Lasse leans back and stretches out on the bed. Sofia, who’s standing in just her underwear and putting her make-up on in front of the mirror next to the bed, picks up a damp towel and throws it at him.
‘Come here and make a child with me,’ he suddenly says, still with the towel over his face. ‘I want to have a child with you,’ he repeats, and Sofia stiffens.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I want us to have a child.’
‘You mean it? Seriously?’ Sofia can’t tell if he’s joking with her.
Sometimes he says things, only to take back what he’s just said a moment later. But there’s something different in his voice this time.
‘Yeah, what the hell! You’re getting close to forty and it’s starting to get a bit late. Not for me, but for you. And I’ve got a feeling we could keep on … Oh, you know what I mean.’ He removes the towel, and she can see that he’s being completely serious.
Maybe it’s the alcohol or the long, tiring flight that gets to her and makes her start crying. Probably a combination of everything.
‘Hey, are you crying?’ He gets up from the bed and comes over to her. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, no, no. I’m just so incredibly happy. Of course I want to have a child with you. You know that’s what I’ve always wanted.’ She looks him in the eye in the mirror.
‘OK, let’s do it then! Now or never!’
She goes over to the bed. He embraces her, kisses the back of her neck, and begins to undo her bra.
His eyes are sparkling the way they used to, and she feels her insides quiver.
Afterwards they go to a nightclub down on Nassau Street. One of the few places along the road where the queue isn’t too long.
The club is dimly lit and consists of a series of different rooms separated by red velvet curtains. In the first one is a small stage, empty when they arrive.
There aren’t many people there, and they take a seat at the bar and order a drink. A couple of hours pass as she gets slowly more intoxicated, more people arrive, and the music from the stage gets louder.
A man and a woman sit down next to them at the bar.
Afterwards she can’t even remember their names, but she’ll never forget what happens next.
To begin with they just exchange looks and smiles. The woman compliments Sofia on some detail of her outfit.
The drinks mount up, and soon the four of them move to some more comfortable seats in a quieter part of the club.
A big room.
Subdued lighting, to match the music. The sofa shaped like a heart.
Then she realises what sort of place Lasse has taken her to.
It had been his idea to go to a club. And hadn’t he seemed to be directing their steps straight to Nassau Street?
She feels rather foolish for taking so long to realise where they are.
Then everything goes so quickly and so easily.
And not just because of the alcohol. But because something happens between her and Lasse in the presence of the two strangers.
He introduces her as his life partner. His body language says they belong together, and she realises that’s because he wants her to feel secure in this situation.
She leaves the table to go to the toilet, and when she returns the woman is sitting next to Lasse, and the seat beside the man is free. She feels her excitement mount at once, and her pulse is racing in her temples as she sits down.
She looks at Lasse and realises that he has worked out that she knows what’s going on, and that she doesn’t have anything against it.
She can certainly imagine sharing him with someone else. After all, she’s there, and she knows he’d never do anything without her consent.
There are no secrets any longer. They will love each other just as much, no matter what happens.
And they’re going to have a child together.
When Sofia wakes up the next morning she has a terrible headache. Even yawning leaves her seeing stars.
‘Wake up, Sofia … Our flight leaves in just over an hour.’
She glances at the clock on the bedside table.
‘Shit, quarter to six … How long have I been asleep?’
‘Half an hour or so,’ Lasse laughs. ‘You should have seen yourself yesterday.’
‘Yesterday?’
She smiles at him, even though her headache makes smiling a painful effort. ‘Just now, you mean? Come here!’
She’s naked, and lets the covers slide off. She lies on her stomach and pulls one leg up beneath her. ‘Come on!’
Lasse laughs again. ‘God, you’re so beautiful lying there like that … You haven’t forgotten that we’ve got visitors?’
She hears the shower running in the bathroom. She can see naked bodies through the gap in the door when she rolls over to kiss him.
‘Is that supposed to put me off?’
Had they done the right thing? Either way, it feels good to her, and he seems happy as well.
‘It’ll have to be a quickie,’ he whispers. ‘Aeroplanes don’t wait for crazy people.’
Her headache now merely feels pleasantly giddy.
‘Sofia? You’ve got to see this. It looks kind of futuristic …’
She’s dozed off against his shoulder, and straightens up stiffly to look out of the plane window. New York, white with snow, split in two by the Hudson River, which cuts like a black line across the view. The street networks of the Bronx and Brooklyn look like narrow lines on a sheet of white paper. The shadows of the skyscrapers look like diagrams.
She feels safe having him there beside her.
When they arrive at the hotel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the sun is shining from a clear blue sky. Sofia has been to New York a couple of times before, but her last visit was almost ten years ago and she’s forgotten how beautiful the city can be.
She and Lasse are standing entwined by the window of their hotel room. From the fifteenth floor they have a magnificent view of Central Park, which is lying cocooned in the thick blanket of snow that’s fallen overnight.
She turns and kisses him on the lips.
‘I can feel that I’m giving myself to you, Lasse. You get me, all of me, and I trust you to take care of me.’
‘I …’ He stops himself and gives her a long, hard hug. She gets the feeling that he’s about to tell her something.
‘I love you too,’ he says after a pause, but she can’t help thinking that he had been about to say something else.
In the mirror she can see the window he’s facing. His face is visible in the glass and it looks to her as if he’s crying. She thinks about how she felt just a few weeks ago. It feels like another world. Now he wants to have a child with her and everything is going to be different.
Then he lets go and looks at her again. Yes, he has been crying. But his whole face is lit up in a smile. ‘Do you know what I think we should do now?’
‘No … What should we do? You’ve been here hundreds of times, so you ought to know,’ she says, smiling back.