Beneath the Neon Egg

by Thomas E. Kennedy

  He does not break stride crossing the floor to her as these thoughts wallop him like a sudden gust of wind, cut the breath from him.

  She smiles, stretches across to kiss him as he sits, a proprietary gesture. He almost draws back, but brushes her lips (less says more) and draws away under the guise of settling in his chair, his thoughts moving too quickly to examine or even to hold for later examination, everything moving so quickly, time like water, a flow of drops, instants. His eyes focus on the glass of red wine on the table before her. “That,” he says, “is exactly what I want,” signals the waitress, glances back at Liselotte, his eyes deflecting from her neck, the sag beneath her eyes, to her pretty mouth, her breasts, her Wild Turkey–brown gleaming eyes.

  She puts her hand on his. He squeezes, takes it away to go for his wallet as the waitress brings his wine, and he empties his glass in two swallows.

  From the Europa, they stroll down Østergade to Hvids Vinstue, the oldest bar in Copenhagen. They sit in the evening crowd at rough wood tables in the basementlike interior. He switches to beer, big schooners of draft, and is easy with her closeness now. “Think of all the drinks that have been served here, all the people that have come here all these, what? two hundred fifty years this place has been here. More than that. Two hundred seventy.”

  She smiles, playing the game, imagining. He tries to picture the place, say, one hundred years back, jowly men with muttonchops, a beer for a copper, talking of what? A century, no, more than a tenth of the history of this country, his own ancestors just settling in New York from Waterford, just beginning to mingle in the melting pot.

  “Where shall we eat?” she asks, her eyes reaching for his, her glance telling him he is far away and she is calling him back.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I will be.”

  He looks at her face, and in his reverie of time remembers that she is a few years older than he. Four or five years. He looks at her neck, sees the years there, swallows more beer and glimpses her delicate hand on the table, so perfect, like her feet, painted nails that turn him on, twenty of them, color of peaches, like her lips, kiss the toes, lips, fingers, nape of the neck, not the throat, not beneath the eyes. Yes, kiss all of her.

  Eat the peach.

  He picks her hand up from the table, turns it over and places a kiss in her warm palm, puts his tongue there, sees her pale brown, Wild Turkey eyes gone tender, touches her nose, says, “I don’t like that look in your eye.”

  “What look is that?”

  “Like the look of, uh, love, or something sticky like that.”

  Now they flash, and he chuckles, “Better.” And, “What should we play now?”

  They eat on Grey Friars Square, at Peder Oxe, a prime cut served by the sweet blonde hands of a cute young waitress. Bluett looks meaningfully across the table at Liselotte. “Her?”

  She smacks her palm at him.

  “No?”

  Falling into the game, she shakes her head. “Too young and innocent. I want someone more sophisticated.”

  They finish with cognac by the fireplace downstairs in the bar, and he considers telling her about his experiences with Benthe and the sister-in-law. Then thinks, what’s the point?

  They take the few steps up from the bar to the dark square. He stands there buttoning his coat, glances at the fountain in the center, the green copper pissoir off to one side, dungareed legs of a pisser visible beneath the bottom edge of the half wall, at the ancient chestnut tree, huge and sprawling with bare wooden winter arms, twig fingers pointing everywhere.

  “You know this square is older than my country,” he says, and he remembers then all the summer afternoons he had spent here with his wife when they were young, the first summer they knew one another. To blot out the thought, he reaches down to lift the hem of Liselotte’s long wool coat, splays his palm over her bottom and squeezes. “May I be so forward?” he asks.

  “Oh yes, you are wery velcome,” she says in shaky English, and he gets under her skirt then, but she ducks aside. “If you start that we have to go home right away,” she says, “you make me wet.”

  He kisses her, delighted, thinking, Yes!

  They stroll across the square to Skindergade, and at just that moment, a taxi comes along with its green fri light lit. Bluett says, “Talk about your synchronicity,” lifts a finger and it stops.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “Let’s go to Christiania. Have a joint. Hear some jazz.”

  “I don’t do that,” she says. “I don’t do any joint.”

  “You can have red wine there. The JazzKlub is great.”

