The Copenhagen Affair

by Amulya Malladi

  Would the ash fall? Would it not? How would he save it?

  And then just as everyone gasped, the song came to a smooth end, and Asgar elegantly tipped his cigarette in the ashtray next to him.

  The crowd went up in flames. People stood up and clapped. Sanya joined them, feeling the pump of the music, the crowd, and Rainy Day Woman within her, who she was starting to accept was here to stay.

  When the next song, “Got My Mojo Working,” also by Muddy Waters, started to play, Sanya asked the previously openmouthed man sitting next to them if she could borrow his lighter. He graciously lit her cigarette.

  They played more songs by Muddy Waters and then announced a break.

  “Give it up for Asgar on the bass, no treble, people,” said Small Creek Slim while the crowd clapped. “We have Janus on harmonica, take a bow; Celine on the drums; and Mister Dumbledore, a.k.a. Buddy, on guitar. Time for a break, we’ll be right back after we have soaked our parched throats. Don’t go too far.”

  Asgar came up to them instead of grabbing a drink.

  “You were amazing,” Madeline said.

  Sanya sat there, a sophisticated woman with her cigarette in one hand and a glass of bourbon in the other. If this was a black-and-white film, she’d say something along the lines of, “You know how to whistle, don’t you?”

  “What’s next?” Madeline asked.

  “‘Catfish Blues,’ ‘The Sky is Crying’ by Stevie Ray Vaughan, and I think some Aretha, because you’ve got to have Aretha,” Asgar said to her, and then looked at Sanya. “Where are you from?”

  She felt a little off balance at the question. “From Østerbro,” she said, mangling the pronunciation of the place.

  He smiled. “Is that where you live? Østerbro?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But where are you from?” he asked again.

  “California,” she said.

  “You’re just what I always thought a beautiful American woman would look like,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  This boy was young enough to be her son, and Sanya wasn’t sure if it was the bourbon or the smoke or the fact that a man like Ravn had shown interest in her, and now that he had, all the men in the world were also taking note of her; regardless, the attention was exhilarating.

  “Really,” she said.

  “Madeline, will you stay until the end? We’re going to go find a bar and get some drinks after,” Asgar said.

  Madeline shook her head. “Take Sanya. I turn into a pumpkin come midnight.”

  “Will you come?” the mannish boy asked.

  “Absolutely, I’d love to,” Sanya said, and then choked a little on the cigarette because she wasn’t used to smoking and ruined the whole Lauren Bacall whistle thing from To Have and Have Not.

  Chapter 30

  Sinner Woman

  “You didn’t do the ash thing after the break,” Sanya said to Asgar as they got comfortable on a sofa next to each other in a luscious swanky bar called 1105.

  Named for the postal code where the bar was, 1105, which made many of the world’s best bars lists, had a subtle décor with sophisticated soft lights, and the music they played was a mix of Motown and easy jazz.

  Before they got their drinks, Asgar introduced Sanya to Mandeep Hardal, the bartender who was apparently the couture cocktail mixer in all of Copenhagen. Mandeep spoke with a British accent and clapped Asgar on his back several times and asked about a music tour and about someone called Helena. And then Mandeep got Asgar a Jack Daniels on the rocks and made Sanya his signature drink, a Cucumber Yum-Yum, a frothy pink concoction in which cucumber was the sole identifiable ingredient.

  “You do the ash thing just once; otherwise it loses effect,” Asgar said, and then laughed. “Actually, I didn’t plan the ash thing; it just happened. It hasn’t happened before. Might never happen again.”

  “Oh, please,” Sanya said sipping her Yum-Yum, which was very yum. “This whole distressed jeans, D&G shirt, and manicured stubble; you’re dressing to produce an effect.”

  He looked at his clothes and then at Sanya. “My mother is a designer. She dumps clothes on me and I wear them. The stubble is not manicured but a product of sheer laziness.”

  “Your mother is a designer?”

  He nodded. “Straight down the pedestrian street from here and right after the Hugo Boss store is Big Legs, Tight Skirts, and that’s my mother’s designer brand.”

