Falling Sideways

  Without knowing he would do so, Adam snapped, “Fuck you, Jes.”

  Jes raised his palms in front of his chest. “Whoa!” Then he straightened his posture to imitate Jalâl and proclaimed formally, “When one is greeted with salutation, offer a greeting nicer still. So, my friend: Fuck you twice, please.” Jes got a beer from Erik and straddled the chair across from Adam. “Hey, man,” he said, “I’m sorry if it hurt your feelings that I, you know, fucked your friend.”

  Adam sneered. He felt this unexpected mood taking hold of him and followed it unwillingly as it dictated his responses. He wondered how to stop it.

  “Hey, I didn’t know you had the hots for her. I thought you were just, like, acquaintances. And she was so cute and so … ready.”

  “Just fuck you, Jes.”

  “You ever been laid?”

  Adam’s sneer intensified, and he said nothing.

  “Hey, it’ll happen, Adam. You’re young.”

  “Oh, and you’re so old, right? The sayings of the wise man Jes. Ha.”

  Jes rose and made an Arabic fanfare with his right hand. “If any do a bad thing in ignorance but then repents and make amends, assuredly mercifulness and forgiving will forthcome.”

  Adam chuckled. He felt the evil mood begin to lift from him, and he began to feel that maybe the man at the bar was just a stranger after all.

  The angry man reached one thick, tattooed arm over the back of his chair toward Jes. “You the kid who works for that key-and-heel place, right? That spic perker?”

  “At least he’s not a prick jerker,” Jes said with a smile that put Adam’s nerves on edge. He didn’t want any trouble.

  “Let’s go,” he muttered. “Let’s go back to your place.”

  The tattooed man stared blankly at Jes while Erik rang open the register, shuffled to the jukebox, and dropped in some coins, punched buttons. Daimi came on singing, about her need to find a man who would treat her like a goddess on Solitude Way.

  Jaeger and Tatyana started dancing. The tattooed man lifted his beer bottle to his lips without taking his eyes from Jes.

  “Something wrong?” Jes asked with a smile.

  “You’ll know when it is, mac.”

  “Well, good. For it is said that God has sealed the lips and covered the eyes of the ungrateful who have forgotten how to speak nicely to people.”

  The tattooed man turned his eyes back to his friend. “You know what the fuck he’s talking about?”

  “Not a trace.”

  Adam was on his feet, and Jes let himself be edged to the door, still peering back at the man, who muttered, “Tarzan, huh?” with sneering lips, tilting back his beer.

  The door jangled shut behind them, and Adam hurried toward North Port Street. Jes sauntered behind him. “Come on,” Adam whimpered. “They may come after us.”

  “They won’t come after us. They’re losers, man. Losers. Racist assholes.”

  As they turned the corner, Adam glanced back and saw the bodega door swing open. “Shit, they’re coming! Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here!” He began to run just as Tatyana appeared around the corner of Solitude Way, snuggled up against the arm of the man with the bandaged little finger.

  32. Adam Kampman

  A rattling plastic bag cradled in each arm, Adam and Jes climbed the six flights to Jes’s apartment.

  “We should’ve bought plastic Tuborgs,” Adam said.

  “No, my boys,” said Jes. “We are talking about delayed gratification here. We suffer the extra weight now in order not to have to suffer the taste of beer out of plastic later. Plus, this labor increases our thirst, so our enjoyment of beer from glass bottles is even greater. Plastic is multinational shit. Glass is good. Millions of peaches, peaches for me. And you!”

  Adam was winded. “What do peaches have to do with anything?”

  “You don’t know The Presidents of the United States of America? You’re in for a treat, my boys.”

  “Hey, thanks for letting me stay, Jes.”

  “Hey, you pay your rent, you’re welcome. The rent is beer. We have thirty-two bottles of beer. Think of it. People might say we have no future, that’s fine with us. Hey, did you see the guy with the finger? At the bodega? That guy works with my father. He works for your father. He lives around here. I see him once in a while. What a mess, huh? You see that woman?”

  “Looked pretty good to me.”

  “Man, you are fucking horny.”

