“Which one is your favorite?” she asked.
He took her to a Degas painting in shades of gray, lacking color. There were several dancers in white ballet outfits. There were ballerinas in motion, fluid, arms aloft, their bodies held in accordance with the music that almost vibrated from the canvas—while in contrast other ballerinas were static, waiting to perform.
“This is one of my favorites,” he said. “Répétition d’un ballet sur la scène, ‘Ballet Rehearsal on Stage.’ It’s on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.”
“Why this painting?”
“Degas was supposed to be a tough guy, but his portrayals of women, especially in his ballerina series, are always so gentle, soft, and delicate,” Ravn said. “Many critics actually say this is not a painting but a drawing. So many things are happening here. The dancers in action. The dancers in waiting. The man sitting on the chair in the back. It’s brilliant. I have a Degas in my office at home, an original. It has just one ballerina, leaning against a barre; her face is almost hidden, but there is this coiled energy inside her ready to be released. If the house was burning down, that’s the one thing I’d save.”
They stood in front of the Degas for a while and watched the dancers practice their pliés. He put his hand on the small of Sanya’s back to hold her because she had suddenly started to sway. The museum was warm, and the sweater she had worn over her T-shirt because it was cool on this summer day was now constricting her. The waistband of her jeans wrapped clammily around her middle. She turned to look at him and weaved on her feet.
“I have another favorite,” he said softly. “Would you like to see?”
She nodded and then removed her sweater. He took the sweater from her and held it in his hand.
As they walked he said, “The sculptures are also very good. The most prized is the series of dancers by Degas, and they’re very good. But I like his paintings.”
Sanya shook her head, nausea building inside her.
I should not have left home, she thought.
It was one thing to go to a café down the street and quite another to go on a clandestine rendezvous to a museum with a potential lover. This was not who she was. She didn’t do this kind of thing. She was the good wife. The good mother. She was the happy woman who had a great life and a closet full of white cotton undershirts that her husband had lovingly discarded for her.
And just as she was about to run, he brought her in front of a Monet, Shadows on the Sea. Sanya stared at the painting and felt, just as Ravn must have intended, a sense of calm spread through her.
“The series is called The Cliffs at Pourville,” he said in a low voice. “After seeing these paintings for the first time, I went to Normandy to experience the view.”
The shadows on the sea, the jutting cliffs, a scene indecipherable at close range. The viewer had to stand at a distance to see the fine points clearly, to feel the peace. Sometimes life was like that, wasn’t it?
They stood in silence for nearly fifteen minutes, both of them staring at Monet’s sea, Ravn’s hand still on the small of her back, now not supporting her but purporting intimacy. She didn’t move away from it. She let the sunlight and clouds that soared over the cliffs of Pourville spread through her, and she breathed in and out slowly and deeply, putting the broken pieces together . . . again.
They walked back to the atrium and went to the café. A waiter took them to an empty table and handed them menus.
When they were seated, Ravn took her hand in his, forcing her attention. His blue eyes were intense with feeling. “People think depression is being sad. People don’t know shit.”
“Is that what you think I am, depressed?” she asked as she pulled her hand away.
“One damaged person can see another, Sanya,” he said. “When I was eighteen, my grandmother died of cancer the same week my girlfriend overdosed and ended up in a coma. A week later she died as well. My father had checked out years before that, he was living in Provence then with his new French wife, still does. My mother was traveling, I think, I don’t know where. My grandmother raised me. After the funerals I tried to commit suicide.”
There was really no proper response to a statement like he’d just made. There was no asking, So, how did you try to commit suicide? Did you slit your wrists? Take pills? What did you do, Ravn? She couldn’t ask because his darkness had obviously been much darker than hers. Sanya couldn’t compete with a beloved dead grandmother and a girlfriend.
