“We’ll go short, take some length off. It’ll make you look younger,” he said. “And product. You need product. I’ll give you a hair mask. Use it once a week and your hair will shine.”
A frisson of panic ran through Sanya. She could barely sustain herself through this day, and he was talking about next week? But wasn’t she getting better at dealing with her days now? She went out. She showered. She had started to go for walks alone during the day and enjoy the city. There were still times when it was all too much and she got under the comforter . . . but those days were becoming less common.
Still, a makeover was a big step. Thankfully, Sanya realized that she wasn’t the first skittish client Wafic had ever had. He winked at her and said, “And whomever it is you want to, you know, have fun with tonight, you can.”
Yes, Sanya, she asked herself, who do you want to have fun with tonight?
Once her hair was washed and colored, and while they were waiting the mandatory thirty minutes for the color to sink in, he asked, “Do you smoke?”
Sanya shook her head.
“Great, let’s step in the back and have a cigarette,” he said, and held his hand out to her.
They stood by a giant trash can in the back of the apartment building where Wafic had his salon. Sanya took the cigarette he offered even though it had been years since she’d smoked.
“So, what’s your story?” Wafic asked.
She took a tentative puff and exhaled. “I had a nervous breakdown,” she found herself telling him.
He nodded appreciatively. “Suicide attempt?” he asked, as if that was a natural follow-up question.
Sanya shook her head.
“That’s good,” he said. “So . . . now . . . depression?”
She nodded.
He nodded.
She took another puff. She could take up smoking. It would give her something to do with her hands, especially when they were shaking.
“And now, you’re stepping out of the darkness with your new hair,” he said. “New hair is not just about getting it cut; it’s a new way of looking at life, of living life. When you look at the mirror, if your hair is shit, you don’t spend time looking at yourself, playing with your hair. But when I’m finished with your hair, you’re going to stand in front of the mirror.”
Sanya smiled. Yes, she looked forward to looking at herself in a mirror. It had been such a long time since she’d actually seen herself.
“And that’s when the healing begins,” he added, and threw the cigarette on the ground, silencing the fire with a shoe. “When you look in the mirror and look yourself in the eye.”
The Love Doctor had cut her hair to shoulder length, and it had a bounce in it that it had never had before. Yasmine had waxed, scrubbed, polished, and squeezed dirt out of the pores on Sanya’s face. She had also given her a pedicure so her feet were soft and her toenails were painted a lovely pink, same as her fingernails. Between her legs, her skin itched ever so gently despite Yasmine’s assurance that sugaring was so much better than waxing and Sanya could have sex that night without worrying about an infection.
Sanya’s dress was a very light pink with bows on the sides. Chloe had assured Sanya when she tried it on at COS, a store on Strøget, the walking street, that it made her glow. After Sanya had put on the dress, Yasmine had done Sanya’s makeup, cut the price tags out, and sprayed her with generous spritzes of Absolutely Irresistible by Givenchy.
While Yasmine had done Sanya’s makeup, Chloe had taken Sanya’s Dankort and gone to Magasin down the street and bought Sanya a silver clutch with rose undertones to match the dress and dangling Pilgrim brand silver earrings that danced when she walked.
Harry had to pick Sanya up outside the DermaBelle salon because the makeover had taken all day, and they barely made it to the restaurant on time. He had been surprised with how Sanya looked and had responded charmingly.
He kissed Sanya and looked at her in wonder as if thinking, Where have you been all my life? It gave Sanya a boost, confidence that had abandoned her for a very long while but was now making a comeback.
“You look like an Indian Audrey Hepburn,” he said.
She glowed and basked in the praise. “I was thinking about My Fair Lady myself.”
Chapter 19
Percy Shelley Strikes at Kiin Kiin
Kiin Kiin was housed in the unpretentious, downright unfancy neighborhood of Nørrebro, the north bridge, Sanya had learned, just like she and Harry lived in Østerbro, which was the east bridge. The north bridge was the other side of the tracks. This was where the immigrants and the students lived.
