But despite development discussions, offers of in-house training, and other forms
of enticement, it was evident that Salander had no intention of adapting to Milton’s
office routines. This put Armansky in a difficult spot.
He would not have put up with any other employee coming and going at will, and
under normal circumstances he would have demanded that she change or go. But
he had a hunch that if he gave Salander an ultimatum or threatened to fire her she
would simply shrug her shoulders and be gone.
A more serious problem was that he could not be sure of his own feelings for the
young woman. She was like a nagging itch, repellent and at the same time
tempting. It was not a sexual attraction, at least he did not think so. The women he
was usually attracted to were blonde and curvaceous, with full lips that aroused his
fantasies. And besides, he had been married for twenty years to a Finnish woman
named Ritva who still more than satisfied these requirements. He had never been
unfaithful, well...something may have happened just once, and his wife might
have misunderstood if she had known about it. But the marriage was happy and he
had two daughters of Salander’s age. In any case, he was not interested in flat-
chested girls who might be mistaken for skinny boys at a distance. That was not his
style.
Even so, he had caught himself having inappropriate daydreams about Lisbeth
Salander, and he recognised that he was not completely unaffected by her. But the
attraction, Armansky thought, was that Salander was a foreign creature to him. He
might just as well have fallen in love with a painting of a nymph or a Greek
amphora. Salander represented a life that was not real for him, that fascinated him
though he could not share it—and in any case she forbade him from sharing it.
On one occasion Armansky was sitting at a café on Stortorget in Gamla Stan when
Salander came sauntering up and sat at a table a short distance away. She was with
three girls and a boy, all dressed in much the same way. Armansky had watched her
with interest. She seemed to be just as reserved as she was at work, but she had
actually almost smiled at a story told by one of her companions, a girl with purple
hair.
Armansky wondered how she would react if one day he came to work with green
hair, worn-out jeans, and a leather jacket covered with graffiti and rivets. She
probably would just smirk at him.