The Cold Song (14 page)

“I don’t want a party!” Jenny screamed. “I don’t want a party! I don’t want suckling pigs and I don’t want your dish! I don’t want anything from you! I don’t want this!”

Then she stormed out of the kitchen in her high heels and did not acknowledge Milla or even notice that she almost knocked her over in the pantry.

A few days later, when the party was finally under way and Liv was dancing on the feet of some distant uncle, Milla decided to stay, at least a little while, even though it was her night off, she’d get to maybe exchange a few words with Jon. She could mention to him that she had played the song he had said she ought to listen to. He had given her a CD (not a new CD, but one that had been lying around in his study, and he hadn’t exactly
given
it to her, it was more of a loan), and then he had sent her a text in the middle of the night and asked her to listen to “Sweetheart Like You.” Just that, nothing else.

Dear Milla
, it said.
Listen to Sweetheart Like You—you’ll like it. J
.

Milla had played the song several times. She wondered why Jon was up in his attic study, sending texts to her, instead of being asleep in bed with Siri. Could it be that he wasn’t happy with Siri? Was he thinking of her—of Milla? Late at night? Was that why he couldn’t sleep? Milla played the song over and over, she found the lyrics on the Internet, read them again and again, wrote them down on a separate sheet of paper, and glued this into her scrapbook. Maybe there was a secret message from Jon to her in there somewhere.

By the way, that’s a cute hat

And that smile’s so hard to resist

But what’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?

Milla knocked back a glass of white wine. And then another. She walked with studied care across the garden in her high heels (the stilettos piercing the lawn and sinking into the earth with every step she took) and into the bathroom off the hallway, the one reserved for guests; she stood in front of the mirror and took her mascara from the little fringed gold evening bag over her shoulder. She smiled at herself in the mirror, adjusted the red strap of her dress. Surely there was something she could do this evening. She had seen people her own age in the Palermo Pizzeria, and she knew there were usually lots of people at the Bellini. Let Jon party with the geriatric set and maybe at some point in the course of the evening he would stop and look around the garden, searching for her, and wonder where she had gone.

Sweetheart like you

Sweetheart

Sweet like you

She took a last look at herself in the mirror and stepped back out into the garden. The old trees sighed in the breeze. The fog coiled around clusters of festive people. Here and there, someone gazed up at the heavens, to see whether they were about to open and wash them all away, fragments of the same conversation heard everywhere.
Is it going to rain soon? Does Siri intend to move the whole party indoors if there’s a downpour? Is there a plan? What about all the food?
And then a woman’s singsong voice rising loudly above all the
others:
A spot of water in our hair is just good luck
. Milla felt a drop of rain land on her shoulder and could not help smiling. She stepped under the outstretched sails that Jon and Irma had slung between the trees and stopped by the buffet table. She sneaked one chicken skewer and then one more, she couldn’t seem to get enough of them, that salty taste, she felt a flutter of excitement in her stomach, maybe it was the wine, maybe the salt, maybe the text message from Jon, she had this feeling that something wonderful was about to happen.

She looked around her and again her eyes met Siri’s. Milla felt sorry for Siri. Lopsided Siri who lay alone at night while her husband was thinking of other women. Milla smiled at her. Lopsided Siri who was never happy.
Come on, smile back! I know how sad you are!
More drops of rain landed on Milla. She felt them on her shoulder. In her hair. On her cheek. Running down her spine. She felt like laughing. It tickled. But when, after locking eyes, Siri turned away, as if repelled by her, she suddenly felt more like crying.

Bitch! Fucking bitch!

She didn’t say it out loud and no one could hear what she was thinking. She was just a girl in a red dress standing by the white-clothed trestle table with her mouth full of chicken. Milla swallowed, tossed her hair, and made her way toward the gate at the end of the garden. She turned around one last time and looked straight at Siri, now surrounded by her guests. Milla wondered what Siri would say if she knew about her and Jon. Milla took out her phone. Could she send him a text right now? Or should she wait? She knew how he liked
talking to her, even if he was thirty years older than her, liked the fact that she popped into his study when he was working. He liked showing her things. Liked telling her things. About himself, about music and books.