  The driver throws the meter, turns around and cuts across the edge of Kongens Nytorv, past the big front of the Hotel d’Angleterre, Magasin du Nord, the illuminated face of the Royal Theater. Bluett cranes out the side window as they pass the door of the Satin Club. “Look at that,” he says. “Look, you ever see that?”

  “What?”

  It is already past. He shakes his head. “Nothing.” They roll past the old Stock Exchange, the Mint, over Knippels Bridge through Christianshavn, the Inuit statues on the square, and up Prinsessesgade to the gate of Christiania.

  They pay, get out of the cab, cross beneath the wooden arch on the other side of which it says you are now entering the european union, through an alleyway to come out on the muddy dirt streets of the Free State, mud and ruts frozen now in the winter dark. Liselotte clings to Bluett’s arm.

  “Scared?”

  “Stay close,” she says.

  “It’s like the Wild West or something. A third-world country. But it’s safe.”

  At the corner, a man in paint-spattered clothes approaches them, his arms floating around him. “You with the group?”

  She tugs Bluett’s arm to keep moving, but he recognizes an accent. “Where you from?” he asks the man.

  “Me?” Arms lifting and falling and floating in the air. “From heah. I’m the Ministuh a Tourism. You with the group?”

  “You’re from Brooklyn,” says Bluett.

  “You could heah that?”

  “You bet I could. Went to school there. How’d you end up here?”

  “This is the only place, man. I been heah since the start.”

  “I read in the papers you got the bikers out, got rid of the hard drugs. How’d you do that?”

  The man’s arms float down to his sides. “We got the hard drugs out, but I don’t know about the bikers. Sometimes I think they’re still heah. Decisions are made on higher levels than I evah see. I don’t ask no questions. Long as no one’s kickin’ ass and no one’s selling that nasty shit, it’s okey-dokey with me. I tell you what,” he says. “You come in heah and ask for crack or snow or horse, they take your money and strip you naked and throw you right the fuck out on the street. It’s like hahd love, you know.”

  Liselotte pulls at Bluett’s arm.

  “So look, you with the group or what?”

  “What group?” Bluett asks.

  “The tour group.”

  “No, sorry, nice talking with you, Brooklyn. Catch you another time.”

  They continue down the frozen mud of the road.

  “Let’s go,” she says. “I don’t like it.”

  “No, really, it’s safe, it’s great.” It looks like the third world. No hash stalls are open on Pusher Street this cold, dark night so Bluett leads them into the little square of market stands, old hippies selling chillums, roach clips, glassine envelopes of five joints for a hundred crowns.

  He stops at one stall, chats with the vendor, a man his own age, maybe younger, with a Fu Manchu and burnsides.

  “These joints any good?”

  “Don’t roll ’em myself, but they’re from a prime supplier.”

  “You vouch for them?”

  He raises his palms. Could mean anything. They stroll to the next stall. “These joints make me high?”

  “Prime shit, man. Classic.”

  Bluett asks for five and pays hi
s hundred crowns. They continue down Pusher Street, which usually has a gauntlet of hash stalls where they sell cigar-size joints and baggies by weight, satisfied customers sitting around garbage-can fires toking happily away. Too cold for that tonight.

  “I don’t know about those joints I bought,” he says.

  The JazzKlub is closed and shuttered. On the next street, they hear music, Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” blaring through the speakers of Café Woodstock. The lights of the bar shine on the dark street. Liselotte holds back; he tugs her gently. “Come on, you’ll love it.”

  Inside is loud and warm and crowded. People sit at tables of four or eight in a long row. The bar is deep with bodies. Bluett buys a bottle of red-label Christiania pilsner and a small bottle of red wine, and they find a place to stand near the toilets. There’s a little shelf on the wall where they can set their glasses and their elbows.

  At the table across from them an Inuit man sits sketching. He sketches a fighting cock, fills in the background, tears the sheet off his pad, begins to sketch a boat. His hand never stops moving. A young woman beside him takes the fighting cock sketch and goes to Bluett with it, asks in English, “You want to buy a genuine Inuit drawing?” Her face is thin and lined and a tooth is missing on the side of her mouth.

