The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark: A Novel (7 page)

ten

Henrik stared at the magazine rack until his eyes hurt.

A bookstore employee tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir. May I help you?”

Henrik shook the cobwebs out of his head.

“No, thank you,” he said.

The bookstore employee gave him a perturbed look and walked away. Henrik waited until the nosy employee was out of view and then grabbed six magazines, including one in a plastic wrapper from the back shelf, and walked into the coffee shop attached to the enormous bookstore.

A woman with blond highlights and chubby ankles was ahead of him in line.

“I’ll have a venti iced caramel macchiato, add one and a quarter pump white chocolate and six pumps vanilla, go easy on the sixth pump, with two whole packets of Equal, no whip, cream foam and three dashes of cinnamon, one to start and two on top.”

Henrik looked at her as though she was insane.

The barista called the woman’s order and looked at Henrik to make his.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee, black,” he said.

“What size, sir?”

“Regular.”

“We don’t have size regular.” The barista pointed up to the list of prices on the wall. “We have tall, grande and venti.”

The barista, a young woman of no more than nineteen, with short black hair, thick-rimmed glasses and an eyebrow ring protruding from a slightly infected patch of skin, shifted her stance from one leg to the other and glanced over Henrik’s shoulder. Henrik looked back as well. A lineup had formed behind him. From the general look of displeasure on their faces, the six customers waiting in line seemed to be growing impatient.

It can’t be this hard, Henrik thought. It’s just ordering coffee.

“Whatever is the smallest, most regular size. That’s what I’ll have,” he said.

Now the woman looked at him as though he was insane. She called out for a venti, charged him for a grande, and sent Henrik on his way.

Henrik sat down at a table by himself and flipped through the magazines.
Sports Fishing
? Didn’t interest him.
Mobile Home Enthusiast
? It didn’t catch his attention either. Henrik opened a martial arts magazine and read an article on the art of attacking a person with nunchucks. In the side panel were some truly awesome photos of a man dressed up as a ninja delivering a series of bone-shattering blows to his would-be attacker. The ninja was wearing a tight karate outfit that concealed everything except his eyes, while the attacker was dressed like a biker with a frayed jean jacket and a long goatee. Henrik noticed, and not for the first time, that bad guys in martial arts magazines and television programs typically have some sort of sinister-looking facial hair.

Henrik thought perhaps he could grow some facial hair, something to accentuate his woolly sideburns. A long ZZ Top–like beard or a Fu Manchu moustache might go a long way in setting him apart from the rest of society. It would have been a perfect idea if not for the fact that Henrik could barely grow much more than a few gray whiskers at the bottom of his chin. His lack of hair growth — promoting testosterone was something of a blessing as Henrik wasn’t really a facial hair kind of guy and besides, he’d long been annoyed by guys with goatees and backward baseball caps and didn’t really want to look anything like them.

He was more fascinated by the man in the ninja costume. So fascinated in fact, that for approximately seven minutes, Henrik seriously considered taking up a martial art of some kind; not all nine disciplines one requires to become a full-fledged ninja, but perhaps a single martial art such as kickboxing or ninja star throwing — something that would involve less physical contact than judo. He pictured a scene from a movie involving an aerial overhead shot in which he, Henrik Nordmark, would dispatch a series of jean jacket–clad villains one by one. Some of his assailants would fall to his high-flying kicks and formidable punches. Others — those holding chains and two-by-fours with nails protruding from their ends — would drop to the ground clinging to their wounds, casualties of his astoundingly accurate ninja-star throwing. Yes, this all sounded great to Henrik.

His enthusiasm faded as he read the magazine further and learned that martial arts wasn’t so much of an activity as it was a lifestyle and as un-athletic as Henrik was, he wasn’t about to commit to starting an active lifestyle he knew he would most likely abandon in less than three weeks.

Henrik picked up the next magazine, the one in the clear plastic sheath, entitled
Naughty Neighbors
. The cover tantalized with salacious photos and blackened-out thumbnail images that suggested on the inside some neighbors were being quite naughty indeed. Henrik wasn’t convinced. While the two girls in see-through brassieres on the cover were enjoying their bubble bath and appeared to be slightly badly behaved, he doubted very much that they lived next door to one another, or even in the same federal voting district.

He tossed the tantalizing rag aside and picked up a copy of
Maclean’s
. On the cover was a picture of a young man slumped against a wall, smoking marijuana. The wall was held up by a stack of red and green poker chips. In large bold letters were the words “
ADDICTION
: A Revealing Exposé.” Henrik got excited and flipped the magazine open. He read about all kinds of addictions — drug and alcohol, gambling addictions, sex addictions, internet and video games, even food addictions. It seemed like one could be addicted to just about anything.

A voice broke his concentration.

“Sir, have you purchased those magazines?”

The nosy bookstore employee had tracked Henrik down and was now intent on asserting some manner of authority over him.

“No, I haven’t,” Henrik said.

“Well you have to purchase items before you enter the coffee shop.” The man pointed to a sign which read verbatim what he’d just said.

Part embarrassed, part indignant, Henrik looked down at the table and hoped the man would just go away. Eventually he did, but not before collecting the magazines Henrik had unintentionally absconded with. The bookstore employee gave Henrik a scolding look and slowly shook his head with disgust as he picked up the
Naughty Neighbors
magazine and then seemed to hover for a while, lording a supposed high moral standing over him. Henrik wanted to grab the man by the nose and yell, “
You
sell this magazine! You’re equally culpable, if not more so, for selling this trash as I am for reading it!” But he couldn’t find the internal fortitude to say anything and instead sat there sheepishly looking at a discarded packet of Sweet ’N Low on the floor until the man left.

