Beneath the Neon Egg

by Thomas E. Kennedy

  The blond boy lunges and his fist hooks with a sharp crack into Ib’s face, spinning him face down with a groan onto the hood of the taxi.

  Bluett calls out, “Hey!” He has the taxi door open and shoves Liselotte in. “Lock the other door,” he mutters and stands there behind the open door, staring at the blond boy.

  The driver says back over his shoulder to Bluett, “You coming or not? Get in or scrub off,” but Bluett is staring into the blond kid’s eyes, glances past his shoulder to Ib.

  One of the others, a dark-haired foreign kid, has Ib’s arm. Then he punches him low in the stomach so Ib grunts, doubling over, as the dark-haired boy’s knee rises into his face with a thump.

  “You take it calm,” the blond boy says in Danish to Bluett. “You take it completely calm. You go home now. You don’t know this business so fuck off. Am I understood?”

  Ib’s face and beard are smeared with blood, but his eyes are calm as he glances across at Bluett, at the door of the cab, a vehicle of escape he just missed. One of the dark boys punches him in the side, and he grimaces with pain, then his face is calm again.

  “Så er det nu bedstefar,” the blond kid says. “That means now, grandpa.” He shoves at the door so it smacks into Bluett’s chest. “I don’t say it again.”

  Bluett is transfixed by the calm sadness of Ib’s face, his silence. He hears himself say, “Yeah, but . . .”

  The driver breaks in, “Either get in or close the door,” and puts the car in gear. Liselotte is pulling at his arm. “You got to come now, now,” and Bluett slides into the car seat, into the dark warmth of the interior as the door smacks shut, and the blond kid gives him the finger and kicks the quarter panel of the rolling taxi.

  Bluett watches for a moment through the side window, Ib on the ground and the four of them over him, their legs working. Liselotte sits very still, unspeaking.

  “Hey, you got a radio,” Bluett says to the driver. “Call the police. Quick.”

  “Call what?”

  “The cops. Call the cops.”

  “Why? It’s just a Christiania thing.”

  “They’re killing that guy.”

  “Who? What guy? It’s a Christiania thing. The police won’t come at night. They throw rocks at them and they can’t see who does it.”

  “Jesus Christ, stop this fucking cab up here, you son of a bitch!”

  Liselotte whispers, “No, Blue, we must get away, what if they come back.”

  “Stop the cab!”

  In a bar across from Asiatisk Plads, the foreign ministry, he dials 112 on a pay phone.

  They ask his name and the number he’s calling from and his social security number.

  “My social security number! There’s a guy getting beaten, killed . . .”

  “Stay calm, please, sir, we need your name, social security number, and the number you are . . .”

  “Outside Christiania four guys are kicking his head in.”

  “We need . . .”

  He slams the phone down. Liselotte sits hugging herself at a table, a glass of red wine before her. Bluett orders a double vodka on the rocks.

  The bartender says, “They won’t go to Christiania at night. Some people there throw rocks at them. They can’t see them at night, can’t see where they’re coming from. I wouldn’t go in there either.”

  Bluett looks into the man’s face, a reasonable, middle-aged Danish face, Nordic, broad-jowled from Christmas pork and Danish lunches, frank friendly eyes.

  “They were kicking this guy. Four of them. Kicking him on the ground. In the face.”

  The bartender shakes his head. “That’s what they do now. In my day, they used their fists. Now they kick. They kick in the head. In the face. They use knives. It’s from America, comes from America. Anything happens in America we get it here a few years later.”

  “These were Danes kicking a Dane,” Bluett says.

  “They see it in all these American films. On the television. Life means nothing anymore.”

  Another taxi comes to collect them from Asiatisk Plads, carries them back across Knippels Bridge and through the city. He tries to put his arm around Liselotte, but she is huddled into herself, stiff, so he takes his arm away and watches the night streets roll past, thinking about Ib, the son he should have visited tomorrow, the calmness of his eyes, the blood clotting in his beard.

