Sanya should’ve been flattered, but it pissed her off that Harry discussed her with Tara. The son of a bitch.
“You know, I’m surprised,” Sanya said, and when Tara raised her eyebrows, she added, “I didn’t know that Harry even talked about me to his colleagues. I didn’t think, you know, I was relevant or interesting enough for discussion.”
Tara smiled uncomfortably, as if caught doing something wrong.
Just then a couple was seated at a table across from them. The woman wore a short black lace dress. Her hair was done up, not thrown together, and lay in dark curls around her face. She wore an expensive leather purse and strappy black heels. The man wore sneakers, a pair of torn jeans and a black-and-white AC/DC T-shirt, and a look like he’d spent the day watching a Game of Thrones marathon and forgotten to take a shower.
“Why is it that women dress up and men don’t?” Sanya said to Tara as they both watched the couple.
Obviously happy to talk about something less controversial, Tara jumped at the opportunity. “I’ve seen this several times. Women primp while men barely run a comb through their hair. Must be some societal pressure thing, don’t you think? Women have to look their best; men just have to be there.”
Sanya partly agreed. “Do you think maybe it’s because women are more insecure than men? We need to prove we’re worthy of the man, while the man knows he’s superior to the woman. I think when a man is unsure he dresses up, just as a woman does.”
They both looked at Harry, who was wearing a pale blue shirt and dark-blue sailing pants from Nautica with a pair of Ferragamo boat shoes. His hair was groomed, and they both knew he regularly visited a men’s salon for manicures and pedicures.
“Maybe you’re right,” Tara said.
Sanya raised her wineglass to Tara and said, “Cheers.”
While the others ate dessert, a Danish layer cake with honey and cherry wine, covered with Valrhona chocolate, Otto, who was diabetic, and Sanya, who wasn’t hungry, went for a walk. They strolled by the canal to the bicycle and pedestrian bridge that went across from this side of the city to Papirøen, Paper Island, known for its street food, according to Otto, who had done his Condé Nast Traveler–style Copenhagen research.
Sanya and Otto had known each other for nearly a decade and were friends. He had even come to visit her at home after the implosion, with self-help books by Deepak Chopra on how to overcome adversity by fixing her chakras.
“How are you settling into life in Scandinavia?” Otto asked.
“Very well, I think,” Sanya said. “And it’s just for a year. So it’s transient.”
“Maybe shorter now that we know what we know,” Otto said, and then he saw the look of irritation on Sanya’s face, and he seemed to realize he had said something he shouldn’t have.
“Okay, what is going on?” Sanya asked.
“Nothing,” Otto said, and then blew some air out. “I thought he told you, or at least asked your advice. You’ve seen the files, right?”
“Why would I? Why would he send them to me?”
“Because he always asks you,” Otto said.
“Used to,” Sanya said. “I haven’t looked at a single Excel sheet. And I used to give advice on small stuff. ComIT doesn’t pay me to support mergers and acquisitions.”
Otto nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. “We don’t know enough yet. Maybe it’s going to be nothing, and it’s all going to come out smelling roses.”
“I’m not well enough to start investigating financial procedures, and I don’t know anything about Danish regulations,” Sanya said in her defense.
“Hey, that’s why I’m here, and J Yu. And Tara, who knows Danish corporate law,” Otto said.
“And isn’t she fabulous,” Sanya said with more venom than she’d have liked.
Otto’s response, which was to divert to another subject, told her more than a platitude about the state of her marriage would have. She was the last to know. Lucky probably knew as well. Otto obviously knew.
How long had this been going on? How many others had there been? Was Harry like Ravn? Had he for half their marriage been diddling other women? Was Sanya actually attracted to Ravn because he was just as much of a philanderer as her own husband?
“Do you know that Harry feels that part of your mental state is his fault?” Otto said. “The thing with men like Harry is that to become a man like Harry, you have to be selfish; you have to take and not give. Harry never learned to give. And you never asked him to give . . . not until now.”
Sanya looked at Otto, puzzled. “I’m not asking him for anything.”
Otto smiled. “Aren’t you? Maybe not overtly, but your circumstances are demanding that he be present and engaged or he’ll lose you. It’s a gun to his head, and it’s fascinating to see Harry actually worry about losing . . . anything.”
Sanya had to admit that it was interesting to see Harry squirm, because he was always so confident and sure of himself, so certain of his past, his present, and his future. He showed no fear. One could never smell blood around him. But now . . . now . . . maybe, Sanya wondered as a new idea flitted through her consciousness, could it be possible that Harry had his own implosion after Sanya’s, and he was changing as well, going through a reinvention to become a new Harry?
“Do you know that Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, the owner of Mærsk, built the opera house?” Sanya told Otto, and continued without waiting for a response as they stood across from the opera house, separated by the canal. “He built it so that the opera house and the royal palace are in the same line, like the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.”
“Have you been to the opera house yet?” Otto asked.
“No. I’ve never been to Paris, either,” Sanya said. “You know, Otto, all of a sudden the fact that I’ve never been to Paris bothers me. I don’t know why. Maybe because this is Europe, and everyone who comes to Europe goes to Paris.”
