for a week now to scout Middle Mum and come up with a way to
contact her.

It wasn't the most developed
dating profile in the world. The photo (of his cousin Neil at a
family wedding) was a bit blurry and the description was pretty
bare. But it was funny, it was concise, it was light-hearted, and
everything was in English as Alice had suggested. In fact he
suspected the ghost profile was actually better than his real
profile. Maybe boo_radley would end up doing better than
irish_clover in the dating world.

The fact that boo_radley didn't
really exist was beside the point. Online existence was such a
shaky concept anyway, right?

He logged in and there it was,
a fat number one enclosed by a pair of brackets on top of his
inbox. He sucked in a lungful of air and held his breath as he
clicked on the new mail. Oh yes. Abso-fucking-lutely yes! Middle
Mum had replied!

He leapt up and did a little
dance in the kitchen, gyrating and air-boxing in sheer joy. Then he
happened to glance out the window and saw two people standing on
the balcony opposite, staring back at him. He froze and flattened
himself against the wall. A deep breath, then he dropped to the
floor and crawled back into his seat, keeping well out of view. He
settled down and hovered the pointer over the mail from
RosieCotton, with his face almost pressed up against the
screen.

The mail he’d sent her
twenty-four hours earlier had been short.

I am actually good friends with
Samwise, but I won't mention anything about seeing you on a dating
site. I hear he's away on business anyway, something about a
ring.

It had, to start with, been
much longer, but after agonising over it for hours he'd thrown out
the bulk of it, leaving only those two sentences. Now it remained
to be seen if they'd done their job. He held his breath and opened
her reply.

Thank you for the tips. But I
know he's away with that Frodo. I think they are playing golf like
they are always. Men like golf, don't they? Maria.

Eoin grinned. She had given him
her name, and after only one exchange of mails! This meant he
probably had to give her some fake name in return, but a little
more lying wouldn't hurt, would it? More important, though, was
that she'd asked him a question and was therefore fishing for a way
to continue the dialogue.

Alice had told him, during one
of her get-Eoin-dating drives, that on a dating site one reply is a
wave, two is a consideration, and three is a yes. And now that
Middle Mum (AKA Maria) was clearly fishing for a second mail from
him, it meant he was under serious consideration.

He read it again and kept on
grinning. As first mails went, this was a mind-blowing success. His
eye skipped down to the list of people who'd viewed his profile
recently and there she was, three places down. It was now
impossible for him to sit still and he got up to fill a glass of
wine. This was big news and would take some serious concentration,
as well as a very large glass to put the wine in.

As he fiddled with the plastic
spout on a fresh box he pondered how he'd reply. What did she mean
with the golf comment? Did she like golf, or hate it? Was it a
deal-breaker if he didn't like golf? But a woman who liked Lord of
the Rings wouldn't like golf. Weren't they mutually exclusive? They
had to be, surely.

He sipped the wine and sat down
to think properly. Obviously he couldn't send a reply too quickly,
because that would make him appear too eager. And if he got some
rapport going with her they'd only be able to meet up after things
faded out with Anja. So he had to slow that whole process down.

But he couldn't leave it too
long either, because that would show he was a moron who couldn't
come up with a snappy reply in a reasonable span of time.

He was also going to Ireland on
Monday, which meant he'd have to send the reply at the latest
tomorrow, before he entered the land of little or no Internet. Yes,
tomorrow was probably good. It also gave him a whole day to think
about it (or fret about it, most likely).

He leaned back in the chair
with his legs crossed, happy with his progress but unable to ignore
that what he was doing wasn't very honest. The chances of the lady
in question taking it well, should she find out about it, were slim
indeed.

But damn it, the situation was
dire! Alice couldn't be consulted for advice until that unspecified
thing between them stopped being a thing, and he needed some way to
get talking properly to Maria. He'd just have to plough ahead and
explain it all to Maria later after she'd been convinced of his
worthiness.

(And after he'd stopped banging
her best friend.)

Eoin arrived at Sonja's café on
Högalidsgatan at five to ten. Rob swore blind that the place had
the best Sunday brunch in Stockholm, but Eoin was pretty sure he'd
picked it because it was only a short walk from his own flat.

Eoin sat down at an empty
table—there were a few of them—and grabbed a newspaper. The other
customers didn't react to his presence and the staff didn't as much
as glance in his direction. Eoin was used to this. As a customer in
Sweden one was often treated as more of a hindrance than an asset,
and it was just something that had to be put up with. Along with
their confusion about what makes a sandwich, and their inability to
pull a proper pint of Guinness.

Rob was only ten minutes late,
looking a bit dishevelled in a crinkled shirt, scruffy denim jacket
and two-day old stubble. He fell into a chair and exhaled, giving
the impression that getting to a location down the road
approximately on time was the most difficult thing he'd done in
weeks.

Eoin started to say something
but Rob waved at him feebly and muttered, “No, coffee first”. He
dragged himself to the counter, ordered in a low mumble (in
Swedish, Eoin noticed) and returned with a mug of rich black
coffee.

Eoin went and ordered the
medium breakfast, the contents of which were not specified.
Presumably it contained an egg, and yoghurt or muesli, and maybe a
little sandwich. Possibly juice. He paid, grabbed a coffee and sat
back down. Rob was scanning the sports section of the paper and
some focus was returning to his eyes.

“
Aren't you missing your
course?”