  Bluett considers the fact that he watched as the man’s head was kicked and did nothing, knows he could do nothing, feels tiny and fragile here in this taxi, something less than a man, some kind of rodent that can only hide, only run. Dimly, in his mind, he sees himself hurting back, sees himself with a bat, swinging at the hard-mouthed blond man, feels his eyes narrow, his mouth tighten in a cruel smile. Could I? No. Could I do that? No, he thinks and stares out at the dark streets reeling past, uncertain what is happening.

  Back at his apartment, he tries to turn the mood. “What we need now,” he says, “is a little bit of natmad. Night food. And “Eine kleine Nachtmusik!” He puts Mozart on the stereo and butters a platter of open sandwiches on rye bread halves—salami and chives, liver paste and salt beef and raw onion, strong cheese. The aroma of the cheese hits his nose and he begins to salivate. He takes down snaps glasses from a shelf and lifts the aquavit bottle out of the freezer.

  He serves the food at his oak table, pours snaps, beer. He lights candles all around the room, switches off the overhead light as the violins leap through the changes Mozart progammed for them two hundred years earlier. He closes his eyes, his head moving like a conductor’s with the spring of the music as he munches, swallows, lifts his snaps glass.

  “Skål, skat,” he says. “Cheers, my treasure.”

  She lifts hers, nods. “Skål.” Her voice is toneless, eyes flat. She eats half a salami sandwich, finishes her snaps and curls up on the sofa with her back to the room.

  Bluett sits there in the candlelight watching her back, wondering where she is, what she is thinking. He looks at the platter of sandwiches, the frosted green snaps bottle, the beer. He carries the platter out to the kitchen and scrapes it into the garbage, shoves the snaps back into the freezer. He looks out the kitchen window at the dark backs of the houses across the little yard, sees through one window a big gray sheep dog asleep in a pool of light from the yard lamp. Up above, the dented moon hangs in the navy sky over the peaked silhouetted rooftops.

  Bluett sleeps on the opposite sofa. When he opens his eyes in the morning, he realizes he was woken by the kid upstairs running back and forth across the floor. Bump bump bump bump bump. Turn. Bump bump bump bump bump. Turn back. Bump bump bump bump bump . . .

  Liselotte is no longer asleep on the sofa. Across the room she sits at the table, dressed, warming her hands around a mug of coffee, looking out the window.

  He clears his throat raucously. “Morning.”

  “Morn.”

  He rises, hunched to conceal his hard-on as he slips into the bathroom, pees, brushes his teeth, rinses his tongue with strong blue mouthwash, looks at his face in the mirror over the sink, guesses the time at 8:50, but sees by the kitchen clock it is already ten; overcast. The clouds had fooled him, curtained the light. He makes himself a cup of Nescafé, stands staring into the refrigerator as he waits for the water to boil, staring at the bottle of Granini tomato juice. His favorite kind. Perfect for bloody Marys.

  Why not? They have the whole long weekend still. It’s only Friday morning. He pours the steaming water over the Nescafé grounds, stirs, carries it to the dining table and sits across from her.

  “Want a bloody Mary?”

  “Good God, no, I don’t,” she says without looking at him.

  I see, he thinks. Let’s say the world stinks today and it is generally my fault. But he says nothing. Let her stew. He begins to consider alternate plans. Send her home. Take in a flick. Jerk off. Take a long walk in the Deer Park. Check out the bucks in winter. Take the train up to Louisiana and see the Picasso exhibit. Have lunch there looking out over the se
a. Open cheese sandwich with slices of green and red pepper and a draft sounds pretty good about now. Snaps, too. Who knows, maybe the woman of your dreams seated at the next table, just waiting for you.

  He sips his coffee, glances at Liselotte. Oh, are you still here? he thinks, amusing himself.

  “Aren’t you overreacting a bit?” he says. “So we saw something ugly. What could we do? What can we do? That world is not our world, we have no control over it, we can’t do a thing but stay clear of it.”

  She looks at him. “What are we doing?” she asks.

  I don’t have time to talk about this just now, he thinks. Can’t it wait until I’m dead.

  “We’re drinking coffee,” he says.

