He’s stopped smoking.
He’s thirty-six and a truck driver for a company in Svebølle.
He’s got three children and a wife who teaches at a daycare center.
She’s never smoked.
She’s badgered him for years—for the sake of the children, herself, him.
He’s not exactly sure where she got the idea, whether it was in a magazine or something the teachers discussed at the daycare center, but when she came to him and offered him sex every day for a month, he jumped at the opportunity.
Now he hasn’t smoked a cigarette for three weeks, and though he still has that craving in his gut, he doesn’t have the desire.
He doesn’t have any desire for sex, either.
His wife, on the other hand, appears to want to fulfill her end of the bargain with greater and greater zeal the more her plan seems to be working.
The world’s turned inside out.
He’s considering smoking again, but who says they’ll go back to once a week?
Maybe it’ll be every second week or every third?
“Next stop: Svebølle,†says a voice through the loudspeaker, and he glances at his watch.
The time is 7:20.
He’s got three hardboiled eggs in his bag, which he prepared during the night while his wife slept.
He once heard that they’re good for the libido.
