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Britt-Marie dislikes whistling, and she has a headache.

Britt-Marie wakes up on a floor. Somebody is leaning over her, saying something, but Britt-Marie's first thoughts are about the floor. She's worried that it may be dirty, and that people might think she's dead. These things happen all the time, people falling over and dying. It would be horrific, thinks Britt-Marie. To die on a dirty floor. What would people think?

"Hello, lady? Are you, you know, dead?" Somebody repeats and makes a little whistling sound.

"Hello, are you, what's-it-called? Deceased?" Somebody asks, but Britt-Marie keeps focusing on the floor.

She's not at all keen on pizza, because Kent smelled so much of pizza when he came home late from his meetings with Germany. Britt-Marie remembers all his smells. Most of all the smell of the hospital room. It was loaded with bouquets (it is common practice to receive flowers when you have a heart attack) but Britt-Marie can still remember that smell of perfume and pizza from the shirt by the side of his bed.

The floor smells of pizza. It would be awful to die with a headache while smelling of pizza.

There was a time just after their teenage years when they still promised to come to visit at Christmas. Then they started pretending to have reasons for canceling. After a year or two they stopped pretending to have reasons for canceling. In the end they stopped pretending that they were coming at all. That's how life went.

Britt-Marie has always liked the theater, because she enjoys the way the actors get applauded at the end for their pretense. Kent's heart attack and the voice of the young, beautiful thing meant there'd be no applause for her. You can't keep pretending someone doesn't exist when she speaks to you on the telephone. So Britt-Marie left the hospital room with a shirt smelling of perfume and a broken heart.

He was sleeping, snoring slightly. She held his hand a last time, without waking him. Then she folded up the shirt and put it in her handbag. When she came home she cleaned the collar with baking soda and vinegar and washed it twice before she hung it up. Then she polished the windows with Faxin and freshened up the mattress and brought in the balcony boxes and packed her bag and turned on her cell phone for the first time in her life. For the first time in their life together. She thought the children might call and ask how things were with Kent. They didn't. They both sent a single text message.

"May I ask where I am?" asks Britt-Marie, in confusion.

Somebody, who actually seems to be a woman, points jovially at an open plastic case marked with a red cross on the lid, and "First Aid" written on it. Then she waves a stinky bottle.

"It smells of pizza," Britt-Marie manages to say.

"But, shit, are you… like… dead?" Somebody asks impatiently.

You don't get any flowers for that.

"Hi there! At the health center," says Somebody cheerfully.

"Yeah, you know, health center is also pizzeria," says Somebody, nodding.

Britt-Marie finds it extremely impolite for Somebody to interrupt her in the midst of dying. Especially with such terrible language. There are certainly a good number of alternatives to "shit," if you have a particular need to express such a feeling. She looks up at this Somebody standing over her, looking down.

"That hardly strikes me as hygienic," Britt-Marie manages to utter.

Somebody shrugs his shoulders. "First pizzeria. You know, they closed down that health center. Financial crisis. What a shit. So now, you know, we do what we can. But no worry. Have first aid!"

"Excuse me?" Britt-Marie squeaks, with her hand on a painful bump on her forehead.

"They closed down the liquor store here, so now we do what we can. Here! Vodka from Estonia or some shit like that. Letters bloody weird, you know. Maybe not vodka, but same shit, burns your tongue but you get used to it. Good when you get those, what's-it-called? Flu blisters?"

"And here, you know, second aid! You want?"

Somebody, who on closer inspection is not standing over Britt-Marie but sitting over her, offers her a glass.

Tormented, Britt-Marie shakes her head and catches sight of some red stains on her jacket.

"Am I bleeding?" she bursts out, sitting up in terror.

It would be terribly vexatious if she left bloodstains on Somebody's floor, whether it's been mopped or not.

"No! No! No shit like that. Maybe you get a bump on your head from the shot, huh, but that's just tomato sauce, you know!" yells Somebody and tries to mop Britt-Marie's jacket with a tissue.

Britt-Marie notices that Somebody is in a wheelchair. It's a difficult thing not to notice. Furthermore Somebody seems intoxicated. Britt-Marie bases this observation on the fact that Somebody smells of vodka and can't quite manage to dab the tissue in the right place. But Britt-Marie doesn't have any prejudices about it.

"Lunch? At this time of day?" mumbles Britt-Marie, because it isn't even eleven o'clock.

"What do you mean, a bump from 'the shot'? Have I been shot?" she exclaims, fingering her scalp as if searching for a hole.

"I was waiting here for you to stop looking deceased. Got hungry, you know, so I had a bit of lunch," sniggers Somebody, pointing at a half-eaten pizza perched on a stool.

Only then does Britt-Marie register what was said.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. A soccer ball in the head, you know." Somebody nods and spills vodka on the pizza.

Britt-Marie looks as if she may even have preferred a pistol to a pizza. She imagines that pistols are less dirty.

"If you hungry? Have pizza!" Somebody explains.

Somebody, who seems to be in her forties, helps her up, assisted by a girl in her early teens who has turned up at their side. Somebody has one of the worst hairstyles Britt-Marie has ever laid eyes on, as if she's combed her hair with a terrified animal. The girl's hair is more respectable, but her jeans are torn to shreds across her thighs. Probably modern.