  “Is she famous?”

  “Yes, in the fashion circle in Scandinavia at least,” he said. “My father used to be a blues musician; he played the guitar and he sang, that’s why she called her brand Big Legs, Tight Skirts. It’s a famous song by John Lee Hooker. The story goes that she had come to a blues bar where he was singing this song and that’s when she fell in love with him.”

  “Your father also plays at Mojo?”

  “He’s dead,” Asgar said. “He died of a drug overdose. He died young.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Sanya said, immediately contrite. Lauren Bacall needed to reel it in and behave like a considerate forty-plus woman instead of some incarnation of Demi Moore trying to seduce young Ashton.

  He shrugged. “It happened many years ago. I didn’t even know him. It’s not a tragedy. I was raised by my stepdad; he’s a corporate type, but the coolest cat. I didn’t have a scary childhood or anything. Well balanced, super good, and all that.”

  “So you’re not the neglected child of famous parents?” Sanya asked.

  “On the contrary, probably even a little spoiled,” he said. “But enough about me. You have the most intriguing eyes.”

  Sanya had to laugh.

  “I’m too old for this,” she said. “I have a daughter who’s eighteen.”

  “Does she have your eyes, too?” he asked.

  “I’m married,” Sanya said.

  “All the good ones are taken,” he said. “You have incredible eyes and incredible legs.”

  “I’m forty-two,” Sanya added quickly.

  “I’m twenty-three,” he said. “And I’ve been playing in a band since I was sixteen.”

  “What’s wrong with you? You seem a bit too mature for your age.”

  “Because I’m an artist,” he said. “Have you gone dancing in Copenhagen?”

  Sanya considered his question for a moment. “I haven’t gone dancing since I was in university, I think. And that was a really long time ago.”

  “A tragedy, because those legs are meant for dancing,” he said.

  “Madeline said you have an IQ of 150 plus,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, and grabbed Sanya’s hand to stand her up. “And because I’m such a smarty, I sound more mature than I am. But I’m a great dancer, and you’re going to have the time of your life.”

  “Sold,” Sanya said and downed the cocktail and felt light in the head but in a really nice way.

  Sanya thought they’d take a taxi, but Asgar borrowed the bartender Mandeep’s bicycle. It was no ordinary bicycle but a Christiania bicycle, which came with a carriage in the front where Sanya sat, a lot like a rickshaw.

  It was a joyride. Asgar rode across the cobblestones and Sanya waved at the tipsy pedestrians on the walking street, feeling energized as the cool night air splashed through her.

  She deliberately didn’t look at her phone, which was in her handbag.

  “What time is it?” she asked, holding on for dear life to the sides of the carriage, commonly used by commuting parents to transport their children to school.

  “No es importante,” he said, not even huffing at carrying her weight. “Come on, Sanya, let’s have some fun.”

  He parked the bicycle on the walking street alongside hundreds of other bicycles, some with carriages and some without. He locked it and slipped the key in his jeans. “I’ll pick it up later,” he said.

  They entered the Jane, another cocktail bar in the heart of Copenhagen on Gråbrødre Square, where mannish boy seemed to know everybody. The bar had a Mad Men fe
el, with some of the rooms featuring bookshelves and where many hidden doors revealed themselves, and behind each door were more bars.

  Asgar introduced Sanya to many people whose names she immediately forgot. The entire time, Asgar didn’t let go of Sanya’s hand. It wasn’t sexual or even possessive; it was almost friendly, as if he was saying, Just hold on to me and enjoy the ride. Sanya had never been to a place like this. She didn’t even know places like this existed.

  Where was the dancing? she wondered, sipping on yet another mystery cocktail that Asgar had shoved into her hand.

  “The DJ is a friend of mine,” Asgar said to Sanya. He opened a door into a room where the dance music played on high volume and the warm air carried a hint of sweat.

  She didn’t recognize any of the music, except one Beyoncé number that wasn’t quite the same one as on her Amazon Music but some mixed version.