“I’ve read about this place,” Harry said as they took the steps down to the restaurant. The entrance was in the basement, which was a kind of lounge area where several guests were scattered, enjoying drinks and small nibbles.
“Welcome to Kiin Kiin,” a young Danish waiter said to Harry and Sanya, after serving them a glass of champagne. “We will serve you Thai-style street food now in quick succession. That should take thirty minutes or so, and then you’ll be taken to your table upstairs. Are there any allergies you would like me to inform the chef about?”
For someone who had been eating sporadically, this promised seven-course menu was making her stomach churn. Sanya wanted to say, Yes, I’m allergic to food and people, and I shouldn’t mix alcohol with my happy pills. But I’m doing all of it all the time.
Instead, Harry said, “My wife is allergic to peaches. But aside from that we’re okay.”
The waiter smiled and then the first dish arrived, a concoction of something fried and baked atop hot black stones. They were quickly served seven small amuse-bouches, and Sanya ate two of them.
“You’re sure I can eat yours?” Harry asked each time, and when Sanya nodded he ate his and then hers. “This is awesome. You know what we need to do? We need to go to Noma. I mean, we can’t live in Copenhagen and not go there.”
“Alec tried and couldn’t get reservations,” Sanya said. “It’s eighteen courses, though, Harry.”
Harry put his hand on Sanya’s and squeezed. “But you only have to eat one course at a time. Just one sip of champagne at a time. One bite of food at a time.”
Sanya nodded weakly. How could she not love this new Harry?
And as she smiled warmly at him, love streaming through her insides like fresh, bubbly champagne, the man with the scar walked into her line of vision with his petite blond wife.
“Oh my god,” Mandy squealed. “It’s . . . you.”
Harry turned to look at Ravn and rose to greet them. Ravn smiled broadly and said politely, “What a lovely surprise.”
“This is awesome,” Mandy said, and air-kissed Harry and then Sanya. “You look . . . amazing.”
Sanya knew she looked amazing. Especially in contrast to how she used to look.
Harry put an arm around Sanya as if she needed protection from Mandy’s scrutiny. No, Sanya wanted to say to him, not Mandy’s but Ravn’s.
As Ravn conferred with the maître d’ to arrange for them to sit together for their meal, and while Mandy was looking at the menu and discussing her nut allergy with another waiter, Harry whispered in Sanya’s ear.
“I think he planned this,” he said. “Lucky got Ravn to book our table. He knew we would be here.”
Sanya’s heart started to hammer. “But why?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “But with this guy, everything is business. He must have an angle.”
Yes, Harry, and I think that angle might be me, Sanya thought.
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Hell, yes. This is our anniversary dinner,” Harry said.
Sanya licked her lips. “I’m going to just step outside to smoke a cigarette,” she said, because her hands were starting to shake, and she gripped her silver clutch tightly.
“Since when did you start smoking?” Harry asked, more than a little surprised.
“This afternoon,” Sanya said. She had bummed a pack from
Chloe, who hadn’t questioned why she suddenly wanted to smoke. She accepted that Sanya was at a crossroads, and everyone at a crossroads needed nicotine.
Sanya saw Mandy curl her nose, and Ravn had a look of amusement, like he knew how Sanya felt. And maybe he did. He had been in the hole Sanya was in, he knew how deep it went, and he knew how desperate the clawing to get free initially was, and then the slumber of wanting and craving the darkness of the hole, not wanting to leave, not wanting to live.
“I’ll join you,” Ravn said.
“You promised you’d stop,” Mandy said stiffly.
“I’ll just light her cigarette and keep her company,” he said.
Sanya knew that Harry would like to join them because he didn’t want her to be alone with Ravn, but then Mandy said, “I hate the smell,” and Harry had no choice but to stay and keep Ravn’s wife company.
Ravn lit Sanya’s cigarette because her hands were still shaking.
“You look . . . done up,” he said.
“Yes,” Sanya said. “It’s our wedding anniversary. Twenty-one years of marriage.”