  Clearly she is in no mood. “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, suppose you formulate your question a little more precisely, hm?” I’ve been through a whole twenty-year marriage of this. I’m not about to start taking shit from you just because we fucked a few times. You want war, you got it, babe.

  “What is the point of us together? What is our goal?”

  “Now, I’m glad you asked that,” he says, “because it gives me yet another opportunity to try to make things perfectly clear. We are together to enjoy ourselves. I didn’t think about us having any particular goal. Except maybe to have fun. To please one another. To be close friends, the best of friends. Isn’t that okay?”

  She looks older when she’s testy, her mouth unattractive in petulance. “Just for fun, you mean. You see me just for fun. We are together just for fun. To amuse yourself.”

  “Isn’t that why you see me?”

  “I’m not a just for fun girl,” she says. “I am not just for fun.”

  “I’m not certain what words you want to hear from me now.”

  “Do you have other girlfriends?”

  “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.”

  “Because I am not interested in getting AIDS.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, you know that half the time I can’t even get it up anyway.”

  “This is not a joking thing for me. I have to know if you are using me.”

  “I hate these questions. I hate this conversation. It reminds me of everything I hated about being married.”

  “Will you be honest with me?” she asks.

  He sighs.

  “I am second to none with a man I sleep with,” she says. “Who is Birgitte Svane?”

  He thinks for a moment, then: “So. Now you go through my pockets, do you? This is moving fast.”

  “Who is Birgitte Svane?”

  “None of your business; that’s who.” He thinks. “She’s a girl I met in a bar and had a couple of drinks with.” He is disgusted with himself for telling her that much. Should he tell that he kissed her? Bullshit!

  “Will you be honest with me?”

  “In another minute I will, but you might not like it.”

  “I vant you to be honest and tell me what is our future together.”

  “As far as I can see right now, on the basis of this exchange, we have no future at all. If you really want to push it to this point. Look, it was a pretty depressing night the way it ended yesterday. Don’t you think you’re overreacting? We’ve been having a great time together . . .”

  “You and Birgitte have a great time, too, maybe?”

  He sighs.

  “Thank you for being honest,” she says. “I appreciate that.” She carries her cup out to the kitchen. He hears the water run. Then she is standing in the doorway in her boots and woolen coat and Wild Turkey eyes.

  He says to her, “You know, you are dishonest in a way you don’t seem to understand.”

  “I am not dishonest. I am not just for fun.”

  And you’re second to none, I know, he doesn’t say. So take a fucking hike.

  The door clicks shut after her, and he slams the flat of his hand on the tabletop so his mug leaps off and spills across the beige carpet.

  “Shit!”

  From the kitchen he gets a cloth and sponges cold water on the coffee, soaks it up, rinses the rug and sponges more cold water on, rinses. Then he takes a clean rag and scrubs at the spot. The stain is lighter but still there.

  “Fuck!”

  He flings the wet rag into the sink, goes out to the front window. Halfway across the frozen lake, the back of her long woolen coat is moving away over the ice.

  “Stupid,” he mutters. “Pain in the ass. Fucking liar!”

  His stomach growls and he thinks of the sandwiches he dumped into the garbage the previous night, and he sits there, heavy-headed, in the dark morning, wondering what just happened, wondering whether he wants to crawl back into his narrow bed.

  Part II

  Resolution

  One thought can produce millions of vibrations . . .

  —John Coltrane

  8. Groovin’ High—Aura Yellow

  Instead he puts on Bird’s “Groovin’ High” and drops to the carpet, does push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, listening to Yardbird’s fast fingers and quick breath as the sweat collects on his back, his forehead. He keeps moving, twisting, lifting, forcing his will onto his body until the desire to sleep, to crawl away, is gone, and he feels only the pull of his muscles, the course of blood beneath his skin. He works out until it hurts to lift, does ten more reps, then drops back onto the carpet in a wakeful rest, staring at the white ceiling, at the spidery cracks in the center, while Parker’s sax melds into “East of the Sun.”

