Falling Sideways

  She thanked him, counting them quickly, discreetly, then gave him a large plush black towel and showed him to a door in the hall. “You can change there, honey,” she said, and returned to her place in an armchair by the door, took a magazine from the tabletop beside it. See and Hear. Kampman could see, on the cover, a picture of the crown prince and princess. “Honey,” she had called him. Again. Vulgar. It blemished his entry. When he left, later, he would slip her the last hundred and tell her, for next time, not to call him honey. He wanted this to be perfect, and that one detail was bothering.

  Now he entered the dressing room and locked the one door behind him. The undressing room, he thought. His hands trembled as he took off his clothes and folded them on a chair, and his knees felt loose as he tapped on the other door.

  A woman’s voice said, “Come.”

  He watched his hand shake as it rose to turn the knob. The room was tastefully furnished, a little old-fashioned, a parlor. A long, slender woman sat in an armchair in the center of a red Persian carpet, her long, bare legs crossed. She was naked but for a narrow, black-leather mask. Blue eyes watched him from the slits in the mask.

  He looked at her body.

  “Lower your gaze,” she said.

  He did as he was told.

  “You’re late.”

  “I—”

  “Be still.”

  He shut his mouth.

  She motioned him forward with her forehead. “You will regret that,” she said.

  Friday

  Vita Nuova

  25. Martin Kampman

  Every third Friday was Kampman’s day to sleep in. He woke in the basement guest room, opened his eyes to the white ceiling, and reached for the alarm watch he had set for seven.

  Six fifty-eight.

  He smiled, deactivated it before it could ring. Then, gazing at the blank screen of the ceiling, he gingerly stretched his limbs beneath the covers. Each detail of his body’s discomfort contained a minuscule fragment of mystery he knew he must push from his consciousness lest he become morbidly fascinated by it. If he dawdled here, savoring it, reconstructing what was now behind him, he would surrender force to the experience, rather than winning from it. Abruptly he threw off the bedclothes and limped naked into the bathroom, turned the cold tap on full, and willed himself beneath it, counting slowly. Only at sixty did he allow himself to begin to add warm water to the stream, soaping himself gingerly, refusing to wince when it hurt. Of course it hurts; I am stronger than pain.

  Dressed and shaven, he went straight up to Adam’s bedroom, meticulously stifling the annoyance that was already asserting itself at his anticipation of having to wake the boy even though he had also been allowed to sleep an extra two hours today. Lazy.

  Adam’s bed was empty, unmade. Adam was not in the room. Adam was not in the bathroom. The twins were still asleep, and Adam was not in there, either.

  Back down the stairs to the kitchen, where he could hear Karen fussing about. He smelled coffee.

  “Are you limping?” she asked when she saw him.

  “Strained a muscle. It’s nothing. Where’s Adam?”

  “He was off early today.”

  Kampman blinked, annoyed. Something fishy here. “Off to where?”

  “Why, to classes, I presume.”

  Fishy.

  He took the BMW and was in his office at the Tank by eight twenty. Even that late, he was still the first one in. No, Clausen was at his desk.

  “Morning, Mr. Director,” he said as Kampman passed his doorless office.

  Kampman drew the corners of his mouth into a little smile. “Early bird.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  26. Harald Jaeger

  At last there was hope, at last the chance for love, for Birgitte, a woman he could love. And his little girls liked her, too. “You’re nice,” Hanne had said to her in the deer park. Spontaneously. And today he could tell them, hint to them that they might be seeing more of Birgitte—maybe even this evening. Jaeger had taken a half personal day to get a head start on his weekend with his little angels. He opened the white wrought-iron gate and stepped into the little front garden of the house he had owned for ten years and to which he no longer even possessed a key. The grass, front and back, was still green and tight as a golf course. Vita’s pride. She practiced her putting here. Galf, she called it, a parody of Gentoftian High Danish that to Jaeger was beginning to sound less like a parody than an assimilation. Let her. She had taken up golf after their split. He pictured himself telling her, Well, some people work and some play, but quickly dismissed the thought. Nothing but trouble in that direction.