“I’m sorry for the intrusion,” he said, and lit a cigarette for himself even though he’d a minute ago promised his wife he wouldn’t smoke.
“No, you’re not,” Sanya said, and felt a smile form on her lips. If nothing else, this was entertaining. When one was deep down in a well, one needed entertainment, especially before starting to claw one’s way up again.
“No, I’m not,” Ravn said. “You look like a Disney princess with the bows on your dress.”
“You prefer the made-over look?” Sanya asked.
“How you look has nothing to do with how I feel,” he said. “It has more to do with how you feel. How does it make you feel?”
“Like a Disney princess on speed,” she said, and started to laugh. Not the crazy, I’m going to lose my head laugh, but a genuine, full-throated laugh because she was happy. A small light in the midst of darkness.
After the street food, they were taken upstairs to the main restaurant.
“I prefer Studio,” Mandy said. “It’s also a Michelin-starred restaurant, at the Standard. I heard you and your colleagues went to the Almanak for dinner when you borrowed Ravn’s boat. Studio is upstairs in the same building. Niels Lan Doky is one of the owners; his wife is a good friend of mine. She’s half Danish and half French Guyanese, lovely lady. They live in Paris now, but I see her often in Paris and here.”
The first course was an outlandish concoction of a syringe with noodle paste that they injected into warm broth (which both Harry and Ravn agreed tasted very good).
“This is amazing,” Harry said. “What do you think, Sanya?”
“It really is,” Sanya said, and looked at Ravn. “What do you think?”
“It’s fine,” Ravn said. His eyes matched the amusement in Sanya’s eyes, so she looked away before her husband could catch the intimacy.
“Studio is so much classier,” Mandy continued. “It’s the whole Asian thing here, you know, it’s . . . so gaudy and lacks sophistication. It’s the same when you travel there. I like Asia, but it’s so cheesy. Asians are so . . . you know how they are.”
Sanya thought the restaurant was chic. The décor was subtle. Yes, there was the big statue of Buddha, but Sanya had read on the restaurant’s website that it was an antique from the late nineteenth century, from Mandalay in Burma. The decorative knickknacks and silverware were designed exclusively for Kiin Kiin by Chaovana “Palm” Imocha, a famous Thai jewelry designer, and co-founder and design director of the brand Mafia.
Ravn grinned then. “We have an Asian at the table, Mandy.”
“Who?” she asked, and when Ravn tilted his head toward Sanya, she shook her head. “Really?”
“That’s okay,” Ravn said. “I’m sure you were talking about the other Asians.”
It was cruel and yet satisfying, because why shouldn’t a racist remark be met with cruelty?
“But are you really Asian?” Mandy asked.
“Yes, I really am,” Sanya said. “I’m ethnically Indian, South Asian.”
The conversation meandered after that. Ravn and Mandy discussed the fine meals they’d enjoyed at the many Michelin-starred restaurants in Copenhagen. But Mandy said her favorite place to go was Torvehallerne, an über-gourmet permanent farmer’s market where they served the best confit de canard sandwiches.
Sanya couldn’t eat.
Sanya couldn’t drink.
Sanya couldn’t focus on the conversation.
She felt suffocated sitting next to Harry and across from Ravn at their small table. She was nervous each time the fabric of Ravn’s suit pant grazed her bare legs. She could feel Harry’s hand on top of her pink dress on her thigh in a comforting or controlling (she wasn’t sure) gesture as each course was served.
It was when they were served the cotton candy dish—a sort of sweet-and-sour minced chicken course with fresh Thai spices and cotton candy that dissolved under the onslaught of a freshly made lime juice sauce with mint—that Mandy brought up IT Foundry.
“Why is it taking so long?” she asked, and when Harry muttered something about how these things take time, she added, “Oh, come on, it can go faster, because I’ve been promised a month in Tuscany. I mean, it’s not like Ravn’s cooked the books or anything,” she said, and giggled.
Both Ravn and Harry went very still.
“Matters such as these cannot be rushed, skat,” Ravn said patiently.