  And for the first time in her life, Sanya really danced.

  Asgar, as he had promised, was a great dancer and an excellent partner. He swept Sanya off her feet, threw her around the floor, and she felt her heart bang against her chest as her blood alcohol level rose and everything turned into a misty dream.

  She danced to the fast songs. She danced to the slow ones in Asgar’s arms. She twisted. She shimmied. She didn’t know how long they danced, but when her throat was parched she whispered to Asgar that she needed water or she’d die.

  So Asgar took her to yet another room in the Jane that Sanya hadn’t seen before. Doors opened and closed in the Jane, new rooms, new ambience; the change was constant.

  In this room the music was quieter and people were having conversations. They couldn’t hear the sound from the dance floor.

  He brought Sanya a tall glass of water with bubbles and ice. She drank it all before speaking. “We can’t hear the music,” Sanya said.

  “Soundproof walls,” he said.

  He leaned closer to her then, and for a moment she wondered if she should not turn away. Was her nearness a signal for him to kiss her? Did she want him to kiss her?

  “Are you hungry?” he asked instead.

  Sanya thought about it for a moment and said, “Starving, actually.”

  From the suave rooms of the Jane, they went back out into the streets and got in line in front of a hot dog stand in Kongens Nytorv where many of the city’s revelers seemed to be getting their post-party fix.

  “These hot dog stands are becoming rarer and rarer; that’s why the line is so long. Today there are more sushi restaurants than hot dog places. This one on Kongens Nytorv is my favorite. The best,” he said, and then proceeded to speak in Danish with the man at the hot dog stand.

  Sanya had eaten hot dogs before. She had even eaten proper ones in Chicago and New York, but she had never eaten a hot dog this good. The sausage was crisp and covered in mustard, ketchup, deep-fried crispy onions, fresh onions, and pickled cucumbers wrapped in bread that held its ground.

  One bite and she moaned. “Wow,” she said with her mouth full.

  “Fabulous, isn’t it?” Asgar said. “Finish your hot dog, and then we wash it down with something that’s going to blow your brains out.”

  They took the chocolate drink, Cocio, to go.

  Hand in hand, they strolled down the street, sipping their chocolate milk. It was an unusually warm evening, or maybe she was flushed from the activity, or maybe she was hitting early menopause and having a hot flash.

  He took Sanya to the lakes, Søerne. There were three rectangular lakes curving around the western margin of the city center, and they were one of the oldest and most distinctive features of the city. The paths around the lake were popular with strollers, bikers, and runners. Stairs from the street went down to the lake, and on a sunny day Copenhagen dwellers used the stairs for picnics or to just hang out.

  They sat on the stairs that led from the street, Øster Søgade, to the middle lake, Fiskesøen, and drank their Cocio.

  “When you asked me if I was hungry, I thought you were going to kiss me,” Sanya told him.

  “I was,” he admitted, “but I got scared.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re incredibly beautiful.”

  Sanya’s eyes narrowed.

  “Come on, you have to know this,” he said in disbelief.

  “I’m not being coy,” she said. “I’m not beautiful. You should see my husband; now, he’s Adonis. I was never a match. We weren’t Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; more like if Brad Pitt married . . . I don’t know . . . some plain Jane no one ever heard of.”

  “And in any case they’re not together anymore,” Asgar said. “Who told you that you’re a plain Jane?

  “Are you sexually interested in me?” Sanya asked instead of answering his question.

  Asgar laughed. “No. I just wanted to take you dancing and to a cocktail bar and am walking in the middle of the night with you to discuss world politics. Of course I’m sexually interested in you. I’m twenty-three. I like to . . . you know . . .”

  “I’ve only slept with one man my entire life,” Sanya said.

  Asgar gaped at her.

  “I know it seems antiquated, but I’m a bit antiquated, I’m afraid,” she said. “And you really find me attractive?”

  “Someone’s done a number on you,” Asgar said. “You’re a good-looking woman with great legs, and I’d love to . . .” He paused and then smiled, “It’s not going to happen, is it?”