  He shakes his head with a smile. She sneers, sits again; the man’s hand is still moving, filling in the lines of the boat.

  Bluett and Liselotte chink glasses. She lights a Prince, and he reaches into his pocket for the joints, comes out with a coaster on which is printed a number, a name. He peers at it through the smoky air, sees the name Birgitte, shoves it back in his pocket, goes into the other and locates the glassine envelope. The joints are fat, suspiciously so. He lights one, draws deep, holds it for a second before he coughs. “Out of practice,” he says tightly, draws again, does better, holding it. He feels a mild buzz he thinks, drags again.

  Jim Morrison is singing now. “The Crystal Ship.” And Bluett listens to the eerie sound of Morrison’s voice, the strange lyrics, wary of the combination of those lyrics and the smoke.

  There is a little space on their shelf, and someone puts his beer on it, a short, lean man with a ponytail and beard, pale blue eyes, a gentle face. Straight out of the sixties, but he couldn’t be more than maybe thirty-two. He’s drinking snow beer, smiles at Bluett, who raises his bottle in salute. It’s empty. Liselotte’s glass is empty, too.

  “Want another one of them?” he asks the hippie, pointing at his snow beer even though it is still full.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say no,” he says in the vaguely cockney English some Danes pick up. “Tak.”

  Bluett has a soft spot for Danish hippies. He buys the round. His joint has gone out so he lights it again, tokes, passes it to the hippie, who tastes it, smiles apologetically.

  “No good?” asks Bluett.

  “You high?”

  Bluett thinks, takes stock. “I’m jammed but I don’t know if I’m high. Probably just the juice.”

  The hippie takes out a little knife. “May I look at it inside?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The man squeezes the cigarette out between his fingers, slits the paper. Bluett notices three fingers are gone from his left hand, from the knuckle. He parts the tobacco inside, says, “You got three seeds there, that’s about it.”

  Bluett peers, sees three green seeds amid the ordinary red-brown cigarette tobacco. Finest Turkish and domestic blend.

  “Burnt agin,” he says and drinks some beer. He has snow beer now, too. Strong and bracing in his throat.

  “What’s your names?” the hippie asks.

  “Marianne,” Liselotte says, and Bluett laughs. “I’m Blue.”

  “Blue?” The hippie smiles, reflecting on the sound. “A good name. I’m Ib.” Ib takes a bag from his pocket, removes a thick strip of hash. He lays the hash on a scrap of foil, begins to cut it up, telling about himself while he works. He is thirty-eight, married, has a son who’s ten; but his wife has left him because she thinks he is a bad influence on the son. He has a pension he got from the gherkin factory in Holland where he lost his fingers. He laughs. “Someone got a freaky surprise in their jar of gherkins.” He scrapes the hash into a chillum. “I love my boy,” he says. “I don’t bother no one. I got to see my boy. We have it good together.” He lights the pipe, offers it. “Marianne?”

  She shakes her head, but Bluett takes it, and one toke sends him through the ceiling.

  Led Zeppelin is screaming now, about getting back to rock and roll, been a long time, long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time!

  Bluett takes the pipe again, sees Liselotte’s face, knows he must not accept the pipe next time. He’s as high as he ever needs to be, up where nothing can touch him, not even a thought, not even a memory. He wants to try to explain to Liselotte that if she just takes a hit or two, they will have the best, best sex she has ever known in her whole life, her hole life, but his tongue is not inclined to formulate words just now. He lifts his snow beer to his mouth to wet it, and an eternity passes as the bottle clears the shelf, floats up toward his face. He smiles, all the time in the world between the simplest of gestures.

  “So cool,” he says to his friend, whose name he cannot recall just now. “So cool.” The three-fingered man snuffles with laughter as the snow beer trickles into Bluett’s dry mouth, waters his parched tongue, his throat. “Oh, yes. Good shit.”