  The strings cannot belie Parker’s expertise, and Bluett likes the number, but he reaches for the remote, flips back to “Groovin’ High,” closes his eyes and remembers flying over the Throgs Neck Bridge in an old Chevy one summer midnight, coming from a girlfriend’s apartment in the Bronx, the satisfaction all around him in the hot night, hearing this Bird tune on Symphony Sid on the car radio. The cut ends, fades to silence, and he puts on Aura.

  Behind the red-black curtain of his eyelids he listens to the strange symphony, moving through color to the rumbling, dramatic tension of “Yellow,” sees some beast slouching across the frozen lake through the icy gloom of morning. And he thinks that the life he’s living is one that he has chosen with every move he made ever since he was a child, every choice, every road taken or not taken for whatever reason, for laziness, fear, whatever. This is his life now. He is responsible for it. And it is not really so bad. He has food and appetite. He has shelter from the cold. He has a Persian carpet to lie on and a CD player and good music to listen to. He has nothing to complain about. Everyone is lonely. Learn to be alone because you will always be alone whether or not you are with someone. There is still the possibility of kindness. There is still a possibility of being satisfied, however fleetingly; learn from your young years when you drove across a bridge from a girlfriend’s house and heard jazz on the radio in the hot summer night. You don’t have to understand everything. You can’t anyway.

  For a few more moments, he lies there in the silence at the end of the CD, still hearing Miles’s trumpet in his brain, listening to his thoughts. Then he gets off the floor and goes to the kitchen. He eats breakfast. Cheese, bread, blueberries in a small cardboard basket, brews another cup of Nescafé, which he drinks at the sink by the kitchen window, looking across to the backs of the houses on the other side. The big gray sheep dog is in the yard below, pressed up against the door, waiting to be let in.

  Bluett reaches across the sink and unlatches his window to let some air in, and the dog turns its head, looks up at him with black eyes through gray fur, black round nose where the fur parts, and that acknowledgement from the dog, the welcoming shiver of his black nose, the vision of it; the thought produces what seems a myriad of vibrations in Bluett’s spirit, and the vibrations become Miles, become Bird, become Trane, and trill in his nerve endings and for a moment Bluett is approaching ecstasy. Maybe he’s still high—or maybe not. Maybe he’s high on music.

  He smiles, thinks for a moment of getting a dog. The door opens, and the dog trots insi
de. He can see it behind the glass of the door lumbering up the stairs, and he understands that what he wanted was that dog, that moment of that dog, looking at him, nose atremble.

  None of these back windows is covered. He sees a kitchen, a segment of a sitting room with colorful abstract paintings on the wall, the corner of a sofa, a hallway. On one window ledge stands a clay flowerpot with a single red tulip on a green stalk. I don’t want flowers here, he thinks. Flowers need attention.

  And he remembers for some reason a Danish woman he once knew, briefly, who sought him out with her eye at a cocktail party and, when he answered the call of her gaze and approached, said, “You are a sexy von.” They had no business being together, but he went home with her, and afterward sat with his head in his hands on the edge of the bed. She sat beside him, the two of them naked, still warm, and kissed his ear.

  “You don’t like me?” she asked.

  “I do. You’re fabulous. I just don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  With a wide open mouth and sparkling eyes she laughed in his face. “This is how you hurt? Then hurt me again, you sexy von.”

  “You know I’m married.”

  She watched him for a moment. “You know vhat your veakness is? All this guilty-boy stuff. Which do you no good because it don’t improve you, it only make you not to enjoy vhat you like to do. Vhat you vill always do anyway, sexy von.” Then she got up and pulled on a robe, knotted the belt with a sharp tug. “Go home to your vife and enjoy your unhappiness with her.”

  He couldn’t even remember her name, only her body, chubby and graceful, her bright eyes in a round smiling face, a woman he never got to know. His marriage was already finished then in all but name, and it seemed no matter where he turned he found regret. But she was wrong. Just as Benthe was wrong on the disappearing cliff when she unknowingly echoed that previous woman: you are a sexy. But what is the answer, then? To bind yourself. Be a slave. To some “not for fun” girl. It seems I should already know the answers to all these questions at my age.