Beneath the Neon Egg Read online

  Bluett thinks maybe this explains why the barmaid was drawn in. The second law of Bluett: When a man has one woman, other women want him, too. The first law is: No woman wants a womanless man. Hell, when I was married . . ., Bluett thinks and pauses in thought. You were fucking miserable.

  Sam leans closer across the table, speaks softly. “She is wild. She wants to do it all. She really wants it. And she’s fun. And my god is she beautiful!”

  I’ll be the judge of that, Bluett thinks. “Who is she?”

  “She’s Russian. A blonde, blonde Russian. Funny, I used to read Russian lit in college, loved it. Jesus. Dostoyevsky. Turgenev. Tolstoy. Chekhov. And of course Nabokov. Hell, it’s like this was ordained, awaiting me somehow. And now I got the woman, I’m not interested in the books. Look, I’m what? Seven–eight years older than you, Blue? My age, never thought it could be like this.”

  “So, you gonna marry her?”

  He shrugs. “When Karine and I split. All that, that, that mess. No. Don’t want it no more. See people get divorced, then marry again. Come on, get real, you know? You been through it now too, you must know what I mean. A harpy ex. The confused kids.”

  “My kids are okay,” Bluett says. “Took some time, but . . .”

  “So you’re the exception. But you know, when I want to be with her, I call, she says, come on overrr, with those sexy rolling Ruski r’s. I mean, I visit her . . .” He hesitates, looks embarrassed to say what he is about to say, but is clearly too eager to share it. “I go over, she lets me in . . .” His voice lowers. “She kneels down and takes off my fuckin’ shoes, man! I mean this woman is beautiful, and she’s young, and she kneels down and takes off my shoes! And . . .” He wants to tell more, Bluett can see, but drinks some beer instead, and Bluett can see that he is not going to get the rest of it. “She understands me. She’s a genius,” he adds suddenly. “An emotional genius. It’s like she knows me, you know, like no one ever has . . .” He stops, as though he has suddenly heard himself gushing and feels embarrassed.

  “Is she bright like in the brain as well as the heart? Is she wise as she is fair?”

  “Wisdom of the pussy, Blue,” he says and looks surprised at himself for saying it, but goes on. “Wish I could crawl in and die there. I would light a candle to her cunt and worship it.”

  “Is this love or a hard-on? Not that anything’s wrong with a stiff. I presume you didn’t mean literally die.”

  Sam’s eyes look as though they’re someplace else, seeing something else.

  “She just knows me.”

  “Sounds like maybe she’s in love with you, Sam. Isn’t she gonna want more?”

  “That’s the thing. She says, however I want it. She wants it that way, too.”

  “Aren’t, uh, East European women usually a little more, I don’t know, down to earth, materialism wise?”

  “Not this one, buddy.”

  Bluett fills his mouth with vodka, lets it chill his tongue before he swallows. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, but I’ve also learned a couple things. One is when a woman wants to give me that much it’s because, regardless what she says, she either loves me, with all the implications and expectations that involves, or she wants something out of me. Or both. Maybe one and the same.” Bluett tries to think a little more about what he is trying to say, but what had seemed very clear when he began suddenly blurs in his mind. He wonders what he is talking about. Is he jealous and trying to bring Sam down? Or what? He feels embarrassed at having said so much, asked questions. He thinks again of telling Sam about Benthe, the threesome, but he realizes abruptly that the reason he doesn’t tell is because he just plain didn’t enjoy it. It was pretense. Like with Francesca.

  He sips his vodka, decides to turn it all into a joke. “It’s like the old Japanese proverb, Sam. If you want to keep a woman, make her pay. A woman will never leave you while you owe her something.”

  Sam just nods, lost in his own thoughts. He says, “I met her at a party.” He lowers his voice again. “Dancing with her, right? We just met, talked a little. Clearly fucking hitting it off, right? So I ask her to dance a slow one, Smokey Robinson, and her lips are up against my ear, warm breath, and whispers . . .” He looks right and left, behind him, leans closer. “‘I vant to suck your cock.’” Sam’s face is alight. “Just like that: I vant to suck your cock!”

  “Hey, take it easy, man, you’re gettin’ me excited, slow down, no, where do you find parties where you meet women like that, huh? Where?” But all the while he is play-acting to be kind to Sam and thinking about Benthe and wondering.

