Weekend plans

The weekend.

Usually begins with something as wild as sitting at Ritorno Konditori until closing.

They close at eight.

Wild enough that I close the place.

Wild on the computer too. Heard of AI? It lives freely in my folders.

Maybe a wild SALE on overnight oats. They won’t survive another night.

Big words, you learn, are unnecessary when you write. It usually goes just as well without them. But athletes overuse them. Everything is crazy or insane.

I don’t like it.

Maybe because I’m too politically correct. Or too empathetic.

Actually, I have friends who are crazy for real.

But I’ll watch the World Cup anyway.

Last weekend S and I made a day trip to Gotska Sandön. Adventure, I thought.

Afterwards I learned that a friend of my mother’s and some other seventy-year-olds had been there the same day. They took the same pictures I did. Seals. Bird tracks in the sand. The boat unloading.

A memory surfaces out of nowhere. Haven’t thought about it in thirty years.

The music school auditions in third grade.

A classroom at Domarringen school. Entrance exam.

I had chosen Vem kan segla förutan vind. Rehearsed at home with Mum at the piano.

Mum waited in the corridor.

Some time later the news arrives. My friend P is accepted. Not me.

I remember the relief.

Evening.

The subway. Far out on the line.

At the next stop something happens.

A guy walks past and drops a phone on the seat. In plain sight. He keeps walking and gets off.

The phone stays.

Two other guys get on. They spot it right away. Laugh. Pick it up. Ask Siri whose it is.

The SIM card is already gone.

They look at each other. Then at their hands. One of them wipes the phone against the seat.

Too late. The prints are already on it.

I think what they’re thinking: the phone was left there for someone to pick up. To smear with new fingers.

The guys say words I can’t repeat here and get off.

I twist around to see if they dump the phone.

I think about my dormant thriller. About A, who writes for Netflix. You can’t make this stuff up.

Count how many beers I’ve had.

Two.

How many new people I’ve talked to.

One.

Count the summer’s adventures.

Check if Ritorno is open.