  The apartment had been littered with empty bottles, heaped ashtrays, and pizza boxes when Adam left. Now he was startled to find the living room all tidied up, glass ashtrays emptied and polished, drinking glasses and plates and utensils washed and stacked in the little kitchen. Even the floor had been swept and the pillows on the ragged sofa plumped.

  Adam squatted before the refrigerator and started stacking beer bottles on the shelves.

  “I smell a Jutland girl,” Jes said, and slipped down the two-step hallway to the bedroom, tiptoed back, whispering, “There’s a Jutland girl in my bed.”

  “In your bed?”

  “Yeah, and I think she’s naked. Have you ever seen a Jutland girl naked? Dear God, man, you’re trembling, you are literally trembling. Listen, listen, here is what you got to do. You go in there quietly and you sit on the edge of the bed and you just watch her. Just watch her face. And when she opens her eyes, you smile at her. Don’t blush or fumble or get scared. Just smile right into her eyes. She smiles back, which she surely will, then you lean down and kiss her on the mouth. Not hard or fast—just slow and light. And let what happens next happen.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You got to. Come on. In. In in in.”

  Adam stood in the bedroom doorway. An oblong of coppery light from somewhere outside fell obliquely across the bed, touching Jytte’s face and her chest beneath the pale bedspread. Beside the bed was a chair, and Adam could see her clothing folded neatly there. A bra, too, hung over the back of the chair. His heart lurched. Jes shoved him lightly and whispered, “Get in there.”

  On watery knees, Adam crossed the bare gray planks of the floor and stood beside the bed. It sat very low off the floor, and he felt he towered over the sleeping girl. This wasn’t right. He looked back over his shoulder. Jes jabbed his index finger downward. “Sit!” he whispered.

  It wasn’t right. She would be so disappointed in him. But he sank to the edge of the bed, not sitting, but on his knees, hypnotized by her pretty, calm face. Her cheekbones were high and luminescent in the coppery light, her jaw strong, her nose, and her skin so clear, so silken, to his eyes. He wanted to reach out and slide his finger down the soft beak of her nose. Bone in the nose, he thought, and remembered the time when Jytte threatened to tickle him. The memory brought a smile to his mouth just as she opened her eyes and looked into his face. Her eyes got big and round and so blue, he was afraid she might scream, but then they settled in recognition, and she returned his smile. There was an understanding in it, an acceptance, and she lifted up a little on her elbow to meet his slowly lowering mouth.

  33. Harald Jaeger

  Jaeger held his breath and slipped his arm from beneath Tatyana’s neck, slid quietly out of her bed. A car passed outside on Griffenfelds Street, its headlights sweeping through the shallow basement windows, across the bed. She looked so very thin and fragile there in the fleeting light.

  His jacket was slung over the back of one of the two chairs in the dining alcove, and he lifted the cell phone from his inner pocket with his left hand. His bandaged finger was throbbing. He looked around for a place where he might call in privacy, without waking her, but there was only this one room, a complex of asbestos-covered whitewashed pipes across the low ceiling, an armchair leaking its stuffing, and a battered drum table in one corner, the dining alcove, a bureau, a scrap of kilim in the center of the gray, stained wall-to-wall. There must be a bathroom.

  He found it behind a curtain, a very narrow, very deep room at the end of which was a white toilet
bowl. The room was so narrow, his shoulders barely cleared the walls. Fear clutched at him as he moved deeper into the length of the room, a sense of being trapped here, no way out but back, and if someone suddenly appeared, charged him … He could not run, could barely turn, his naked back a square target. He dialed Birgitte’s number with the thumb of his left hand while he peed, and it occurred to him he had not used a condom.

  Sweat broke out on his brow. Don’t worry, he thought. She’s okay. She’s clean. She’s not sick. But the image of her naked on the bed reentered his mind, so thin and fragile, her sharp, exposed hip bones. Jesus, he thought with horror, I went down on her! What the fuck is wrong with me!

