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he became drowsy, just wanted to sleep.
    Magnus curled up next to him and they watched a documentary about the circus. When the coffee was ready, David got up despite Magnus’ protests. Eva was at the stove, fiddling with one of the knobs.
    ‘Strange,’ she remarked, ‘I can’t turn it off.’
    The power light wouldn’t go off. David turned some knobs at random, but nothing happened. The burner on which the coffee pot sat gurgling was red-hot. They couldn’t be bothered doing anything to it for the moment, so David read his piece out while they drank the heavily sugared espresso and smoked. Eva thought it was funny.
    ‘Can I do it?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘You don’t think that it’s…’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, going too far. They’re right, of course.’
    ‘Well? What does that have to do with it?’
    ‘No, of course. Thanks.’
    Ten years they had been married, and hardly a day went by that David did not look at Eva and think, ‘How bloody lucky I am.’ Naturally there were black days. Weeks, even, without joy or the possibility of it, but even then, at the bottom of all the murk, he knew there was a placard that read bloody good luck . Maybe he couldn’t see it at that moment, but it always resurfaced.
    She worked as an editor and illustrator of non-fiction books for children at a small publishing company called Hippogriff, and she had written and illustrated two books herself featuring Bruno, a philosophically inclined beaver who liked to build things. No huge successes, but as Eva once said with a grimace, ‘The upper middle classes seem to like them. Architects. Whether their children do is less certain.’ David thought the books were significantly funnier than his monologues.
    ‘Mum! Dad! I can’t turn it off!’
    Magnus was standing in front of the television, waving the remote control. David hit the off button on the set but the screen did not go black. It was the same as the stove, but here at least the plug was easy to get at, so he pulled on it just as the newscaster announced the start of the evening current affairs show. For a moment it felt like pulling a piece of metal off a magnet, the wall socket sucking at the plug. There was a crackling sound and a tickle in his fingers, then the newscaster disappeared into the dark.
    David held out the plug. ‘Did you see that? It was some kind of…short circuit. Now all the fuses have gone.’ He flicked the light switch. The ceiling lamp went on, but he could not switch it off again.
    Magnus jumped up in his seat.
    ‘Come on! Let’s keep playing.’
     
    They let Magnus win Monopoly, and while he was counting his money. David packed his stage shoes and shirt, along with the newspaper. When he came out into the kitchen, Eva was pulling the stove out from the wall.
    ‘No,’ David said. ‘Don’t do that.’
    Eva pinched a finger and swore. ‘Damn…we can’t leave it like this. I’m going over to my dad’s. Fuck…’ Eva tugged on the stove but it had become wedged between the cabinets.
    ‘Eva,’ David said. ‘How many times have we forgotten to turn it off and gone to bed without anything happening?’
    ‘Yeah, I know, but to leave the apartment…’ She kicked the oven door. ‘We haven’t cleaned back there for years. Bloody thing. Damn, my head hurts.’
    ‘Is that what you want to do right now? Clean behind the stove?’
    She let her hands fall, shook her head and chuckled.
    ‘No. I got it in my head. It’ll have to wait.’
    She made a final desperate lunge at the stove and threw up her hands, defeated. Magnus came out into the kitchen with his money.
    ‘Ninety-seven thousand four hundred.’ He scrunched up his eyes. ‘My head hurts a whole lot. It’s stupid.’
    They each took an aspirin and a glass of water, said cheers and swallowed. A farewell toast.
    Magnus was going to spend the night at David’s mother’s place, Eva was going to visit her father in Järfälla, but come back in the middle of the night. They