  Sanya sighed. She was cheating on Harry with Ravn and on both of them with Asgar, or was she just having a good time? Wasn’t a little bit of flirtation necessary to keep the blood pumping? Wasn’t it good once in a while to feel something that wasn’t linked to reality?

  “I’m afraid that you might become a midlife crisis,” she said.

  “I don’t mind,” Asgar said.

  “I mind,” Sanya said. “No one should be someone else’s midlife crisis release valve. Not someone as talented as you. You should have good sex based on mutual attraction.”

  “You’re not attracted to me?”

  It sucked to be older and wiser, Sanya thought. “I’m attracted to the idea that a twenty-three-year-old Mensa-smart blues prodigy is attracted to me.”

  “But you’re not attracted to me?”

  “I’m too old for you.”

  “I once had an affair with a woman who was thirty-five,” he said. “It was brief. It was in the Alps during a ski holiday. She was British. The cutest thing ever. Curly hair, freckles, tiny, and full of energy. We had a week, and we went skiing and made love in every possible way and place we could. It wasn’t more than that.”

  “Of course,” Sanya said. “Of course. No, don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t thinking that you were suggesting anything but an affair. I’m just too old for an affair. Or maybe I’m just too messed up for an affair. I recently had a nervous breakdown.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Sanya said, “I’m a nut case. It happened several months ago in California.”

  “What happened?”

  “I used to be a consultant with expertise in financial process optimization, and I worked in a consultancy firm, a prestigious one. I worked there for a decade and a half, and I was happy to be a director of strategy even though my husband was a partner at his firm and my parents were sure that I was a complete loser for not making partner,” Sanya said.

  “Your family is the corporate type?”

  “No. My father is a surgeon and my mother is a surgeon; and my sister is a pediatrician married to a surgeon,” Sanya said. “Overachievers. I was supposed to be a doctor, and barring that I had to have Condoleezza Rice’s job.”

  “So you have shitty parents; lots of people do,” he said. “Tell me about your breakdown.”

  Two swans floated close to the stairs in the lake, their white wings and bodies in stark contrast to the dark waters.

  “I call it an implosion,” she said, watching the swans. “One fine day the partners called me in
to a meeting and offered me a partnership. They said that I had done a bang-up job, and they wanted me to be a partner after fifteen years of grinding my soul to produce for them.”

  Sanya paused and Asgar waited, as if he understood that she needed time to say this because she hadn’t told this to anyone.

  “I got angry. That was my first reaction. I was angry. How could they? I mean, it took them fifteen years? Brian made partner six years ago, and he started three years after me. And Santosh became partner last year, and I had four years’ seniority over him. So I was angry. Really angry,” Sanya said. “I stood up.”

  She stood up then and dropped her empty bottle of Cocio on the concrete stairs, and the bottle crashed into pieces. The swans scattered. Asgar didn’t move. He just watched her.

  “I wanted to say fuck your partnership,” she said. “I pointed my finger at the senior partner, a really nice guy called Miguel Herrera, and I wanted to say that even though he had hired me and I was grateful, he could shove the partnership up his ass. But I didn’t say anything. Something broke inside me, and I sat back down on the chair”—Sanya sat back down on the stairs—“and I started to cry and I couldn’t stop for hours. They had to knock me out in the hospital. I didn’t speak for a week after. They put me on suicide watch. Gave me a psychiatrist and some drugs and told me that I had just had a nervous breakdown.”

  “That’s a pretty disproportionate reaction to being offered a partnership,” Asgar said. To his credit, he didn’t seem shocked, or at least he didn’t show it.

  “I know,” Sanya said, and blinked back tears. “You should have seen their faces. God . . .” And suddenly, just like that, she started to laugh. “I remember one of the partners saying they should call security. What did they think I’d do?”

  “Maybe they thought you had a gun on you somewhere?” Asgar said, joking with her.

  “In a Hugo Boss skirt suit that was a little tight on my waist?”

  “Maybe James Bond style? Strapped to your thigh,” Asgar said, and Sanya laughed some more.