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of remembering his experiences, he remembered the music and the pants and the cologne. But his actual daily life as it
went by, he was remembering even less of that. And when he told me this, it was a Sunday afternoon, we were waiting for the Metro at Mariatorget, we had just played basketball, our fingers were
sore after all the dunking on the kid-high baskets, our fingertips were rough and smudged gray, and he shook his head and looked toward the train that was about to roll in, the rails crackling like
a bonfire.
    “I don’t know how you all do it.”
    I assumed he was talking about memory and I told him that I had a shitty memory too.
    “I hardly remember what I did last week,” I said.
    Samuel looked at me, his face lighting up with a grateful smile.
    “Really?”
    Maybe it wasn’t completely true, but I said it to make him feel better, I felt sorry for him, he worked so hard to try to understand and control something that came perfectly naturally to
so many people.
    *
    After three rounds it was last call and then last last call and we got the bill. I paid. Samuel hardly seemed to notice. But as we were standing on the square, about to say
goodbye, he said:
    “Thanks for the beer. Next time, it’s on me.”
    “No problem,” I said, putting out my hand to say goodbye.
    He took my hand, pulled it up toward his chest, and leaned in for a hug. I let him do it, I didn’t hug him back, but I didn’t shove him away either, I didn’t head-butt him, I
hardly thought about how it would look to the people on the Stairmasters inside the twenty-four-hour gym. It would have been an unnecessary thought anyway, because the gym was empty, I noticed once
we’d said goodbye and I was walking home.
    *
    Panther says that she would be happy to share her memories from the last day. Samuel and I talked to each other at quarter to eleven. I was the one who called. He picked up and
said he was in the car but he would call back soon. We hung up and I thought: “in the car?” Whose car? And where is he going? And why did it sound like there was freaking elevator music
in the background?
    *
    Nothing in particular happened on the second night, and not the third or fourth either. We met at different places (twice at Spicy House, once at a bar in Gamla Stan). We
ordered drinks, we drank, we talked. About normal stuff. About the kind of things people talk about to seem not totally bizarre. But in the midst of all the regular stuff, unusual things would pop
up. Like when Samuel suddenly asked if I had tried putting saffron on pears.
    “It’s wicked good.”
    Or when he told me about the kayak stand by Norrtull where you could borrow boats without being a member.
    “Want to try it sometime?”
    Or when he asked if I’d been north of the polar circle.
    “No,” I replied. “Have you?”
    “I went up to Jukkasjärvi a few years ago to check out the northern lights.”
    “By yourself?”
    “Mmhmm. But I was only there for one night. I stayed at a hostel and trudged through snow up to my thighs for several hours, on the hunt for the northern lights. But the sky was totally
pitch black. Then I got it in my head that I had to do something to make them show up. I started making snowballs and I thought, if I hit the same tree with three snowballs in a row I’ll get
to see the northern lights. It was harder than I thought. It took me like fifteen minutes to do it.”
    “Did you see them?”
    “No. The sky was just as black as it had been before. But on the way back to the hostel I got lost in the woods. Then I looked up at the sky and saw the light. It was a yellowish round
circle in the middle of all that black. It looked incredibly alien, a lot more amazing than in pictures.”
    “Nice.”
    “But the next day the girl at the desk in the hostel said I had probably just seen the lights from the sports arena nearby.”
    *
    Panther says that when Samuel called back, it was a bit past eleven. I answered on my German phone,