Milla thought about the time he had given her the Dylan CD. This was several days ago. How he had looked at her and spoken to her.

“Sorry to disturb you, Jon. I was just wondering if you knew where the sunscreen for Liv is? I can’t find it and I was thinking that we might go to the beach since the weather’s so nice.”

Jon swiveled around on his office chair and looked at Milla. He had his own special way of looking at her. His eyes sparkled. She felt like telling him that he was cool. That he had this kind of cool energy. Or would that sound stupid? He was a writer, and she wasn’t sure how you were supposed to talk to writers. She didn’t want him to think she was stupid, that she was just this immature young girl.

“No, you’re not disturbing me, Milla. In fact I’m bored to death here!”

He had a pile of CDs lying on his desk. He picked up one of them, the Dylan CD, and tossed it to her.

“This is good. You should listen to it.”

“Thanks,” Milla said. “Thanks a lot.”

Jon made no reply. Milla went on standing there.

“What are you writing?”

Jon looked away. “I’m writing a novel that will never be finished. I simply do not have it in me to finish this book.”

“That’s nice,” Milla replied, then corrected herself: “I mean,
it’s nice that you’re writing a novel. It’s not nice that you can’t get it finished. I’m sure you will, though.”

Jon laughed again. Not at her, though, she thought. He was laughing to himself, as if she wasn’t there, as if something funny had just struck him. But suddenly his eye met hers again and he said, “You look very pretty today, Milla, look how pretty you are, standing there like that in the light from the window.”

Milla smiled.

“I think you’re cool,” she blurted out, “you’ve got this incredibly cool energy and I’m absolutely convinced that you’re going to write a brilliant novel.”

Jon gave a curt laugh, it was hard to interpret that laugh. Milla blushed. It had probably been stupid to say that bit about cool energy.

“Looking at you gives me energy, Milla,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at her. “You’re beautiful,” he added. “Luminous.”

Jon had turned back to the computer screen. She didn’t want it to end yet. She said, “I’m not very good at writing, never have been, but I have so much respect for the way you sit here writing, day in, day out, and you’ve written lots of books before, it was so hard for me at school, I just couldn’t do it, but I’ve often thought that if I
had
been able to write a book then it would have been something really special.”

Jon turned to face her. A different look in his eyes now. Not the friendliness of a moment before. Something more challenging.

“Oh—a book about you? About your life?” he asked.

“Yes, kind of. There’s so much I’d like to describe, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I know what you mean,” he said.

He laughed out loud, but she had no idea whether he was laughing at her or at himself or if she was supposed to laugh along. And then he looked at her and said, “Are you an elf, Milla?”

“What?”

For a moment Milla thought she hadn’t understood what he’d said. Had he in fact asked her if she was an elf? What was she supposed to say to that?

“What … an elf?… Yes, maybe I am.” She giggled. “There’s a lot of magic in my life, kind of.”

“Good,” Jon said tersely, “that’s great.” And suddenly he looked very tired.

But Milla stood her ground.

“What I wanted to tell you is that I make books too. Not like you do, I don’t mean like you. It’s just something I do for myself. Secret scrapbooks. Secret because I don’t show them to anyone, have never told anyone about them either. Only you, now. You’re the only one who knows. I take pictures. I photograph everything I come across—people, animals, scenery. But mostly people. When they don’t know they’re being photographed. I glue all of the pictures into my book, and I put other things that have some meaning for me in there. Everything from tufts of grass to good quotations. And I write a little bit too, but not much. Diary entries.”

Milla took a breath. Jon swiveled around on his chair again and this time he looked straight at her.

“Do you have pictures of yourself in there, too?” he asked. “In your book?”

He had that provocative look about him again, as if he were challenging her once more.

Milla wavered. “No, how do you mean?”

“I mean, this is a book
by
you and
about
you and you’re telling me that you take lots of pictures of other people, and I was wondering whether you have a picture of yourself, I mean, whether you’ve glued a picture of yourself in there, in your book?”