  Beneath his arm he had a little gift for her, a book of golf cartoons wrapped in silver paper and tied with a dark green ribbon. Last time he came, he’d got the idea of bringing a little present as a surprise and saw that the gesture had startled and moved her, and he was eager to repeat that success.

  He gazed from the grass to the agreeably uneven assortment of trees—larch, lilac, pine, the brittle rose vines that in spring and summer blossomed with fat blooms of red, yellow, white. The forsythia hedge was nearly bald now in the gray early afternoon, but in the eye of memory he saw it as an explosion of bright yellow late April leaves, his two yellow-haired baby girls standing before it with their big, sweet smiles. Returning here was always like a dream fragment for him, the unreal real. A return to the life he had always assumed temporary until it took root, grew clinging vines he had to hack away, and somehow he had managed not to realize the result would be pain, blood. Yet had he not decided—now! quick!—he was certain they all would have died slowly and with a greater, all-consuming pain.

  “I feel so fucking guilty,” he had told his psychologist.

  “So feel guilty for a moment, then move on. The guilt helps no one. Learn from it.”

  “But I did a terrible thing. To marry a woman I didn’t love was—”

  “The mistake of a confused man. Move on.”

  “But the babies …”

  “As a very wise man once said, Harald: Shit happens. Move on.”

  Now he moved on down the garden path to the neat white front door with its neat rectangle of little square white-curtained windows. He pressed the bell and listened to its pleasant chime.

  Vita opened the door wide and looked at him. Then she closed it halfway and kept staring. She wore tailored jeans and a tailored tweed jacket. She looked terrific. He held out the gift. “Hi,” he said. “How are you? How are the girls? Here’s a little present for you.”

  She did not take the package and she did not speak, only stared at him, and she did not step aside to let him enter.

  “You look great,” he said. “Have you lost weight?”

  Vita was slim as an eel, with close-cropped yellow hair that glittered silver. She was eight years older than Jaeger. She let the question hang in the air. Then she said, “What have you been up to? Who is she? I can see you’ve met someone. Again.”

  It did not occur to Jaeger that he did not have to answer. “Do you remember Birgitte Sommer?”

  “From your office? She’s married.”

  “We … well, it just kind of happened. I—”

  “Oh, I know all about you and things that just happen. You really take the bloody biscuit. You desert one wife, then steal one from another man. Do they have children, too?”

  “No, I—”

  “Because I ought to warn her not to let you be alone with them.”

  “What do—”

  “I have to ask you straight out now, and I want an honest answer.”

  “What? I—”

  “Did you bathe the girls last time you had them?”

  It took a moment for the question to make sense to him. Was she complaining that they were dirty when he returned them to her? Then he remembered he had taken them to the deer park and it was muddy, so he’d washed them under the telephone shower back at his place. “Well, yes, I …”

  She stared at him, lips slightly parted wi
th distaste, eyes narrowed, and she whispered, “How could you do that? To your own daughters.”

  “What are you … They’re my daughters … they needed a bath …”

  “They do not need to have you undressing them and … You disgust me.”

  “Where are they? It’s my weekend to—”

  “You will not see them. I have to consider what to do about this now.”

  “You can’t do this. I’ll complain to the—”

  “Go ahead. And I will tell them what you did.”

  “What I did? I didn’t do anything. I gave them a bath because they were muddy. I sprayed them with the telephone shower. There was nothing.”

  “I knew you were sick, but I really never expected this. Now get out of here.” And she closed the door.

  Jaeger was trembling. He rang the bell, knocked. “Vita, you can’t do—”

  The door opened again, and Jaeger started. It was not Vita but her father, Frank, a short muscular man with kinky yellow hair and a broad, porcine face. He stepped close, and Jaeger could smell coffee on his breath.

  “What do you want?” he demanded.

