The Meaning of Life

"That is a very wild lion, Jonatan. What's his name?"

"Rory."

"Perfect name for a lion. Does Rory roar?"

"ROAAARRR."

"Wow. Look, all the rolls got really scared. Is Rory the kind of lion that eats rolls?"

Soon there was no doubt that Isabelle had passed this interview, too. Negotiations regarding salary, living quarters, time off for playing with the band (Chicken Spittle) and working on the dig were short and simple; Isabelle got whatever she wanted.

Lukas seemed fascinated with Isabelle's fascination with the dig. He knew of it of course, but he knew nothing about it, something Isabelle was quick to rectify. At length. The gist of it was that people had lived there for a very very long time. There were houses which were built on older houses which probably were built on even elder houses which possibly were built on really fucking old houses. And just possibly another layer of house beneath that, and now you're talking bronze age.

"Wow!" Lukas said, looking at her with admiration.

"Roarr!" Rory said, biting her in the bum.

23 – THE VOICE OF BOB DYLAN'S MOTHER

"Popzilla" had a powwow about Marie's latest song. They all felt it had great potential but they all also felt that they had not yet figured out how to play it. It was called "I Wrestled With My Conscience And Won" and was all about the pyrrhic victory of doing things that were against your own moral code, but trying to convince yourself you're being free and liberated.

"It's definitely not a song for Ground Zero Naughts," Marie said. "We'll have to do it, if it shall be done at all."

"Of course it must be done," Isabelle said. "By the way, Popzilla is a great name, couldn't we please settle for that?"

"Googled it," Ho said. "Taken, I'm afraid."

"I think we should try it acoustic, soft," Peter said. "Just two acoustic guitars. I'll sit this one out. And I got this hunch that Isabelle should sing it."

"Me? Fuck no, I sing like an anteater who has ruined his voice with too much whisky."

"We'll try it!" Marie decided.

They tried it. Marie picked the chords and Ho found some semibassish line. When they were ready for Isabelle she had won her wrestling-game with embarrassment, and decided that she should do her best, that she was among friends, that she herself never for a second had claimed she could sing and that if this turned out to be a disaster it would at least be a very small disaster.

She sang. No one ran, no one held their ears, no one stopped her. She sang the whole song through and no one said anything for a long time.

"I told you it wouldn't work!"

Peter embraced her. "Bella my very dear friend, that was fantastic. I'm crying here."

"Me too," Ho said.

"You are hereby the official and undisputed lead singer of this band," Marie said. "These songs never really fit me anyway. We need a permanent name, Ho, it's time to grow up. I want this song on Youtube."

"I guess Spit Spot On is my favorite name of the lot."

"Spit Spot On it is! Now we have a lot of work to do. And you've got a lot of lyrics to learn, Isabelle."

"Come on, you're kidding me! My voice is terrible. In school my music-teacher asked me to sing really quietly so I wouldn't put the others off."

"It's a unique voice, only you sound that way," Peter said. "It's great - like a cross between Bob Dylan's mother and Amanda Jensen. And with a bit of AA anteater thrown in to spice it up."

24 – UP THE GARDEN PATH

"We've got to do something about the garden," Lukas said. The garden was strict, traditional and large. Flower beds, gravel paths, lots of hedges, lawns too small to play on. Not a garden for kids and a garden that needed constant work not to look totally neglected. "I want the garden to be an adventure, and now it looks like a giant stamp collection."

"Lots of work," Isabelle said.

"I don't mind work. I've got time on my hands since you came here and I need a project. Lots of things to do around the house, but I'm rubbish at that kind of thing and the house is too beautiful for one of my klutzitude to tinker around in. But the garden, that could be fun."

"I still think you need help. I'm sure Peter, you know, our drummer, could give you some hints when it comes to planning the garden, his is marvelous for a small city garden."

"Ask him to come over. Invite them all, we'll have a dinner party. And I've got an idea about who to ask to assist me." He called someone.

" Hi, it's Lukas...yeah, bollocks to you too, sweetie...no, still only forty-one...yep, losing my touch, or maybe getting responsible in my dotage...I wanted to ask you if you wanted a job for the summer...assistant gardener here...why, I'd be the head gardener, of course...oh no, mutiny would be punished very severely...you would? Great, yeah, the pay would be fabulous, of course...three weeks, well I guess I could wait that long...we'll see if you all come here or I come and get you, either way I get to meet you all...everything's fine with Edvin?...great...by the way, I got a girl to help me out here...yes...Isabelle...yes she's pretty...no, she's quite nice...you don't have to worry...stop it!...yes, you have the right to your own opinion, but there's a difference between an opinion and a preconception...all right...see you soon...give Lena a hug from me."

