Somewhere Else

Chapter 1: Arrival (ii)

Aksel's apartment – or our apartment, as I have to get used to calling it – is located on a street with a very long name that I can neither pronounce nor remember. The street is lined with cars on both sides as we turn in, and Aksel pulls into a lot right in front of the entrance to an apartment building. Then he kills the engine and turns to me. "We're here."

I get out of the car, slowly taking in my surroundings. The building itself spans the entire stretch of the road, ending only at the cross-junction ahead. A part of the building, around the corner, is a shop for golfing supplies. Beside the golf shop is a set of wooden double doors, labelled with the letter C at the top. Aksel heads for the parking meter beside the doors, and I go to stand beside him after I've hauled my luggage out of the car.

"Here?" I ask him, looking up at the orderly rows of windows peering out against the facade.

"Here," he confirms, without looking up.

There are five storeys in total, with the last storey separated from the rest by a jutting strip that hides part of the top-floor windows from view from my angle. The middle three floors right above the doors are jettied storeys - protruding out over the rest of the windows. As I stare up at them, I wonder which window is the one to our apartment, or if it is even visible from this side of the building.

Across the street, there is a clump of bare trees surrounding what could be a nice place to sit and relax during the summer. From where I am, I can see two large sculptures standing amid a large patch of snowy ground that is boxed in on all sides by strips of pavements, which are in turn lined by leafless bushes. Where the hedge ends, there is a gap, in which a wooden bench sits behind a streetlight.

"What are those?" I ask Aksel, pointing at the sculptures.

He looks to see what I'm referring to. "Sculptures," he says, shrugging.

"Oh," I said. His answer is a little anticlimactic. "I thought they might be... significant, or something."

"They might be," Aksel says, "but if they are, I don't know." He reaches for my hand then, and leads me to the doors. "Come on."

The apartment is on the second storey above the ground floor. Aksel unlocks the door and pushes it wide open, gesturing for me to head in first. I step into the unit and take off my shoes at the door. I shrug off my coat next, and then resist the urge to put it back on almost immediately. There is a sort of dull cold in here, the kind that comes from stepping into house left empty for a while.

Once we are both inside, Aksel shuts the door before striding past me to turn on the radiator. "Keep your coat on for a while longer," he says, even as he takes off his own.

I laugh a little. He knows me too well.

I take my time to look around the apartment. It's quite sparsely furnished, with plain white walls and only the most necessary furniture. Upon entering, the entrance widens into the living room, where there's a TV sitting atop a wooden coffee table. Aksel has tried to put a touch of home to it – here's a rug under the couch, and an upright lamp right next to everything else. A few steps to the left is the dining area, where a dining table with two seats stands right before the entrance to the kitchen. The kitchen is small but seems to have everything needed, down to a shiny coffee maker sitting atop the counter. I remember how important coffee is to Finns – something that is more than obvious from Aksel's own coffee-drinking habits. To the right of the living room is a narrow corridor that I assume leads to the master bedroom that we will share.

Aksel is watching me as I drink all of it in. "What do you think?" He's holding himself a little tensely, and as he stares unblinkingly at me, I realise that he's nervous. He wants me to like his place. Our place.