They had played with Tropicos on a couple of occasions in the past, and knew both Roland, the lead singer, and the rest of the lads in the band. There was a fair amount of back-slapping and congratulation aimed in Lennart’s direction, because they all listened to the Swedish top twenty. Lennart managed to force out something positive about Tropicos’ latest song, ‘A Summer Without You’, even though it sounded exactly the same as everything else. They didn’t even write their own songs.
The evening went without a hitch. Lennart & Laila were even given the final spot, which meant that they had one up on Tropicos, so to speak, and they performed with considerable verve. Laila sang better than ever, perhaps because she knew it was a kind of swan song. Lennart had explained that they would never play these songs again, so as Laila tugged at the heartstrings with the final notes of ‘Summer Rain’ which ended their set, several members of the audience had tears in their eyes, and the applause was unusually enthusiastic.
Lennart had considered finishing off by mentioning that they would be called The Others from now on, and ‘don’t forget to listen in on Sunday’, but in light of the applause it just seemed petty. He allowed Laila to have her swan song in peace.
Afterwards they had a few beers and a bit of a party. Lennart got talking to Göran, the guitarist with Bert-Görans, who also had greater musical ambitions than the rigid chart formula usually allowed. He expressed great admiration for Lennart’s skilful interweaving of listener-friendly dance band tunes with what he called, ‘more continental elements’. He was convinced this was the way forward, and they raised a glass to Lennart’s future success.
When Lennart went to buy the next round, he couldn’t find his wallet. He asked Göran to wait and hurried back to the other room, purring like a cat inside. He couldn’t help it, there was something special about being praised by someone who actually knew what they were talking about. And Göran had proved himself to be a pretty good guitarist, so surely it was just possible that…
Lennart opened the door and his life was kicked in a completely different direction. He was looking Laila straight in the face as she stood there, bent over a table, her fingers spread wide. Behind her was Roland with his trousers around his ankles and his face turned up towards the ceiling as if he were suffering some kind of cramp.
Lennart had obviously disturbed them at a critical moment, because when Laila caught sight of him and launched herself across the table in a reflexive door-closing motion, Roland groaned as he was wrenched out of her. He grabbed hold of his cock, but couldn’t manage to stop the ejaculation; the semen spurted, arching across the room to land on a make-up mirror. Lennart watched the sticky fluid work its way down towards a jar of fake tan which presumably belonged to Roland.
He looked at Laila. The fingers with the bright red nails still clutched the table, and a couple of strands of her hair had stuck to her cheeks. He looked at Roland and Roland looked…tired. As if he just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. His hand was still holding his stiff cock. It was bigger than Lennart’s. Much bigger.
As Lennart slammed the door shut, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Roland’s cock. It followed him along the corridor, out into the car park, into the car. He switched on the windscreen wipers as if he were seeking some physical help to erase the image, but the cock forced its way through, violating him. It was that big.
He had never seen an erect penis other than his own. He had thought he was pretty much OK. Now he knew this wasn’t the case. He tried to think what it might feel like to have a…a pole like that thrust inside you. It was difficult to imagine that it would be a pleasant experience, but Laila’s face, in the brief second it took her to switch from enjoyment to terror, had told a different story. He had never seen that expression on her face. He didn’t have the necessary tool to evoke it.
The wipers squeaked against the dry windscreen, and Lennart switched them off. The cock had gone, replaced by Laila’s face. So pretty. So bloody pretty and so desirable. So ugly in its contorted ecstasy. He felt as if he were being ripped in two. He wanted to start the car and drive somewhere, lie down in a ditch with a bottle of whisky and die. Instead he just sat there, his arms locked around his stomach, rocking, and whimpering like a puppy.
After ten minutes the passenger door opened. Laila got in and sat down. She had tidied her hair. They sat next to one another in silence for a while. Lennart carried on rocking back and forth, but had stopped whimpering. Eventually Laila said, ‘Can’t you hit me or something?’
Lennart shook his head, and a sob escaped from his lips. Laila placed a hand on his knee. ‘Please? Can’t you just slap me a couple of times? It’s OK.’
It was an ordinary Wednesday night and people were starting to leave the car park. Cheerful revellers strolled by. Someone spotted Laila in the car and waved. She waved back. Lennart glared at her hand, resting on his knee, then pushed it away. ‘Has this happened before?’
‘What do you mean? With Roland?’
An icy stalactite detached itself in the area between Lennart’s chest and throat, tumbled down through the empty space in the centre of his body and shattered in his stomach. Something in her tone.
‘With others?’
Laila folded her hands in her lap and sat in silence, watching a lone woman tottering along on too-high heels. Then she sighed and said, ‘So don’t you want to hit me, then?’
Lennart started the car.
The next three days were almost unbearable. They couldn’t talk, so they kept busy. Lennart did little chores in the garden and Laila went running. Jerry went from one to the other, trying to lighten the atmosphere by telling Bellman stories, but all he got in response were sorrowful smiles.
Running was Laila’s way of keeping fit, keeping slim and supple ‘for you and the audience’, as she had once said. The day after the gig Lennart was oiling the garden furniture as Laila passed him, wearing her blue windbreaker. He put the brush down and followed her with his gaze. The trousers and jacket were unnecessarily tight, and her long blonde hair was caught up in a pony-tail that bounced up and down on her back as she jogged along the village road.
He knew what this was all about. She was on her way to an assignation of some sort. A man was waiting for her in the bushes somewhere. In a little while she would meet him there and then they would be at it like rabbits. Or perhaps she just enjoyed running along in her tight clothes, making sure men were looking at her. Or perhaps it was both. She got them to look at her, then she ran into their houses and let them screw her, one after the other.
The oil splashed everywhere as Lennart slapped it onto the garden table with his brush. Back and forth, back and forth. In and out, in and out. The pictures flickered and excited, constricting his lungs and making it hard to breathe. He was going mad. That’s the kind of thing people say, but it really did feel like that. His consciousness was standing on the threshold of a dark room. Inside there was oblivion, silence and-right in the corner-a little music box that played ‘Auld Lang Syne’. He would sit in the darkness and turn the handle around and around, until he fell asleep forever.
But he kept oiling the table and when he finished the table he started on the chairs and when he finished the chairs Laila came home, red and sweaty from all the big cocks she had been riding. While she was stretching he secretly looked over her running clothes, searching for damp or dried-in stains. They were there if he wanted to see them, but he didn’t want to see them, so instead he looked at the half-rotten porch step and decided to build a new one.
Sunday. The Swedish chart countdown.