  Jaeger was less afraid of the man than of what he himself might do to him. He felt his right fist ball up. His breath was ragged, and he saw the bulky little man as a door behind a door blocking him from his daughters. He wanted to bury his fist right dead in the middle of the piggy face. Words rasped from his throat in a grating whisper.

  “I want to see my daughters!”

  “You can get the hell out of here,” Frank snapped. “We know what went on. It’s not going to happen again.”

  “That’s a fucking lie, Frank. Repeat it, and I’ll smash your fucking face for you!”

  Frank spoke over his shoulder as he shoved the door between them. “Call the police, Vita! He’s violent!”

  Jaeger put his shoulder to the door, and they struggled from each side of it. Moving his foot for traction, he lost his balance and the door slammed on his little finger. He yelled out with pain. The door opened a crack, and Frank muttered, “Sorry,” then slammed it again and the finger was caught once more. Jaeger bellowed, and the door opened a crack so he could pull his finger free. “Sorry,” Frank muttered again, and shut the door.

  Jaeger heard the dead bolt mesh shut, and he stood there on the little brick stoop, cradling his injured finger, muttering, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” and felt the shame of tears rolling from his eyes.

  27. Frederick Breathwaite

  Now the autumn really sinks down around us, Breathwaite thought, standing on Queen Louise’s Bridge, gazing out over the gunmetal gray water of Peblinge Lake. Already heavy dusk at five thirty P.M. The damp autumn smell off the mossy water filled his nose and touched his heart with chill fingers. Leaves of yellow, red, and brown lay scattered across wet green grass on the bank. He shuffled through big soggy yellow leaves heaped on the bridge walk, in the gutter, like scuffling through soggy cornflakes. He remembered that this Sunday, daylight savings time would end. What is it now, do we win an hour or lose one? Spring ahead, fall back. Curiously he observed his own melancholy; it had been so many years since he’d felt himself this alone. Facing disaster. Too strong a word? What else to call it?

  He began walking again, north, paused just before the embankment to look at a stone sculpture of a young man and woman who sat facing each other, leaning forward to peer into each other’s faces. The young man had his elbows on his knees, palms on his cheeks; the girl had elbows on knees and palms joined, wringing her hands, which were extended toward the boy. Their gaze was fixed on each other—or rather, she gazed at him, while his glance was slightly downcast. The lake water glistened between them, and Breathwaite could see the Lake Pavilion on the far bank, Codan building rising behind it like a sore thumb. He considered the girl and boy gazing at each other. A pair of opposites. We have all come from lovers. For what purpose? To become lovers. Mate. Like mayflies. Ephemerals. Infinite motion. What’s it called? Chain of … No, chain reaction. Cause and effect and cause. What came first, the penis or the egg? Of what fucking use are we?

  Some sensation at his back turned him. On the other side of the bridge, several people were standing in a loose row, leaning back against the railing, the dusky lake behind them, but they were facing in his direction. A chill crawled over his flesh, a distinct chill, infusing the moment with a distressing sense that he had been caught in some subliminal ghostly confusion. The hair on his body lifted. Were they looking at him?

  His eyes flicked from face to face—man, woman; man, woman; man, woman. Six of them. Three couples, they seemed to be. As if moved by his thought, their bodies regrouped, man to woman, as if to demonstrate that they were indeed three couples.

  Was he going mad? It almost looked like some scene from a Hollywood musical. He almost expected them to begin to dance, sing, tango—an older couple, sixties, perhaps, the man with a battered leather satchel beneath his arm, woman in a blue wool coat; a couple in their forties, man in a leather jacket, cap backward on his head; another couple somewhere between, dark-haired man wearing a gray beret with a woman whose blue eyes were so light that Breathwaite could see them shining across in the dark all the way from where he stood.

  Breathwaite’s confusion focused. He smiled. Dance, he thought. Turn into Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds and Fred fucking Astaire and whoever else. Then, as though they had never been looking at him at all, the three couples turned and moved away along the bridge, two of them in one direction, one in the other, melding into the after-work pedestrian traffic.