"Seems I got a new member in my fan club?"

"Sophia does not have much faith in my ability to make sensible choices."

"I suppose we can agree with each other on that, at least."

25 – WILD BEARS UNSOOTHED BY MUSIC

The dinner party was a success. Peter and his pregnant wife Magda, Ho and Marie with her daughter Kajsa, Estelle because Isabelle hadn't seen her in ages and Lukas' old friend and firstmother Bea with her daughter Signe. Peter, Ho and Lukas promptly disappeared with the kids and they all were dirty, hungry and happy when they returned. Apparently they had been in the woods, playing badgers and bears.

"Shit!" Estelle said. "I wanted to be a badger, too. I think I got caught in the sensible-female trap. It was great talking to you ladies, but next time I'm gonna play with the wild bunch."

"Me too!" Isabelle said. "There are a lot of munchies in the kitchen, eat whenever you're hungry. Jonatan helped me with the pies and Signe made the meatballs all by herself!"

Peter and Lukas went off together to talk garden, pointing, pacing and pondering.

Marie and Ho got their guitars and tried to get the kids to sing children songs, but they were not in the mood. They wanted to run around and scream, which they did, and then they got tired and wanted to hear a story. Bea volunteered.

"One more example that music does not conquer everything," Marie said.

"Conquer me, then," Lukas said. "Play some of your songs, Bella never lets me hear any."

"And she did not tell you we're on Youtube? No. Still not comfortable that you're singing?"

"She does? She won't even sing to the kids round here."

"Well, she's gonna sing now," Marie said, strumming the chords of "Wrestled With My Conscience".

Isabelle was nervous. Very nervous. She still had issues with her voice and for some reason it seemed to be very important what Lukas thought about her singing. She carefully did not look at him, she looked at Peter, mostly. Peter was safe. When the song was over she dared to sneak a peek in Lukas' direction. He was staring at her, open-mouthed.

"That was so beautiful!" he said. "So emotional, the regret but also the feeling that this will not keep you down for long. And your voice...just wow!"

Isabelle fought with a big bubble of joy that wanted to transform her to a sap-happy silly-grinner. "This is weird," she thought. "Why should I care that much what he thinks, the big brat?" Estelle was watching her with that you can hide nothing from me look, too. Shit!

"Sounds just great!" Estelle said. "Why didn't you sing in Dill Dolls? We would have been famous."

Isabelle felt...something. She had liked the feeling of preparing for the party with Lukas, the feeling of togetherness and sharing. She didn't feel like an employee, more like a...friend? He was an idiot sometimes, but only in ways she could stand – and he actually liked it when she called him out when his good old feel of entitlement reappeared.

And she screamed NO in her head when Estelle, with that knowing smile of hers, asked if it was ok with Bella if she flirted with Lukas. Bella , of course, said she didn't care and Stella, of course, knew that she did, so she didn't. Flirt, that is. But Bella knew, also of course, that there was some major teasing coming up. What she did not know was whether the teasing would be justified or not.

Lukas, though, had no doubts as to his feelings for Isabelle. He had been smitten from the start and this smitten-ness had grown every day. He sometimes wondered if he had a masochistic streak, the way he enjoyed when women, or girls in Sophia's case, called him out when they felt his head had swollen to unaesthetic proportions. It generally made him feel happy and secure, far from the morass of sucking up he had been surrounded by in his previous life. He also felt secure that Bella was not pursuing him for his money. Problem was just that, far as he could tell, she was not pursuing him at all, nor did she show any sign of welcoming pursuit. Bloody frustrating.

26 – EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE BILLIONAIRE'S DEN

Life was settling, routines were established, habits were formed. Isabelle liked it. She spent a lot of time with Jonatan and Signe, not so much with the other kids. They always came with their mothers, since none of them was there enough to feel secure with just their father. They visited now and then because their mothers wanted their kids to have a face to the concept of "father" and Lukas did his best that they should enjoy their stays in his world. He would never be an everyday dad to them, would never be the one who nagged about homework or cleaning their rooms, but he avoided to be the super-luxury dad who gave them a lot of stuff. By and large she thought he did what he did pretty well, crazy though it was.

