pulled the cuff of my jeans back down over my .45. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Why don’t you come back on a day when you feel better.” It wasn’t a question, I was being kicked out. “I’ll buy you a beer the next time I see you.” He said it in a caring way, I couldn’t be mad about it. And besides, he was right.
I got up to leave.
Without deigning to look at me, Asshole said, “See ya, Frankenstein.”
I stepped toward the door as if leaving, but turned and swung my cane two-handed like a bat. Scored a perfect kidney shot with the back of the gold lion’s head handle. Asshole went down like a rock, screamed and curled up into a ball. I gave the folks in the dogs’ corner a small salute, wished them pleasant evenings and hobbled home.
On the way, I decided that in my current emotional state I was dangerous, not fit company for other humans. I decided to go into self-imposed isolation. It didn’t last long.
2
Six thirty p.m. Pizza delivered, waiting for hunger to build. Check. Tranquilizers, pain medication and muscle relaxants ingested, so that I could work up to eating it. Check. Half tumbler of kossu on the side table beside my armchair, to amplify the effects of the dope. Bottle on floor beside me. Check.
Only an idiot pays attention to the warnings on medication stating that it shouldn’t be taken with alcohol. Any fool knows tranks and dope work better with booze. The dope wasn’t that strong, just tablets with thirty milligrams of codeine and some Tylenol, max eight a day. I eschewed stronger painkillers because they guaranteed addiction and detox, the last thing I needed to add to my list of problems. Tranks are addictive, but were necessary to relax my jaw enough to eat or speak. As the doctors taught me, I had to balance functionality versus nonfunctionality.
By that point in my life, I was expert at pain management. The buzz and pain relief the alcohol generated was enough to get me by. I’d gone to the manufacturers’ websites of all the medications and worked out how many I could take of each per day, in conjunction with alcohol, without destroying my vital organs. I discovered double-checking medical advice was a necessity after once going to terveyskeskus, the public health clinic, also known as arvauskeskus—the guessing center—with a simple flu. Had I taken the medication as directed, I would have required a liver transplant.
Katt, my cat, was fed, watered and litter box cleaned, in case I passed out. Check. I was ready to settle in for another stoned evening of introspection. For some reason, I felt a desire to tour my self-imposed luxury prison first.
Behind the living room in our fourth-floor apartment, a low dais next to the kitchen, our dining area, has a big oak table that seats ten, so we can have dinner parties. The kitchen has brushed-stainless-steel fixtures. The refrigerator and induction stovetop are state-of-the-art. Not the best money can buy, but not far from it. The bathroom is a tad small, but bigger than is common in apartments in Helsinki. It has a small electric sauna in it, and like many people, we use it more for drying clothes than sweating in steam heat. We have two bedrooms, one for Kate and me, with an oversized and almost too comfortable bed—I sometimes have to force myself out of it to face the new day—and one for our daughter, Anu.
In front of the dais is a long couch that faces an entertainment center. When you’re sitting on the couch, a bank of windows makes up the wall to my left. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases—which I built myself—make up the right side of the room. They’re chock-full, overloaded with books and music. My CD collection numbers over five hundred now, and my vinyl records number near a thousand. My man’s chair sits to the side and in front of the couch, near a large window, angled toward the forty-two-inch flat-screen television and stereo in our entertainment center. In summer, this is poor placement for the chair. The window faces east and gets the full blast of morning sun until the building across from me blots it out. The sun penetrates the drawn, thick red curtains, makes them glare like the front window of an Amsterdam whorehouse, and the light beating through them makes me swelter.
Most people love summer. It’s so short that it’s like a flower that blooms and quickly dies. People