Free Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo

“Angel.”
Martti breaks out again into unnecessary explanations: They’re colleagues in a longish collaboration, which led to a closer acquaintance. I greedily pump him for info. Angel comes from somewhere in northern Ostrobothnia, actually almost in Lapland, moved to Tampere as a little kid, went to school there, then to the Lahti photography course, then came back here to work. He’s a well-known photographer, much in demand, and nowadays as a virtuoso photo creative, a true magician of the Mac, a Freehand fakir, and prophet of Photoshop.
Each word proves that Angel is designed for me, tailored for me, meant for me, and that this guy had better not intervene, no way, and therefore I tell Martti confidentially, and as if by the way, that Angel is keeping company with a veterinarian, has been keeping company with him for a long time, and seriously.

ANGEL
    It’s night, and the phone’s ringing.
Pessi’s so sick he doesn’t even really perk up his ears, though the dark room’s filled with the piercing noise that goes right through you. At the sixth ring I pick up the receiver.
“Mikael.”
At the other end there’s a moment’s silence, and then a voice I know, and it’s as if someone had slit my belly open with a single slash and hurled iced water on to my hot intestines. Dr. Spiderman.
“I hope it’s not a collie.”
I can only stammer. “What?”
“That damned animal you stole my anthelmintic for. Listen. If it’s a collie, the Scottish sheepdog, some damn relative of Lassie, then it has a known central nervous anomaly. It’ll die from the anthelmintic.”
“It’s not a collie,” I say, and I could bite my tongue off. There’s the tiniest little snort of cold, soft laughter from Dr. Spiderman.
“So don’t get scared either, then, when our friends the parasites die and briskly secrete toxins.”
“Toxins?”
“The beast’ll show symptoms of poisoning, but they’ll definitely pass.”
I don’t know what to say. The anthelmintic package is a light patch on the corner of the table.
“And then one more thing, my Angel . . .”
My heart thumps limply. A criminal charge?
“You could easily have got a medicine to do the same thing from a pharmacist. It’s called Piperazine.”

DR. SPIDERMAN
    Angel’s almost sobbing into the phone. The cold and furious fire of vengefulness that’s been burning in me begins to die down, turning to gray ash. I’m starting to feel tired and old and stupid. I’m in the same painful, exhausted state as when I was still married and had gone off the deep end with my young sons—lashing out at them and scolding them for mindless things they’d done. I’m just as exhausted and deflated and agonizingly conscious that nothing I’ve said has gone home, not even dented the surface. In their eyes, the lashings and scoldings weren’t legitimate punishments, educational discipline, but pure demonstrations of my malice—a bigger person’s arbitrary use of power and sheer badness—leaving me with nothing but the fear: can they love me any more after this?
Why am I calling in the middle of the night? Why didn’t I wait until the next time I saw Angel in the Café Bongo? Then I could have brought the theft of the medicine forward in the most compromising light, making it a merciless counterblow to the pain he’s caused, a delicious weapon, an instrument of power.
Because I remember. I’m remembering subliminally a certain other conversation of ours. And now I go cold in real earnest.
“Angel. Listen. If it has . . . if the animal has . . . intestinal parasites, there are bound to be external parasites as well. Fleas or lice, or at least their eggs. Get some Program tablets from the pet store.”
“Program.”
His voice shows he’s mechanically fixing the name in his memory.
“It’s easy to use, one a month is enough.” I notice with horror that my words are taking on the tone of a professional consultation. “No toxic reactions . . . it’s not even a poison. Just