“You’d do that for a hockey club?”
“I’d do that for a better hockey club.”
“So what do you want with me? I don’t know what you think I sell here, but it sure as hell isn’t gold.”
“I want to get you elected to the board.”
“Are you drunk, lad?”
“It will take a strong man to rescue the club now. And there’s no stronger man in Beartown than you, Ramona.”
She laughs hoarsely.
“You always have been a bit thick, you have. Anyone would think you’re a goalie.”
“Thanks,” Tails mutters, genuinely moved.
Because Holger was a goalie. That’s a compliment in the Bearskin. Ramona goes and serves another customer. When she comes back she puts a beer in front of Tails, and gets herself a coffee.
When she sees Tails’s surprise she mutters:
“I should probably try to sober up if I’m going to sit on the board. And considering how much I’ve drunk over the past forty years, I might need a couple of months.”
*
Benji and the bass player are lying side by side on their backs in the rehearsal room. Surrounded by instruments along all the walls, watched over by dormant music. Sometimes it’s easy to learn to play anything at all. You just have to not play, and then you stop doing that.
“I have to go home soon,” the bass player says.
He doesn’t mean his apartment in Hed. He means home. Benji doesn’t say anything, and the bass player really wishes he would.
“You could . . . come too . . . ,” he finds his mouth saying, even though his heart struggles against it.
He doesn’t want to hear the answer. Doesn’t get one anyway. Benji stands up and starts to put his clothes on. The bass player sits up, lights a cigarette, smiles sadly.
“You could move away from here, you know. There are other lives, other places.”
Benji kisses his hair.
“I’m not like you.”
When Benji heads out into the last snowfall of the year and the door closes softly behind him, the bass player thinks how true that is. Benji isn’t like him, but he’s not like the people who live here either. Benji isn’t like anyone else at all. How can you not love someone like that?
*
When night comes to Beartown, Kevin runs alone along the illuminated jogging track. Around and around and around. Until the pain in his muscles is greater than everything else that hurts. Around, around, around. Until his adrenaline grows stronger than the insecurity, so that rage defeats humility. Again, again, again.
He will think he’s imagining it at first, that the shadows are playing tricks on his eyes. For a moment he will even think he’s just so tired that he’s hallucinating. He will slow down, his chest heaving. Wipe the sweat from his face with his sleeve. And only then will he see the girl. The shotgun in her hands. Death in her eyes.
He’s heard hunters describe the way animals behave when they fear for their lives. Only now will he understand what that means.
*
Ana wakes up and looks around the room, murmurs vaguely and sleepily for a few seconds before flying up and hitting her head on the bedside table. She grabs the covers, hoping that Maya is just hidden beneath them, but when she realizes what’s happened, terror seizes hold of her like a wild animal’s claws. She throws herself down the stairs, thunders into the cellar, screams with her lips tightly closed as if the blood vessels in her head were exploding one by one, when she opens the gun cabinet and sees what’s missing.
*
There’s a note in the cabinet. In Maya’s neat handwriting.
Happy, Ana. In ten years’ time I see myself being happy. You too.
49
In ten years’ time, a twenty-five-year-old woman, in a big city far away from here, will walk across a parking lot outside a shopping center. There will be an ice rink right next to it, but she won’t even look at it, because it doesn’t belong to her life. Before she gets in her car she will cast a glance across the roof at her husband. He will put the bags of shopping in the trunk, and laugh when he catches her eye. He won’t look at the rink either; isn’t interested. She’ll rest her chin on the car roof for a moment, he’ll do the same. They will giggle, and she’ll think to herself that he’s all she wants, everything she’s ever wished for, he’s perfect for her. She’s pregnant. And happy. In ten years’ time.
*
The illuminated jogging track is quiet, but not deserted. Kevin can only see the outline in the distance, he slows down without actually stopping. When Maya steps forward into the light, he doesn’t have time to escape. When he sees the shotgun it’s too late. She stops three yards away from him, the gun held calmly, her breathing even and relaxed. Her eyes don’t leave him for an instant, she doesn’t blink, her voice is cold and merciless when it demands that he get down on his knees.
*
In ten years’ time, in a big city far away from here, an illuminated sign will shine out above a rink, bearing a performer’s name. There’s going to be a concert rather than a hockey game that evening. It won’t make any difference to the woman in the parking lot; she’ll get in her car and hold her husband’s hand across the seat. She won’t be under any illusions that love is simple; she will have made a lot of mistakes and felt a lot of pain, and she will know that her husband has too. But when he looks at her, he sees her, deep down inside of her, and even if he isn’t perfect, he is for her.
*
Kevin kneels on the snow, his skin stiffening in the wind; his arms tremble as his head sinks to the ground, but Maya presses the barrel of the shotgun to his forehead and whispers:
“Look at me. I want to see your eyes when I kill you.”
Tears are streaming from his eyes. He tries to say something, but the sobbing and gasping overpower his lips. Snot and saliva are dripping from his chin. When the cold metal of the shotgun’s twin barrels presses against his skin, an acrid smell of ammonia rises up. The stain on his grey jogging pants grows until it covers all of his thighs. He’s wet himself in terror.
Maya had been expecting that she would be nervous. Possibly even scared. But she feels nothing. It was a simple plan: she knew Kevin wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, and she hoped he would go out for a run. She was right, she just needed to wait outside his house for long enough, and seeing as she had timed his circuits last time she was standing here, she knew exactly how long it would take him to run around. Where she should hide. When she should step out from the darkness. The shotgun holds two cartridges, but she has always known that the most she would ever need is one. His forehead touching the barrel. After tonight it’s all over.
She had been expecting to feel hesitant. To change her mind. To spare him this moment, in spite of everything. She doesn’t.
When her forefinger pulls the trigger back, his eyes are closed, hers open.