Erotic Refugees (5 page)

But still he couldn't stop
himself from trying.

“
No, no, I didn't mean it
like that. I meant that, you know, I could have been talking to
other girls. I wasn't, but I could have, and I…”

The orange-shirted man was
watching all this with interest. He caught Eoin's eye, gave his
head a quick shake and drew a finger across his throat. Eoin took
the hint and clamped his mouth shut to prevent more drivel from
leaking out, but it was too late for that now.

Rebecka stepped back from the
bar. “You wait here.” She stomped off and returned a very short
time later with Eoin's jacket, rolled into a ball. She thrust it at
him.

“
My friends were right,
you were too boring.”

She turned on her heel with a
sniff and stalked off for good.

Eoin raised his voice to what
he hoped was a shout, but was in reality more of a petulant
whine.

“
Well at least I wasn't a
half-tonne heavier than I said I was!”

She was already out of range
and Eoin's parting shot flew wide, raising only a few glances from
the people sitting at the bar and a tiny shake of the head from the
barman.

“
Look,” the man in the
orange shirt said. “Sorry if I screwed that up for ye. But she
looked like bad news anyway. Arse like a builder. Rotten temper
too. Reminded me of a sheepdog we had back on the farm, old Jessie.
Shot him in the end, the poor mad bastard, and for the best too.
Anyway.” He slapped his wallet on the bar. “The name's Rob, and I'm
guessing I owe ye one, for stickin' my nose in there. Or maybe more
than one. So what're ye having?”

Eoin fixed the man with a
withering glare, in no doubt that he'd never hated anybody as much
in his entire life. But he was trying to make up for it, so…

“
Oh alright then, a
Guinness. But definitely just the one.”

Chapter
6

Rob peered through his
letterbox and watched in dismay as people moved up and down the
hall outside, carrying mops and buckets and other implements of
domestic torture.

Damn it, how could he have
forgotten—today was the twice-yearly cleaning day! It was that most
forced of occasions when every apartment owner in the building was
supposed to head out in a grand show of camaraderie and then
proceed to scrub, paint, patch or fanatically arrange
something.

Rob had managed to avoid the
five previous cleaning occasions since he'd moved in, but now it
seemed his luck had ran out. He would have to leave his flat soon
to make it on time for his indoor hockey game, but he knew the
instant he poked his nose out he'd be snared by neighbours and put
to work at some horrible task involving gardening gloves, noxious
chemicals and idle banter.

Why couldn't it be more like
Ireland? If you bought a flat there you actually owned it and just
paid for some nameless serf to turn up every week and keep the
building in order. In Sweden you did kind of own your flat, but not
really. What you actually owned was a share of the building, and
you were expected to get involved in events like this to make up
for the fact that nobody said as much as hello to you for the rest
of the year.

But why now? Why today?

"Crap," Rob said, still
squinting through the letterbox. He was becoming resigned to the
idea of hiding under his bed all afternoon when suddenly he spotted
his chance.

His neighbour Annika was making
for his door, sweeping a wide mop from side to side as she
approached. Annika was all right, and he was fairly sure she
fancied him, so she'd be perfectly willing to help him make his
escape.

When she drew level with his
door he cracked it open and hissed her name. She looked up in
surprise and gave a sly grin when she saw half of his face peering
out. He invited her in with a jerk of his head. Her eyes widened
and she glanced around before balancing the mop against the wall
and slipping in through the door.

Rob closed the door and shoved
his sports bag out of the way with his foot as he turned on the
light.

"You are not cleaning, Rob?"
she said, giving him what could only be interpreted as a naughty
grin. "We thought you were not home. I told them you were probably
in the church."

He stared at the woman standing
in his little hall, not sure if she was joking or not. She was not
unattractive, Annika, with her (probably dyed) blonde hair,
white-rimmed glasses and sizeable breasts, all on a wiry,
well-trained frame. She was somewhere in her mid-thirties, but Rob
had never really cared exactly where that was since the grey zone
after twenty-nine was not an area in which he was particularly
experienced, or interested, when it came to females.