Sanya had told Alec after she had come back from the hospital and started therapy that she felt like a fraud because she didn’t really have any reason to be depressed. People struggling to make a living or dealing with abuse or living through a war, these people had the right. Not Sanya who lived in a three-thousand-square-foot house in Los Gatos with a swimming pool.
“Only the hen that lays the egg knows the ass burn it takes to pass it. Everyone’s pain is their own personal hell. You cannot compare notes. You cannot say your hell burns less hot than mine,” Alec said. “Your pain is real to you, and that’s reason enough.”
The waiter came and they ordered drinks. They both were having coffee with milk and sparkling Carlsberg water.
“So you don’t usually go to museums?” Ravn asked. “MOMA in San Francisco is very special.”
“I’ve been there with a client—but there just hasn’t been time between work and life to indulge . . .” She trailed off, because it sounded like a cliché. I’ve been too busy working and not living.
“There’s something about walking around a museum and seeing the different nuances between the various works of art,” Ravn said, and raised his hand as if holding a paintbrush. “We can stand in front of the canvas just as the artist did and experience a little bit of that magic. Would you like that? To experience that magic with me?”
He was obviously asking about more than museums. She didn’t hesitate, well, not for long. New Sanya wanted to fly into the unknown.
“I’d love to walk through a museum or two with you,” she said. “I’d love to learn to see art.”
“I know nothing about painting styles and eras and . . . all of that. Specific art turns me on,” he said.
“And I don’t even have sexy lingerie,” Sanya said.
He laughed out loud. “You’re more complicated, nuanced, and layered than a Monet, aren’t you?”
Harry used to call her his Indian princess, when their relationship was still new and fresh, but no one had ever called her a Monet. Was this just a line to this man? Or did he really think she was this deep and interesting woman? Sanya decided to, for once, take what Ravn said at face value, and she liked the idea, very much, of being compared to a painting.
They ordered after that. She had a caprese sandwich, and he ordered a steak, medium rare, with new potatoes and béarnaise sauce.
“I’ve been here before,” he said in between sips of his water.
Sanya smiled. He wasn’t talking about the museum. “I’ve never been here before,” she confessed. “How many times have you been here?”
“Three and a half times,” he said. “I say half because I only came to the doorstep one time and returned. But I think it still counts.”
“Why did you return?”
“There was a storm approaching, and it was going to be a rough one,” he said.
“And three and a half times is what percentage of your marriage?” she asked.
“I’ve been married for twenty years now. Each lasted somewhere between a year and three,” he said.
“That’s almost half your marriage . . . give or take,” she said.
He nodded as he silently counted. “More or less. I never thought about it that way.”
“Did you fall in love?”
“Every time,” he said.
“You fall in love easily.” She should’ve felt disappointed that this was not special, she was not special, he did this all the time—but she didn’t. Instead, she felt relieved that she was not his first indis
cretion and probably not his last. It made this lunch much easier to swallow.
“Not easily,” he said, “but definitively.”
“I’m sure I fell in love with Harry, a long time ago. I just can’t remember anymore,” she said.
“We’ll make sure you remember this time,” he said, and grinned broadly, inviting her to jump, to take that leap into space.
Where had this come from? Sanya thought. This feeling of abandon, this feeling that maybe, yes, yes, why not, why shouldn’t I jump? Has this always been inside me, and has it come out because of the implosion? Where had this recklessness, this affinity for disorder, come from?
In South India, after the 2004 tsunami, lost temples at Mahabalipuram had emerged, rising from the ocean. A big earthquake had to happen for this revelation to be forced out from the belly of the water. Maybe that was what happened with me.
“It’s not easy for me,” she said.
He smiled. “Hell, Sanya, it’s not easy for anyone. Falling in love is exhilarating, exhausting, confusing, and maddening . . . but it’s never easy. Why should it be? People confuse being in love with being happy. Love has nothing to do with happiness. It’s about being alive. And right now you’re depressed. When you’re depressed you love no one, not even yourself.”
I’m not ready, Sanya wanted to scream. And wasn’t she unbalanced enough without falling in love?
