Benny & Shrimp Read Online Free PDF Page A

lap! She kept books of advice on Love Problems in the loo, so you could tear a page out if you needed one in an emergency.
    “Hard work convincing yourself, eh?” was all she said, unconcerned, and glowered at me over her eternal cigarillos. Märta stuck to the principle of Listen to your Heart.
    “Örjan’s got everything,” I said stubbornly.
    “According to consumer research, you mean?” snorted Märta. “Best in test, sifted out from all men in the 25-35 age group? Does he really exist, or is he just a prototype? Have you checked to see if he runs onbatteries? You know, if you can hear a faint hum coming from his ear…”
    Shortly after that, Robert, her Greatest Passion, sold her car and used the money to go off to Madagascar without her. Märta’s face took a serious tumble at that point, but she regained her poise by hating him, shedding the odd tear, working like crazy and then hating him a bit more before bedtime. And when he came back, tanned and gorgeous, she opened her arms to him again within three weeks.
    That did it as far as I was concerned. If that was what the wide blue yonder had in store, you could keep it.
    So I embarked on the project of being Happily Married. Within six months, we had a marriage as comfy as a pair of old slippers. We were in complete agreement about equal division of the bills and the chores; gave parties for people from work, with bottles of Greek Demestica and proper Bulgarian feta; renovated furniture we found at auctions with a lick of paint; and cut interesting articles out of the newspapers for each other.
    What went on between us in the double bed was a little problematic and we tended to blame that on my sensually deprived childhood. Örjan did his best with the foreplay, which never took less than half an hour, but I stayed as dry as coarse-grade sandpaper; we positively grated on each other.
    Of course, I never really knew Örjan.
    Not that he tried to conceal anything – if I asked, he was happy to tell me whatever I wanted to know, fromhis political views to his mother’s maiden name. But…
    “The people in the picture have no connection with the article,” you sometimes read in the paper. That was Örjan in a nutshell, in some indefinable way. So I stopped asking.
    He didn’t ask much, either, and if he did, his face had “This is Me Taking an Interest” written all over it. So I stopped answering. It didn’t really seem to bother him.
    What seemed to bring us closest was talking about friends and acquaintances who had got divorced after stormy marriage guidance sessions. We loved sitting there going over all their mistakes, and sometimes we’d even get straight under our designer duvets and find I grated less than usual.
    But my egg never, ever, turned somersaults, however hard Örjan worked on my erogenous zones.
    The cemetery bench was freezing my backside off, so I got up and went. No Forest Owner today, ha! He wasn’t there on my next two visits, either.
    The third time, I passed him coming in at the cemetery gate as I was on my way out. He was carrying some fir twigs, a little wreath with plastic lilies and a grave light. Of course, it was All Saints Day! He gave me a nod as stern as an old schoolmaster’s, as if he was thinking : Well? Is your grave light properly positioned, young lady?
    I thought of Märta and her Greatest Passion. Was this how it started? With finding yourself going places you didn’t want to go, your feet and ovaries starting to live a life of their own?
    A wreath with plastic flowers! Örjan would have found that very funny – yes, Örjan could laugh!
    I didn’t go to the cemetery the following week. My feet and ovaries needed putting in their place; anything else would be plain ridiculous.
    Olof, who’s the head librarian and recently divorced, asked me if I felt like going out for something to eat after work. We went to a new pub, with the sort of interior design no real British pub has had since the Thirties. Olof’s