Five months into the new millennium I had reason to go looking for Alejandro. It was said to be the warmest spring in decades and I’d moved into an apartment that for the first time was mine alone, a one-bedroom in Gubbängen with an east-facing balcony where I could read the morning newspaper in the sun. It was only April when the hagberry blossomed, the caul that breaks every year, and an ardent scent suffused the city’s green spaces like a stubborn ache, a quiet organic fullness that was new and yet familiar, a slower place in time, with a different center. [...]