An hour later they are on the road, Niilo driving slowly and steadily as the headlights of his truck illuminate the snow flurrying ahead of them. It hadn’t been a great meal and he’d noticed that Nari had been pointedly quiet as she lifted the bun lid to inspect the veggie patty nestling beside underdone French fries. Her notebook had stayed unopened on the table between them.
‘I’m guessing that place won’t make it onto your blog either?’ says Niilo, his eyes set firmly on the road ahead.
‘Hmm, I review most places I eat when I’m travelling. Maybe I’ll compliment the décor. Although you wouldn’t have thought Marilyn Monroe posters, Tiki surfer knick-knacks and mounted moose heads would go together, would you? I’ll tell my readers this place is the perfect mash-up between a wood-panelled, Scandi hunting cabin and a cool, chrome sixties’ diner. Accentuate the positive.’
Niilo misses Nari’s wink thrown casually towards him with a grin. ‘I wish the nice places had been open tonight. You deserve the best we can offer.’
‘It was fine. My milkshake was good.’
After a moment’s silent concentration on the drive, Niilo steers the truck off the road and into a dark car park. ‘Here is it.’
Nari peers expectantly into the blackness. ‘I don’t see anything. We’re in the middle of nowhere.’
‘I hope it’s still open, I haven’t been here for years. Come on.’
Using Nari’s phone to light their way they pass the recycling bins and piles of snow-covered broken-down cardboard boxes before climbing the clanking metal steps of what looks to Nari like a warehouse. A few cars and trucks are parked down below, and skis and snowshoes piled by the outer door. As Niilo pulls it open for Nari they instantly hear the sounds of music and voices coming from behind another door all the way across a workshop floor. The smell of sawdust and tree sap hangs in the air of the uninhabited, dimly lit room.
‘Whatisthis place?’ Nari whispers as they pick their way past dusty work benches scattered with tools.
‘Would you believe me if I told you it was a toy factory?’
‘I’d believe anything you told me,’ Nari said, wide-eyed and smiling as she tried to make out the objects on the shelves lining the room: wooden cars, nutcracker dolls, whistles and sailboats. ‘I’m not about to have an audience with Father Christmas, am I? You should have warned me, I’d have dressed up a bit more,’ she laughs, as they reach the double doors, glimmering light spilling through the gap in between.
‘If anybody asks, tell them you work at Frozen Falls,’ said Niilo.
‘OK. What do I do there?’
‘Whatever you want,’ he replied, trying the door handles and finding them unyielding.
‘All right then, I’ll be the resident reindeer whisperer.’
‘That job’s already taken,’ he says with a smile, before attempting to force the stiff doors with his shoulder. They burst open with the impact and Nari is hit by a loud wave of Scandinavian symphonic metal coming from a tower of speakers on the far side of the room.
Precariously rigged coloured lights spin and dazzle from the rafters and strands of fairy lights cross-cross the ceiling illuminating a crowded dance floor populated by moving figures. People in their twenties and kids in their late teens are jumping and swaying, arms aloft and hair swinging. A makeshift bar area is doing a roaring trade in bottled beer. Struggling to make herself heard, Nari leans close to Niilo’s ear.
‘A… clubhouse?’
Niilo raises his voice over the soaring guitars. ‘It’s where the European kids who work at all the surrounding resorts come after their shifts; ski and chalet workers, tour guides, that sort of thing. And it’s just how I remember it.’
‘Is it always heavy metal?’ Nari roars back, just as the song ends and her question is answered by the sudden shift to upbeat Euro pop. The crowd scream and whoop and dance along as before.
‘It’s like a student union on a Saturday night. I’ll bet we’re the oldest people in here.’
Suddenly, Nari falters and turns to look at Niilo’s placid expression in the swimming blue and green lights. ‘Although… exactly how old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?’
A wary smile spreads over Niilo’s face, before he leans close to her ear and loudly informs her he’s twenty-nine.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me? I’m thirty-five!’
‘Sorry?’ he shouts, pointing to his ear and shrugging.
‘Never mind.’ Nari turns towards the bar, wincing.
Nothing Niilo did brought him closer towards rescuing the date he’d had such high hopes for and which had fallen so flat. He sipped Coke Zero and watched Nari down a shot of cheap Finnish vodka, and he smiled and made a show of willingness, hopping from his bar stool, when she indicated with a jab of her thumb towards the bouncing crowd that she wanted to dance.
He had to swallow down the mortified shyness he felt as he swayed ineptly in front of her, feeling more sober than he had in his entire life. Nari hadn’t seemed to notice his awkward moves and she danced, eyes closed and with a fixed smile, her hair whipping from side to side across her shoulders.
After a few numbers though, Nari shouted that she didn’t recognise any of the songs and that she felt like someone’s grandma in this place, so they made their way back to the bar, dodging the kissing couples.
