Chapters (61)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Imagine a girl
- Prologue
- The Foreigner
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- The Skeptic
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- The Spectator
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- The Assassin
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- The Hunter
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Imagine a girl
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Ben McPherson
- About the Publisher
So convinced she was of her own position. I felt a strange protective surge of pride. Our stubborn little girl. “You can tell me later,” I said. “When you’re ready.”
“Tell you what?” she said, her own eyes flashing. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
Because, Vee, I thought, you are every inch your mother’s daughter.
Twenty-Eight
Elsa and I were on the sofa, drinking martinis in front of the evening news.
I said, “I want to know your reaction to something Vee said.”
Elsa reached across, took my hand in hers. “How do you get them so perfect, Cal?”
“I’m serious,” I said.
“I am too.”
On the news was an interview with the immigration minister, in Norwegian. Arrest photographs of dark-skinned people. Cameras roaming through dusty African towns. Handcuffed figures being led up airplane steps. The minister in a studio, all bottle-blond hair, her lips and cheeks rouged, like a child’s drawing of a white woman.
“So,” said Elsa. “Vee . . .”
“Yeah, Vee asked me, if I had one gun and one bullet—”
“—which one of the Andersens you’d kill?” That smile, as if the idea amused her. “I can see where she’s going with that . . .” She took a long swig of her drink, rolling the glass appreciatively in her hand as she swallowed. “My reaction is that it’s normal to play around with ideas.”
The immigration minister used the word ghetto. I turned to face the TV. The minister seemed to be making a point about Sweden.
Elsa put her glass on the table. She turned to me. “That really is a great martini. Why don’t you tell me about the olives you used?”
The immigration minister’s job appeared to be sending refugee children back to Afghanistan and Central Africa. A Facebook page full of love-heart emojis celebrated successful repatriations.
“The olives, Cal?”
I answered sharply, “You just . . . you buy the right fucking olives, Elsa. Is that really more important to you than Vee’s state of mind?”
The interviewer was asking the minister if she was as skeptical about immigration as the Andersen brothers were.
Elsa reached forward to take my hand again. “This is our ritual. Cal, why are you getting hung up on a child’s game? And will you please look at me, and not the TV?”
On-screen the interviewer was asking the minister precisely how her views differed from the Andersens’. The minister replied that her views were nothing like the Andersens’. The interviewer quoted the prime minister’s words from the memorial service: “More democracy. More openness.” His tone was sarcastic. An argument broke out in the television studio.
Elsa picked up the remote control, began flicking through the channels.
“Okay,” I said. “So what’s your answer to Vee’s dilemma?”
“It’s hardly a dilemma, Cal. You shoot the strong one. Paul Andersen. Without him the weak one crumples. Everybody wins.”