  Sam is chuckling as he lifts his glass, drains off the rest of his beer. “Woman ever say a thing like that to you?”

  “Yeah, once, a hooker.” He sees hurt in Sam’s eyes and realizes he wanted to cut him down a notch, so he hastens to placate. “No, seriously, Sam, so when do I get to meet her?”

  Sam’s smile slips away. He stares off a little. “This is kind of separate like. Separate part of my life, you know? For now.”

  “Scared of the competition, huh?”

  The distant eyes turn to Bluett, slowly refocus in a grin. “Eat your liver, boy!” He tips back his glass to let the last drops of beer slide into his mouth, sets it down with a clack. “Got to go.”

  “Hey, watch out for the old ticker, huh?” Bluett says. “And watch you don’t use up all your orgasms. Limited number coming to us, you know. According to the L.O.T.—the Limited Orgasm Theory.”

  Sam is at the door, buttoning his fancy leather coat, a merry smile beneath his startled blue eyes. He lifts his left hand like Hitler, and cold air sweeps in as he departs.

  Bluett watches him move quickly up to Queen Louise’s Bridge, toward the city center. Then he sits looking at the white snowflakes on the blue label of the empty beer bottle. He looks into his glass. The ice is slush, a finger left. He glances out at the lake again, glimpses Sam’s head bobbing along above the bridge wall, looks across the dark sweep of ice to the lights on the other side. And he realizes why he doesn’t want Benthe: because when he got to know her, he realized he couldn’t love her. The chemistry was not right. She was too . . . Abruptly he realizes he doesn’t have to understand it. It simply is how he feels.

  Behind the bar, the girl leans on her elbows, staring at a glass of water.

  “Dead tonight, huh?” he says.

  She lifts her eyes to him, lifts her brow, says nothing.

  Would a kind word kill ya? Bluet spills the rest of the vodka down his throat, goes to the gent’s. He studies himself in the mirror over the sink. His once grand lambskin coat has gone a bit shabby, scuffed up, missing a button, some loose threads hanging from the seam. He looks at his Marimekko shirt, notices its collar-lapels are washed out, and at his tie and sweater, his winter-gray face, wonders what he wants, considers taking on some more translation jobs, maybe buy some new clothes, attend some translator conferences, meet some new people. Maybe he should put an ad in the papers, personal. Saying what?

  Man, white, advanced youth, divorced, children, has no idea

  what he wants, seeks great-looking, bright, like-minded woman,

  object unknown, but chemistry must be right.

  He considers going home to read a book, or to watch a video—maybe get out all the movies Bernard Herrmann did the music for, The Wrong Man, Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Psycho, Fahrenheit 451, Taxi Driver . . . He shakes his head, winks at himself in the mirror, polishes his glasses—he wants to have fun tonight!—steps out, crosses to the door, raising his arm to the barmaid. “Hej hej,” he calls out.

  “Hej hej,” she replies, but somehow it sounds more like Fuck off, jerk. Chemistry wasn’t right.

  At Kruts Karport, he eats a bowl of chili, and he feels okay, studies the green row of absinthe bottles behind the bar, 136 proof, resists the urge, orders a glass of wine. He looks into a local newspaper to avoid looking at the tables full of beery youngsters in sweaters and leather jeans, grinning and pawing each other.
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  Then he is surreptitiously watching a man alone at a corner table, perhaps a dozen years his senior, Sam’s age maybe, little older, drinking a pint of beer. The man lights a cigar, and from a satchel on the table removes a book and begins to read. Bluett cranes discreetly to see the title. Finnegans Wake. Considers calling across to the man, but what? Something about James Joyce. Then the door opens, a woman in a long green woolen coat enters, eyes the green of her coat and smile so light. She crosses to the man, who looks up just in time to receive a kiss on his mouth from her pretty lips. They appear to be about the same age, couple of notches short of sixty maybe, but still youthful, like where Bluett wants to be at their age, and the way their eyes meet, their smiles, touches pleasurable yearning in Bluett. Could happen to you. That old chemistry.

