Falling Sideways (11 page)

And then he slumped, wiped his hand on the sheet, disgusted with himself.

That’s all it was. Those few moments. Then the gloom. Disgust. Here in his bed. In this room. This cage. As his time alone, his little eternity, evaporated. He checked his watch on the night table. Seven. Half an hour left. At best.

He threw back the covers and rose, went to his computer to check his e-mail. There they were again:
Virgin pussies first-time sex. Tiny girls huge cocks. Hot young pussy girls. Horny ebony teens waiting for you. Dirty sluts on film. Add inches to your cock now. Girls giving head to strangers. I need to feel a huge cock. Hi, watch me suck cum out of his cock. Produce stronger rock hard erection. Cum-covered girls. Nasty cum sluts. We like it up the butt. Doctor-approved instrument enlarges your penis. Need a stool softener? Adam K: Want a big penis?

They even had his name! One by one he deleted them, then deleted his delete box. He was convinced that the reason he received this porn spam was that one day he had discovered there were sites on the Web that contained all manner of interesting things and he spent several hours with them. Then, by a fluke, he accidentally hit some combination of keys whose function he did not understand, and a list of the sites he had visited appeared on the screen. They were recorded there. He had left fingerprints. Anyone—his father, his mother—could log on and see where he had been. They shared the same server. They could even log on to his e-mail by switching IT identities. So he had the Sisyphus task each morning before school and evening before bed of deleting and then deleting the deletes. He didn’t dare open any of the mails for fear of what kind of trail
that
might leave.

All deletes completed, he sat slump-shouldered before the glowing screen in the still dark room. He felt weary again. The crumpled bedclothes drew him. He crawled back in beneath them, found himself thinking about those magazines again, about the tabloid he had discarded without even reading the pages he had bought it for. The classifieds. All those women offering to sell what he wanted. Some of them even showed addresses. He had seen one with a Holsteingade address:
I got whatever you want, baby, and I know what you want.

He started thinking about Holstein Street then, about the bench, about the man smoking in the doorway and the man in the train station men’s room. Was it the same person? Did he see him take the magazines, watch from behind the windows of that door, follow him? Did he leave those magazines there? Was it a trap? Did he follow him afterward? Could he have followed him all the way home? Was he watching the house?

He turned onto his belly, buried his face in the pillow. Was he going crazy? He remembered then last night in the dark as he lay waiting for sleep he had suddenly felt there was someone in the room with him. Someone standing with his face just in front of him. He thought that all he had to do to dispel the fear was to open his eyes and see that no one was there, but he couldn’t. He didn’t dare. If he opened his eyes and a face was there, peering into his, he feared his heart would explode. He would die. Of fear. Shock. Who could it be? Who did he fear could be there, staring at him? That man?
What’s your name?
Standing back from the urinal. Shaking his penis. Fat.

Then he got it into his head that there were snakes under his bed and that one had coiled and risen over the edge and was staring at him with a red glowing eye but would hurt him only if he opened his eyes to look. He knew it was nonsense, but he was too frightened to open his eyes and end it. What if it didn’t end? What if someone really was there, staring at him? That man. Forcing his penis. Into his mouth. Adam moaned. He was stiff and ashamed of his stiffness. What did it mean?
Am I gay?

There was a tap at the door. His mother. He recognized the way she tapped. With the tips of all her fingers, drumming lightly at the wood.

“Adam!” she called gently. “Honey? Time to get up.”

“I’m sick.”

“What’s wrong, honey? Can I come in?”

“No! Don’t. I’ve got a stomachache. I couldn’t sleep all night.”

“Shall I call the doctor?”

“No. I just have to sleep a little more. I’ll get up later.”

“You’ll miss a class.”

“The first two classes are canceled.”

Silence. Then: “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, of course I’m sure!”

“Well … Okay, then, I’ll ask Jytte to wake you at nine, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Oh, Adam, honey, would you do me a big favor today and make copies of the house keys for Jytte?”

He groaned.

“It’s important, honey, she needs to have them, and I don’t have time. I’ll lend her mine for today, but she’ll need her own. I’ll leave a note so you remember. And a hundred crowns. You can keep the change, okay? Buy yourself a hamburger and a Coke.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Don’t forget now, honey, okay?”

“I
said
yeah!”

