Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name Read Online Free

“Didn’t you see me?” he said. I shook my head no, my hood swinging left and right.
    I hadn’t been touched by anyone since Pankaj, the liar, had tried to comfort me. Kari saw my eyes on his hand and let go.
    “Sorry,” he said.�
    I forced myself to smile. “About what?”�
    I was impressed by his choice of a bar. It was on a back�- street, and from the outside, it looked candlelit, warm. Inside, groups of friends convened around blond wood tables bordered by benches. Plum-colored tulips were mixed with red berries and placed in the center of each table.
    Kari gave his last name to the hostess. It sounded short but looked long when she wrote it down. The plans had evidently changed to include dinner. I didn’t mind—I had a night to kill. Another woman escorted us to the bar’s wooden stools. A third came by for our coats.
    I gave her mine, along with my hat and scarf, and then shivered.
    “Why do you do that?” Kari asked. “What?”
    “What you just did . . . what do you call it?” He imitated me, doing an exaggerated shudder.
    I told him it was called shivering. “But that’s not real,” he said.
    “Not real? You mean not natural.”
    “Yes, it’s not natural. You don’t sliver because you’re cold.” I shivered again.
    Kari had changed clothes since driving the bus. He was wearing a black-and-white speckled sweater that made me sad. All that effort put into making something so ugly.
    “How old are you?” I asked.

    “Twenty-three,” he said. He was adding a few years. “And you?”
    “Twenty-six,” I lied, subtracting.
    Kari ordered a rum and coke. I ordered a vodka and cran-berry.
    We knocked glasses, and I studied Kari’s face. He had pale, doughy skin. I could see the palimpsest of teenage acne.
    I took another look around the bar, at the woman who’d written down his last name, whatever it was. She was wearing camouflage pants and was admiring another waitress’s camouflage belt. Gone were the deep-jungle patterns of the eighties; these were sand-colored, period-specific. Fashion knows no bounds.
    Kari and I had nothing to say to each other.
    I told him an anecdote that had amused Pankaj:
    One night, when I’d first moved to New York and gotten a job waitressing at a steak house, I had a table of Swedes. After they’d finished their food, I asked the busboy, Gilbert, to clear the table. Gilbert was from Guatemala and kept a picture of his wife wrapped around the handle of his comb. The picture was so frayed that the one time he’d shown it to me, I couldn’t make out much of her appearance except that, in the photo, she seemed to be wearing something red. He sent her money every month.
    I paused to ask Kari if he understood everything so far. He nodded, and I continued:
    Gilbert returned from the table and told me that each time he tried to clear their plates, the Swedes had laughed.

    “I’m sure they’re not laughing at you,” I told him. “Go try again.”
    I watched as Gilbert returned to the table. He asked if they were done, and the Swedes said something to him and then laughed. He came back to my side, confused. “See?” he said.
    This time, I went to the table. “Is something wrong?” I asked. The man who was leaning forward in his chair, the man who had sent back his steak because it was overcooked, decided to answer my question. “Your busboy keeps coming to the table and asking, ‘You Finnish?’ and we say, ‘No, we’re Swedish.’”
    Kari stared at me. Pankaj had liked this story so much he had told it a couple times himself.
    A minute passed. Kari downed his drink, examined his knuckles. At last, he spoke. “Why did the busboy think they were Finnish?”

15.
    My mother’s friendship with Gita, Pankaj’s mother, bore a strong resemblance to that of schoolgirls—they would talk on the phone every night, rehashing the day’s events. For a short time, Dad and Pankaj’s father became friends as well, drawn in by their wives’ enthusiasm for