Free Benny & Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti Page B

it, this isn’t just a matter of taste!”
    “So why did you put up the poster with the couple in the seashell?” she asked slyly.
    “Because he made me feel so happy…” I mumbled.
    She gave a knowing nod.
    “But you can’t honestly imagine me on a three-leggedstool with a milk pail jammed between my knees?”
    “You weren’t there for a bloody job interview!” Märta roared. “That guy gave you the best lay you’ve had for decades, maybe ever. And you’ve had a good laugh with him, which is more than you ever did with that bird fanatic you were married to! So what do a few fly specks matter? Don’t be such a bloody coward! Grab it while you can! Otherwise you might just as well go in there and pull your pristine duvet cover over your head.”
    “But what should I do? I don’t know what he’s thinking ! He hasn’t been in touch!”
    Märta held up the snowstorm with the pair of lovers inside.
    “What you do is take this and a couple of Danish beers, right, and buy a pack of frozen meatballs and go out there and surprise him tomorrow night. He made the first move; take it in turns and you might get somewhere ! You can borrow my car.”
    A picture came into my mind of Salami and Zulamith. They’re two characters in “The Milky Way”, an old poem by Zacharias Topelius that I fell in love with when I was little, though I hardly understood a word of it. With Mummy’s help I learnt it off by heart, and at her coffee parties she used to stand me proudly on the table and get me to recite it for her bored guests.
    Salami and Zulamith are a man and a woman who each live on separate stars and love each other so much that they build a bridge of stars through space. I had a sudden vision of us taking it in turns: competentbricklayer Benny, trowel in hand, fixing star to star at his end, while I at mine tried to jump between the stars as if they were ice floes…
    Märta’s advice isn’t always foolproof, but it usually involves some action that moves things forward. The following evening, I packed a basket with Danish beer, frozen meatballs, ready-made potato salad and a ( shopbought ) blueberry pie. And Märta’s snowstorm with the lovers, wrapped up in gold paper. Then I drove out to Benny’s farm. There was no answer to my knock, but the door was unlocked and the kitchen light was on, so I went in.
    The strip light was buzzing, and a black monster of a radio on the draining board was blaring out some commercial station. I switched over to the shipping forecast and started bustling about; soon the air inside the grubby bobble-trimmed curtains was thick with a comfortable, childhood sort of feeling. I cleared a dirty porridge bowl off the table and put it to soak in cold water in the sink, along with the one already floating there. Then I searched drawers and cupboards until I came across china and cutlery, found a dainty embroidered tablecloth in the oak sideboard in the sitting room, and fried meatballs in a less than hygienic frying pan. When I heard him clomping up the stairs from the cellar, I had a sense of deja vu: this had happened before.
    “What the hell…” He stopped in the doorway, dressed in his cowshed gear. Then he strode across to me, moulting straw and chaff, and gave me a mighty hug.
    “Oh, meatballs?” he grinned. “Did you fry them all by yourself, my pale little lady?”
    “Don’t go thinking I shall make a habit of it!” I mumbled into his rank-smelling orange Helly Hansen jacket.

 

     
    It was the best thing she could possibly have done – though I still feel I’ve got meatballs coming out of my ears. Violet had given me a bucketload to bring home; I’d been living off them for three days.
    She spent the night with me, and as I was changing the sheets, she said she’d got her period and hoped she wouldn’t leak on them.
    Be my guest, I thought, because I liked the fact that she was saying it. It felt so intimate, homely even. You don’t bother going to visit a