“It is the city for lovers,” Otto said.
“Why do you think Harry and I have never gone on a romantic anything ever?” Sanya asked.
Otto shrugged. “I told you. Harry is selfish.”
“And he got his romance elsewhere,” Sanya said softly, her eyes shimmering with tears, blurring the bright lights of the opera house. They disappeared as quickly as they came, but Sanya felt a softening inside her, a churning, and a movement like a butterfly that flies past and leaves just a tiny ripple in the air.
Otto put both his hands on Sanya’s shoulders. “Harry loves you. He’s terrified of losing you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the light in his darkness,” he said.
“I have no idea what that means,” Sanya said. “He said it once, too, that he didn’t want to be without me because he didn’t like who he was without me.”
Otto seemed surprised that Sanya didn’t know how her husband felt, because it apparently was obvious to him. “He wouldn’t be human without you. Look at him. He’s . . . this . . . I don’t know, businessman persona, two-dimensional with no affiliations. You give him family—you’re his only family. He loses you, what is he left with? Lucky?”
When Sanya nodded he let his hands drop from her shoulders. They went back to looking at the opera house. “I should check the season. If Tosca is coming, I’d like to go. I like living here. It’s like the city was made for me,” Sanya said a little dreamily. “The weather, I know, is unreliable, but it matches my moods. They tell me I’m going to hate the winter. It gets dark by three in the afternoon, and the sun doesn’t rise until after eight in the morning. But in June and July it’s glorious with the sun shining until midnight. How long are you here for?”
“Just a few weeks,” Otto said. “If all works out, I go back and work with the team at home. J Yu will stay a few months to help Lucky and Harry.”
“How about Tara?”
Otto was sharp and didn’t miss a thing. “You don’t have to worry about her. She won’t be staying long.”
; She could have said, “Why should I worry about her?” But it would be disingenuous. They both knew why. And that was how the universe confirmed it. It was one thing to be certain with no proof but quite another to have the proof. She felt her heart constrict and break a little. She decided to ignore it.
“Will you send me the IT Foundry files you think I need to look at?” Sanya asked Otto. “And don’t tell Harry.”
It was an unusual request, but Otto and Sanya went a long way back and she knew he would do as she asked.
Otto wrinkled his nose. “Why do you want to do this?”
“Because I need to know.”
“What?”
“Just how corrupt IT Foundry is,” she said.
What she didn’t say was that she wanted to know how corrupt Ravn was.
Chapter 17
Improper Fantasies, Sexual and Otherwise
“We should do this more often,” Harry said as he collapsed on his side of the bed, still panting. “Why don’t we do it more often?”
“Because we’ve been busy.”
He looked puzzled, as if saying, You’ve not been busy.
“I’ve been busy having a nervous breakdown,” Sanya said. “And you’ve been busy trying to buy a company.”
Harry smiled. “But we’re both almost on the other side of the tunnel now.”
He seemed so hopeful that Sanya didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was still in the darkness, still trying to strain her eyes to figure out what the hell was going on around her. Worse, she couldn’t even see the light at the end of the tunnel and was sure that if she did, it would be an oncoming train.
“I like living here, Harry,” Sanya said. She felt him tense next to her.
“What do you like best about Copenhagen?”
“I like the ease of living here. I like living in a city, this city. I feel at peace. You did good by bringing us here,” Sanya said. “Do you think we could stay longer than a year? I could find a job. Maybe Ernst & Young in Copenhagen will hire me as a financial consultant even though I don’t speak Danish.”
“The weather sucks,” Harry said, “and once this IT Foundry business is settled, I’ll have to go back.”
“Then maybe I can stay,” Sanya suggested.
“Without me?” he asked, now lifting himself up on one elbow to look at her.
“Why not? You travel so much anyway—and you can come visit,” Sanya said, smiling at him.
She waited for Harry to ask what she knew he wanted to. Do you want to stay because of Ravn?
Harry lay on his back again, his head hitting the pillow. “I find Danes to be . . . I don’t know . . . sexually debauched.”
“Sexually debauched? Where did that come from? And you sound like a prude.”
“Half their marriages end in divorce, and most of them don’t even get married,” Harry said.
Sanya laughed. “Really? This is your problem with Denmark? The moral standing of marriage in their society? The United States is no different.”
“Did I tell you that Penny propositioned me?”
Sanya sat up then. “What? No, that I would’ve remembered, slow brain or not.”
“She said something about both of us being adults and interested and that she had an apartment that she kept exclusively for extramarital . . . liaisons,” Harry said, and Sanya could see he was slightly smug about a beautiful, ex-model type like Penny coming on to him.
“And then she takes me out to lunch,” Sanya said in amazement. “So, how did Penny take the rejection?”
“How are you so sure that I rejected her?” Harry asked.
“You wouldn’t have told me if you’d gone and fucked her,” Sanya said, and then, as if making a decision, she reclined again and stared at the ceiling. “This is an egalitarian society when it comes to sex. It only makes me like this country more.”
“All I can say is that moving here has been good for our sex life,” Harry said.