“You don’t have to jump off the mountain right away,” he said. “Why don’t we keep it simple and eat lunch?”
He put his hand on hers again, and this time Sanya didn’t pull away. She laughed softly and fell in love with him a little in that moment, because this stranger seemed to have his finger on her pulse and could see her as she wanted . . . no, as she needed to be seen.
Chapter 13
Penny and Mandy Take Sanya Around the World
The day after Sanya had lunch with Ravn, Mandy, who didn’t know about that lunch, invited Sanya for lunch at Café Jorden Rundt, Café Around the World, in Charlottenlund on Strandvejen, where she was going to meet Penny after her run.
She had deliberately chosen a place that was as casual and inexpensive as this because it was unpretentious and uncomplicated. You stood in line and ordered and paid for your food and drinks and then found a place to sit down. This way everyone paid for her own order and there was no unnecessary credit card wrangling at the end of the meal. Not that Mandy minded paying—she loved doing it, but she wasn’t sure what type Sanya was. And it was a beautiful day in June with the sun shining, and the café had such a brilliant view of Øresund and the people swimming in it alongside sailboats and kite surfers. The beach was already packed with beach umbrellas, screaming kids, and sand castles. This year it appeared that it would be a good summer, unlike the past two years, when it had rained through the end of July and the flights out of Kastrup Airport were full of Danes getting to Southern Europe and sunshine.
Penny and Mandy got there a half hour early to discuss how to approach the matter and the American’s brown wife. They would start with the weekend at the Swedish summer house, obviously, but then how to move into matters of business?
“Why not just ask her how Harry is doing and how the work is coming along? They’re supposed to be done by August or so with Harry becoming the CEO,” Penny said.
Mandy wasn’t sure. “She’ll just say it’s going well, and we’ll find out nothing.”
“Mark is singing his everything will be okay song and keeps telling me to calm the hell down,” Penny said. “I have a migraine building. I asked Mark last night if we should divest from each other’s companies, and you won’t believe what he said. He said that I could do what I wanted, but he wanted me to buy him out because my company was worth more than his. He’s such a mercenary asshole.”
Mandy nodded and patted Penny’s hand to comfort her.
“And something odd is going on. I think Jinny is wearing my lingerie,” Penny said.
“She’s stealing from you?” Mandy asked. It wasn’t uncommon or special; it happened all the time. This was why Mandy never had an au pair; she couldn’t stand the idea of having a stranger lurking around the house. It was one thing to have cleaners and gardeners; they came and left and were under her supervision, but an au pair lived in the house with you, and you couldn’t keep an eye on her all the time.
Penny shook her head and rubbed her temples. “I saw an Aimer negligee in her room. I think. I told Mark about it, and he says how can that even be possible and why was I spying on Jinny. I wasn’t spying; I was just walking by her room and the door was open. But then I checked my closet, and the negligee was there. So I don’t know what to think.”
“Maybe she’s sleeping with some Hellerup type who gave it as a present,” Mandy suggested. This also happened often enough in Hellerup—au pairs would sometimes carry on with men they met through their employers.
“I said the same thing to Mark, but he couldn’t see how it was possible, and he has a point. She’s working in our house all the time, so I don’t think she has time to have a liaison with some rich Hellerup bloke,” Penny said. “And who cares what Jinny is up to when my world is crashing around me?”
“So Mark is not worried about this tax audit?” Mandy asked.
“He says that the government will back off soon,” Penny said, and tears welled in her eyes that she dabbed with her napkin. “It’s all such a mess, Mandy.”
Penny went from being teary to being agitated and pulled out a cigarette. She lit it with shaking hands.
“If you don’t look calmer, she’s going to suspect something is wrong,” Mandy said.
“How can I be calm?” Penny asked. “I talked to my lawyer. He knows everything about tax fraud, and he said that if the government is looking into Mark’s books, then they have very good reason to do so. He said that the government doesn’t screw around.”