  Birgitte did not answer. Impulsively, he left a message. “This is Harald. You’ve got to call me,” he rasped into the phone. Then he added, “Did you tell Lars about us yet?” Immediately distressed by his impulsiveness, he clicked off. He had to do something, get dressed, get away.

  As he turned, he glimpsed someone moving up behind him and gasped. Arms circled him, Tatyana’s, long and thin, floating around him. She nestled her cheek against the back of his neck. She was as tall as he, a little taller.

  “You gave me a shock,” he said, trying to turn, to slip past her. But she pressed close to him within the narrow walls, pressed her belly to his. He could feel the blades of her hip bones digging into his own, feel her damp cunt against him, and despite himself, he got stiff. She kissed him with her tongue, then drew back and looked into his eyes.

  “You were calling to your wife, perhaps?” she said.

  “I have no wife.”

  “I am thinking you have someone.”

  “I have no one.”

  A smile turned in the line of her thin lips, in the strange oval of her amber eyes. “You vant perhaps to have me?”

  “I—” His telephone rang. He lifted it to his ear. “This is Harald,” he said.

  A man’s voice replied, “Yeah, this is Lars.”

  Jaeger froze.

  “I called to tell you the answer is yes. Birgitte told me about you. She asked me to tell you to stop calling her, okay? She’s not interested. So go bother your own wife and leave mine alone, okay?”

  Jaeger clicked off. He wondered if Tatyana had heard.

  “I am thinking you have someone,” she said.

  “No. Yes. I did have. It’s over.”

  “I am thinking you should need glass of tea.”

  34. Adam Kampman

  Adam felt taller, stronger. Even lying down. He felt muscles in his arms and legs and back he had never considered before. He lay beside her on Jes’s bed, and she was curled around him, her fingers on his chest, her face close beside his ear, and the world seemed to him new and full of wondrous surprises.

  From the next room, he heard the sound of bottlecaps popping, and Jes appeared, barefoot, carrying three Tuborgs in one hand, their necks laced between his fingers. He wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with black block letters that said, SAME SHIT DIFFERENT DAY.

  “Have a pivo,” he said. “You’ll feel like a new man. Trouble is that new man may want a pivo, too.” He distributed the bottles and sat on the side of the bed where Jytte lay, tapped her hip. “Shove over, make room.”

  “Jes! I’m not dressed.”

  “What else is new?”

  He slipped under the covers and tipped back his bottle for a long pull, eyes looking upward as he drank.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Adam demanded.

  “Aren’t we friends?” Jes smiled into Jytte’s face. “Aren’t we all friends?” He kissed her lips lightly.

  “Girls from Jutland don’t do this,” she said. She was smiling, too.

  “I think girls from Jutland don’t have rules. I think girls from Jutland make rules.” He flipped back the top of the covers and looked at her breasts. She lifted her chin, met his gaze, her smile proud. Jes’s fingers rose to one nipple and circled it reverently. “So beautiful. Adam, have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Without waiting for an answer, he lowered his face to the nipple. Jytte sighed—that same sigh Adam had heard earlier, so long ago, from the other room. But now he was here. Her eyes found his, smiling, inviting, enjoying revealing to him the pleasure she was experiencing, and he leaned down to the other breast.

  She crooked one arm around each of their necks as they curled around her.

  “Hey, man,” said Jes, “it’s like Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf who suckled them. No, you’re Beatrice. You’re our bel viso. Beautiful vision.”

  Adam raised his face. His eyes were wild, his chest heaving.

  “You’re all fucked up,” Jes said, and Jytte giggled.

  “God,” he whispered, “God, I’m so hot!” and his face moved down her belly over the little paunch, toward the golden fleece, and her thighs clamped lightly around his ears as he heard Jes’s words, muffled from above: “Welcome to the vita nuova, pardners.”

  Saturday

  Fuck You, Dad

  35. Adam Kampman

  Adam’s father and mother played golf on Saturday mornings. They took the BMW and drove the twins to his mother’s parents on their way to the course. Jytte had the weekend off. They were always out of the house by eight A.M.

