Other Copenhagens (And Other Stories)
Dedication
The Art of Losing
And Not Your Yellow Hair
Slices of Pi
Future Perfect
Other Copenhagens
Acknowledgements
Books By Edmund Jorgensen
About the Author
Copyright
For Patrick, who makes alternate universes unthinkable
The Art of Losing
There is no shame in bad hair in and of itself. Bad hair is a hand you’re dealt, therefore a hand you can play, sometimes very well. Take Bill Murray, whose hair is like shooting the moon in hearts. Tragic hair, on the other hand, is a choice. Tragic hair is a neglected child or unwatered plant, a crime against beauty, against life itself. The woman in the security footage had tragic hair.
In back it distinguished itself from a football helmet only with an unconvincing wave and halo of split ends. In front the bangs were too long and too evenly cut, and they curled over her forehead like a spookhouse hand reaching across her scalp to poke her in the eye.
Detective Crane rewound the tape and froze it just at the moment when the woman looked up into the camera–or right through the camera, it seemed, through the TV on which the tape was playing, and into the dingy room where I was being questioned.
“Like looking in a mirror, isn’t it?” said Detective Crane.
“Only in my nightmares,” I said. “Did you see those bangs?”
“So you got your hair cut afterwards.”
“If I ever had those bangs, I’d have to get my wrists cut afterwards.”
“You’re pretty glib for someone caught on video stealing a painting worth … how much was it?”
“Insured for 200 thousand and change,” said Detective Greary.
“200 thousand dollars,” said Detective Crane, picking up with perfect rhythm, “and change.”
I enjoyed seeing the two of them work together, finishing each other’s sentences, setting each other up for lines of questioning. They were well matched physically too: Detective Greary, the eager junior partner who moved and spoke like a minor country music star–without the accent–leaning in the corner, while Detective Crane, pale, jaded and world-worn as one of Goya’s soldiers, paced back and forth in front of the table where I was sitting, occasionally leaning in on his knuckles to confront me.
“That’s the real crime,” I said. “The Romulus and Remus is a lousy painting, and anyone who would pay 200K for it has lousy taste. I would have taken the Kandinsky.”
“I would be pretty worried in your situation,” said Detective Greary, putting his right sole up against the concrete wall and nestling in, “but I have to hand it to you: you don’t seem worried.”
“Because that’s not me.”
“You have a twin?” Detective Crane said.
“Is she single?” asked Detective Greary, earning his partner’s glare.
“No woman would think for a minute that was me.”
“Then you should be all set,” Detective Crane said. “I’m sure there will be at least one woman on the jury.”
“Or you could help us out,” said Detective Greary. “This could all go down nice and easy. Tell us where the painting is, and maybe Mr. Firenze will drop the charges. He likes you. He stuck up for you, even after he saw the video. Even after he found out about your history …”
“My ‘history?’”
“It’s an illness. People these days get that. Mr. Firenze gets it–I certainly get it.”
“You’re saying Firenze won’t press charges because I’m mentally ill?”
“Hey now,” said Detective Greary, tucking in his chin and showing me his palms, as if to demonstrate he held no weapons and came in peace, “you’re the one who used those words, not me.”
“I was sixteen years old. I went through all the treatment I was ordered, and no one has accused me of stealing anything since.”
“Until now,” said Detective Crane–a point he thought worth a lean-in.
“We can help you,” Detective Greary said, “but you have to help us first.”
“If I had wanted that painting, why would I break in the window–why wouldn’t I have just stayed late one night and taken it with me?”
“Misdirection,” said Detective Crane. “To make us think it was a burglar, not someone who worked at the gallery.”
“Then why wouldn’t I have turned off the security camera?”
“Maybe you’re prettier than you are smart.”
“I have a smart lawyer, and I want to talk to her.”
“Hey now,” said Detective Greary again–apparently that was his go-to phrase to slow things down–“things are getting out of hand. We’re just chatting here, no reason to get all official. I mean, you call in a lawyer, we have to book you, everything becomes much less fun. Right now this is just a friendly chat, how about we keep it that way?”
“Lawyer.”
“Maybe you just tell us some places the painting might be–you know, ‘If I were a painting, where would I be?’ Like a game.”
“Lawyer.”
“Book her and give her a call,” Detective Crane said. He walked out of the interview room without looking back.
“With pleasure,” said Detective Greary, after the door had closed.
* * *
He chatted me up throughout the entire booking procedure, reminding me periodically in a pro forma tone how much trouble I could still save myself, then following up with a question about which clubs I frequented or what bands I liked. He told me I would look good in orange, twice.
He would have been right on the line for a slow Thursday night at Acuarela. I could imagine him approaching, still in his work clothes, showing off the good strong jaw, the clear blue eyes untroubled by too much intelligence, the sandy hair, and his most attractive attribute: the absurd sureness that I’d let him buy me a drink. I probably would have. With a drink in his hand, he would at least be unable to indulge in his worst habit–the hooking of both thumbs into his belt loops as he spoke. There was some potential there, even if it was buried deep.