Henrik sipped his black coffee and reflected on the addiction article. For all of the negatives associated with addiction, there was also something alluring about having a driving force in one’s life. Gamblers lost their cars and houses to slot machines and blackjack tables and yet still they came back for more. Sex addicts caught all manner of
STD
s and exchanged phobia-breeding, germ-filled saliva with dozens if not hundreds of partners a year, yet still they cruised side streets and swingers bars desperate for someone to touch their private parts. The drug addict would rather steal than go without his fix.

Henrik longed to feel a compulsion so strong that nothing else mattered. He wasn’t about to give up his job for a life of Dumpster diving and sticking needles in his arm. Nor was he willing to gamble away what little money he had on confusing table games in smoke-ridden casinos. But perhaps there was a way he could get close enough to one of these vices to tantalize his senses with just a taste of the pressing urge these people felt every day.

But which vice? That was the dilemma.

Henrik looked around for a sign — something, anything to help him decide. He searched the faceless faces passing by and hunted with his eyes along the walls. In the background, a song about three little birds played over the corporate bookstore stereo.

The sign appeared suddenly like a beacon on a dark night, one Henrik couldn’t believe he’d overlooked. The entire bookstore tumbled down in his mind’s eye, with people and bookshelves and cash registers collapsing by the wayside like trees run over by a bulldozer. The world disappeared and all that remained was a magazine on the next table — a copy of
High Times
with Bob Marley smoking a joint on the cover.

Henrik picked up the magazine and an insert fell out. He gazed at the 4x6 piece of orange paper with wide eyes and then tucked it discreetly in his pocket. Henrik stood up. In his haste, he knocked over his cup of coffee. It spilled off the edge of the table and burned the chubby ankles of the woman with the iced macchiato. He ignored his natural instinct to stop and apologize. Henrik walked out of the bookstore and into the street in search of euphoria. He was headed to the docks to buy himself some marijuana.

The docks were a scary place. Henrik had only ever been there on weekends and statutory holidays when the community fishermen’s fair took over the area. He arrived to find a desolate wasteland of rusted cargo vessels, drunken hobos and random fish carcasses strewn across the pier. The Ferris wheel and cotton candy machines he anticipated, the families strolling around with little girls on their father’s shoulders and boys pedaling Big Wheels, the all-ages fun and carnival games were absent. Even though it was well into the daylight hours, Henrik felt a dangerous foreboding about this place.

His mission was simple: purchase the marijuana and get the hell out of there in enough time to start work in an hour and fourteen minutes. He wandered around aimlessly for a while, careful not to make eye contact with any of the street people lurking in alleyways, before he saw a lone man sitting on a bench at the end of the pier. Henrik promptly walked over and introduced himself. The man had a long beard and a dark overcoat covered in fishing lures. His red face was partially hidden by his jacket and he didn’t look up when Henrik said hello.

“Do you know where I might procure myself some Mary Jane?” Henrik said.

The man turned his head a fraction of an inch. His voice was whispery and full of needles.

“Do you mean a hooker?”

“Goodness no,” Henrik said, flustered. “I’m looking for some grass. You know, some reefer.”

The man stared straight through him. Henrik pulled the orange piece of paper out of his pocket. On this insert taken from the
High Times
magazine were all sorts of nicknames for the drug. Henrik’s courage received an immediate boost as he was pretty sure he was less likely to get arrested if he spoke in code.

“Some Indonesian Bud. The Devil’s Lettuce. You know, some Giggle Weed.”

The man stood up slowly, with some effort. He was barely two inches taller than Henrik but in his dark cloak with its hundreds of hooks and lures, he towered in the air. “Giggle Weed?” the man said.

Henrik glanced around. The beach underneath the pier was deserted. There wasn’t a single child building a sandcastle or a pair of lovers out for an early morning stroll. The wind whispered eerily in his ear and the rank smell of fish was coated in death. Henrik watched the water churn crisp against the dock and wondered how many bodies had washed up along this shore. Worse yet, how many hapless souls had been thrown to a watery grave from right here at this very spot? He stood absolutely still, too afraid to move.

“Yes,” Henrik said. “Giggle Weed.”

The man’s mouth spread into a gray-toothed grin.

“We all buy our weed at the bait shop,” he said.

Henrik followed the man’s pointing finger with his eyes. He’d walked right by the bait shop and its Open for Business sign.

“Thank you, good sir,” Henrik said and hurried off the pier as fast as he could.

Henrik entered the bait shop. A young girl was chewing bubble gum and standing behind a sign that read “Fifty Worms For Five Bucks.”

“I would like to buy some Mary Jane,” Henrik said. “And I don’t mean a hooker. I mean Giggle Weed — marijuana or whatever the kids are calling it these days. I have seventeen dollars to spend.”

The girl pulled a single joint out of her pocket and set it on the counter. She blew a pink bubble and let it pop before pushing the gum back into her mouth.

“That’ll be seventeen bucks,” she said.

Henrik tucked the marijuana into the breast pocket of his security guard uniform and headed to work. He was positively giddy, like a schoolgirl with a secret she was dying to share. He stood at his post nodding his head at the business-people who walked by, just as he’d done five days a week for the past twenty years. The only difference was the silly smile on his face. Occasionally when he thought nobody was looking, Henrik would place his hand over his pocket like Gollum cradling his precious ring.

When it came time for his break, Henrik practically skipped out the doors. He purchased a pack of matches for two cents at the local mini-mart and found a secluded spot behind the building. Henrik lit up the joint and took his first puff. He immediately coughed out loud. Not once or twice, but a few dozen times. Henrik shook his head in amazement at the dedication it must take to smoke several packs of cigarettes every day. One really had to commit to getting one’s throat used to this corrosive pain.