It was as if all that good energy had been redirected somewhere else now. We were still there, all five of us, but now Bj?rnar stood in the kitchen alone and made the food like an automaton. I scrubbed the bathroom floor and made the tiles shine, just as much an automaton. Even the children were completely silent, sitting there staring at the TV screen.
I knew why. Fridays no longer kicked off a weekend of freedom and cheerful leisure but rather chaotic cleaning drives and heavy frustration. Lately Saturdays had been spent having open houses, and on Sundays Bj?rnar went to work with the same worn-out expression on his face that he’d had all fall. We weren’t human anymore, more like zombies, trapped in a world that was dominated and controlled by the Dictator of Housing Sales.
In this new reality, Monday morning was almost preferable. It was almost a relief to go to work and hear knocking on the door. It was a blessing to know there was another universe populated by humans who didn’t care about the downturn in the housing market and who didn’t hold conversations in which this premise lurked under everything.
“Yes,” I called.
“I found a solution,” Peter said with a wink, “the perfect solution, you might say.”
I was still wondering if he had intended to wink or if it was maybe a nervous tic when I realized he was waiting for me to respond.
“To . . . ?”
“I know how we’re going to reverse the planned course revision!”
He swept into my office and started waving around the folder he had tucked under his arm. It reminded me of the one we’d received from our real estate agent. I felt nauseated and opened my mouth to lie and tell him I had an appointment and couldn’t talk, but wasn’t able to get anything out before he flopped down on the chair and opened the folder. Inside there was a single sheet of paper with some scribbles on it.
“I have a friend in the private sector,” he said with satisfaction, “and he tipped me off to a negotiation strategy designed to outmaneuver the other party.”
“In the private sector?”
“Look,” he continued, “we’re meeting with the administration next week, right? We’re going to suggest a plan for how we envision the new course offerings and how these are going to fit into the new overall BA and MA programs, right?”
I nodded slowly.
“Well, my strategy is that we show up at the meeting without a plan. Wait, please don’t interrupt me. We have no plan, we say. They’re the ones who have to propose a plan. And when they do, we counter them with the following tactic. Because we actually do have a plan—namely for this revision never to take place. Do you have a red pen?”
I passed him a red pen and he motioned me closer.
“So, here’s what we do.”
I found myself looking at something that resembled the kind of play diagram a soccer coach might show the players before a big game. Under my name it said “bad cop.”
“Bad cop,” I read, and glanced up. “What’s that?”
Peter smiled.
“According to my sources, a bad cop behaves in an aggressive, antagonistic manner. In other words she opposes every argument put forward by the other party, and actively works to suss out their weaknesses.”
“I see?”
“Yeah, and then eventually brings the whole negotiation to a standstill, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
I looked down at the diagram again.
“And you have Frank listed as . . .”
“Frank is the good cop. That doesn’t really need any explanation, and actually we don’t even need to tell Frank about this at all. Good cop is his normal modus operandi, if you will, so that’s kind of the path of least resistance.”
“Ingvill, then. She’s the hard-liner?”
“Right. She’ll stall for time and make sure our team keeps its focus.”
“You think that’s a good role for Ingvill, do you?”
“It’s not ideal. I’ll concede that, but there wasn’t anyone else left after I put myself down as leader. So Ingvill will be the hard-liner. She really wants to do it and is going to practice. Did you know she has a personal trainer? He’s going to help her with the psychological preparations.”
I kept looking at his diagram without saying anything.
“Is bad cop the same as fall guy?” I finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I get that we’re all on the same team, of course, but to me it looks like the bad cop is the most inflammatory of the roles, and I would assume that the one who’s always objecting to everything and being difficult isn’t going to get all that much sympathy from the administration and could pretty quickly end up being the one who finds herself reorganized into the preschool-teacher education program. If you’re actually right that that’s the real purpose of the course revision plan.”
He laughed a little too loudly and ran his hand down my arm.
“You don’t think I’d do something like that to you, do you?”
“Maybe not, but then I don’t get why I can’t be the hard-liner and Ingvill could be the bad cop.”
He pulled his hand through his hair.
“That’s how I had it! But then I talked to her first. She threatened to put me out on a leave of absence if I listed her as the bad cop, so then I had to amend the diagram. Sorry.”
He sighed heavily and made puppy-dog eyes at me. I sighed at least as heavily.
“I can’t promise anything,” I finally said.
“Marvelous,” he replied and circled my name. “Marvelous. I knew I could count on you.”
Then he disappeared out the door, leaving me with my thoughts.
I considered going to the chair to inform her that Peter was losing his marbles, but didn’t really have the energy for that. Besides, I had to write that paper on Tehom for the conference and save my energy to form a protective shield around the children and make the phone ring with the news that somebody wanted to buy our house.”
But first of all I was going to the break room to make myself a cup of coffee. We didn’t have any left at home, and I hadn’t been able to face buying more. But as I walked down the hall, I felt like my head was getting too much oxygen. I shook it to try to let some of the air out, without success. It was like walking on a ship in a raging storm, and I saw the floor rising toward me. I clung to the wall.