Beneath the Neon Egg (5 page)

Another, heartier draught of spirits and he proceeds to an article about a freak hailstorm in Dublin. The article includes background research on hail. “Like tumors,” it says, “hailstones come in standard sizes: the size of a pea, a walnut, a golf ball, a pool ball, a baseball, a grapefruit. There are even cases on record of cars totalled by hailstones, of light aircraft whose fabric was torn to rags, of cattle killed out on the open range, leaking their bespattered brains into the ground.” Bluett rereads the last sentence to be certain it actually says that; it does. The Dublin hail had decimated a flock of pigeons on O'Connell Street; a dozen dead birds were found outside the post office.

On the next page he reads an article about the Hale-Bopp comet accompanied by a map with flow arrows showing where it will be visible when. He writes behind his ear (as the Danes say) that it should soon be clearly displayed in the northern sky above the lake here.

He drains his glass. The slushy ice chills his teeth. He calls to the barmaid for another just as the door opens and his friend Sam Finglas floats in.

“Sam!”

The man halts and looks about with his startled blue eyes. He has a dreamy look about him. Then, with a visible reluctance that wounds Bluett, “Hey, Blue,” he says mildly.

“You been over to Christiania smoking some of that hippie hay or something? You look spaced.”

Sam chuckles, and Bluett notices the man's clothes: a Pierre Cardin black glove-leather coat he hasn't seen before, with a padded, leather-trimmed vest under it, black shirt and burnt-sienna silk tie under an elegant bottle-green cashmere sweater. The waitress delivers Bluett's vodka and waits to be paid, eyeing Sam's coat.

“Join me in the sacrament,” Bluett says to his friend.

“Can't, Blue. Got an appointment.”

“An
appointment
? You dog. Is that who you're all cleaned up for?”

Sam grins self-deprecatingly.

“That's a delicious coat,” the barmaid says, her fingers trailing affectionately over the leather on Sam's chest, and Bluett is jealous. He tips her, gets no thanks, says to Sam as she disappears, “Well, what in the hell are you here for if you're not drinking?”

“Just a quick one, then.” He goes to the bar, and Bluett watches him chatting with the girl there. She smiles brilliantly as she takes his money, and he returns with a bottle of snow beer.

Bluett says, “My feel-good shield has suffered a few blows.”

Sam's startled eyes show lack of comprehension. Bluett drops it, though he can't help but wonder about himself in comparison to Sam. “So tell me about this
appointment
.” They raise their glasses, say, “
Skål, slanté, kipis
,” sip. Bluett adds, “
Terviseks
,” an Estonian toast, in honor of the madman who had accosted him in Vesterbro the previous week.

“Just an appointment,” Sam says through a cryptic smile.

“You've gotten lucky. What do you have that I don't? Don't answer. Other than that fantastic coat? Be careful. Your brothers'll hit you on the head and throw you in a ditch.”

Sam takes a long draft of his beer while Bluett sits watching the white snowflakes imprinted on the blue label of the bottle.

Sam lowers his glass, sighs. “Tell you, Blue: this woman rings the bell. Never thought this would happen again. Again? Hell, never happened before. Never really wanted it to. But here it is. Happening. It's like . . . you hold back, you hold back, and suddenly . . .” He shakes his head, baffled.

“You surrender,” Bluett says, thinking he's completing Sam's thought.

The startled eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You surrender. You know, you give in to the, uh, the calling of love. Or some such.”

“Yeah,” Sam breathes. “Yeah, like that.”

Bluett laughs. “You got bit bad, my friend!”

The startled eyes flash, blue glass. “You got something better going?”

Bluett raises his hands. “Hey, no offense, I'm nowhere. I'm jealous.” He thinks again of Benthe and wonders why he doesn't want that. But he doesn't.

Sam's eyes are earnest again. “Listen. You live a life that is all, like, broken up. Compartmentalized. I don't mean
you
, I mean people. Like the Brits say: One. It don't have to be that way.” He sighs, abandoning the enormity of explaining himself.

“You gonna marry the chick or pay her off?”

The eyes flash again, then damp down. “No. Don't know. Hardly really know her to say it like it is. Yet, anyway.” He burps discreetly behind his fist.

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.