See You Tomorrow by Tore Renberg

grove.
    ‘Chessi,’ he says, killing the ignition. ‘Come on. It was a cat. A cat, okay? We can’t do anything about it.’
    She’s sniffling in the back seat. He recognises the level. It’s not disaster sniffling, it’s demonstrative sniffling.
    ‘Do you hear me? I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Youandme, baby. Mariero Beauty. It’s going to be okay. Right? Come on, be a doll now, lie down on the seat, and just keep calm until I get back. And don’t smoke, okay? People get all flustered, you know, if they walk past a car filled with smoke and nobody inside. They get suspicious, ring home to the wife, tell her they’ve come across a car filled with fucking smoke. You can manage without one for a while, right?’
    She sniffles again.
    ‘Is this what Jani meant when he said I should go out and get some air?’ she says. ‘It could have been a kitten, Rudi!’
    ‘No, no, it was a fully-grown cat, didn’t you feel the bump? No kitten would have made the car jolt like that. Listen. Chessi. Afterwards,’ he says softly, ‘afterwards we can drive someplace and sit and look at something. The sea or something. You like looking at the sea. You can teach me that. How to look at the sea.’
    Cecilie folds her arms. Doesn’t reply.
    He recognises the signs. It’s all about being smart now. Not making a big deal out of things. He tries to sound as warm as he possibly can: ‘Great, baby, so cool of you to take it that way, no one wants to be together with a chick who’s high-maintenance. Five minutes, okay, ten tops, then I’m back, who knows, I might come back with a million bucks in my pocket. Then you’ll have one million five hundred. Remember, tomorrow, Mariero Beauty!’
    No reaction.
    Rudi takes a deep breath. Okay, he thinks, all right. He really needs to dig deep here. He looks at her, as directly as he can, he smiles, with as much charm as he can muster, sucks his cheeks in and sings: ‘
Don’t want to close my eyes, I don’t want to fall asleep, cause I’d miss you babe and I don’t want to miss a thing
.’
    She gulps.
    Yesss
.
    She looks at him.
    Laughs a little.
    Yesss
.
    The Aerosmith Trick.
    Never fails. Not once since he first did it, standing in front of her, sucking in his cheeks and imitating Steven Tyler, has it failed. The woman just falls apart.
    ‘Baby! Youandme! Daddy has to do a little bit of work now, then I’ll be back. Come on, down in the seat with you.’
    Rudi gives her a wink. To say she smiles would be an exaggeration, but she wriggles down into the seat in any case.
    He opens the door and feels the cold prickle of the September air on the back of his neck. He looks around. The old forest. It’s strange being back here. It was Granny’s forest in a lot of ways. She spoke about it so much, and all the things she did there when she was little. The flowers she picked and how much better things were before,
in the good old days.
Rudi has never got that out of his head. He often thinks about it, thinks how right Granny was, it was better
in the good old days
. More peace. More style.
    Rudi begins to hurry along the path. He glances about himagain, feels the surroundings sucking him in. Then he comes to a halt.
    ‘Hm,’ he says, almost loudly.
    ‘Pål,’ he says.
    ‘It’s as if … there’s something about that name. It … shit … it calls something to mind! But what? Hm? Pål, Pål, Pål…’
    Rudi walks on. We’ll soon see, he thinks, who you are and who you’re not, Pål. You called me. You’ve reached out your hand. And who are you? I’d love a cigarette now. If I’d known it would be this hard to stop then I never would’ve quit. Women. It’s not bloody easy. You’ve got to be a sly eagle with a good Aerosmith trick in order to be supple enough to get around their corners. Except for Gran. She had her head screwed on.
Skål
, you old jelly roll.
    Rudi, without even being aware of it, raises his hand, puts it to his forehead and salutes,