The movie theatre was showing a travelogue. She bought Smarties and lemon drops at the kiosk while he waited at the entrance with the tickets in his hand. "Do you want anything to drink?" she asked. He shook his head, too preoccupied with looking at her, comparing her to all the others crowded together in front of the theatre. The attendant appeared in the doorway, dressed in a black uniform and holding a punch in his hand, and as he clipped everyone's tickets, he studied the faces before him. Most of the kids kept their eyes lowered because they were under the age restriction for this movie. A Bond film. The very first one they had seen together, their first date, practically like a real couple. He swelled with pride. And the movie was a good one, at least according to Annie. He hadn't actually followed much of it; he was much too preoccupied with staring at her out of the corner of his eye and listening to the sounds she made in the dark. But he did remember the title: For Your Eyes Only.
He typed the title into the field and waited for a moment, but nothing happened. Got up impatiently, took a couple of steps, and tore the lid off a jar standing on the windowsill where he kept a packet of King of Denmark tobacco. This was hopeless. He shoved any trace of guilt to the far corner of his mind. It was a secret part of his mind, and it contained something from his past. There was no stopping Halvor now; he walked through the kitchen to the living room and over to the bookshelf where the phone was. He looked up the listing for computer equipment, found the number he wanted, and punched it in.
"Ra Data. Solveig speaking."
"Hi. I'm calling about a locked file," he stammered. His courage disintegrated; he felt small, like a thief or a voyeur. But it was too late for that now.
"You can't get in?"
"Er, no. I can't remember the password."
"I'm afraid the technician has left for the day. But wait just a minute and I'll ask somebody."
He was pressing the receiver to his head so hard that his ear went numb. On the other end of the line he could hear the hum of voices and telephones. He glanced over at his grandmother, who was reading the paper with a magnifying glass, and he thought, "Annie should have known you could do this."
"Are you still there?"
"Yes."
"Do you live far away?"
"On Lundebysvingen."
"You're in luck. He can drop by on his way home. What's your address?"
He sat in his room and waited, his heart pounding in his throat and the curtains open so he could see the car when it pulled into the courtyard. It took exactly 30 minutes before the technician appeared in a white Kadett Combi with the Ra Data logo on the door. A surprisingly young man got out of the car and glanced uncertainly at the house.
Halvor ran to open the door. The systems specialist turned out to be a nice guy, plump as a dumpling, with deep dimples. Halvor thanked him for taking the trouble. Together they went to his room.
The technician opened his briefcase and took out a stack of charts. "Is it a numerical or alphabet password?" he asked.
Halvor turned bright red.
"Can't you even remember that much?" he asked in surprise.
"I've used so many different ones," Halvor muttered. "I change them regularly."
"Which file is it?"
"That one."
"'Annie'?"
He didn't ask any more questions. A certain etiquette went with the job, after all, and he had big ambitions. Halvor went over to the window and stood there, his cheeks burning with a mixture of shame and nervousness, and his heart was hammering so hard that it might have been a drumroll. Behind him he heard the keys clacking rapidly, like distant castanets. Otherwise there wasn't a sound, just the drumroll and the castanets. After what seemed like an eternity, the technician got up from the chair.
"OK, man, there it is!"
Halvor slowly turned around and stared at the screen. He took the invoice that was handed to him for signature.
"What? 750 kroner?" he gasped.
"Per hour and any fraction thereof," said the young man with a smile.
His hands trembling, Halvor signed the dotted line at the bottom of the page and asked to have the bill posted to him.
"It was a numeric password," said the expert, smiling again. "One seven one one nine four. Date and year, right?"