Such Good Work by Johannes Lichtman

Author:Johannes Lichtman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

SOON AFTERWARD, I WENT OUT with a Swedish girl, Lovisa, I’d met on a dating app. I had written Lovisa my usual opener: Hey there! Is English okay? Swedish is fine, too, but I’m 30% more charming in English.

English is fine, she’d answered. But Americans are usually only 20% more charming in English.

As the conversation progressed, she seemed not only funny, but also warm and smart, and I thought that this could be more than another encounter that ended with morning awkwardness. I didn’t want a relationship—something that could trap me in a place I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay. But I thought that Lovisa might be the type I could share inside jokes with on lazy Saturday mornings.

I met her at Far i Hatten, an old pub in the park next to Moriskan, where she was already seated when I arrived. She was cuter in real life than in her pictures, with short brown hair, green eyes, and sharp cheekbones and a small chin.

“Oh, good,” she said in English when I sat down. “You don’t look at all like a murderer.”

“Neither do you.”

“So it’s already going better than most of these!”

Everything clicked. Her English was excellent, and even if she sometimes couldn’t find the right word or if it took her a second to understand the subtext of what I’d just said, she knew when I was joking and either laughed or added another bit to the joke. She told good stories. She asked good questions. She didn’t check her phone too often. I found myself not hating the sound of my voice, which was usually what happened half an hour into a date.

When I returned from the bar with our second beers, I said, in Swedish, “It’s unfair that we’re just speaking my language. We should switch over to Swedish so you get a chance.”

Lovisa smiled and started speaking more effortlessly than before. But slowly, yet undeniably, the spark of the conversation disappeared. With either language, one of us was at a disadvantage, like a correspondent with finger pressed to earpiece, waiting through a few seconds of satellite delay for the delivery of the anchor’s message. When she fumbled in English, it didn’t halt the conversation. Yet when I searched for the word in Swedish and lost the momentum of the story, or when it took me a second to understand the subtext beneath what she had just said, she seemed disappointed.

I excused myself to the bathroom, and when I returned, she started speaking English again.

* * *

After four beers, Lovisa asked if I wanted to go somewhere else. I thought she meant her place, but instead she took me to Babel, a nightclub a few blocks away that was housed in a converted church. The rooms of Babel were packed with Swedes dancing to the type of looping electronic music that I could never understand. Lovisa bought us beers and we danced sort of together but sort of apart. I would dance close and she would dance away.

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