Sanya wondered if it was moving to Denmark or Anders Ravn that had contributed to this night of sexual frolic. Was Harry a substitute for Ravn? And, if so, wasn’t that a terribly Danish and debauched thing for her to have done?
Chapter 18
The Love Doctor
It was Alec who suggested Kiin Kiin, the Michelin-starred Thai fusion restaurant.
Alec was a foodie, and not just now when it was fashionable, but always. He would come visit them in Copenhagen, he declared, even though he had not been able to get a table at Noma, but he had heard great things about the meatpacking district, Kødbyen, and he was very keen on going to Christiania, a hippie area in the heart of the city where one could buy weed on the main street.
Sanya had asked Alec for tips on what to do when Arthur had given her an exercise to increase intimacy with Harry. Plan a dinner, he suggested. Or go for a walk. Do something that brings you closer outside the house.
So Sanya decided that for her and Harry’s twenty-first wedding anniversary, in late June, she would book Kiin Kiin and surprise Harry with a world-class meal. She called the restaurant, and when they told her that the next available table was a month away, she phoned Lucky.
“If they don’t have a table that evening, then they don’t have a table that evening,” Lucky said. “Sanya, there are a zillion restaurants in Copenhagen and many with Michelin stars; just book another.”
“I want to go here,” Sanya said like a stubborn child. “Why can’t you help me? Use your influence.”
“What influence? I’m not even from Copenhagen. Why is this so important to you?” Lucky was exasperated.
Sanya felt a surge of emotion, and inadvertently her voice choked. “Because I want to do something normal.”
There was a long pause from Lucky, as if he were waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Sanya to start crying uncontrollably or do something else remarkable. When she didn’t, he sighed. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “I’ll send you an email with the details.”
Sanya took pains to dress up for the dinner. She had called Chloe, her British friend she had met at Café Bopa, to help her shop. She didn’t want to go to a fancy place, but she wanted a fancy dress, a va va voom dress (and not the yellow one with red flowers that Birgitte Green had wanted her to buy for the ambassador’s dinner).
“You need more than a new dress, girlfriend,” Chloe said as she smoked a cigarette over a cup of coffee at Café Bopa. “Your hair . . . what’s with that?”
There was a numbness about appearance after an implosion, a white, blinding silence that took all judgment away. Just like after someone’s leg falls asleep and the pins and needles hurt, Sanya had experienced something similar as she stood in front of the mirror that morning and saw herself for the first time in nearly a year.
The hair Chloe had asked about disparagingly had not been tended to. It was frizzy. There were split ends. Her roots were white, a halo around her dark face. Her eyebrows were unruly caterpillars (it was the fashion now, Chloe told her, though they did need a little cleaning)—and then, to her embarrassment, Sanya saw that she had facial hair. Yes, upper lip and sideburns.
Her first reaction was that someone like Ravn would never be interested in a woman like her, and she wondered if Ravn was also doing what Mandy and Penny were doing, digging for information. And what if he was? Did she care?
Otto had sent Sanya some large zip files via secure email. These were IT Foundry financial documents. She still hadn’t opened the email. She would, she promised herself, very soon.
“I don’t know what to say. I have no defense,” Sanya said, touching her hair. “To be clear, I was never a fashion plate, but I did basic maintenance.”
“When was the last time you shaved your legs?” Chloe asked, looking at Sanya’s jean-clad legs.
Sanya nodded and then sighed.
“We’ll start with the hair and work our way down,” Chloe said, picking up her phone and pressing a number in her contacts. She looked at Sanya’s crotch pointedly.
> Sanya smiled weakly. Was she ready for this? But the more important question was, who was she doing this for? Harry or Ravn?
“Wafic,” Chloe squealed. “I have an emergency.” She paused and then said, “No, it’s an emergency, and it needs to be now. I’ll also book her at DermaBelle for . . . everything else.”
She hung up and smiled at Sanya. “He’ll see you in twenty minutes. Take a taxi; I’ll give you the address. And then you’ll go next door to DermaBelle, where Yasmine will take care of you. She’s Iranian and is very good with body hair. I’ll come and get you from DermaBelle after you’re waxed and polished, and then we’ll buy you a new dress. That will give me time to pick up Caroline from kindergarten and drop her off with Johan’s parents, who are babysitting.”
Sanya felt like Audrey Hepburn, a much more beaten down version than Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Chloe put her hand on Sanya’s shoulder. “This is not a drill, soldier. So let’s find you that taxi.”
“I am the Love Doctor,” Wafic Sileba, Chloe’s favorite hairdresser on Kronprinssesegade in the city center, announced. Wafic was from Lebanon, had long, curly hair that he collected in a top bun, and spoke English with an Arabic accent.
Sanya raised her caterpillar eyebrows.
Wafic smiled and showed bright white teeth. “After I cut their hair, women get laid. One client, she comes every week for a wash and blow dry on Fridays because her husband travels during the week. He comes home on Friday evenings, and the hair does the trick.”
“Or maybe he’s just horny because he’s been gone for a week,” Sanya suggested.
Wafic laughed. “She’s not the only one, chiquita. Now, what should we do with you, besides getting rid of the whites?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have no idea what should be done with me.”
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