“And now,” he said, when I had finished my mug shots and fingerprinting, “as promised, your phone call.” He handed me a quarter, retracting it at the last moment to add “Don’t spend it all in one place.”
“Watch me.”
I launched the quarter into the pay phone with a flick of the index finger, making sure that it struck the back of the phone hard and fell loudly enough for Detective Greary to hear.
My aunt was unavailable, as always–her assistant said she was in court–so I left a message with a description of my circumstances. Throughout the brief conversation I held the receiver away from my ear, far enough so that Detective Greary would be sure that I was not just talking to a dial tone. I hung up.
“Here’s your change,” I said, dropping the quarter back into Detective Greary’s hand. He looked at the quarter, the phone, then at me, and I smiled innocently as he escorted me to the women’s holding area, a man walking his date to her door after an evening gone wrong in some way he could not understand.
* * *
The first time it happened I was thirteen years old–or a “baker’s dozen years,” as my mother had explained to me at my birthday party a few weeks before. It was Easter, and I was sitting in the living room, on the orange sofa that my mother hated but would never replace, kicking my patent leather heels against its flaps and plotting violence against the sleeves of the Easter dress my mother had bought me, which puffed at the shoulders like blowfish trying to swallow my arms and made me look like a pastel linebacker. I was alone–my mother was in the kitchen struggling to get the lamb into the oven, and my father was u
pstairs shaving, having left the television tuned to the parade, the volume very low, like the murmur of adult conversation from another room.
While I waited for my parents to return, I eyed the chocolates in my basket–forbidden until after dinner–and instead ate a deviled egg from the plate my mother had left on the coffee table, considering all the while whether it would be possible to rend my dress into a sleeveless using only my bare hands, and whether the result would be worth my father’s wrath.
My mother returned a few minutes later, wiping sweat from her forehead and tidying her hair. She scanned the living room like a radar dish, hands on her hips, hunting for anything out of place or order, any imperfection which my father might remark on or raise his eyebrows at when he came back down.
“Why can’t I have one chocolate?” I asked her.
“Have a deviled egg instead. They’re your favorite.” She angled a picture frame a few inches inward on the mantle.
“I already ate one,” I said. “So now can I have a chocolate?”
“Bella,” she said, moving the frame back to where it had been, “if you don’t want an egg, you don’t have to eat an egg, but don’t lie about it. I can count.” She described a small circle with her finger above the plate holding the eggs.
It was an old plate, made of a fine white porcelain that had chipped but not yellowed through the years. Even then I thought the design over-elaborate. The center of the plate bulged into a purely decorative mound of fern-like porcelain leaves, and around the outer edge of the plate porcelain twigs wove in and out of each other like the reeds of a basket. Between these two elements, spaced out evenly around the plate like hours on the face of a clock, twelve egg-shaped depressions in the porcelain waited to cradle a halved egg, fat end towards the center. And, at the moment, all twelve depressions were occupied.
“You made a baker’s dozen,” I said.
“A baker’s dozen is thirteen, remember? Like your age. I made twelve. Let’s show off your math–how many eggs did I use if I made twelve?”
“Six.”
“Don’t roll your eyes, it’s good for you to practice. And if I made thirteen?”
“Six and a half.”
“That wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Where would the other half be?” she said, attempting to tousle my hair. I ducked so she would not feel the dusting of her hairspray I had applied earlier in the bathroom. “All right, have a chocolate, but quick, and don’t tell your father.”
As I unwrapped a Cadbury Egg I let the matter of the deviled eggs drop, but I knew my mother was mistaken–there must have been thirteen. I could still feel the pickle juice tingling on my lips, and taste paprika. The grainy yolk still coated my tongue.
When my mother died, I inherited the plate. I keep it in the warehouse.
* * *
My aunt entered the consultation room like a hurricane, slamming the door, slamming the folder on the table, dumping her coat next to it, and yanking out the chair so it screeched against the floor. She almost parachuted into her seat.
“We had a deal,” she said.
“Nice to see you too, Aunt Daniela. I like that cameo–very retro. But I would rethink the pleats on the skirt. You could go straight, or even sheathe–you’ve still got the legs for it.”
“You were supposed to come to me if you started getting those feelings again. You didn’t. So explain why I should even agree to represent you, when you broke our deal.”
“You aren’t even going to ask me if I did it?”
My aunt leaned forward, her elbows on the table, staring at me. I returned her stare until she shook her head and leaned back.
“All right. Did you do it?”
“No.”
“Damn it, Bella, I watched the tape.”
“You watched the tape, and you still think that was me? Did you see those bangs? Does anyone in the entire justice system know anything about hair?”
She was on her feet again in a second, and the chair slammed back into place below the table.
“I don’t have time for games. I have innocent people to defend.”