The mothers helped out with things and Isabelle liked most of them, except one, Britta. She was one of the few impregnated in the old fashioned way, and she was a lot too big-tittedly pushing them big tits in Lukas' face at every opportunity. Fortunately Lukas did not seem to enjoy her attentions very much, sending glances of shared awkwardness in Bella's direction.

A lot was going on in the garden. Lukas and Peter had made a lot of sketches and plans and the stamp collection was already just a memory, all neatness ravished with a tractor that Peter had borrowed from a neighbor and then run amuck with. Some guy was there and welded constructions out of grid-iron – towers, tunnels and enclosed spaces. The garden now looked like a muddy wound haphazardly stitched with rusty staples and Isabelle saw the welder-guy shake his head whenever Lukas was not looking. Lukas was having a lot of fun and Bellas heart grew a little at the sight of his enthusiasm in the ruins of the stately manor garden.

Lukas awaited Sophia's and Lena's arrival eagerly.

"I can't wait to see Sophia's face when she sees the garden," he giggled. "She will have a fit!"

She did.

"What the fuck have you done, Lukas? You expect me to spend my summer in this bloody pit of mud, desolately shuffling rocks and sticks into random puddles and having aggressively rusty bits of iron poking into my tender flesh. It will probably rain a lot, too."

Her reaction to the state of the garden did not suffice to make her forget her duty to inspect Isabelle. She belligerently dragged her off for a serious talking to, which never really got off the ground since she very quickly discovered that she liked Isabella.

"You really don't give a shit about his money, do you?"

"No, Sophia, I really don't."

"And you really love him, in spite of him being the idiot he is?"

"He's not bad, for an idiot. But I wouldn't say I love him, really."

"Yeah, right."

Sophia announced that Isabelle was just what Lukas needed and that she (Sophia) was relieved that he at last had found someone who could keep an eye on him while she had other and more important duties, like making out.

Stina, Sophias's sister, also decided she liked Isabelle. While Sophia fitted in well with the chaos-gardeners and worked her ass off in spite of her constant griping, Stina preferred being Bella's assistant at the dig. She had the patience and the endurance to do the job properly in spite of no immediate gratification – they found nothing apart from pieces of a burned down wall for a long time. They talked a lot and Isabelle really liked talking to this twelve year old, who usually was quiet in a group but really had a lot to say. She told her a lot about Lukas from her perspective, how she and Sophie had been very skeptical at first but how he had gradually won them over and how the same process had happened again with their father.

"He has always been The Great Artist, and I think he is pretty good, too. At least when he is painting. He does a lot of postmodern crap because that's how you get grants and you can't make a living just from selling paintings. He teaches too, good for his ego to be admired by the pupils. He's always been very dismissive about people with money since he's never had any."

"Most men compete all the time," Bella said, nodding sagely. "And a lot of them compete by loudly proclaiming that they don't compete, which generally means that they know they would lose if they agreed to compete in that particular aspect of life. If nothing else they can compete in the noble art of not-competing. Of course, there are some who genuinely don't."

"I don't think Lukas does. He seemed genuinely interested in dad and his art when they met and he didn't try to fake that he knew more than he did. Then he bought a painting, far as I can tell because he really liked it. It's the big one in the dining-room."

"All right, I like that one too. Maybe Lukas doesn't feel he needs to compete because he's got all that money. It's like someone having a really big dick, he wouldn't need to always wave it around to know he would win that competition."

"He sure got that territory pissed in."

"And you don't have to be a besserwisser if you're a besserpisser."

"Gaaah!"

"Sorry."

Then there was Lena, Lukas' old friend with benefits. Isabelle liked her, it was impossible not to. But she wasn't sure that she liked liking her, somehow it would have been simpler to just consider her the enemy – but why should she be an enemy? It was confusing and she didn't do confusing very well.

Isabelle didn't know that Lukas had made clear to Lena that those aforementioned benefits were a thing of the past. He had given no reasons, but the reason was quite clear to her. She approved, too.

"Tell her!" she said.

Lukas did not pretend to not understand what she was talking about, he knew that was futile.

"What if she's not interested. I don't want her to leave. And I'm her employer, too."