  They were gone.

  Am I going nuts?

  He glanced back at the sculpture: stone girl and stone boy peering at each other. Lovers on the bridge. We have all come from lovers. For what purpose? He thought of Kis. Sweet Kis. Sweet angel. Please God don’t let her love me so much that I hurt her. Then he noticed the date at the base of the sculpture: 1942. During the German occupation. So that’s the story. The impotence of their love against a mad world.

  Off Queen Louise’s Bridge to North Bridge Street and left on Blågårds Street to the square to visit Jes. He thought of phoning first, but that would only give the boy a chance to beg off. On my way out, Dad. Can’t wait. Another time. Sorry. Catch him by surprise. Take the chance and hope he’s home, hope for the best, hope.

  Listen, son, you’ve got to listen to me. And use your head. I’ve got an opportunity for you that you can parlay into a berth for life. Funny expression, berth. Don’t use it. He’ll say, I don’t want a berth, Dad. I don’t want to spend my life sleeping. I want to wake up.

  Sure, sure. Truist bullshit. This is real life we’re talking about here. Not airy fairy floss. You’ve got a head on your shoulders. This job is a real shot at life. You’ll travel. You’ll earn good money. Don’t throw everything away because you don’t like the way the world is screwed together.

  I want to make a difference.

  This will make a difference for you.

  He stopped outside the building. Sooty gray stone that needed sandblasting. Badly. They’ll gentrify this square in no time. Triple in value. He’ll be okay. If he takes the job and gets his butt back in school.

  Breathwaite stared at the bell register for a moment. Instead of Jes’s name, alongside the bell it said, “HVT6.”

  Breathwaite smirked—High Value Target 6—decided he needed fortification, and stepped into the Café Flora a couple of doors down, ordered a quadruple Tullamore at the bar.

  The very young barmaid looked startled. Thinks I’m some rich fuck. Or dangerous, maybe. “On the rocks, please.”

  “The what?”

  “The rocks. On ice cubes.”

  “Just ice cubes? Nothing else? No lemon?”

  “Oh, Jesus, no. Just ice cubes.” This is not fortifying me. “Just ice.” Justice. “Please.”

  She took some time studying the bottles on the shelf behind her.

  “Second shelf, fourth from the right,” he said. “No, not that, that’s bourbon,
the next one … Right.” He watched her carefully pour four two-centiliter measures into the glass, then dip her fingers into an ice bucket and scoop out a single cube. Breathwaite laid a hundred on the bar and laughed at himself for perceiving this as another example of his luck gone sour. The center cannot hold. He tipped her five crowns for the finger sweat bonus and swished the whiskey in the glass to let the rapidly melting little cube chill it, then threw it back in two snaps and returned to the door of Jes’s building.

  Instead of ringing Jes’s bell, he rang another at random, on the third floor, not to alert Jes yet. No warning. Just Dad there at the door, in your face. Whoever it was mercifully buzzed him in, and he began the long, slow climb to his son’s sixth-floor walk-up.

  On three, he paused to catch his wind. A door opened, and a young man’s shaven head ducked out.

  “Sorry,” Breathwaite wheezed. “I must have rung you by mistake.” He pointed upward. Without a word, the young man’s bald head disappeared behind his shabby door again. On the fourth, Breathwaite began to hear noise, music from above. He was feeling the climb. Too many cigars, even if he didn’t inhale. Much. Well, that was another cozy comfort that would regulate itself with the economy. Start smoking El Cheapos. Or quit altogether. Sit around and chew your fingernails instead. Free habit. Bite yourself.

  On five, the noise grew louder, and louder still as he ascended the sixth flight. He stood on the landing outside Jes’s door, waiting for his lungs and heart to quiet down. Stenciled in white paint along one edge of the door were the words SUCCES SUCKS.

  Learn how to fucking spell! Or was that some kind of intentional irony?

  He could not avoid hearing the voices from within, punctuated by short bursts of jazz.