“Maybe I have an alibi,” I said. “You didn’t even ask.”
She was already putting on her coat.
“Do you have an alibi?”
“It was 3 a.m. I was sleeping.”
“Alone?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Not my business means not an alibi. I was planning to bail you out, but I think maybe a night or two in here will be good for you. I’ll see you at the arraignment–you’re pleading guilty.”
“If you can find a single picture of me with hair like that, ever, I’ll gladly plead guilty. As long as I get to serve out my sentence somewhere without mirrors.”
“Guard!” my aunt shouted. “We’re all done here.”
* * *
I could not entirely blame my aunt for assuming I was guilty, even in the face of what should have been the sure contraindication of that tragic hair. There was the matter of–as Detective Greary had put it so delicately–my “history.”
Back in my high school Cynthia Ward was, inexplicably, the main arbiter of taste for a popular clique of rich girls, and my great enemy on account of the upperclassmen and college freshmen for whose romantic attention we often competed. She did have good taste in men, if not fashion. I used to call her–always to her face–“Skinthia,” “Cynthia Weird,” and on occasion “Ward of the State,” which offended her rich-girl sensibilities deeply and represented my nuclear option. She used to call me “slut” behind my back.
But one day she was not standing far enough behind my back, and the ensuing (rather silly) cat-fight left an image of the thick golden signet-style ring I had carelessly worn that morning imprinted in her mind as well as on her forehead. As luck would have it, she had recently lost her own ring, and during our subsequent dressing down in the principal’s office she urged him to put some questions to me that I found it hard to answer, especially when he examined the inside of my ring and found engraved there: “Cyn reach for the moon love M & D.”
The principal’s report to my mother prompted a toss of my room, where she discovered the underwear drawer in which I kept all the jewelry–my first warehouse–and, since I could not explain how I had come by these pieces, it was decided that I must have stolen them. My father, always one for Truth and Justice Equally for All Amen and God Bless America, reported me to the police over my mother’s lamentations, and turned all the jewelry over to them. As I was a minor, and the police had trouble determining the identity of my supposed victims, I never saw the inside of anything more serious than a therapist’s office. But even in that office I did face an unpleasant choice.
I like the truth. I prefer it to lies, all things being equal, as I prefer simpler cuts in dresses and fewer accessories in outfits. These are guidelines to depart from only with good reason. But in truth, as in fashion, there are both eternal and seasonal principles at play. There are no hard and fast rules to memorize and be done with–“always tell the truth”–“never wear dangly earrings with shoulder straps.” The situation is always fluid, and the human factor cannot be overestimated: with a few changed minds high fashion can become kitsch, or the truth a lie. So I could choose either to tell my therapist a truth he could never have believed, and therefore be a liar; or to lie to him, and be just a young woman with an intense attraction to beautiful things and an underdeveloped notion of personal property. Not much of a choice, really.
To this day I attend the odd meeting at my local chapter of Kleptomaniacs Anonymous. I still have some friends there, and recovering kleptomaniac men, who live straddling the border of adrenaline and repressed desire, know how to show a girl a good evening or two.
* * *
At my arraignment Monday morning I pleaded not guilty, and made arrangements for my bail.
Aunt Daniela was so angry she wouldn’t speak to me on the way out of the court room. I followed her through the halls and out
the doors of the building, trying to talk to her, until we were halfway down the court house steps.
“Fine,” I shouted. “Go on. If I need to talk to you I’ll just get arrested again–that seems to be the only way you have the time of day for me.”
She stopped short at the bottom corner of the stairs, right by the statue of Justice, and turned around to look at me. I always forgot how beautiful my aunt really was–she had the same features as my mother, but she wore them differently, as if the same material had gone into a smart pants suit instead of a summer frock. At that moment, however, in the thin light of a New York spring morning, she seemed just as beautiful and permanent as the statue of Justice holding up her scales–and just as undecided. She started to say something, bit her lip, and then continued.
“I’ll stop by tonight. Be home.”
She turned and walked away, shaking her head.
I waited until she was out of sight before I hailed the cab.
“Red Hook,” I said, and, just to be on the safe side, gave an address a few blocks away from my destination.
* * *
My caution paid off: I was in front of Jerry’s Tavern, just a block from the warehouse, when I spotted him over my shoulder.
“Hello, Detective Greary,” I called.
He came sheepishly out of the alley into which he had retreated too late and crossed over to my side of the street, waving a passing taxi in front of him.
“Buy you a drink?” I said, motioning my head back at the sign for Jerry’s.
“It’s 11:30 in the morning.”
“It’s 11:45. And that’s not an answer.”
“I’m on duty.”
“That’s not an answer either.”
He shrugged and opened the door, holding it for me.
Jerry’s Tavern had no windows, and only the bare minimum of bulbs, so it took a few seconds for our vision to adjust. When it did, Detective Greary whistled.
Other Copenhagens Page 1