"She's interested, believe me, I've seen the way she looks at you. And the way she feels about me, she's not sure if I'm competition or not."

Lukas muttered...something, he didn't know what. He was in unfamiliar territory. As far as he could remember he had never felt this nervous about a woman, never felt this feeling he must not fuck things up. Scary. But real, just the kind of thing he needed to grow. Shit, yeah. He must not chicken out, he told himself. But not yet.

27 – HAPPY NOT-QUITE END

Spit Spot On had their first gig. Isabelle was nervous, which she never had been with Dill Dolls. She felt safe playing keyboards, but this singing stuff was quite another matter. She still had a hard time believing that anybody could want to hear her croak. Ho had given her a t-shirt with a whiskey-drinking anteater which she had chosen to wear on stage. They did not have stage-outfits, like the Ground Zero Naughts.

Peter was nervous, too. He was not sure he could handle playing for a lot of people. He was not shy or anything, it was that thing with overloading his brain. He had explained it to Isabelle who had said she understood, feeling she probably didn't. He was glad that as a drummer he could keep in the background. Ho promised to shield him, and a wall of huge Ho-Buddha body should screen off a lot of potential bad vibes.

"You play chess to much larger crowds than we will ever have," said Marie. "How do you manage then?"

"I'm in my head and in the game and in the game in my head. The audience does not exist until the game is over. But now I play together with you and I must be open. But I think I will be okay, I have grown a lot since I met Magda."

It was time. Isabelle entered the stage and waved to the crowd, still quite nervous. Her eyes met Lukas' who was standing in the front room, smiling with such loving acceptance that her nervousness just disappeared. She knew she had one who would be on her side, however terribly she sang. Stella was beside him. Two safe people to sing to. She sang.

It was over. Over too soon. Everybody wanted to hug everybody and most of all they wanted to hug Isabelle. She was carried by a hug-cloud, carried eventually to the one embrace that really mattered. They kissed, kisses that told them both that the other also wanted what they now knew they themselves wanted.

Someone drove them back to the manor, they did not even notice who, since their world was very small right then, with room only for two people, and they avoided their usual beds because there might be visits from little ones needing to sleep close to a father or almost-mom and Lena slept there this night so their universe could be kept small.

They both were gloriously beautiful in each others' eyes, and they smelled good and felt good and they could not get enough of the feeling of the other and the other on themselves. First time was tender and slow because tender was the most urgent need and frantic or rough could wait. It was full daylight when they fell asleep and they had not slept long when Jonatan found them. And such was their happiness that they were not cross from lack of sleep (and all of you with kids will understand the magnitude of that) but were happy to see him ad include him in their bubble of joy and he was happy to find them together.

28 – AND NOW; THE HAPPY END!

That was two months ago, and there has been a lot of love since then, both soft-tender and rough-tender. Lukas has abandoned his father-to-all-the-world project, insofar as there will be no more children. Any new kids will be Isabelle's, created in the good old-fashioned way.

Sophia left recently, happy with her summer and with what had been accomplished. The garden still looked like a disaster, of course, but now you could see that something exciting was going to happen, once those plants got their game together and grew up. She had no doubts they would, since she had informed them on the consequences of insubordination in no uncertain terms.

Jonatan had started to call Isabelle mama, which made her cry. It made Lukas cry too, for that matter.

About a week ago, Isabelle had a phone-call. It was from a big-wheel music guy, one of those that people knew about even if they were not in the music business. He had seen everything that Spit Spot On had put on Youtube, including their one and only concert. She had potential, he said, and wanted to meet her. He was not interested in the rest of the band, but he thought she could be big in the singer-songwriter genre.

He was very surprised when she turned him down.

"A few months ago I might have been content with a life as a music star. But now...why should I settle for second best when I've got everything I want?"

Lukas' wealth was something that could have been a problem if they let it be a problem. Isabelle could have everything she pointed at, but both appreciated that she pointed very little. She was not interested in luxury stuff; fancy cars or designer clothes. Basically she wanted, and got, two things. Firstly that the music of Spit Spot On and Ground Zero Naughts was recorded, CDed and made available digitally. Secondly that she could have a few assistants at the dig next summer, with paid salaries, an alternative to the mothbeard self-appreciation society. Apart from that she didn't want a thing, she wanted to live on her modest au-pair salary.