The Copenhagen Affair

by Amulya Malladi

  “Have you?” she asked instead.

  “Of course not,” Harry said.

  “Me neither,” she responded, but harshly.

  “Have you ever wanted to cheat on me?” Harry asked.

  This was a new Harry. He was pursuing conflict instead of ignoring it and pretending it didn’t exist.

  Just the day before, while Sanya was watching aimless television, on some show a woman had said, “Confession might be good for the soul, but it’s a hot lead enema for a marriage.” It made sense to Sanya, so she told Harry she’d never even had a crush, which was true until Ravn. They didn’t need a hot lead enema in their marriage.

  “I don’t think I could stand it if I lost you,” Harry said, his voice shaking just a little when she didn’t answer.

  “I think you had sex with Tara Hansen,” she blurted out suddenly. No way was he going to make her feel guilty by being vulnerable. She had only received a poem by text message; Harry had actually had sex with another woman.

  He stopped breathing. If she focused, she thought she could hear his heartbeat, because the tension emanating from him was loud, like that of a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. What a cliché!

  “What nonsense,” he managed to say, his voice strained.

  “Come on, stop this ‘what nonsense’ routine,” Sanya said. “I don’t care. I mean . . . I wish you hadn’t, but I don’t care.”

  Why had she said that? She kicked herself. Why had she said it? Why? Why? Why? Because she knew. After talking to Tara and Otto, she knew. And then a lightbulb flashed in her mind. The fucking dolphins!

  “She bought you that Hermès tie,” Sanya said as if the clouds had parted and the sky was blue and she could see everything clearly, especially that tie. “The blue one with the yellow dolphins. She got you that. I know she did. She told me how she’s all about saving the fucking dolphins.”

  “You’re crazy,” Harry said. “I bought it in New York. Would you like to see a receipt?”

  “Then she picked it out,” Sanya said. “If you have a receipt, that is.”

  Harry shook his head. “Tara? I work with her. I’d never shit where I eat.”

  That actually could be true, Sanya thought cynically. But . . . They both lay there for a long while. Sanya was certain, but as Arthur had said, she really didn’t have any proof. Otto had sort of confirmed it, but he hadn’t said it directly, had he? And Harry wasn’t owning up to it. Perhaps he didn’t have an affair.

  “I’m sorry,” Old Sanya said. “Maybe I’m just jealous of her.”

  “Why?” Harry demanded, incredulous. “You’re better looking than her. You’re more successful than her, and you have a better husband than she does.”

  Sanya laughed then. “Only you would think that having a better husband is a badge of honor,” she said. “Maybe it’s because she has a job and I don’t?”

  “Sweetheart, once we go back, you’ll get another job,” Harry said. “You’re just taking some time off. It’s okay. Everyone needs to rest their brain once in a while.”

  “I am enjoying my time off,” Sanya said. “Don’t get me wrong; eventually I’ll go back to work. But then again, who knows, and maybe not in finance. Maybe something else.”

  “And that’s your choice, but you’re really good at what you do,” Harry said, obviously happy to be off the topic of adultery and Tara.

  She let it go. She let him convince her that it was all in New Sanya’s head.

  The next morning Sanya found Harry’s blue Hermès tie with the yellow dolphins on it and took a pair of scissors and cut it up neatly into thin strips. Then she threw the pieces of the tie into the trash can.

  Chapter 20

  The Swedish Summer House

  The summer house was gorgeous.

  The lakefront house was surrounded by a garden and a wraparound patio with a view of the lake. The house’s main attraction was the heated indoor pool. In the winter, Mandy explained, guests could get into the heated pool and look out of the glassed sunroom onto a snow-covered landscape. In the summer, they opened all the glass doors to let in the fresh air.

  “I come here at least three times a year,” Mandy said as she gave her guests the grand tour. “But then we also go to Norway, where the company has summer houses near Oslo and in Lillehammer. That one is busy in the winter because everyone wants to go skiing.”

  J Yu, Tara, and Otto were super impressed with the opulence and quiet sophistication real money could buy.