"Um, yeah, church. Sure, I
never miss it, have a season ticket, me. Look, how long more are
they out there for?"

"Some hours,” she said,
shuffling closer to him. “Olle is in charge. He showed us a
timetable. It is very extensive."

Rob groaned, one of those true,
painful, heartfelt groans. Olle was the most irritating man in the
world, a bald, arrogant, red-faced autocrat who always spoke to you
as if he were addressing an auditorium without a microphone even if
you were standing in front of him. As an unshakeable member of the
residents association, Olle simply had to be in charge of
everything and he loved ordering people about as if he had a
God-given right to do so.

Rob heard his voice now,
booming from the depths of the building as he bellowed orders at
some poor sod concerning chairs and the proper way in which to move
and/or stack them. If Olle saw him he was finished. He wouldn't get
away from the building until nightfall, or possibly dawn.

Annika prodded her glasses
flush against her face. "So you don't want to do cleaning? They
won't be happy."

"Yeah, I know, but I forgot
what day it was, and I have other things to do. Very important
things."

"Hmm," Annika said, studying
him in a way that he did not find altogether comfortable. "But you
live on the first floor. Just climb down."

Rob thought about this. "Well
it's a bit far to jump. No point going to play bandy with broken
ankles, you know?"

Annika raised a finger and
pursed her lips. "Wait, I have it! Just hang on!"

She slipped out though the
door, leaving Rob to stand around brushing hairs from his jacket
and checking his watch. Barely a minute later she knocked on his
door and Rob let her in. She was holding what appeared to be a ball
of rope, and he studied it with suspicion.

"It's a rope ladder. You know,
if there is fire, and you escape."

"You have a rope ladder in your
flat?" Rob said. "But … why?"

"Why? For times like now, when
it becomes useful! We hang it from your balcony and trip-trap down
you go! But Rob." She lowered her voice and tilted her head. "Then
you must do something for me."

Oh hell, he thought, here it
comes. Now she asks for money, or emotional support, or help with
doing her wallpaper. Maybe it's sex she's after, and that could
probably be managed, if it's just the once, and nobody found out
about it. Although—he glanced at his watch again—things were
running on rather a tight schedule.

"I have a midsummer party, and
I would like you to come. You have something planned?"

Rob smiled politely and shook
his head, since she was clearly holding all the cards here, and the
card box, and the little plastic wrapper the box came in. It looked
like he was on his way to her party.

Her eyes sparkled. "Good then!
Everybody comes at one, and we drink a little, and then we all go
to the park. It will be great!"

He nodded. Sure, it'll be
great, especially as her dull friends would be there and he
couldn't leave early with the excuse of having to travel home,
since he would already be home. Oh well, that was a future worry,
and right now it was getting late and this escape needed to be put
into action.

"Great, then I show you,"
Annika said. "Come!"

She made her way through the
living room and Rob felt a wince of embarrassment at the mess. Not
any greater mess than normal, just a greater mess than the average
person would ever have to deal with in their lives.

At least there were no
magazines of a questionable moral nature lying open anywhere. Or,
at least, he hoped not.

Annika pulled open the door to
the French balcony. She tossed out the rope ladder, fixed the two
big hooks to the metal frame, and stood back with a flourish.

"All ready. You go, I pull it
back up. How do I lock your door?"

Rob shook his head. "Oh don't
worry about it, what is there to steal? I'll just lock it when I
get home."

He dashed back to the hall to
get his sports bag, which he dropped from the balcony. It landed
with a thump of dust and dry leaves. With Annika's help he
manoeuvred himself onto the rope ladder. It wasn't very stable but
with careful steps, and some panicked grabbing, he made it the
short distance to the ground.

The door to the basement at the
back of the building was open, and he could hear people moving
around inside to the steady drone of Olle's voice, like slaves
rowing a galley. He swept up his bag and waved a thank-you to
Annika who was already pulling up the rope ladder.

