at her. She had wondered about her neighbor sometimes, what he really did to conquer so many hearts. Now she was seeing it with her own eyes.
He looked at her like she was the only person in the whole world, and as if he really liked her. Well, ‘liked her’ was too weak. He looked like he had been waiting for her his whole life and now stood there, completely attentive, ready to do anything for her. God, he’s a good actor!, she thought, impressed despite herself, caught in the confused locking of their eyes. But why are you looking at • • like that?
That was when she realized. He didn’t recognize her, because he had never seen – and even now wasn’t seeing – her. It was all the fakery that he was seeing, and he clearly appreciated it. The new hair color and the shiny Hollywood curls, the fake, painted eyelashes, the lip gloss, the rented dress, and, of course, the well-padded chocolate-brown bra. She had dressed up as a ‘pin-up chick’ and suddenly she was on Mr Sex Machine’s radar. She was suitable prey for the predator.
Then a pretty, dark-haired girl approached Peter with a corset provocatively pressed against her body, obviously flirty and intimate. Vera wasn’t surprised that she had never seen the girl before. The scene illustrated perfectly why Peter’s inappropriate gaze had caused her to have such unpleasant associations. Vera fled back into her changing room and let the swing doors hide her blush of indignation. Safely alone again, she sat down and tried to calm her racing pulse with deep breaths.
‘That one!’ Cissi said, sticking her head into Vera’s changing room. Vera hopped nervously up off the little stool. Shhh, she wanted to say.
‘Ooh la la!’ emphasized Cissi and lifted her arched eyebrows suggestively.
Don’t you recognize Peter? ‘Do you think so?’ asked Vera and tried to look relaxed.
‘Yes! What a heartbreaker!’ said Cissi with conviction.
Vera grimly took off the formal gloves, no longer able to hide what she felt in her heart.
‘Right. Exactly. And that’s nothing worth betting on. It’s really nothing worth having.’
Cissi stared uncomprehendingly at her. ‘What? A girl needs it sometimes, right? It does the trick. Of course you should buy it. No doubt about it!’
13
Jujutsu belongs to the Japanese martial arts family of budo. Ju is translated as soft and responsive, while jutsu means method or technique. The name communicates that it is the art of defeating an opponent using as little physical strength as possible.
Peter’s first book about his martial art
Peter’s eyes had been drawn like a magnet to the reddish brown curls, and to his joy he realized that it actually was the girl from the changing room who was sitting on the bus he climbed onto for the ride home. She was real and she was travelling east on the number 8 bus, just like he was, at the same time! He sat tensely, wondering why she looked so familiar. Had they met when they were out somewhere? He thought that he ought to find out her name. He didn’t want to lose her again, not without knowing something about her.
But then strange things started happening.
The first was that she sat next to Cissi, the hippie lady from the department. Maybe he had seen her with Cissi? But that didn’t feel right. They were talking. He sat diagonally behind them and strained to hear what they were saying. It was then he realized that the voice he had recognized from the left-hand changing room had been Cissi’s. She’s a friend of Cissi! Well then, he could just ask Cissi who she was and needn’t worry about losing her. Cissi said, ‘See you,’ and got up. When she moved to the back of the bus to get off, Peter hurriedly looked away, out through the window, as if he didn’t want her to see him. Afterwards he wondered why he had done so.
Then things got even stranger. As soon as the bus started moving again a teenage boy slunk forward and sat down next to her. Peter recognized him. It was the kid with the jeans and the big unruly hair who had been waiting outside the changing rooms. Peter considered for a brief moment, looked around in embarrassment, and moved lithely and quietly across the aisle to the boy’s now empty seat, only two seats behind her. He listened tensely.
‘You know, she brings up sex all the time. That’s not what it’s supposed to be about!’ the boy complained.
‘Well then all you need to do is explain that to her.’
She sounds kind, Peter thought affectionately and a strange certainty filled him.
‘I’m sure she’ll help you,’ she continued.
‘Yeah, but I think you can help better. You’re like, married and everything!’
She’s married! His heart sank like a stone – he hadn’t thought of that. She might actually be happily married, faithful and forever unavailable.
She looked out of the window, but the youngster looked pleadingly at her, ‘please?’
Peter realized with some discomfort that he himself might not have been fully informed about the ages of all the girls he’d picked up in the city, but none of them had been that young, had they?
‘There’s no rush. As long as it’s, like, before the class trip,’ the teenager continued.
‘When’s that, then?’
‘In the spring.’
‘I’m really not the right person,’ she said, and Peter felt relieved.
Her curls spilled between the seats when she turned her head and studied the boy; she shook her head a little, and Peter got the sense that she was amused.
‘Alright,’ she said finally.
Hah, so much for being faithful. If you’re going to help guys hungry for love, the least you can do is stick to ones your own age, thought Peter helplessly.
The kid looked satisfied under his giant hair: ‘Awesome! I’ll, like, come over some time. I’ll check with Cissi about where you live and stuff.’
The kid got up and moved to a seat on the other side of the bus, the one Peter had been sitting in before. He put on his headphones and turned the music on. I’m Mister Lovva-Lovva, bragged Shaggy so loudly that it was audible to everyone on the bus.
Tinnitus is what you are going to get, Mister Lovva-Lovva, thought Peter sourly, again feeling like he was not at all himself. But there was something familiar in that voice – the feeling that he had heard it before grew stronger. And how could he be so strangely certain that she was kind? The truth crept up on him slowly. When she got off at his bus stop and he saw that she limped toward Stipend Street, he was certain. The woman from the changing room was the dull, grey girl on crutches – his wall-banging neighbor Vera Lund-something. Gren? Berg? Kvist?
A cold fall wind made him shiver, and he put up the collar of his tweed blazer. He waited a while to give her more of a head start. He couldn’t bring himself to catch up and talk to her. Embarrassment paralyzed him.
Of course, he had never before seen her in anything other than ugly old jogging clothes with a fuzzy braid down her back. Yet from the moment he had seen the beauty in