  The music is excellent, too. “Let’s dance,” he says to Liselotte, but she shakes her head. He sees fright in her eyes. She keeps glancing to the bar. Bluett follows her gaze. Four younger men stand with their backs to the bar, facing across the room to where Bluett and Liselotte stand. Two Danes and two dark foreigners, maybe second-generation immigrants—and it occurs to him that what is he but a first-generation immigrant? They look very young to Bluett, like kids, his own boy’s age. He doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to think. He feels the nose of panic seeking its way up inside him, remembers how a wrong mood can topple you when you’re high, forces it down. He looks at Liselotte again, and words find his mouth.

  “Hey, you got to relax and let be, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes soften. “What did you call me?”

  “Marianne.” He leans to her ear and whispers, “Liselotte,” and what he wants to do to her, and when he draws back her smile is easy again, warm. Her blue coat hangs open, and he puts his hand inside it.

  “I go to see my boy tomorrow,” the man whose name Bluett cannot remember says. Ib! “We have one whole day together.”

  Liselotte’s smile is sad watching him. There is too much sadness here suddenly. Bluett thinks if he could just take one more hit of the peace pipe he would be ready to climb on her but the pipe seems far away and there is too much sadness in Ib’s beard, in Liselotte’s smile. He whispers in her ear, “You want to go?”

  She nods, grateful, and they finish their drinks.

  Ib says, “I go, too. I go to my boy tomorrow.”

  They walk together through the frozen mud toward the gate. Bluett is thinking about the guy who sold him the fake joints. Twenty crowns, three and a half bucks, for a goddamn cigarette!

  “Gonna talk to that guy. Tell him something.”

  Liselotte squeezes his arm. “What if he is one of those, you know. Bikers?”

  “He was no biker. He’s an old hippie, ripped me off ’cause he figured he could.”

  “No one know for sure,” Ib says.

  Wondering what Ib means by that, Bluett’s high begins to climb again. He sees his feet in the dark, spattered brown shoes, gliding across the frozen ruts. A dog trots past, a mongrel with some Labrador in her, and Bluett calls to her, but Liselotte tugs at his arm.

  There are people walking behind them. Bluett glances back for the dog, sees the four young men from the bar, moving four abreast across the frozen road as they pass through the empty stalls of Pusher Street. One or two are open now. Beyond, in the little square where he
bought his joints, he sees that the guy he bought from has closed shop, a hundred crowns of Bluett’s money richer.

  That’s a quarter page of translation, he thinks. But I pay sales tax and income tax on it so it’s really almost double. Abruptly he becomes obsessed by the money, but a sound distracts him.

  He can hear the shoes of the four boys behind them cracking against the cold mud as they move closer. He peers around him for an escape route if necessary, but sees no possibilities. Abruptly he comes down. Should have stopped at one of those hash stalls. He remembers vaguely there is a restaurant, the Flea, not far ahead where they could phone a taxi, but the taxi couldn’t come into Christiania anyway.

  The boys are just behind him now. He glances at Ib, who moves close to the wall of a long dark building they are passing, and it occurs suddenly to Bluett that Ib is one of them. Maybe they saw his wallet, saw him duped by the bad joints, figure he’s some rich fuck slumming. To them, maybe he is. A wallet full of hundred-crown notes, a fortune to them. He spies a pile of lumber scraps along the side of the road, his eye searching for a plank he can use as a weapon, but his will locks. What can he do against five of them? Stay calm, reason, keep Liselotte safe.

  Liselotte grips his arm as the boys come up behind him. Bluett hesitates, braced. The boys continue past, through the passageway out to the street.

  Bluett’s knees are weak in the aftermath. He wants to comfort Liselotte with a hug, but is embarrassed about the trembling of his arms. He says to her, “There’s usually a cab outside.”

  “You take a taxi?” Ib asks. “I ride with you a little? Just up to the bridge. I can pay ten crowns.”

  “Sure, don’t worry.”

  Through the passage to the little square outside, and a single taxi idles there in the cold, a Mercedes, green fri lamp burning behind the windshield, and Bluett heads for it gratefully.

  He hears shoes on gravel behind them. The four boys waiting against the wall. They are moving toward them now in a wedge, a blond hard-mouthed boy in the lead. Bluett is thinking how incongruous the blond hair, blond whiskers seem for a tough guy, as he moves for the cab, shoving Liselotte before him.