Milla was still wavering. “I don’t like to look at pictures of myself. I’m not very photogenic. My mother used to take pictures of me all the time when I was little. I hated that—”

“Give me your phone,” Jon said, cutting her off.

“What?” Milla giggled.

“Give me your phone, come on, give it to me.”

She drew her cell phone from her jacket pocket, crossed over to him, and placed it in his hand.

Jon waved her away.

“Stand over there in the doorway. That’s it. Now look at me. Don’t pose. Just look straight at me. Never mind the sun in your eyes, it’s fine. That’s it, yes!”

Jon snapped a shot and at that same moment Leopold got up off the floor and sat down by the door. Milla stood there in the doorway, looking at Jon and conscious of the sun in her eyes. He wasn’t doing anything, but it felt as if he were stroking her.

“There now, look at this,” he said, studying the picture. “You’re luminous. You can glue this into your book. And look here,” he added, pointing to a black smudge in the bottom corner, “there’s Leopold’s tail.”

Jon handed the phone back to her. She studied the picture. She looked pretty—she could tell right away. He had taken her photograph and she looked pretty. The blue denim dress hugged her figure so neatly, the ponytail suited her, her lips were red, and there was no uncertainty or awkwardness in her eyes.
Luminous
.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you. It’s a nice picture. I’ll make an exception and show it to my friends. I’ll post it on my Facebook page.”

“Yeah, well,” said Jon. “Just don’t mention who took the picture. Okay? Let that be our little secret.”

“Okay,” she said, looking at her cell phone. “Anyway, it looks like a picture I could have taken myself.”

He didn’t answer.

“I mean, I never let anyone photograph me.”

He turned to face the computer screen and said, “Well, Milla, now I’d better get back to work. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

She stared at his back, hoping he would turn to look at her one more time.

“And I guess Liv is waiting for you,” he said, not turning around. “Weren’t you going to the beach?”

“Yes,” Milla said. “Okay. Bye, then. Thanks a lot for the CD. And the picture.”

“Bye,” Jon replied absently, still with his back turned. “Take care.”

Milla opened the garden gate and left the party. She told herself that no one would notice she was gone. She had no
business there anyway. In the mist, dancing, with the old people. She was young.
Sweetheart like you
. She was beautiful. She was
luminous
. And soon she would text Jon and maybe even meet up with him.

The road twisted, snakelike, from Jenny’s house at the top of the hill to the jetties and the sea at the very bottom. It was lined on both sides with summer cottages and houses, all of them small and all but invisible in the mist. But Jenny’s house was neither small nor invisible. Light shone from the windows, lights glowed in the garden, and the voices and laughter could be heard a long way off.

Milla started walking.
Don’t look back in case anyone’s watching
. The silky red fabric of her dress wafted around her, barely brushing her skin, the breeze brought soft rain with it.
Don’t look back!
She seemed to hear her own voice in the mist, her own voice as it had sounded when she was a little girl out cycling with Mikkel, her father, the man who always had to turn everything into a competition.

“I want ice cream, Papa!”

She had to pedal hard to keep up with him, even going downhill she had to pedal hard.

“Can we buy ice cream?”

Mikkel accelerated, turned to look at his daughter. Long dark ponytail. Pink girl’s bike. Pink helmet.

“You want ice cream?”

“YES!”

He was going faster now.

“If you beat me down this road we’ll buy ice cream, if
I
beat
you
we don’t buy ice cream. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Are you ready?” he said.

Milla had picked up so much speed that she was now neck and neck with him.

He glanced down at her. He had a nice, wide mouth, his forelock was blown by the wind. They sped down the hill.

Milla let go of the handlebars. She could cycle downhill without holding on. Her father had taught her to do that.

“One! Two! Three!” they shouted together, and they both stuck their arms in the air.

“Rock! Paper! Scissors!”

Milla chose rock. She always chose rock. Papa had told her she ought to vary it now and again. Be smart. Not always choose the same thing. It made her an easy target, he said, and smiled. But rock was rock. There was nothing more solid than rock. If you wrapped a rock in paper it would hit every bit as hard as when it was not wrapped in paper. Rock did not lose its force. Milla was eight years old and sure that she was right. Paper was for wimps.