Free Justine by Kerri A.; Iben; Pierce Mondrup

disappears into the living room, but he appears again in the doorway, shirtless and in his underwear gives me a look.
    â€œIt’s in the kitchen,” Ane says.
    She’s talking about the camera I’m going to borrow, which she got from her father as a maternity gift. It’s already taken thousands of pictures of the baby who’s sleeping on her shoulder.
    â€œLet me show you how it works,” she says.
    â€œDo you have the manual? I can just read that.”
    She rummages around in her bag and hands me the booklet.
    Torben has put on a T-shirt, but he’s still in his underwear. His body cuts my body on the way out to the kitchen. “May I take a bath?”
    â€œOf course.”
    I stand beneath the showerhead. The fish odor persists on my skin, in the oil and the folds. I unhook the sprayer and stick it between my legs.
    â€œAre you almost finished, Justine?” she calls. “What are you doing in there?”
    â€œBathing.”
    â€œYou’ve been bathing for an hour.”
    â€œThanks for letting me.”
    â€œSo, Torben is waiting on me. We have to go. Can you just lock up?”
    He’s standing in the hallway outside the door and waiting on her—or on me? Under some ridiculous pretense or other, what does he want?
    I pull open the shower curtain and douse my lips, press the sprayer into their softness, rinse their depths of semen. The dog. If that’s what he wants, he’ll get it. He stands lurking in that despicable way, his eye against the hole, staring. The water flecks my body around the nipples that swell, my body is three pulsing buds. Bared.
    The apartment is empty. He wasn’t there at all. Or was he?

I ’ve got a camera now, it’s a good place to start. I feel like I’m on such secure footing, it simply can’t go wrong. Now I’ve just got to take the pictures. But before that: I need a tripod, then I can do it myself, do myself, timed release.
    Trine Markhøj sits in her studio among tools and wood and plaster and clay in plastic sacks piled around a square podium. On the podium is a plastic-packed figure on a modeling stand. I’ve just knocked, but Trine doesn’t look up.
    â€œIt’s gone totally downhill,” she says. “It’ll never, ever amount to anything.”
    She leans on the figure that resembles a bowed body beneath the plastic.
    â€œCareful!” I shout.
    The small amount of pressure she’s applied to the body puts it on the verge of collapse. Now it’s happening, bending backward in a sluggish movement that accelerates abruptly until it topples onto the floor.
    â€œThere,” Trine Markhøj says. “That’s that. What can I help you with?”
    She hunts for the tripod beneath the table and behind the cabinet.
    â€œWhat a good thing you showed up,” she says. “That was just the thing. The last little push. It never would’ve amounted to shit anyway. Just think, sometimes you can’t see it yourself.”
    She pulls out a wallpaper roll and a pair of fishing rods. I tell her to leave off looking, but it’s no problem at all, she says, and continues.
    â€œSee, I also found my water hose.”
    She tugs the end of a green hose that proceeds to unwind. Beneath the cabinet she finally finds what I came for: the camera tripod.
    â€œIf I need it, I know where to find you,” she says, and transforms to clay, brown masses fall and pile on the podium like a tower.

B o’s come. He asks if I want to go to Vega and hear some reggae, dry, sharp.
    â€œThis tripod’s fucked,” I say.
    I fidget with and press on Trine Markhøj’s tripod, what a piece of shit. Bo grasps the tripod between his hands and unfastens the clasps one after the other, adjusts, twists a little lever with a gently rotating wrist. The base rises, shooting out of its cocoon.
    â€œSo are you coming?” he asks.
    His body nears, wrestles the tripod