  Relieved he hadn’t spoken to the man, he has another glass of wine, tips the charming, pretty, round-faced young waitress whose name, he happens to know, is Cirkeline and who rewards him with a smile meant for him only. He pastes it to his feel-good shield and sets off past Silver Square to Nørreport, down Fiolstræde, past the university, the cathedral, behind which people queue at a yellow-lit sausage wagon on the dark street to eat steaming pølser with their cold bare fingers. Through Jorck’s Passage, he takes a left on Strøget and cuts across alongside the Round Tower, looks into Café Rex—and remembers a British woman he met there once who invited him home to her tiny apartment into which was crammed a white baby grand piano and who allowed him to undress her to her white lace garters, which, when he saw them, instantly caused him to go down on her. He strolls along Pilegården, continues down to the Palæ Bar on New Nobility Street, stands on the dark sidewalk, looking into the bright window at the crowded tables, decides to save that for later, doubles back for a peek into the Bo-Bi Bar.

  Across the half-filled bar room, he spots a familiar face at the back table, two familiar faces. An American translator and an Irish book salesman. The Irishman waves him over. Dermot Cleary, with a face full of whisky veins, map of Ireland on his nose. Bluett notes they are drinking Black Gold beer and Gammel Dansk bitters, orders a round and three hard-boiled eggs on his way back to them. Dermot has channeled a series of lucrative contracts his way in the past couple of years and Bluett feels he owes him.

  Watching their fingers fumble at the brown bits of eggshell, Bluett sees they are a few rounds up on him, reminds himself Dermot has supplied a good deal of his business in the past year. He wonders if the American resents Dermot’s generosity to Bluett. He is a southern Californian who jumped ship and made his way to Sweden during the sixties to beat a tour in Vietnam, then moved to Denmark, which is a NATO member, previously off limits, when Jimmy Carter let all ship-jumpers off the hook. But the American—Milt Sever—is listening raptly to the story Dermot is telling about a Danish poet who has just returned from Brazil where, Dermot reports, the writer has reported to him in considerable detail that he had paid children to have sex with him.

  Bluett cracks his egg on the edge of the table and rolls it between his palms, peels away the shell in one crackling sheet, pinches on finger salt from a stone bowl on the table.

  “You wouldn’t actually consider such a thing yourself, would you, Dermot?” he hears himself ask and regrets being there.

  Dermot blushes, clearly surprised. “I but tell the tale that I heard told,” he says and looks at Milt Sever. “What about yourself, Milt? Would you ever consider such a thing yourself?”

  Milt’s smile is buttery. He is a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired man. He clearly enjoys looking at Bluett in light of what he is about to say. “Well, now, I’m sure I would hate myself in the morning, but . . .” He shrugs serenely. Bluett is surprised to find himself having to resist the urge to take a swing at the smug mouth, realizes he would probably miss or be blocked and find himself engaged in a humiliating and ridiculous tussle, realizes he is in danger of screwing himself out of money, a lot of money, and hears himself say, “Well, I think a man ought to burn in hell’s river of boiling blood for a thing like that.” He holds his breath.

  “You’re an honorable fellow,” says Dermot, and Bluett starts calculating an exit that might cut his losses.

  But Milt is not finished with him. “Have you seen Andreas Fritzsen’s new novel?” Fritzsen is a Danish-Anglo writer living and teaching in Denmark, a novelist who makes his living in the university. Bluett has read the first chapter of the man’s new novel in some literary journal. It is about the brief legality of child pornography in Denmark in the late sixties and early seventies and it includes a scene in which an adult male engineers penetration with a ten-year-old child which, when Bluett read it, had inspired him to write a letter expressing distaste to Politiken. Bluett’s letter had evoked a surprising response from people who called upon the immortal beauty of Nabokov, Genet, and others in defense of sexual love between children and adults, all of which makes Bluett realize he has walked into a trap here. He begins to prepare an argument against the stance that Humbert truly loved Lolita by pointing out that Humbert extorts sexual favors from the child in return for her allowance, but in that direction lies rage and loss of income.

  He shrugs, raises his Gammel Dansk, says, “Gentlemen. I drink to your very good health,” swallows, chases it with Carlsberg draft, and as he retreats from the Bo-Bi Bar, wonders whether he has ruined his economic stability. First Benthe, now Dermot.

  Human beings, he thinks, are not to traffic with. And where does that leave me?

