Free The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm Page B

saw that too. And in the background SHOTS.
Pang
.
    Though
pang
. Maybe it was just snapping in her head because the girl had gone down on the ground now in the alpine sun, she could not stand upright in all her day-after weakness and she knew that she was about to faint.
    But then the Islander was there shaking her, holding her, and everything was okay again.
    “Am I not an Ålänning worth the name?” the Islander said in a brilliant mood in the taxi on the way back to the hotel. “A damned impressive one with captains in the family going back generations?”
    “Mmm,” Sandra said because that was the way she had the habit of answering when he was going on like that.
    “I mean the house,” the Islander clarified in the sunshine. “Won’t it be phenomenal?”
    “Yes,” Sandra answered slowly. And she knew then, in the same moment she heard her voice, that everything was so irreversible.
    “This seals our union,” the Islander also said. “Now we’re sharing a secret. Remember. I’m counting on you. Not a word to anyone.”
    And then she also understood something else. She could no longer get out. She was involved now, whether she wanted to beor not. And it was no hallucination. It was nothing less than reality, which, despite her current dazed state, was more than ever before completely clear.
    Little Bombay
    Pashmina was invented more than four hundred years ago when Nur Jahan, wife of the Emperor Jehangir, asked her weavers to present a woolen fabric that was “as light as a cloud but as warm as a tender embrace.”
    And she got it
.
    Many are the finesses and secrets of pashmina
.
    Silk is, should we say it directly, second class
.
    We’re talking about silk in pashmina, in other words
.
    Real pashmina wool comes from the belly of sheep
.
    Or was it the hindquarters
.
    “This is what it looked like. A room with bolts of fabric, two tables, and shelves
.
    “A table and a chair and a record player in the back part of the room
.
    “A water boiler. We always drank tea. A certain type of tea.”
    But she could also become angry. “Why didn’t anyone come?”
    “And you ask as if business was going well.”
    “Business is terrible.”
    And all of the needles fell out of her mouth, she was so angry
.
    And
clink clink
the needles fell on the floor
.
    Little Bombay—
    Little Bombay, Köpmansbranten 42, in a suburb in the western parts outside the city by the sea, open between eight and six in the evening
.
    A fabric store, “for silk. Can anything be more idiotic?”
    The puzzle in the back room, on the little table
.
    Alpine Villa in Snow
.
    And all of the fabrics
.
    “. . .
And the Islander. What is he doing again? He’s hardly ever at home
. . .”
    And one day the door opened and an acquaintance stepped into the boutique:
    “When you speak of the devil.”
    It wasn’t the Islander, but the Black Sheep
.
    “Long time no see. But remember this. That it isn’t always so wonderful to see what your dreams look like in reality.”
    The Black Sheep, the eternal student of architecture. The Islander’s brother
.
    Always on the go, always busy
.
    Like the Islander. Yet so different
.
    And so it was, a time later. More like the time that it takes for a baby elephant to be ready baked in its mother’s stomach.
    “Here comes happiness from a lucky roll of the dice!” the Islander yelled and shuffled a large, square package into the bedroom of the apartment in their native country. The package was almost as tall as Sandra, covered with silver-colored paper and a wide red silk ribbon tied in the shape of a playful tropical flower right on top. Sandra knew. She had already seen everything, but later when it happened in real time she lay and huddled on her mother’s bed, under her mother’s quilt. Squeezed her eyes shut, held her hands over her ears and
la-laed
to herself to shut out what could not be shut out.
    And then glitter confetti rained over the bed, the package, the room, her.
    A few days before