  The massive chef’s kitchen adjoined the patio. Sanya stood at the doorstep. She could see Mandy, Penny, and Katrine with their family friends, Leah and her journalist husband, Bjarke, pouring champagne and preparing snacks, blinis piled up with smoked salmon, sour cream with chives, or salmon roe.

  Turning toward the lake, its waters quietly glistening in the sunlight, Sanya watched Harry and his colleagues. Then Penny appeared and handed her a glass of pink champagne with glistening raspberries floating inside. She took the glass and leaned against the doorway, looking away from the lake and facing Penny.

  “Ravn, as always, is late,” she said breezily. “I hear you went out for lunch with him.”

  Sanya couldn’t imagine how Penny had found out, and it probably showed on her face, because Penny continued with smug satisfaction, “Ravn tells me everything.”

  “He was being nice,” Sanya said. “He thought I must be bored and took me to lunch at the Glyp . . . something museum place.”

  “The Glyptotek,” Penny said as if Ravn took all the women he had on the side to the museum. “Did you see the Monet? It’s his favorite. And the Degas. Our Ravn does love those ballerinas. He has an original Degas in his office at home. He hides it, and if perchance someone sees it, he doesn’t tell them it’s an original. Did he tell you about it?”

  Sanya could see how much Penny was enjoying telling her that she was nothing more than a piece of ass, that Ravn did this all the time.

  “He did. The painting with a single ballerina leaning against a barre,” Sanya said, even though she knew she was tipping her hand and letting this vindictive little bitch know her secret. The hell with it, she thought. Old Sanya had been a pushover, a naïve optimist and a pleaser. New Sanya was none of these things. She flexed her muscles and straightened her spine. Chin up. Tits out. Go get her, Sanya.

  “And then you and Mandy were kind enough to take me to lunch as well,” Sanya continued. “I’m sorry I had to leave in a hurry. I haven’t been well.”

  “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” Penny asked.

  “I had a nervous breakdown a few months ago. I’m in recovery.”

  Her jaw dropped, and New Sanya started to enjoy herself.

  “I hear that you took my husband out to lunch,” she said before Penny could tell Sanya about all the people she knew with similar stories who were now doing fine.

  Her jaw dropped again.

  “Ah, well . . . we’re friendly here in the IT Foundry family,” Penny said.

  “Ah, but you’re not really part of the IT Foundry family, now, are you? I heard that Danes are not friendly to foreigners, but I have found all the Danes I’ve met to be very congenial,” Sanya said. “And Harry has had the same experience.”

  “How nice for you,” Penny said, looking for an excuse to walk away from Sanya.

  “Penny, I’m going to say this once, and it’s important that you listen carefully: Harry is not available,” she said, as she sipped her champagne, looking at Harry laugh at some joke that Mark, who had just joined them on the patio, cracked. “Harry tells me everything.”

  Then Sanya watched Penny drain her glass of champagne, her high cheeks pink with embarrassment, her ears aflame like the red raspberries in Sanya’s champagne glass. She made a hasty retreat into the house, and that was when Sanya heard a commotion in the kitchen. Ravn had arrived. He hugged and kissed his wife, who seemed so happy that her face burst open like a sunflower.

  He saw Sanya at the doorway and leaned in t
o kiss her on just one cheek. “Hello,” he said, then exited to the patio.

  He stood right next to Harry, leaning against the balustrade with a beer in hand. They were so different, Sanya’s blond man against Mandy’s raven-haired husband, and yet they were so alike. They were equally tall, equally well-built, equally smart, equally deficient in moral character . . . and as they both looked at Sanya with focused intensity, she realized, they were equally available to her.

  Sanya didn’t swim in the heated indoor pool and lay on a lounge chair instead. She was wearing a pair of shorts (now that her legs were waxed) and a tank top; she had discarded a cardigan she had been wearing, because it was warm by the heated pool. Ravn, Lucky, and Harry didn’t swim, either; they disappeared into a large meeting room upstairs.

