Two hours later Lua and I are sitting on a stoop next to Enid’s. The woman with the camera is taking pictures, I open another beer. She’s wearing black pants and a black blouse, she has black curly hair and dark eyes, her laughter flashes in the darkness. My hand has stopped bleeding. Lua gets up, hobbles across the street and through an open steel door into the Polish bakery and comes back with a loaf of bread. A baker chases him into the street, fucking dog, he shouts, and stops when he sees the woman with the camera. She takes pictures. It’s all just a fashion statement, absolutely, I say to Lua. We share the bread and the beer, and maybe the dog says, strange times. At which point I raise my drink to him and he takes another bite. Lua reserves his wisdom for the decisive moments, I’m drunk and full of resolutions. Things have to be different from now on, I say to Lua, and kiss him on his scruff, but how’s Tuuli doing? No idea, says Lua, why don’t you ask her. And how am I supposed to do that? Call, says Lua, or even simpler: pick up the phone! But it’s not that simple, I think, don’t pick up under any circumstances, I resolve, today the splinter is getting removed. Lua puts his foreleg on my knee and looks into the camera. Stay like that, says the woman with the camera, you two look good. Can you give the dog some more beer? she asks, and takes pictures. When the dog is drunk, I say, we have good conversations. A dog isn’t a parrot, says the woman. Lua got some bread, I say, petting the dog between the ears. You know, Lua, I say, lately I haven’t been getting enough sleep, lately I haven’t really been myself. Come with me, the woman with the camera says, and walks to a Polish corner store two blocks down, you can’t go to a party empty-handed. So we buy two six-packs.
A GIRL WITH RED hair and a birdcage without a bird is climbing the stairs behind us and says, I’ve lost hope. What? asks a short Mexican guy with a pink water gun in his hand. On the top floor it’s loud, everywhere people are raising their arms to the music, everyone’s wearing white. I’ve lost hope, repeats the girl with the birdcage. Let’s hope I get the bastard, says the Mexican, hiding behind a sofa on which some people in white are balancing with their arms in the air. Kiki Kaufman, says the host to the woman with the camera, kissing her on the neck. He apparently knows Lua too, good evening, Mr. Dog, he says. Lua doesn’t say anything, but instead lies down in the middle of the loft under a gigantic, dust-brown Christmas tree with purple glass ball ornaments. Behind a cardboard Dolph Lundgren, a tall black guy in a white shirt is kneeling on the floor, he leaps over Lua in a single bound and aims his Super Soaker full of red wine at the Mexican guy, who defends himself. Showdown, he yells, die, motherfucker, die! They both empty their magazines, boom, boom, bye-bye, shouts the black guy, cha-cha-cha, yells the Latino. White is innocence and red is war, says the host, with red wine you see the hits better, there’s beer in the bathtub, and yes, there’s a truckload of plastic toys hanging on the walls, salvage items, there’s liquor on the roof, don’t ash on the Christmas tree, it’s four years old, fire-extinguishing water is in the buckets by the window, piss from the roof into the neighbor’s garden in the back. I’m Pierre, says the host, make yourself at home. Take care of yourself, says Kiki Kaufman. Pierre grabs her hand and pulls her along behind him onto the roof. I’m Svensson, I say. I’ve lost hope, sings the girl with the birdcage. Want a beer anyway? I ask, but she dances through the room and isn’t listening to me anymore. On the edge of the bathtub a gorgeous Chinese girl in a snow-white suede coat is sitting and cooling her feet in the beer bottles. My shoes are too small, she says. You can have mine, I say.
From the roof you can see the island behind the bridges and the smokestacks of the empty factories on the riverbank. We’re sitting on the edge, behind us two Russians are playing Ping-Pong. We’re drinking gimlets, and the girl with the red hair puts down the rusty birdcage on the tar paper, fuck off, will you, says one of the Russians, her search for hope is interfering with his serve. Lawyer, says a long-haired guy in a white suit and metal tie, Morgan Stanley. Illustrator, says a guy named Christoph, and the ice cubes clink in the vase he’s drinking from, New Yorker and New York Times and this and that, he says. The Mexican guy pees off the roof, the red wine stains on his shirt look like my fashion statement. The guy with the Super Soaker gives him a whack in the face, order must be maintained, he yells, cha-cha-cha, shouts the Mexican, and the two of them dance over the abyss. The roof trembles, Pierre weaves a wreath for Kiki out of hanging geraniums and says, Morgan Stanley has been flattened, they were in the South Tower, at which point the long-haired guy in the white suit loosens his metal tie and says, everything’s going to be okay. My telephone vibrates, Svensson Home, to answer would be too simple, it would be too easy. I sit on the edge and think about what the metal-tie man said. What exactly is going to be okay? I think, and how, I wonder, and where is Tuuli right now, I’m always wondering where Tuuli is. Kiki gives me a book, writes “646-299-1036 Kiki Kaufman!” in it, and I put it in my jacket pocket.
I drink another glass and lie down on my back, I look into the sky, into the clouds, I haven’t been this drunk in a long time, I’m smoking one of Tuuli’s cigarettes, I notice that I feel my feet less and less. Why does Tuuli always have to call when they’ve finished fucking surrounded by my books, I wonder, can someone that pregnant still fuck, or is it only Felix on the phone, wanting to know what Tuuli’s favorite breakfast is? Tuuli eats cold pizza with capers for breakfast, she drinks her coffee with milk and no sugar, she hates nail scissors but tolerates nail clippers. She feels at home when she eats snails. Her father has a snail farm in Lapland. I know how she folds sheets and that she sings the Finnish national anthem when the weather’s bad and seriously believes that will make it better. I know that she thinks Felix kisses like a rock and I like a cup of tea. She told me that, definitely didn’t tell him. I know all this and also that we miscalculated, we’re three, we said, we’re not alone. A hand gives me a light. If Felix only knew that he kisses like a rock, but I won’t tell him.
It smells like autumn, it is autumn, I hear people talking, I see people dancing, the music is playing far away, Kiki with the geranium wreath and the camera is holding my hand, I close my eyes. How long it’s been since everything has spun like this! Kiki lets go of my hand, the dog lies down between us, I plant a foot to stop the spinning. Take it easy, says the dog, everything all right? Yup, I say, today the thorn is getting taken out. Do you like pizza? asks the dog. Yes, please, I say, with capers, then I can save a piece for Tuuli. The dog licks my ear. Mr. Dog, I say, how I’d like a slice of pizza right now, how I’d like to be somewhere else right now. Then let’s go, says Lua, licking my face, the taxi’s waiting below, he says, and when he takes my hand and the telephone vibrates and I open my eyes, when the Chinese girl in the suede coat suddenly flicks her tongue in my ear, nothing is spinning anymore. I’m Svensson, by the way, I say. Grace, says Grace. I’m going to get some pizza, I say to Kiki and Lua, but Kiki and her geranium wreath are nowhere to be seen, and Lua under the Christmas tree doesn’t wake up until I’m climbing in my socks down the fire escape behind Grace and getting into the back of a taxi. West Eleventh and Greenwich, Grace says to the driver, Lua performs his taxi trick, Grace kisses me, and the girl with the red hair buckles up the birdcage next to us as if it were a person. Okay, I think. The taxi is crossing a bridge to Manhattan, I’m hungry, the telephone is ringing, and I don’t answer, have you found hope? I ask. In the front the girl with the red hair sings her reply, and Grace tastes like smoke.