Britt-Marie touches the bump on her forehead.

Somebody sniggers, without a care in the world.

"Bloody brats, you know. Bloody soccer. But don't get angry, they weren't aiming at you!"

"They hit you!" laughs Somebody, throwing out her arms. "If they aim, they don't hit. These kids bloody terrible at soccer, huh?"

"Is my face dirty?" she asks, simultaneously reproachful and anxious.

Britt-Marie's gaze falls self-consciously on two men with beards and caps, sitting at a table in a corner, with cups of coffee and morning newspapers. It seems abominable to her, lying there passed out in front of people who are trying to have their coffee. Yet neither of the men even glances at her.

Somebody shakes her head and rolls back towards her pizza.

"You only passed out a little," says Somebody breezily, while shoveling the pizza into her mouth.

Britt-Marie gets out a small mirror from her handbag and starts rubbing her forehead. She found it very vexatious passing out, but nowhere near as vexatious as the thought of having passed out with a dirty face.

"How do you know if they were aiming at me?" she asks, with just a touch of criticism.

"Shouldn't you be at school?" asks Britt-Marie, without taking her eyes off the soccer ball.

Vega's mouth opens in surprise. As if this, in some way, changes everything. But she remains silent.

Britt-Marie notices that she's holding the soccer ball in her hands. The way you hold a ball when that's what you have to do to stop yourself from repeatedly kicking it.

"We're actually not that bad…" mutters the teenage girl standing next to them, looking offended.

"Let me tell you something, I was on my way to work when I was hit on the head. I'm the caretaker of the recreation center, I'll have you know. This is my first day."

Britt-Marie grips her handbag more firmly.

"Caretaker?" asks Somebody. "Why didn't you say so, lady! I've got one of them, what's-it-called? Registered letters! With the key!"

"Shouldn't you be at work?" answers Vega, holding the ball as you do when you're holding on to someone you love.

"My name's Vega. I work here!" the girl says.

"Ha," says Britt-Marie.

Somebody gestures encouragingly at the girl.

"Are here! They closed down the post office, you see!" shouts Somebody, rolling round behind the counter, still with the bottle of vodka in her hand.

There's a growl from somewhere between the beard and the cap: "Look where you're going."

Somebody comes back with Karl's packaging; Karl looks with irritation at Vega and hostility at Britt-Marie. Then he nods grumpily to the two men at the corner table. They nod back even more grumpily. The door tinkles merrily behind Karl as he lopes out.

Britt-Marie, who wasn't even moving, is deeply puzzled. Then she grips her handbag even more firmly and says:

"All right, Karl! I have packaging for you, wait!"

Britt-Marie turns around and is almost knocked to the ground by someone crashing into her shoulder. She looks up and sees a thick beard just below an unreasonably dirty cap, the whole appendage looking back at her.

There's a short silence. There's a tinkle from the door and a pair of dirty boots cross the unmopped floor. Somebody yells out:

Britt-Marie doesn't like it at all. She gets confused when anyone defends her -- it doesn't happen very often.

"You walked into her!" Vega hisses behind her.

"Ha."

"I've been informed I'm to pick up the keys at the post office."

"Never bloody mind about him. Karl has… like… what do you say? A lemon up his arse, you know what I mean? Pissed off at life and the universe and everything. People around here don't like visitors from the city," she says to Britt-Marie, and nods at the men by the table when she says "people." They keep reading their newspapers and drinking their coffee as if neither of the women are there.

Somebody pats Britt-Marie encouragingly on the shoulder.

Britt-Marie looks at a section that leads off the pizzeria, health care center, post office, or whatever it is. There are shelves of groceries in there. As if it were a mini market.

Somebody rolls her eyes. "Come on! I'll show you the recreation center, huh!" she shouts and rolls off towards the door.

"They closed down the supermarket, you know, we do what we can!"

"Could I ask, is this a grocer's?"

"How did he know I was from the city?"

Britt-Marie remembers the dirty windows in the recreation center.

"Might one ask if you have Faxin available here?" she asks.

"Surely people can't just behave like that?" Britt-Marie bursts out.

"Absolutely not!" Britt-Marie interrupts, walking towards the door as she hisses: "I'll use baking soda!"

"Is… but how… is that even legal?"

"Faxin is not anymore in manufacturer's… what's-it-called? Product range! Not profitable, you know."

Somebody shrugs again. "Never mind though, eh? I have another brand! You want Russian brand, good shit, over there --" she starts to say, and gestures at Vega to run over and get it.

"Not profitable," says Somebody with a shrug.

It was just that the world did not see her.

As if that's an answer.

Britt-Marie has never used any other brand than Faxin. She saw an advertisement for it in her father's morning newspaper when she was a child. A woman stood looking out of a clean window and underneath was written: FAXIN LETS YOU SEE THE WORLD. Britt-Marie loved that picture. As soon as she was old enough to have her own windows, she polished them with Faxin, continued doing so daily for the rest of her life, and never had any problems seeing the world.

Britt-Marie's eyes open wide and she makes a little gasp.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asks Britt-Marie, only a touch reproachfully.

Because you can't change Britt-Marie's way of seeing the world. Because once Britt-Marie has taken a position on the world there's no changing her.

"I know, you know, but there's no Faxin now… you know?" says Somebody.