  Tara had abandoned her computer to put her lithe body in a bright-red bikini and swim the length of the pool gracefully. Mandy took a dip and then went into the sauna with Penny. Both of them wore black bikinis with gold embellishments, one of Penny’s designs.

  Katrine swam and then lounged on a chair with a book. It was the biography of Caesar her father had talked with Sanya about.

  Mark, who had been swimming, hauled himself out of the water as soon as Bjarke and Leah dived in. They swam from the deep end to the shallow end of the pool, where Otto was leaning against the railing.

  “Isn’t Bjarke the editor-in-chief of Børsen?” Sanya asked Mark after he sat down next to her, and when he nodded, she mused, “Isn’t it awkward to . . . ?”

  “It’s bloody painfully awkward,” he said.

  “But you’re all still friends?”

  “Penny is friends with this crowd. I don’t really fit in, can’t you see?” Mark said bitterly.

  Sanya shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “This is old money,” he said, waving his hand around. “I’m new money. Tolerated but never accepted.”

  “I’m sure that’s not the case,” Sanya said. “So, is the government investigation into your business over?”

  Sanya had done research on Mark and used Google Translate to understand the articles in Børsen so she knew what was what. She still hadn’t gone through Otto’s files, and she knew it was because she was in denial. If something was wrong, would it tarnish her attraction for Ravn? Would it be best to not find out? But that was Old Sanya. New Sanya didn’t think like that, though for this one time, she wished she did.

  “So you’ve been reading the papers, too?”

  “No habla Danish,” Sanya said. “Just a little browsing and Google Translate. I was looking for your wife’s online store to strengthen my paltry wardrobe. I didn’t bring much from California.” It was a plausible story.

  “You’ll look really good in her clothes,” Mark said. “I have to say that you look really good in those shorts. You have nice wheels.”

  Sanya wasn’t sure if he was being sleazy or complimentary, so she ignored the comment/compliment.

  “Mandy said that Penny is very stressed about all of this,” she said instead, to get him back on the topic she wanted him on.

  “Penny has been losing her mind over it. She worries that we’ll both go to jail,” he said, and laughed as if that were an impossible scenario and it was bizarre to even think about it.

  “Will you go to jail?” Sanya asked perversely.

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “These sodders are just making noise with this tax audit. In Denmark, they like to give it to white-collar crimes. You rape a minor and you get less than a year in jail, but you mess up your taxes and they’ll put you away for years. My lawyers are sure it’s going to be fine, as are Ravn’s lawyers.”

  Sanya was careful to not seem too interested, in case she spooked him.

  “How is Ravn’s business connected to your business?” she asked.

  Mark realized then that he had said too much. “Oh, he’s just helping me out. Family, you know. Ravn’s big on family.”

  “And here you thought you were just tolerated and not accepted,” Sanya said.

  How much trouble is Ravn in? Sanya wondered. He seemed so confident and self-contained that she couldn’t imagine his business dealings were less than perfect. But then she was a woman with a crush; Ravn could do no wrong.

  But Sanya knew she would have to look at those files Otto had sent sooner or later, just to be sure.

  That night Mandy served a dinner fit for kings, even though her Vietnamese cook couldn’t make it because he was at a friend’s wedding in Munich for the weekend.

  “So don’t mind the food; I just threw it together,” she said like it was effortless.

  It wasn’t.

  They had lobster bisque that she made fresh in the kitchen as an appetizer. For the main course they had beef tenderloin with a red wine reduction, roasted rosemary potatoes, an avocado salad, and a warm green bean salad. For dessert, she made a warm and bubbling berry cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream she had brought from home, as she didn’t have an ice cream maker or the time to make ice cream, she said, in the summer house.

  They ate outside on the patio, and Sanya sat next to Bjarke. He was in his early fifties and had poise and dignity. His wife worked with handicapped adults and was down-to-earth and serious. They seemed relaxed as a couple. Comfortable in their own skins and the skin of their marriage. This was an isolated system, where the disorder had remained exactly as it had been the first day the system was created.

