I say to Jörn now,
“I guess it is because there is such a need to feel grounded in something remotely normal, it seems my mind wanders off to a moment I’d had the other day walking
I was going down a side street by a school and then some houses and I was thinking of the time I’d been staying in Hyde Park before the suicide and I was walking that day past some houses. Across the street there was someone standing in front of a house watching me. He started singing. Loudly. Obviously for my benefit a line from that Crosby Stills and Nash Song ‘Guinniver’ and he was staring right at me as he sang and as I kept walking
I was thinking this but what mostly bothered me was the line he sang because from where he stood he had to have assumed the wrong color of my eyes,” I laugh now, “why did I think this? Right—it’s years later, but it comes to me out of nowhere—but, maybe it’s God’s little joke because two seconds later I hear a group of school boys behind me talking as they’re riding their bikes and as they pass me one boy calls out to me, ‘I like your jacket!’ And you know it was so sweet, I replied ‘thank you!’ And he said, ‘of course! Have a good night!’….” I pause there just stuck on the two experiences as that had been on my mind when the boy on the bike called out to me
I laugh and get up from the bed and brush off some stable diet I’d not noticed was on me from before but I walk to the other window to look out and I say,
“why can’t boys stay that sweet?”
Jörn laughs and shakes his head,
“some things don’t change….” he walks to the club chair and sits down, long legs stretched out before him
“What do you mean?” I ask sensing there is more to this but then I sigh, “it’s a lot to take in ….I mean ….Willem ….? ….not that I couldn’t imagine him —I mean, I almost feel —like I knew this already but I don’t know why because ….like you said, or as you say —it would have been before …. before ….look….”
I walk back to the bed and sigh heavily, and throw myself to sit at the foot of the bed slightly propped by my feet as though ready to spring ….
“I guess —I’m ready —it’s time I just take the bitter pill and hear all of it—I mean, I assume you want to tell me?” I say this and only by the very end of the sentence do I dare look at him
He slowly smiles at me. That cool vampire smile, like one hungry for the kill as his eye alight with their luminous glow
“So—?” I shrug at him
“You think that you are ready? Ready to know why I laughed at what you just said because I’d heard you once say the exact same thing about ….someone ….”but he stops himself and quickly turns away
I get up fast and go over to him,
“what were you about to say?”
He shakes his head
I watch as he looks into the far horizon
For a moment a silence falls between us. But I am thinking about so many other things. I’m thinking about the spy games. The changing of leadership. The spy meetings. All the undercover work missions that always felt especially surreal; like out of a Marvel comic book and I never could put my finger on what that feeling had to do with. That weird underground Batman quality, like a Bruce Wayne and yet there’s that whole ….
“Count Dracula quality ….” I say this aloud not intending to as I’d meant it more for myself
“Where do you think they got it from?” Jörn asks me provocatively, raising one blonde brow. He slowly smiles at me and then he walks towards me; I feel him reading my thoughts, “you sensed it that day when you first saw Stina, didn’t you?”
“Stina?” I say her name slowly as I watch his eyes. He stares hard into me
“The first day you saw her—remember….? The day at the penthouse by Ethan Rhys Jones’s office door ….”
I almost feel myself black out from forgetting to breathe ….my mouth has gone dry from the shock
But I say,
“If I am so clairvoyant then why did I never see what was going on?”
Jörn is near enough now to touch me and he reaches to caress my cheek,
“it was a blocking shield —we intentionally kept you in the dark, you did start to suspect so don’t be hard on yourself—you’re not that obtuse….”
As his words slowly dawn their meanings into me I go back to the foot of the bed to sit down
“Are you still sure you are ready to know all of it?”
For awhile I stare at the floor not really knowing what his question means anymore but I nod absently. I say things like,
“Stina ….?” And just stare from the floor to him and then, “Marcus?” and yet I am missing something else aren’t I?
“Wait wait wait wait ….” I stand up and pace the width of the room several time in almost a kind of winding up rage ….
I stop dead in my tracks and look at Jörn sitting there now as he is sat at the foot of the bed looking at me
I point a finger at him
“Lisa!”
I am actually angry!
“And —aaahhhhh—you got there!”
As if he expected this. Do I have to stop and rewind my thoughts ….he knew Willem from —before—we now have established; the family all in on the facade ….but—the time at Adelsö where I recall Josef and Elsa at the Folkmoot but I had recently recalled there was also Andreas and Hanna there ….
“Yes,” Jörn replies to my thoughts “you are remembering more, aren’t you?”
I just stare and for a moment go blank but then I say,
“if you were with Elan all those years—the day in Adelsö ….that was later —then you had to have been with Lisa and Elan so you cheated!”
Jörn laughs at me— it is a good and long laugh; that kind of satisfying and long witheld glee that is finally let out
When he us finally done he asks,
“have you ever seen Lisa ever seem even slightly interested in me? And vice versa? In fact, can you ever imagine such a scenario ever taking place?”
“Your mother seemed quite sold on the Union if I recall,” I remind him
But this just makes Jörn laugh harder. It is a long while before he seems able to collect himself well enough to ask,
“do you’ve worked out Lisa is from our time?”
“Clearly,” I say with both sarcasm and indignation
“To be clear; we grew up together but I’m sure you’ve heard of the existence of female Vikings?”
I look at him in the eye waiting to see the absolute truth once and for all
“We only did the nasty once when we were about fifteen centuries ago and mana has never let go the fantasy of us as a couple but, that ship sailed a millennia ago,” he says this in such a final manner that I find it hard to argue especially as I have seen them together. And truth be told— yeah, I can see her as a Viking and it’s no stretch
I rub my hands over my face as I put the facts together in my head knowing I’m missing something and when it does hit I finally sigh and shrug looking up into the dazzle of kryotonite as I ask with blank curiousity
“then whose ….?”
“Couldn’t you guess?”
It is like the hand on the clock slows and rewinds again ….
“why can’t boys stay that sweet?” I say again and know now why …. Jörn laughed
I feel that weird lightheaded feel as the blood drains from my face and head and say in a whisper,
“they’re mine.”
