Britt-Marie Was Here Read Online Free Page B

post office?”
    “Britt-Marie, is that you?”
    “I can hardly hear you!”
    “Did you say blown up ? Are you okay?”
    “Of course I am! But what about the car?”
    “I don’t know the first thing about cars,” tries the girl.
    Britt-Marie releases an extremely patient exhalation of air.
    “You said I should call you if I had any questions,” she reminds her. Britt-Marie feels it would be unreasonable for her to be expected to know everything about cars. She has only driven on very few occasions since she and Kent were married—she never goes anywhere in a car unless Kent is there, and Kent is an absolutely excellent driver.
    “I meant questions about the job. ”
    “Ha. That’s the only important thing, of course. The career. If I’m killed in an explosion, that’s not important of course,” states Britt-Marie. “Maybe it’s even good if I die. Then you’ll have a job to spare.”
    “Please Britt-Mar—”
    “I can hardly hear you!!” bellows Britt-Marie, in a very helpful way, and hangs up. Then she stands there, on her own, sucking in her cheeks.
    Something is still thumping on the other side of the recreation center, which is still standing only because at the last councillors’meeting in December, there were so many other things already scheduled for closure. The local authority representatives were concerned it might cause a postponement of their annual Christmas dinner. In view of the importance of the Christmas dinner, the closure was pushed back to the end of January, after the holiday period of the local authority councillors. Obviously the communications officer of the local authority should have been responsible for communicating this to the personnel department, but unfortunately the communications officer went on holiday and forgot to communicate it. As a result, when the personnel department found that the local authority had a building without anyone to take care of it, a vacancy for a caretaker of the recreation center was advertised with the unemployment office in early January. That was the long and the short of it.
    Anyway, the job is not only exceptionally badly paid, but also temporary and subject to the decision regarding the closure of the recreation center to be reached at the councillors’ meeting in three weeks’ time. And to top it all, the recreation center is in Borg. The number of applicants for the position were, for these reasons, fairly limited.
    But it just so happened that the girl at the unemployment office, who very much against her will ate salmon with Britt-Marie the day before yesterday, promised Britt-Marie that she would really try to find her a job. The next morning at 9:02, when Britt-Marie knocked on the girl’s door to learn how this was going, the girl tapped her computer for a while then eventually said: “There is one job. But it’s in the middle of nowhere and so badly paid that if you’re receiving unemployment benefits you’ll probably lose money on it.”
    “I don’t get any benefits ,” said Britt-Marie, as if they were a disease.
    The girl sighed again and tried to say something about“retraining courses” and “measures” that Britt-Marie might be eligible for, but Britt-Marie made it clear that she certainly wouldn’t welcome any of those measures.
    “Please, Britt-Marie, this is just a job for three weeks, it’s not really the kind of thing you want to be applying for at your . . . age . . . plus you’d have to move all the way to this place. . . .”
    Now Britt-Marie is in Borg and her car has blown up. It’s hardly the best possible first day in her new job, one might say. She calls the girl back.
    “Where can I expect to find the cleaning equipment?” asks Britt-Marie.
    “What?” asks the girl.
    “You said I should call if I had any questions about the job.”
    The girl mutters something unintelligible, her voice sounding as if it’s coming from inside a tin can.
    “Now you have to listen to me, my dear. I