The Loop by Frank Sonderborg


Up at the crack of dawn. Wrapping Max up for the cold weather outside. A train and a bus trip three times a week. To ensure we snared a place in our local kindergarten. We'd moved from the centre of Copenhagen to Ishoj. Which lay, way out in the suburbs. And we could not get a place for Max. So, we kept him in the Copenhagen kindergarten and Ishoj had to pay.  Which meant our trip three times a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Out early in the morning. Back home and then back out in the afternoon to pick him up. It suited me perfectly as I was unemployed, between jobs as they say. This blackmail pressure was put on Ishoj to come up with a place, as they had to pay full wack for the Copenhagen kindergarten. I was on the final leg of our bus journey one morning, when I saw her. She was on a big Christiania bike and had a kid in the front. I would have known her anywhere. She was as sharp as a tack and had been studying to be a lawyer when I met her. Met her mom and her divorced dad too.
The mom was a bit of a nutter. Her dad was a playboy. She walked out on me one cold Christmas eve. I thought I'd never recover from it. But did. Moved on. Met someone else. The usual story. But still, it rankled, when I heard she had gone back to her old boyfriend. I’d met him too. A shady awkward goatee beard artist type of a boyo. Worked in some tax-free Nato job in Brussels. She told me she couldn’t trust him. Obviously, she did. Then I didn’t see or hear from her for a couple of years. One day she walked into a bar, I was drinking in with my mates. She sat, and we chatted like old friends. I realised then, we were never lovers. Just ships humping in the night. She wanted to have a break from her boyfriend, and I was a handy excuse. I was just infatuated. A long way from home. Needing something to cling to. 
Her latest boyfriend arrived in the bar. A tall handsome Dutch guy, from Amsterdam. Studying Architecture at Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, she gleefully informed me. In comparison, I was on a welding course. So, no contest there. Then I realised he was very uneasy. A jealous boyfriend. Which made me happy, for a bit.

I watched from the bus, as she cycled through the slush and snow. The wheels like my life, just spinning around and around. Will I keep seeing her again and again?

Meanwhile back on planet Earth my weekly blackmail endless bus and train transport loop cycle continued. Thought to myself, here we go again, another day and another dollar.  

   



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