“From the galley. Do you want me to get you a cup?”
“Nah, they’re busy with breakfast, I’ll wait. Anyway, when I spent a summer with him when I was thirteen, I saw how destructive he was. I haven’t seen him for thirty years. I get a note from him every now and then, and I answer because I don’t want there to be any mystery or drama, I send him these brief replies, I’m fine, etc. I’ve felt ever since I was thirteen that every moment I think about him is a moment that he wins. He certainly doesn’t waste any time thinking about me.”
As usual, Mark can think of nothing helpful to say. He wishes she would go on. After a few seconds he says, “Since he’s Danish, how did he end up in America?”
“Long story. He grew up in some sandy wasteland in North Jutland, an only child, his father and grandfather were both ministers in this little parish. Or anyway, that’s what he told me once, but a charming thing about him is that he loves to make shit up. It’s part of the power thing—the less you know about him. He said he met my mother in India and that’s probably true, my mother always said the same thing, then they came to upstate New York and he enthroned himself as guru on that old property I was living on when you and I met. Then he got restless and pretended he wanted to depart this mortal realm but probably he just wanted to run away from humdrum obligations. So when he got out of the hospital he left the US, seems to have traveled for a while, he might have done some eco-activism, when I met him again at thirteen he was trying to prevent a river in Norway from being dammed. When everyone else wouldn’t do exactly what he wanted he took his bat and ball and left that game, too. Anyway, as far as I know he’s been back in Denmark now for the last twenty years. His address is some island that’s so small you only have to put his name and the island on the envelope. He wrote a few years ago that he was living in an old windmill he was repairing, which sounds so exactly like him, or like the image he’s always liked to project, I’ve wondered if it’s bullshit. He probably wants everyone to picture him sitting on top of it like a bearded holy man in a New Yorker cartoon. I think he wishes he were a trickster god, like Loki or Coyote. You know, God the Liar—what would that be, Deus Mendax, Deus Mentiens? Anyway, I’d bet anything he’s got a Border Collie named Lila. All his life he’s had a succession of dogs, all Border Collies, all named Lila. It’s a way of making the dog timeless, making himself timeless. Narcissists live forever because they’re convinced the whole cosmos ends when they die. He’s probably about seventy by now, but he’ll look fifty, max, you heard it here first. I’m kind of mad at myself that I gave Mette a Danish name, but I’ve always known the language a little, I can read simple stuff, I’ve always liked the sound of it. I should have given her the middle name Fuckthomas just so there’d be no misunderstanding. If you sound it out, it’s actually got a pretty nice rhythm to it, Mette Fuckthomas White. Anyway, guess what? He’s winning.”
Mark’s head is swimming. She has always done this to him.
The breakfast cart is approaching. “Earlier they said we had a choice of mushroom and cheese omelet, or pancakes and blueberries.”
“Anything, as long as I get coffee. I’m not hungry. What are you getting?”
“The omelet.”
“If I don’t eat mine, which would you rather have?”
“Another omelet.”
“I’ll get that. I don’t know how men eat so much.”
“Of course you do, we’re bigger.”
“You’re right, I was being rhetorical. Busted!”
The stewardess is by his elbow, holding breakfast boxes as neat and aseptic as astronaut food. “Sir?”
“Two omelets, please.”
“I’m sorry, I can only give you one, as we have limited supplies.”
“He means one for me and one for him,” Saskia says. “Coffee?”
“Coming in a minute.” The cart lurches into the rear galley.
Mark opens his plastic box, removes the plastic utensils from their plastic bag. Pulls back the plastic film covering the pat of butter, pries the plastic lid off the plastic tub of strawberry jam. Such impressive amounts of trash. Maybe the plane should just drop its quota directly into the ocean while they’re flying over it. Save on fossil fuels powering the barges.
Coffee arrives at last. Mark eats, Saskia sips. Mark eats most of Saskia’s food.
“Don’t forget to drink all your buttermilk,” she says.
“They have buttermilk?”
“Sorry, dumb joke. Never mind.”
In the quiet minutes after eating, it occurs to Mark that Saskia “shared” with him, and maybe this is the time for him to “share” back. He remembers regretting, years ago, that there were certain personal things he’d never told her during the brief time they were together. He thinks about having, maybe, failed Mette. He looks down at the archeological ruins of his breakfast and says, “When my mother became demented after my father died, there were a few set phrases she would say repeatedly. For example, when she first came downstairs each morning she would say, ‘Mark, I’m afraid the TV isn’t working.’ I never could figure out whether she was actually feeling anxiety, or even thinking about the TV, or whether the sentence was just a verbal tic elicited by her arrival in the living room. She’d always been an angry person. She became sweeter as she lost cognitive ability, but there were some things that would set her off. She wanted to watch the same movies over and over. One of them was a TV adaptation of a Dick Francis mystery called Blood
