Metro Read Free

nowhere, and I carefully turn to pick up the newspaper. Comparing the picture on the front page to my reflection, it is exactly the same… Only, I am not. I am mirrored, or the reflection is mirrored; and if the picture in the paper isn’t mirrored too, then it can’t be me in the picture. Both my mole and my scar are on the right side of my face, and both the picture and the reflection would have them on the left side.
    I frown. The picture will probably turn out to be mirrored. It would be quite astonishing if there was a man out there in Copenhagen who looked so much like me that he literally could be my mirror image.
    Then I see it. The suit, the buttons. The buttons are, of course, placed on the right side as they always are on men’s clothes. The buttonholes are on the left. If the shot was mirrored, they would be placed the other way around, like on women’s clothes.
    The train beeps, the doors close, and the train starts moving. I glance back at the young woman. Now, she is sitting with her eyes closed, maybe even slumbering. The earplugs are back in her ears. My eyes follow the white cord along her neck to her ears and once again I can almost taste the metal of her earrings inside my mouth.
    And then I remember. Her name was Ellen-Marie. My first love. Ellen-Marie. Of course. Ellen-Marie Lundquist. I was so in love with her. I don’t even think I was that in love with my ex-wife. Betina seemed more like a reasonable choice, a good woman to mother my children; but Ellen-Marie, fourteen years old… It was so intense. The feeling of her fine, soft hair between my fingers. It was magic. She trembled when I touched her. I even remember the scent of the tea she used to make those afternoons in her parent’s big, empty villa. The posters on the walls of her room, the hand that slowly found its way inside her shirt. She was far too young to wear a bra.
    Noticing me staring at her, the girl shoots me a hard look. Embarrassed, I turn away. Maybe if she had been older I could try to start a conversation. God knows, I need a woman in my life. There have been no women, absolutely no women, since the divorce. I haven’t had the time nor the desire. No more women for me. I have been working, doing my job. I have traveled the world with my laptop and Armani suit. I need a woman I suddenly realize, but not a fourteen-year-old child with a vague resemblance of the first girl I made love to.
    Besides, Ellen-Marie was a slut. I found her a few weeks later with another guy at a party and something inside me broke, something… I haven’t been thinking about for years.
    “Next station Femoren.”
    Once again, I have been so caught up in thoughts that I didn’t even notice the train stopping at Kastrup station. I am tired now. I could sleep right here in the train, but there is hardly going to be that much sleep for me tonight. I need to contact the police. Or maybe I ought to go home first, get some sleep—just a couple of hours—and then call my attorney early in the morning to get things fixed.
    Through the window I see the suburbs on the island of Amager rushing by. The streets seem deserted in the dull lights from the street lamps. The houses are dark blocks with only the occasionally warm glow of a window to be seen. This part of Copenhagen is sleeping.
    There is a single man standing at the platform at Femoren waiting for the train. His shoulders pulled up around his ears, he looks like he is freezing. It is always cold on the elevated stations with nothing to provide shelter from the wind. It is much better at the stations on the part of the Metro line where the tracks are underground.
    The man is well inside the train before the dreadful truth occurs to me. He is the man from the newspaper. The rapist. My doppelganger. My mirrored doppelganger.
    The train is still as good as empty. Nobody here, but the three of us. Still, he doesn’t sit. He stands by the doors where he came in. Right between me and the young woman.