“I just sat. And I swept underneath the counter. What’s the key to?”
“To a place out on Damhus Lake. I haven’t even been there, it was just because of this guy who called Vibse’s little brother.”
We turned the corner at Jydeholmen. We could hear music from inside the bar, something with funk bass. The door was open a crack, the smell of smoke and old carpets met us.
The man, Leif, sat up at the bar, his back to us. There was no baby in sight. She nodded at a round table off to the side, we sat down. I laid the duvet on my lap under the table. The duvet felt clammy, my uniform did too. Fortunately the radiator by the window gave off strong heat. The bartender came over to us: “What’ll it be?”
“Two beers and aquavit,” she said, and then to me: “I’m just about to faint. He spotted us.”
“Are you sure he’s the one who took Mathias?” I said, when the bartender had left.
“Yeah, it’s him.”
“Then why don’t you go up there and give him the key?”
“I need to sit for a minute. I’ve got to be calm.”
“Where do you think Mathias is?”
She shook her head, she had tears in her eyes. “He’s here somewhere. It’s so cruel.” I couldn’t help reaching over and putting a hand on her shoulder. Which caused the tears to run over. Meanwhile she smiled crookedly: “I used to run around with some real sickos, I was a big idiot.”
“What about your boy’s father?”
“He came from Koge. Originally,” she said, and wiped her nose with her arm.
The bartender brought the beer and two small glasses of North Sea Oil, the aquavit. We drank. It burned my throat. We both lit a cigarette, no smoke rings this time. I felt how tired my entire body was. My legs ached, I had been on my feet all day.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“I’m Helle.”
“Helle,” she said. “That’s my sister’s name too. I’m Christina.”
“Yes, I heard. That’s my sister’s name too.”
“Really, it is? So we have the same name, that’s really strange. With a C?”
“Yes.”
“Really, that’s strange. My sister works on the Oslo ferry, she’ll be forty next month.”
“She must be a lot older than you.”
“Yeah, we have different mothers,” she said, and tears welled in her eyes again. She covered her mouth with her small fist.
“My sister is a reflexologist,” I said.
“I tried that once, it really hurt,” she said, from behind her hand.
We sat, nodded shortly. Took a few swigs of our beer.
“And I work out in Bakken,” I said then.
“I figured that out from your clothes, I’ve seen you walk by a few times. What do you do out there?”
“I sell tickets for the rides and stuff.”
“That must be fun.”
I shrugged my shoulders: “It’s only for the time being.”
“Me too,” she said. “I’m going to be a midwife. I’m starting high school equivalency classes next year.”
“That’s a really good plan,” I said.
He climbed down from the barstool, the windbreaker short on his lower back. He disappeared through the door to an adjoining room, maybe the bathroom was out there. She straightened up, took a deep breath. “I’m following him and I’ll give him the key, but he has to give Mathias back right away,” she said, and stood up. “Mathias is out there for sure, they have this little sofa, I’m sure he’s laying on it.”
“You’re a little bit black under this one eye here. There.”
“Thanks. That’s sweet of you. I’ll be right back,” she said, and left.
I drank my North Sea Oil. I lit another cigarette, avoided glancing around the place. I looked at the leaded window of lurid colors, blue, red, yellow, and green, I counted the panes, five times seven, thirty-five in all, minus the three black squares in the middle, thirty-two. I reached into my net bag for a piece of gum. Yanked my sleeve up.
I needed to pee but I wasn’t going
The boy lay sleeping on an overcoat on the floor behind the bar. Now I could see how big he was. Chubby arms and legs, round cheeks, pacifier moving back and forth. It seemed strange a boy that large had come out of such a small person. The rattling from the kitchen grew wild now, I leaned all the way over, I couldn’t see the bartender. Quickly I fetched the duvet and my net bag, went behind the bar, and picked up the boy. He didn’t wake, his head fell into place on my shoulder. It was a battle with him in my arms, the duvet hanging from my wrist.
We made it out of Jydepotten, and I walked across the street into the narrow alleyway beside the butcher shop. I leaned against the wall, I was completely out of breath. I wrapped the duvet around him. The boy had some real bulk to him-I figured out a way to hold him with both arms, the net bag wrapped around one of them. We stood like that for a while. The rain had stopped. The water puddles on Jydeholmen were like mirrors. I waited, my eye on the bar’s front door.
Much later I heard loud noises from the courtyard behind the bar, grunts and groans beneath that unmistakable pearly laughter, the moaning now from pleasure. I stood holding the boy until it was all over. At that point I had almost no strength left in my arms.
I left the alleyway and returned to the grill. I walked around the back and laid the sleeping boy in the carriage, tucked him in. I returned to the street, paced up and down the sidewalk for quite a while, and at last I walked home. I took a long shower, using all the hot water. The next morning I was late getting up and had to rush out the door. I waited for the C train to Klampenborg. My pocketbook wasn’t in my net bag; it had been fat, Karen and I had secretly exchanged all the Swedish bills. Almost four thousand kroner. I might have left it on the bar, I kept on imagining that.
But I never looked into it. Two days later I quit at Bakken and returned the uniform, the only one I’d ever had. The week after that I enrolled in a writing program.
PART II.
WHEN THE TIME CAME BY LENE KAABERBOl & AGNETE FRIIS
“Shit.”
Taghi felt the tires on the junker Opel Flexivan sliding and losing traction in the icy mud. If he drove any closer to the entrance they might get completely stuck on their way out. The marble sinks were heavy as hell, and right now a wet, heavy snow was barreling out of the black evening sky, forming small streams in the newly dug earth in front of the building. The walkway around the building lacked flagstones. Nothing at all, in fact, had been finished. The whole place had been abandoned, left as a gigantic mud puddle, slushy and sloppy, and they were forced to park out on the street.
Taghi backed up, swearing in both Danish and Farsi. It would be backbreaking work lugging all the stuff that far, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He wasn’t going to risk getting bogged down with all that shit out here in the middle of nowhere. No goddamn way.
They hopped out on the street and stood for a moment, hugging themselves in the icy wind. The building looked like every other place out here. Glass and steel. He’d never understood who would want to live in such a place. True, there was a view of some sort of water if you were up high enough, but otherwise… Taghi sneezed and looked around. The other brandnew glass palaces were lit up as if an energy crisis had never existed, but there was
