Studio Sex aka Studio 69 / Exposed

me and sucks until my clitoris is big as a plum, maintaining that I cry from pleasure and not pain. The swelling remains for days, rubbing when I move.

I'm groping my way. The darkness is so vast. Depression hangs like a gray dampness inside me, impossible to exhale. My tears lie just below the surface, constantly present, unreliable, harder and harder to keep in check. Reality shrinks, contracted from the pressure and the cold.

My only source of warmth is spreading icy brutality at the same time.

And he says

he will never

let me go.

Wednesday 5 September

You can't fucking live here. No hot water, not even a damned toilet! When are you going to come home?'

Sven was sitting in the kitchen eating yogurt, dressed only in his briefs.

'Put some clothes on,' Annika said, tightening the sash around her dressing gown. 'Patricia's sleeping in there.'

She walked over to the stove and poured herself some coffee.

'Yeah, and what the hell is she doing here?'

'She needed a place to stay. I had a room available.'

'That stove, it's lethal. You'll set fire to the entire building.'

Annika sighed inwardly. 'It's a gas stove, it's no more dangerous than an electric one.'

'Bullshit,' Sven said truculently.

Annika didn't reply, just drank her coffee in silence.

'Hey, listen,' Sven said in a conciliatory voice after a couple of minutes. 'Stop what you're doing and come back home. You've had a go at it here and you can see it's not working. You're not a big-time reporter, you don't belong in this city.'

He got to his feet, walked behind her chair, and started massaging her shoulders.

'But I love you anyway,' he whispered, leaning forward and biting her earlobe. His hands slipped down along her neck and gently cradled her breasts.

Annika got up and poured out her coffee in the sink. 'I'm not coming back yet,' she said warily.

Sven gave her a penetrating look. 'What about your job? You're going back to Katrineholms- Kuriren again after the election, right?'

She drew a sharp breath and swallowed. 'I've got to get going. I've got things to do.'

She quickly left the kitchen and got dressed.

Sven stood in the doorway watching her while she put on a pair of jeans and a sweater. 'What do you do during the day?'

'Find out about things.'

'You're not seeing someone else?'

Annika's arms fell down in a gesture of resignation. 'Please. Even if you think I'm a terrible journalist, there are others who think I'm okay-'

He interrupted her by taking her in his arms. 'I don't think you're terrible. On the contrary- I get mad when I hear them bad-mouthing you on the radio when I know how wonderful you are.'

They kissed fiercely and Sven started opening her zipper.

'No,' Annika said. 'I've got to get going if I'm to-'

He shut her up with a kiss and moved her down onto the bed.

***

The archive of the highbrow broadsheet newspaper was located next door to the entrance of Kvallspressen. Annika walked quickly through the door, her eyes firmly on the ground. She didn't want to bump into anyone she knew. She walked past the reception and in among the shelves. Three men were standing over by the microfilm desk and the big table. She put her bag on the small table.

Issue nine of Folket i Bild Kulturfront, 1973, that Berit had mentioned had come out at the beginning of May. Annika pulled out the file containing the broadsheet from April the same year and began looking through it. She had to admit it was a long shot. She tore out the note from her pad and put it in front of her.

Domestic archive, 24 Grevgatan.

Foreign archive, 56 Valhallavagen.

The newspaper pages were yellowed and torn in places. The print was tiny, no more than seven points, and hard to read. The editing was untidy. The fashion ads made her want to laugh out loud, people looked so silly in the early seventies.

But the subject matter of the articles felt surprisingly familiar. Millions of people were threatened with starvation in Africa; young people had difficulties fitting into the labor market; Lasse Hallstrom had made a new TV film called Are We Going to My Place, Your Place, or Each to Our Own?

The world ice hockey championships were in progress, it seemed, and Olof Palme had made a speech in Kungalv. Wars were being fought in Vietnam and Cambodia, and the Watergate scandal was unfolding in Washington. She sighed. Not a single line about what she was looking for.

She moved to the next file, from the April 16-30 to April 1-15.

Monday, April 2, was the same as every other. Guerrillas in Cambodia had attacked government forces in Phnom Penh. A Danish lawyer by the name of Mogens Glistrup was successful with a new one-man party called the Progressive Party. The former American attorney general John Mitchell had agreed to testify before a Senate committee. And then at the bottom left of page 17, next to the short item 'Bright Aurora Borealis over Stockholm,' she found it:

'Mysterious Break-In at Office Building.'

Annika's pulse quickened, racing until it thudded through her head and filled the entire room.

According to the short piece, an office at 24 Grevgatan had been searched sometime during the weekend, probably Sunday night. But strangely, nothing was missing. All office equipment had been left untouched, but all cabinets and drawers had been gone through.

I know what was stolen, she thought. Good God, I know what disappeared!

She found the second item in Section 2, at the top left of page 34. An office in 56 Valhallavagen had been vandalized over the weekend. It was a short piece, squeezed in between a picture of Crown Prince Carl Gustaf, who had caught two trout in the Morrum River, and a piece about Gullfiber AB in Billesholm closing down.

None of the paper's editors had spotted a connection between the two break-ins; maybe the police hadn't either.

She copied the two pieces and put the file back on the shelf.

I'm on the right track, she thought.

She left the archive and took the 62 bus to Hantverkargatan.

***

Sven had left and Patricia was still asleep. Annika sat down with her pad and the phone in the living room.

What are the areas of responsibility of the minister for foreign trade? she wrote.

Trade and export, she thought. Promoting trade with other countries. What government department would pay for such travels? The Swedish Trade Council, she wrote.

What does Sweden export? Cars. Timber. Paper. Iron ore. Electricity. Nuclear power, perhaps?