  “How do you know Ravn and Mandy?” Sanya asked Bjarke.

  “Oh, we’ve known each other for years,” Bjarke said, and then shrugged. “I think his father and my father played golf . . . we’re family friends, I think that’s what they call it.”

  “Mark was saying that the Ravn family is old money, and that he’s tolerated but not accepted,” Sanya said to him. “I know the class system exists everywhere. What do you think?”

  Bjarke snorted. “The reason that Mark is barely tolerated is because he’s a sleazebag. It’s all over the papers; everyone knows.”

  Sanya raised her eyebrows because that was quite direct. He certainly wasn’t sugarcoating it.

  “I read some of the news articles in your paper using Google Translate. You don’t feel it’s a conflict of interest knowing Ravn and Mandy?” Sanya asked.

  Bjarke shook his head. “They have nothing to do with this. This is all Mark.”

  “What has he really done? There’s plenty that’s lost in Google translation,” Sanya said.

  “Ah, well, it’s simple, and I’m shocked that Mark thought he could get away with it. He leased some properties out and then didn’t pay taxes on that revenue,” he said.

  “Whom did he lease the property out to?” Sanya asked. She was starting to guess what could’ve happened. She knew that the ComIT people suspected a connection between IT Foundry and Mark, but they didn’t know what it was.

  “Some shell corporation,” Bjarke said. “We tried to figure it out, but the trail ran cold. Doesn’t matter. What he’s done is illegal.”

  “Will he go to prison?”

  Bjarke shrugged. “It’s possible. We take white-collar crime very seriously in Denmark, unlike how you do it in the United States.”

  They discussed fiscal policy in the United States in comparison to the European Union, and Bjarke was impressed, he told Sanya, with her grasp of the financial business; and when he found out what she used to do for a living, he was further impressed and told her as much.

  As they discussed numbers, Sanya started to see the Excel sheets in her head, and that part of her brain that had gone dormant since the implosion started to come back to life.

  “What is the holdup with this acquisition?” Sanya asked Harry when they went to bed that night.

  There were fifteen bedrooms in total, and Mandy had given Sanya and Harry the one right by the swimming pool because it had the “best view” of the lake.

  “You think they designed these small rooms with twin beds to prevent people from having sex?
” Harry asked instead of answering his wife’s question. He was lying in bed, his hands crossed over his chest, staring at the ceiling.

  Mandy had explained to them that the summer house bedrooms were designed for corporate retreats like the old-fashioned Danish hotels, Kro, that came with two single beds so two colleagues could sleep in the same room more comfortably.

  “Harry?” Sanya prodded, because it was obvious he was evading her question.

  “We don’t know,” Harry said, frustrated. “We know something is not on the up and up; but we don’t know how any of the dots are connected. If nothing else, Ravn is one slippery asshole.”

  “So you won’t buy the company?” Sanya asked.

  “Right now we’re on track to acquire, and the delay, though not appreciated, is accepted,” Harry said. “It’s all hunches and gut feelings, Sanya. It looks like he padded last year’s revenue, but it’s within compliance—it just raised some questions for us that we have not been able to answer. We have to move on this soon, and if we don’t, there’s a good chance Ravn’s going to sue us for breach of contract. And then the shit is really going to hit the fan.”

  “Otto didn’t find anything?” Sanya asked.

  Harry shook his head.

  “I talked to Mark and Bjarke, and it looks like Mark is in some big trouble,” Sanya said.

  “Everyone knows that,” Harry said.

  “Mark said that I have very nice wheels,” Sanya added.

  Harry smiled. “Was he hitting on you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I’m the kind of woman that men hit on. Now, you are a whole other story.” Old Sanya reared her head.

  Harry got out of his bed and came to Sanya’s. He got in and they managed to squeeze in together.

  “I’ll hit on you anytime,” he said as he kissed her on her nose.

  “And apparently half the women around will hit on you and save me the trouble to return the favor,” Sanya said only half jokingly.

  She expected him to respond with a joke, but he became serious suddenly. She put her head on his chest, and he stroked her arm.