Read Online Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo - Free Book Online Page B

is, because, brimming over with breathless enthusiasm, I asked him about everything possible, including whether the medicines were arranged from A to Z or according to their use.
The package is already in my hand when I hear a voice behind me.
“The bathroom isn’t that way.”
If my pulse was fast, it now bursts into a gallop, nearly suffocating me. I try to keep my back to him and stuff the package in my boxers. It mustn’t slip down through the legholes, so I’m forced to squeeze the square cardboard box into the fork of my groin, with my balls wedging it in. I turn and try to behave naturally.
“Oh yes, it was that other door.”
“Henrik Tikkanen’s writer-friend, Benedict Zilliacus, as I remember, once peed into a blue-painted basketwork chair because he thought it was the sea,” Spider reports from the darkness in his dry voice. He’s still on the sofa and won’t be able to see any more of me in the darkness than my faintly visible pale-colored doggie-pants.
I try to walk to the bathroom without my gait betraying at every step that the excruciatingly sharp corners are poking into the soft flesh of my crotch. I don’t know how successful I was, but thank God my denim shirt’s over a chair back on the way there, and I snatch it up and take it with me, while trying feebly not to slip into an apelike shuffle. And soon the bathroom door is shut behind me—and my denim shirt has pockets.

ECKE
    Drowning one’s sorrows is never a good idea, but anyway the fourth glass has come to my table, as if by itself, since Angel and Spiderman left. I’ve given two men the brush-off and turned off one eager raconteur and decide to decamp into the desolation of my own pad—after this fourth drink, of course, just as I did after the second and third—when someone asks if they can sit at my table.
There don’t seem to be any empty seats anywhere else, so my companion’s clearly forced to sit with me out of sheer necessity, not interest. As it is, that’s a pity, for a first glance suggests the guy’s agreeable goods: obviously smart, tall and broad-shouldered but nevertheless far from being an Atlas-type, with round glasses, mustache, a full well-tended beard, dark brown slightly curly hair, longish at the neck, and, of course, an earring. Agreeable goods? No, by God. A second and third look, and the guy’s the catch of the month.
We toss a few ideas around, and then he makes a move that catches me pants down: he asks if I’ve happened to see Angel. At first I’m completely bemused, as he’s using the first name Mikael, but then he uses the more usual Michelangelo, and, God, I come out in goose pimples when he says it. But after describing a few identifying features—fair curly hair, tall, eyes like pieces of sky—I recognize Angel. I let it out that I’ve seen him but say I don’tknow him except indirectly. He shot off a while ago, I add. I don’t go into more exact detail.
The guy introduces himself. He’s Martti something, an advertising man. What he wants Angel for is no big deal—no, naturally not, nor for any of us here. He’s been trying to reach him, to check up on how some assignment’s progressing, but Angel’s studio hasn’t replied, and he gets voice mail every time he tries Angel’s cell. Here he confides his wonder that Mikael doesn’t keep his cell on. A freelancer ought to be available twenty-four hours a day. And, with that in mind, he decided to see whether Mikael might perhaps be at his regular watering hole. The commission’s important, really important, otherwise he’d not pester Mikael—just wanted to find out how the project was going.
He’s completely overdoing it. He’s obviously had several already, and something in this picture stinks anyway. Martti’s not one of us, not at first glance, but I’ve seen these tottering-on-the-brink types before. This has to be the hetero that Angel dumped Spider for.
“So you know—Mikael—well,” I throw out. I’d almost said