Copenhagen Noir

The spare tire was in the trunk. Adina dropped it, and it rolled onto the sidewalk; something rattled when she took hold of it again. She grabbed it with both hands and shook. There was something inside. She removed her pocketknife from her bag, made a slit in the tire, and stuck her hand in, and there she stood with a roll of hundred- euro notes! She sat back inside the car and cut the tire all the way around-it was filled with rolls. Ludmilla still sulked in the backseat. She began slitting the brown envelope open with her finger, turned it upside down. A birth certificate, a physician’s statement, a stack of tourist brochures about Copenhagen in Polish. The girl looked unhappy and started hammering her knuckles into the front seat. Then she let her head fall between her knees. Adina laid an arm around her neck, squeezed her, and then stuffed the money into the bag; she could count it later. Ludmilla sat crying with her head in her hands.

“Come on,” Adina said, and she got out of the car and started looking for a taxi.

“Where are we going?” Ludmilla asked, following her outside. She was skinny as a reed.

Adina didn’t answer immediately. She felt strangely weightless, and the pale, thin girl made her feel sentimental. She wasn’t dead, Henry had saved her. The girl could sink to the bottom as quickly as a stone. She put her hand on Ludmilla’s cheek, wiped the tears away.

“Where are we going?” the girl asked again.

“I’m going to Australia, and you can come along.”

“What will we do there?”

“Wait for a man. A good man.”

ALL I WANT IS MY BABY, WOAH WOAH, WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH BY SUSANNE STAUN

City Center

So let us go then, you and I, down the dark streets we know so well we no longer see them, let us eat the last sidewalks of Knabrostr?de and turn down L?derstr?de, stomp off in the light from the last breathing windows of the night, you, my towering steaming rage, and I, who must recognize that things probably can’t be a whole lot different right now.

Unless you decide to bug off?

Before I do something stupid?

To be preferred.

But noooh, you won’t do it, you’ve dug in, you insist on reaming my ass like a dog, and I’m not talking poodles and puppies, I’m talking a big filthy doberman with long brown teeth, a rotten mouth, and a snout with no honor. Well good luck, and excuse me if I’m not wild about this. But I’m not, amigo, just like I’m not wild about how I wasn’t any good this evening. I was somewhere else, funny, sure, they laughed, got their money’s worth, but I was somewhere else, and I hate it when someone like you gets me way out there, which is also out where my rage grows so huge that my body can’t contain it and I have to ship off the rest to Nowheresville, where it belongs, a grim place, far from me and me.

So take a hike! Can’t you see what you’re making me do, cawing and glowering on an empty street, as if talking to myself? It’s so very lonely, I’m a thousand light years from home.

You’ve been following me for precisely a week, since last Saturday, when you said it, when it rolled right out of you like an old belch: You fucking look like Keith Richards, you want a beer?

It was just past three in the morning. I was standing there, minding my own business and a large draft, trying to ease stage-adrenaline out of my body. But: your wit, your speech, your repartee, impressed me almost instantly. I’d been present, really present, on that stage, had them in the palm of my hand, never better. And then it slipped in, ruined my night, day, week, month:

You fucking look like Keith Richards, you want a beer?

And me? Didn’t say a word, stood there gawking, didn’t mention your gut, your watery eyes, and your fat cheeks. Not a word. Not that I’m polite, I’m not, but words just wouldn’t cut it, no matter how ugly. And I lacked the courage for the kind of brutality it would take. Plus I didn’t have the time. I was way too busy watching my life fall apart.

You fucking look like Keith Richards, you want a beer? But if you’d just smile a little…

I’m not smiling, not at you, at any rate. If the show must go on, let it go on without you. Bereaved of my illusions, I pondered whether it was the young Keith Richards, the one with the teen acne and all the scars, that you had in mind. The one who recorded people’s toilet visits on his tape player? Or the old sod with his Grand Canyon-junkie face, the silver skull ring and bandana and girlie crap in his hair? Is my face really already a map of the twentieth century?

And then I walked home. Not enraged, not enraged, not yet. Just speechless. It’s not easy facin’ up when your whole world is black: only seconds ago I thought I was young and beautiful.

When we pass by Kongens Have, in just a few moments, why don’t you go on in and run around in the dark a bit? To unwind, maybe? You never know, that fenced-in tar pit may hold people more bizarre than me, and honestly, I’d really rather not be Kill Bill tonight. Look! So gorgeously black and dark behind the grating. So seductively blue- black against the moon, so murky, too murky, just right for you. The ideal place to go up in smoke.

Right?

All right. But if I’m Keith, it seems so right to murder you tonight-not you, your ethereal remains, but you with the fat gut and the runny eyes who ruined my life with a sentence. Short and sweet. For we are both full of violence, separately and together. You may not know that I kicked a Glasgow bully in the head with the pointed toe of my boot. That I nearly strangled Ronnie Wood with my bare hands. Hammered my fist repeatedly into Stigwood. And why? Because he kept getting up. And for you I have a real buffet: blue and yellow and dead. In that order.

(But I’m still nice, given the chance. “I am a lover.”)

Ah, I see you stare at the park grating. Kongens Have beckons? Go! I’ll retreat. Tiptoe away. Ever so quietly. Cut diagonally across the street to where the shadows are even blacker. Hide in the crowd, blend into the facades, disappear. But the crowds have gone to sleep, the city is nearly empty. One couple walks by, like tears. Wrapped around each other, and her coat grazes me as they and their conversation slowly pass by, Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty girl, you’re a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty girl, pretty, pretty, such a pretty, pretty, pretty girl, come on, baby, please, please, please, I love you, are you cold?-yes, please! I’ll have some of that, thank you. For here or to go? No matter, just need to file off the rough edges.

Now you cut across the street, dear towering steaming rage, and catch up with me on the corner where I thought I’d faded into the bricks so you couldn’t see me. You glower at me, I can’t miss it: Go on, go on.

All right then, let’s. Side by side we walk down Gothersgade, I paint you black so I can’t see you, step up the pace so to avoid your presence, and keep a steady rhythm without looking back. My feet move beneath me furiously, but I make no progress on this deserted street, and I sense you behind me, a thousand arms, a thousand legs twitching pointlessly, hear you grunt like a frenzied pig, grind your long, loose teeth and lose them, plink-plonk, on the sidewalk. Maybe this is a dream. No drunks in sight, it isn’t right. No drunks, no scum, and no slime. So wrong for this time of night. And no intense poetic airheads who write ART, who write sitting in the leftovers. World’s silence. All are drunk on ether hope. Also that will pass away. Violently. Suddenly. And now; no lame come on, baby, please please please; no T &A with metal heels; no old gals with teased, sprayed hair; not even the odd lost specimens who only want to find a head they can hop up and down on until all that’s left is cauliflower. Don’t you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up, to live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough! Naw, we have the street all to ourselves, you and I, and I’m getting nowhere. And it’s as if you’re growing. And the more you grow, the more nowhere I get, the more I want to headbutt you, both of you. You fucking look like Keith Richards, you want a beer?

Have you ever heard a mouse roar? If you don’t get lost, your face ends up like mine: Fuckface with Beckett-