Free The Swede by Robert Karjel

Williamsburg. No elevator, but brick walls and hardwood floors. Views over the balconies of Orthodox Jews, and to the west you could supposedly see part of Manhattan. “Feel free to borrow the place—any time.” Said on a whim once (they’d spent a handful of nights together; she also loved predictable art, Jirlow and Grünewald, and was married)—but still, on the phone she seemed to remember her promise better than she remembered Grip. At any rate, it was enough; she stood by her word. She still needed someone to let in the workmen—a renovation that had dragged on too long, she herself never had time to be there. There was a doorman to give him the keys. “Stay as long as you want.”
    Everything was ready with a phone call. Grip threw out his few potted plants, put a plastic basket under his mail slot in the door, bought a ticket via London, went underground.
    Williamsburg, New York. It started out predictably enough. Galleries and museums, and in between Grip searching for shops that sold the food he missed. Keeping up with his weights in a gym that overlooked barges on the East River. Letting in the workmen, who spent a few days replacing the old tiles in the bathroom with travertine and then disappeared again. He made a few attempts at the local bars. Halfhearted attempts, paying for drinks. No luck.
    How many personality tests had he taken for the security police over the years? A dozen, twenty, something like that. Pages filled with tricky timed questions, hypothetical moral dilemmas, boxes to tick, yes/no. We want to identify trends among our staff members. After a week of interviews, hired psychologists would summarize you in a ten-minute briefing. “I see that loneliness does not scare you. You seem to enjoy danger.” Yet never more than tiptoeing around the edges of who you really were. Had anyone been able to predict what would happen, who he’d become after his houseplants were thrown out? A security police officer on sick leave, between borrowed sheets in New York.
    Instead of all checkmarks and contrived statements, he should have shown them a picture. “There, that’s me,” he could have said, pointing to the smuggler at the back of the boat in Hopper’s The Bootleggers . Calm, blue-gray water in the foreground, a crude little wooden boat making its way along the coast. In the background, a character on shore watches the boat and the two men in it. “There I am.” The figure in the stern, with his back to the viewer. He’s right where he wants to be, but he doesn’t belong anywhere.
    What nobody could have predicted had occurred by chance. Or at least afterward, that’s the way it seemed. One coffee too many, perhaps, he was out on some errand one afternoon and needed to find a bathroom. The door was black with a pane of glass at eyelevel—a bar, just what he was looking for. He opened it, walked in. There were only a few customers. Nodded at the bartender when he passed the counter to avoid issues and looked for the bathroom, among unmarked doors in the gloom at the back. Did his thing, went out again. Then continued as before, back up the street.
    But that was when something caught up with him from the bar, an overwhelming feeling. His steps slowed. For a moment, for a few seconds, he felt like a child coming home to his bedroom after a trip. A sense of loss and familiarity at the same time. But he hadn’t seen anyone he recognized inside the bar. He’d simply noticed a hand patting someone else’s shoulder, and from a table at the side heard a low, sincere laugh. Grip passed a street sign, memorized the address. He returned a few days later after getting up the courage. A Friday night.
    There were a lot more people now, crowded, a haze of faces. The familiar tingle more intense in his body. “ It’s the dark night of my soul . . .” Tracks of Depeche Mode lay like a carpet over the din. Suggestive guitars, French 1980s pop, “ avec son sabre , attaque les cavaliers . . .” The