  Moving toward Kongens Nytorv, he refuses to think about these people, takes a long loop behind the Royal Theater to see if there are any attractive joints back there. He notices then, just across from the New Scene, on the edge of the square, a scooped-away corner with a door on which is mounted a brass plate that says,

  SATIN CLUB

  10:00 P.M. TO 4:00 A.M.

  RING BELL.

  He stares, wondering, crosses the square, past the French Embassy to Nyhavn. Your problem, he thinks, as he climbs down the steps into the half-basement of the Mermaid Bar, is a classic one: Lackanookie. Well, not exactly lackanookie, but lackalove-nookie. Forget these provincial fools. Have fun until you meet someone who has the chemistry.

  Here he continues with beer, orders a pint of draft lager and sits on a stool at one of the high drum tables. The place is filling up. A fiftyish Scot in the middle of the room strums a guitar and sings “The Streets of London,” as Bluett surveys the joint. No familiar faces.

  The Scot takes a break, and an Italian kid comes on who is much smoother. He sings some Simon and Garfunkel, Elton John—“Benny and the Jets,” a favorite of Bluett’s. The first pint goes down fast, and halfway through his second, the bar continues to fill nicely. The pleasure of a crowded bar is that it forces contact. Three women join him at his drum table. Look like office girls maybe. He likes the blonde. They chat a bit in Danish. She asks him about his accent, asks how an American speaks such good Danish. He tells her she’s too kind, explains his ex-wife was Danish, the key word being ex, his ringless fingers resting on the table. He buys a round. More people come in, forcing them closer together. She lights a cigarette. “Is it okay I am smoking near you?”

  “Sure,” he says, wishing he were upwind.

  The Italian kid is singing “Nothing’s gonna change my world” and doing a fair job of it. Bluett studies the blonde woman’s face. She is maybe thirty-two, very full-lipped with a bright smile and light eyes. Her lips are rouged pink and he cannot take his eyes off them. They talk about films, music. She buys a round. Nice habit for a woman. She tells him that she lives in Albertslund.

  Shit.

  She glances at her watch. He guesses that she’s thinking about the train schedule. Her girlfriends have moved to another table. Her name is Birgitte. The last time he looked at his watch it was nearly eleven p.m. Their glasses are full again, and he is shoulder to shoulder with her, the wall behind them, staring into her light, bright eyes. He kisses her full pink lips, tastes her tongue. Then she kis
ses him. Kisses and smiles in the dim smoky light, hands touching. Soft lips. Soft. And she surprises him by sucking on his tongue. Quite briskly. The Italian kid takes a break and the Scot comes on again with “The Streets of London.” The girlfriends are back, and Birgitte has to go, to get the train. She writes her name and phone number on a coaster, which he slips into his pocket. She gives him a last lingering tongue kiss to catch his attention, stands for a moment pressing her breasts against his arm, smiling at him, then she waves good-bye with a cute tiny circular movement of her palm.

  Bluett sits there watching a snow-beer poster above the taps. The white flakes really seem to be falling down the night-blue background. He watches, hypnotized, realizes he is getting sloshed and likes it. It occurs to him once again that love is a chemical. Incredible but true. His beer is nearly empty. The Scot seems to believe that he is the vicar of Roger Whittaker in Copenhagen. Bluett takes the coaster out of his pocket, reads what she has printed there. Birgitte Svane. Svane means swan in Danish, he thinks. Maybe she and I would give birth to Helen. She had told him she was a bookkeeper at the electric works near Nørreport. She had a two-year-old daughter named Astrid. Sweet name. A little girl. Bluett has nothing against little kids. Likes them. But Albertslund. The chemistry was good but the geography was way off.

  Bluett has been to Albertslund two times in his life, the first and the last. Middle of nowhere. If hell was absence, as Thomas Aquinas or some such philosopher suggested, Albertslund was a good candidate for hell. Nothing. Nowhere. He had suggested she stay the night with him, here, which was possibly some kind of somewhere, a lesser hell at least, and she had smiled, as if to consider it for a moment, then had said, “Call me.”

  Nice answer.

  But I will never visit you in Albertslund. Ever.

  The Scot sings “The Streets of London” yet again. Bluett wonders if the man is having a nervous breakdown. Two American women sit at the table beside his, drinking dark beer.