“And now you have a team from America here,” Mandy said. “I thought it was simple. You know, like buying a bag at Hermès. You go and check it out, and then you negotiate a good price, of course, because they know you’ll be back sooner than later for the new season, and then you run the plastic.”
“Buying a company is a little more complicated than buying a bag,” Sanya said. “You can return the bag, but you can’t return a company. I worked some acquisitions, and they can be brutal. Once we worked with this big medical company, and they even announced the purchase to the stock market—but then they found out that the company they were buying had some huge compliance issues in how they did their accounting in Africa and Asia. Apparently they had been cooking the books to make the revenues seem more robust than they were. So the big medical company pulled out of the merger, and they’re still fighting it out, last I heard. The company that was corrupt is still struggling to get back in the good graces of the stock market. So I understand that Harry’s company wants to be really thorough and sure, because once you cross the line, there’s no going back—just a lot of court cases.”
Ravn focused on Sanya intensely. “ComIT has publicly announced that they’ll be buying IT Foundry.”
“I’m sure that won’t happen here,” Sanya said sweetly, and put her hand on Harry’s arm. “Right, my love?”
Harry looked like he had been hit by a bulldozer. Sanya knew he was wondering how she knew what she knew. It was a guess and not based on evidence, which Sanya knew was in her inbox in that email from Otto.
Mandy looked poleaxed. She had probably been thinking Sanya was a ditz, and now she was reassessing her competition, as she should, Sanya thought smugly.
Ravn was relaxed, like he had this in the bag.
New Sanya wanted to tell him to not be so sure.
The text message came during dessert. A banana and sticky rice medley, plated with style. Harry ate Sanya’s dessert and Ravn excused himself.
Sanya’s phone was lying next to Harry’s hand.
She had never had a reason and had never learned to hide her messages or have a passcode on her personal phone. When the message flashed, along with Ravn’s number, Sanya grabbed the phone, just as Harry’s head turned to look at it.
She looked down so Harry wouldn’t see her eyes or her lips as they moved with the words she read in delight.
I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight. She was reading the message a second time when Harry asked, his voice low, �
��Who’s that from?”
She pressed the phone to her breast.
“Oh, phones,” Mandy said as she browsed her phone at the same time. “I want to be good and never check it when I’m out for dinner, but you know how it is. Especially these days with Penny so upset. She texts me at least fifteen times a day.”
Harry didn’t even bother to pretend he was listening to Mandy. He was focused on Sanya as she gingerly put the phone on the other side of the banana dessert, away from Harry and facedown.
He’d never asked her before whom a message was from or who called; and she had never hidden it, either. This was a deviation for both of them.
He knew! Sanya realized.
“Mira,” she lied without hesitation.
Harry sipped his coffee, which had come with the dessert, and set down the white cup on its white saucer with a clink.
“I thought I saw a Danish phone number,” he said. He wasn’t even pretending to be nonchalant in his curiosity. He was being blatant.
“It was Mira,” Sanya lied again. This time she looked him in the eye.
They sat, staring at each other, at an impasse. He knew she was lying, and she knew he knew she was lying, but she wasn’t going to tell him what he wanted to know. They sat for a long moment, conversation buzzing around them. Mandy continued about the pitfalls of phone addiction while she didn’t look up at them from her screen.
Harry blinked first.
“Well, say hi to her from me,” Harry said, and excused himself to use the restroom. He met Ravn at the top of the stairs. They appeared to square off, but then they walked smoothly past each other, Harry away from Sanya, and Ravn toward their table.
Harry initiated sex that night, as if trying to prove that the message he had almost read wasn’t the end of their marriage, wasn’t the end of Sanya’s fidelity.
“Have you ever cheated on me?” Harry asked her as they lay in the darkness after they’d made love. Sanya hadn’t minded making love with him. It felt like an apology for receiving that message from Ravn; it felt like paying for being happy. It was illicit happiness, and no good ever came of illicit happiness.
The Copenhagen Affair Page 15