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BY SYDVEST STATION

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THEY’RE READY. THEY HAVE A COLLECTION CAN, A BAG with the cancer logo, and two streets by Sydvest Station with an apartment co-op and some rental flats, and Kirsten has no idea what she’s in for, just that it’ll be exciting to try collecting money for the Cancer Society in a neighborhood like this, while Lina steels herself for the awkwardness of standing so far from home in her white sneakers and rattling the can. She’s also tired, and at the same time her head is full of him and what he said. It hurt her, and she’s felt tired ever since, like she could fall asleep on her feet. But Kirsten’s game, and Lina smiles at her and says that she is too, and then they get started.

At the first building no one answers initially, even though they press all the buttons on the intercom, but it must be the guy on the fifth floor who finally lets them in, as he ends up being the only one who contributes. He gives them twenty kroner, and then they giggle all the way downstairs because it’s the first money they’ve ever collected, but also because they’re nervous. Some of the doors make it clear how odd people can be. They put stickers with Rottweilers, Bambi, and Cinderella around their nameplates, which sometimes are galvanized and other times written in ballpoint and stuck up with masking tape. There are also doors that send mixed messages, and the two of them talk about how you never know what awaits you 32when you knock on someone’s door. True enough, Lina thinks to herself, musing that Kirsten for instance doesn’t know that he said what he said. In fact nobody knows that he told her that—that her love couldn’t be genuine. That no one really loved that way. It was just compensation, he’d said, but she doesn’t want to tell Kirsten that. She’s certain her reaction would be textbook, and nothing’s worse than someone who goes by the book, Lina thinks, saying nothing, and then Kirsten suggests that they start using the decorations on each door to guess what sort of person might answer.