  Despite the fact that Adam had not been home all night, he had little doubt that they would follow their routine. As they always did, no matter what. The end is here, but golf goes on! The only thing that kept them from their golf Saturdays was heavy rain, ice, or snow, and today the sun was blinding white, low on the horizon, pools of light in every hollow of the roads and sidewalks, tree branches with their sparse, wizened leaves limned silver.

  Adam approached the house with caution, stood behind the trunk of an oak on the other side of the street. One half of the garage door was up, the side his father always used to park the Beamer. Still, he watched the house. There was no movement through the long row of leaded-glass front windows, no sound from the back garden. All was as usual. Routine.

  He stepped up the walk between the poplars, slid his key into the front door, and opened it a crack, waited, listening. There was no sound. He let himself in and shut the door carefully behind him, stood still in the foyer for a moment, head cocked. Nothing.

  In his room, he took the blue canvas suitcase from the top of the armoire, zipped it open, and laid it out on the bed. He packed his favorite jackets and slacks directly on their hangers, emptied drawers of folded underwear and rolled socks, folded shirts, an extra pair of leather shoes, runners, two sweaters, his alarm clock. He decided to leave his CDs. They all seemed dated.

  As he stood considering whether to take a couple of neckties, he heard a sound behind him and spun to see his father there.

  “I thought you were playing golf!” Adam yelped.

  His father smiled. “Obviously.” The smile was the kind he wore if he beat you at ping-pong or Monopoly. He nodded toward the suitcase. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a suitcase, Dad.”

  “Ah-ha. And I notice it’s packed. You plan on going somewhere, do you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll send you a postcard.”

  “I think I’d like to know now, son.”

  “Fuck you, Dad.” Adam hadn’t known he would say that. But now it was said. He zipped the suitcase shut and looped the strap over his shoulder. “Please get out of the doorway, Dad.”

  “When I get a reasonable explanation. You’re off the track, son.”

  “Fuck the track.”

  “Put the suitcase down. Sit down. And we’ll talk. Then we’ll see.”

  “Fuck you, Dad!”

  “That the best you can do to explain yourself? Your vocabulary used to be much better than that.”

  “I don’t have to explain myself.”

  “Oh yes, you do. We all have to explain ourselves sometime or another, and this is your time. You have to explain yourself to me. Now. So just put the suitcase down. And sit.”

 
Adam glowered at his father. The calm of his voice, of his face, was more infuriating than if he had shouted, scolded. Adam wondered if he was strong enough to shove the man aside, to force his way past him. He couldn’t allow himself to do as he had been told. He could not. If he just headed straight for the door, his father would have to step aside, and once he was past, he could run for it, get out. His father wouldn’t follow him out to the street. He wouldn’t make a scene where the neighbors could see.

  His father lifted his brow. “Put the bag down now, Adam.”

  Adam moved straight toward him, fast. His father sidestepped but caught his wrist and twisted the arm up behind Adam’s back.

  Adam cried out, “Ow!” and he could hear the sob in his own voice. “Dad! What are you doing? Ow!”

  His father shoved the arm up another notch, then suddenly let go. “Now,” he said, and Adam looked into his face. He could see the doubt there, saw that his father doubted what he had done and didn’t know what to do next. For the first time in his life, he saw doubt in his father’s face. He saw it. And he was past him.

  “I fucking hate you,” he whispered, and was in the hall, down the stairs, his father moving fast behind him.

  “If you leave now, Adam, don’t think you can just come back.”

  “Fine!”

  “Get back here!”

  “Fuck you!” He had the front door open now and was out in the air, hurrying down Tonysvej. He could feel the small hard malevolent smile tightened upon his own mouth, but he didn’t dare look back for fear his father might see the tears rolling down his cheeks.

  Monday, Monday

  A Boy Named Isaak

  36. Martin Kampman

  At his desk, Kampman gazed out the window over the botanical garden, sipped a Danish water, and contemplated strategy. Rain streaked the tall narrow windows that lined the outer wall of his office. It had been raining all day, and the sky hung like a marbleized gray ceiling, low over the city. Autumn, and his boy was playing the fool. This was not the season for nonsense. This was the season for completing a shelter and ensuring the larder was full.