"See you next Friday then!" she
said cheerily and disappeared inside his flat, closing the balcony
door behind her.

Rob went into stealth mode and
moved off, hugging the corner of the building with his bag balanced
on his shoulder to hide his face.

Just perfect—a dull party he
was practically forced to attend. He'd been planning to just go out
the night before midsummer and sleep the whole day away like he'd
done with the previous two. Instead he'd have to entertain Annika
and her boring friends and do his best to avoid the clutches of her
middle-aged fingers.

Feeling quite sorry for
himself, he slipped around the corner and took the long way to the
subway station to avoid any chance of being spotted from his
building. Now he was looking forward to forgetting his woes in a
sweaty, violent game of indoor hockey and, more importantly, in the
long, meandering beer evening that invariably followed.

“
Come on, it's a party!
We'll be in the park, and they'll be doing that frog dance, and
there'll be people slippin' off behind the bushes and getting up to
all sorts. It'll be brilliant!”

Eamonn shook his head. “Nah, it
sounds kind of stupid. I'll just watch the telly or head down the
pub.”

Rob drained his Guinness,
trying to decide if it was worth pressing Eamonn a bit harder, or
if he should just give up and turn his attention to Andy or
Brian.

He put the empty pint glass
down, pushing aside some older glasses to make room. The Shamrock
was one of those bars where they didn't remove the glasses as they
are emptied, and Rob liked it that way. It gave one a sense of
accomplishment, having the night's hard work arranged upon the
table. But it also served as a stern reminder. When the physical
space on the table was running low it was clearly time to think
about taking it easy. Or maybe time to move to a bigger table.

“
Come on Eamonn, I'm
offerin' food, booze and nice women. And you just want to sit
around at home and watch the telly?”

Eamonn fished around inside a
crisp packet. Finding nothing, he extracted his fingers and slurped
the salt from them instead.

“
Well what's the whole
idea with midsummer anyway? I don't get it.”

“
It's a big fuck-off
party, that's the idea! Just come along to a real midsummer, see
how it is. They're nice people, lovely people. Go on now, tell him
Andy!”

Andy leaned back and cracked
his arms noisily behind his head.

“
Rob, I've met your
neighbour. Remember the New Year’s party, she got me in the corner
and talked at me about her dead cat for half an hour? Had me ready
to jump off the balcony and end it all.”

Rob shot him a look of daggers.
Andy smiled back and shrugged.

“
All I'm saying is, you
sold your soul to this lady for a rope ladder so now you're gonna
have to bite the bullet. Or whatever else she offers to be
bitten.”

Andy Quirley was a nice guy but
he had a sadistic streak in him, most evident when he was shoving
you hard up against a wall during a bandy game. Sometimes Rob felt
like tugging at his beard and slapping him repeatedly on his bald
head in a Benny Hill manner, just to see what he'd do. He never did
though, because Andy also had very big fuck-off muscles and looked
like he knew how to use them.

Eamonn Dee, on the other hand,
would only hurt a fly if the fly had forgotten to get its round in,
or had conned him in a deal involving cattle. He was a wiry
flap-eared lad from the wilds of County Mayo, not long in Sweden,
and not exactly the kind of person you'd be all excited about
bringing to a party.

Rob was desperate though. He
just couldn't show up at a party by himself, and the list of
possible candidates was growing short. He turned to Brian, his last
hope, with as pathetic a look as he could muster. Brian raised his
hand and cut him off before he had even inhaled.

“
Sorry mate, I have to
polish my ash-trays. And I have a whole pile of ash-trays, let me
tell you.”

“
Oh come on Brian, the
café won't even be open on midsummer, will it? What can ye possibly
be up to that's more fun than a party with people ye don't
know?”

“
I like it when you
include the answer to a question in the actual question,” Brian
said with a wise nod. “Very thoughtful. Saves time for all
involved.”