Free The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson Page B

on the sofa. I ran my hands through my hair and wondered if I had ever really gotten over her. Since Sunita I hadn’t had any long relationships. I compared all women to her. I searched in vain for that spark, that intensity…
    I realized I was never going to experience that sort of erotic charge and intense tenderness again. Occasionally I wondered if she still thought about me. Did she remember me? Did she remember any of our adventures and secret meetings, or had she suppressed it all? On some level she must still miss what we had. A bit, at any rate. How much had she and her family had to pay to W.R.D.?
    The sun had gone down. It was dark inside the apartment, but I couldn’t be bothered to switch on any lamps. I alternated between lying down and glaring at my worthless possessions, and sitting up and scratching my head. Evening passed and turned into night. I ought to have gone to bed, but I could just feel myself getting more and more upset.

“I don’t understand,” I said to Maud when she eventually picked up, sounding slightly drowsy. “I don’t think this is fair at all.”
    I heard her clear her throat at the other end of the line.
    “No…hmm…I heard that your amount had been adjusted,” she said.
    It was the middle of the night. Maybe she was trying to get some rest between calls. Maybe she’d actually dozed off? Obviously even she needed to sleep sometimes. Either way, right then I didn’t care. I’d been lying on the sofa for hours, getting worked up about the unfair calculation. I felt I had to vent my frustration.
    “Adjusted?” I said. “It was doubled!”
    She was moving something. A duvet, maybe, or a blanket.
    “Yes, I looked through your file afterward and, well, it’s an impressive result, I have to admit. They managed to get your figures badly wrong upstairs in—”
    “But my friend Roger—” I interrupted her, before she immediately interrupted me, as usual with a practiced harangue. She could probably do it in her sleep.
    “It’s best not to try to make comparisons,” she said. “It’s incredibly hard to see the differences if you haven’t been trained and understand the system.”
    I didn’t care about that now. I felt like I’d heard enough.
    “I think it’s deeply unfair,” I went on. “The more I think about it, the worse I feel. I mean, I haven’t done anything at all with my life. Not a thing. I haven’t traveled or studied or applied myself to anything…I used to drift about with my mates and talk a lot of rubbish and hang out at bars. And now I sit here every day watching films or playing games or listening to music. In the past few years I’ve always gone to the same supermarket and bought the same cereal for breakfast. I get the same coffee from the same café, I still work at the same place, and I basically stand there doing the same thing every day. Then I go to the same restaurant and get takeout. I even go to the same kiosk when I want ice cream. I usually grab a Pizza Grandiosa, ‘X-tra everything, 40% more taste,’ and heat it up in the microwave. If I want to push the boat out I buy a Nogger ice lolly for dessert. Two, even. I never go out. I don’t see any friends. That’s no sort of life!”
    “Why don’t you go out?” Maud said.
    She sounded more alert, but her voice was still a bit hoarse. More than usual, anyway. For a moment I caught myself wondering if she was wearing nightclothes. How did she prefer to sleep? At the same time, I was too upset really to think about her like that. For once, I was just too angry. Sad, even. And I noted how effectively that strangled any tendency toward flirtation.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about it until after I spoke to you. You tell me I have to pay because I’ve had it so easy, but in actual fact I’ve had a really shit time.”
    “But you had all the prerequisites for…” she began.
    “That just makes it worse,” I said.
    I could feel I wasn’t far from bursting