“But what has Mark’s business got to do with Ravn and IT Foundry?” Mandy asked, feeling a slight flutter of panic.
“I wish I knew what those two have been up to,” Penny said.
Sanya came in a taxi, wearing a pair of jeans and a ratty T-shirt, a dull gray sweater on her arm. Her hair was a mess piled up around her head. She had good hair, Mandy accepted grudgingly. It needed a cut, badly. And she had to do something about all those white roots. She looked like a beaver with the springy white curls clamoring around her wavy black hair. How could a woman be so negligent about her appearance?
“We’re so glad you could come,” Mandy said, and leaned over to air-kiss Sanya. Penny did the same.
No makeup, either, Mandy noticed. But she had good skin. She could get away with it. A little makeup wouldn’t hurt, though. A light foundation would smooth the edges and . . . the T-shirt had to go. Was that Hennes & Mauritz? My god, where did this woman go shopping? No one shopped at H&M these days. At least Zara or Massimo Dutti would have some dignity. And her husband had money. Couldn’t he afford better clothes for his wife?
Sanya sat down next to Penny and across from Mandy. She was wearing sunglasses. Dior, at least that was decent enough, though very last season with the steel frame. It was all about the big round ones this season. Well, she was a career woman, and maybe that’s why she didn’t spend time taking care of herself. Mandy knew that career women dressed like men and behaved like men to compete with men in the corporate world. Ravn’s chief information officer, a woman, always wore shapeless black pantsuits and had her hair cut short. She looked like a man, talked like a man, and walked like a man. Maybe Sanya was like that as well. Mandy smiled at the thought, because there was no way Anders Ravn would be interested in a woman like Sanya. She was certain of it.
“How are you settling into Copenhagen?” Mandy asked when they were seated inside the café.
“Fine,” Sanya said. “It’s nice. I went to the Glyptotek yesterday and had lunch.”
Penny raised an eyebrow. “Did you now? Lunch at the café?”
“Yes,” Sanya said pleasantly. “I
really liked the impressionist art collection.”
“Which painting did you like the best?” Penny asked.
“Oh, this Degas, with ballerinas . . . um . . . in rehearsal? And one by Monet of these hills in Normandy,” Sanya said.
Penny nodded and then smiled. Mandy wasn’t sure what was going on. Why was Penny asking about stupid art?
“How is Harry doing?” Mandy asked then. “All set to sign on the dotted line?”
As Mandy predicted, Sanya didn’t have much to tell them about Harry’s work. She seemed distracted the entire time she was there. She refused lunch and only had a latte, so Mandy and Penny didn’t order any food, either. It wouldn’t do to be chewing while asking questions if Sanya wasn’t going to eat.
“So this is Café Around the World,” Sanya said in wonder.
The café was round with glass walls on one side and mirrors on the other, so no matter where you sat you had a charming view of the sparkling Øresund. The sun was shining and the sky was blue, and there was just about enough wind that the sailboats were masts up in a rainbow of colors, crisp and beautiful against the satin length of the blue waters.
“It isn’t the fanciest place in the world, but I get my latte here after my run. I go to the gym three times a week, and other days I run. Do you run?” Mandy asked.
Sanya looked amused at the question, in an aloof manner. Mandy was sure that the woman was a can . . . no, several cans short of a six-pack, as they said back home. She had these big brown doe eyes with a deer caught in the headlights expression.
“I don’t run,” Sanya said, but she was smiling. “I used to do Pilates, a long time ago, and some yoga. I do neither these days.”
“You should join Well-come Fitness,” Penny said. “It’s a great place with excellent equipment, personal trainers, and classes. You can take yoga or Pilates or anything else you like. They have a lovely pool, steam room, sauna, and all the works. I go there three to four times a week. We all go there—Mandy . . . Ravn, all of us. I even get my facials and waxes there. It’s very convenient.”
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