Then peace at last. Another ninety minutes! He closed his eyes and felt the ease again, a little hideaway of time, eternity, drawing him down toward the place of peace. There were dreams this time, good dreams, though he didn’t really experience them, only as some sense of well-being, warmth, so when the knock on the door came, it seemed part of that distant warmth and goodness, and he woke smiling. Until he opened his eyes and saw his room, daylight blurred around the edges of his curtains and the gloomy air pressing down all around him. Missed classes. He’d already missed so many. His average had already fallen to a B. And that man in the men’s room. Shaking it at the urinal. Then he remembered the dream. It was about Jytte. She looked into his face and said,
You’re an old pair in a soft stool.
She was naked, smiling—that dimple—and she was holding a condom that was full of come, which she raised up above her mouth as though she were going to swallow the whole thing, smiling.
Don’t you eat the condoms over here?
she said, and he woke, feeling good. Why would that make him feel good? Was he gay?

Another knock. “Adam?” Again. “Good morning, Adam! You awake?”

Was he gay?

The door opened slowly and Jytte’s pretty face peered in. That smile. Dimple. The room filled with her light. Adam blinked.

“So sleepy,” she said, smiling. She wore a long-sleeved turquoise T-shirt that clung to her breasts and followed the trim line of her shoulders and chest and waist. Her nipples were clearly outlined against the green blue cotton. His penis stiffened.

“Are you awake now, sleepy-John?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

She crouched threateningly, fingers curled into claws, smiling. “You want me to tickle you awake?”

“No!”

His response was angrier than he’d meant it to be, and he was disappointed to see her drop the game at once. She moved closer, and he saw her eyes look at the place in the blanket that had lifted. Could she see? He turned on his side and feared that had only given him away all the more. Her smile was owlish. She seemed about to speak when there was a crash down the hall and one of the twins hollered, “You stole my phone!”

“Did
not
!”

“Did
so
!”

There was the sound of thumping footsteps followed by thumping footsteps in pursuit and a scream of terror, and Jytte was out the door with a flash of her butt and long legs in tight beige jeans.

Adam could hear her out in the hall reasoning gently with the twins while he squeezed his stiff prick in agony and began to pump it rapidly.
Come back come back come back and see see see see
see
!

She looked in briefly—“There’s coffee downstairs”—and was gone again, and it seemed to him her blue Jutlandic eyes had taken it all in at a glance, surveyed and registered his hopeless emptiness. How he wished he could tell her how he felt. But he didn’t really know how he felt.
I love her. God, I love her.
But he didn’t trust her, certain things. He loved her dimple. What could you do with a dimple? He could just look at her dimpled face for hours, just look. She was almost a year younger than him, but she seemed older, more sure of herself, her blue gaze so steady and direct when they spoke, and her energetic politeness, her warm eyes and smile, her readiness to laugh and joke. Did she know what she did to him? What would she think if she knew? Once in a while, when she laughed, she opened her mouth wide, and the look on her face, the clumsily rhythmic rise and fall of the laughter, seemed to reveal a profound stupidity concealed behind the lovely country-girl mask of her face. Her
body
!

She was from Tønder. Adam’s mother always hired au pairs from Jutland: “Wanted: Jutland girl with a bone in her nose to care for energetic twins in CEO home in Charlottenlund.” How he hated those expressions: “bone in the nose.” It sounded like one of those porn spams—
Hot Jutland girls with bones in the nose.
And “CEO home in Charlottenlund.” What the fuck is a CEO home supposed to be? Big shot, CEO. Big deal. And who the hell wanted to live in Charlottenlund? Rather live in fucking Albertslund or someplace where the real people lived.

He wiped himself off with the bedclothes and got his robe from the back of the chair, crossed the hall to the bathroom, stood staring at the tub. He pictured sitting there with his knees up to his chest while Jytte sponged his back the way she sponged the twins, pictured her kissing him, him kissing her dimple, the bone in her nose poking into his face. Her nose
was
big, but it was sexy. What did it mean, really? Bone in the nose? Opposite of cotton prick. That’s what
he
was. A cotton prick. That guy in school, in gym class, Sandemark, with his ugly teeth, calling across the basketball court, “Hey, Kampman, you cotton prick!” And the others laughed. Girls, too.

Fuck you, Sandemark, you snaggletoothed fuck!
he should have shot right back at him. But he said nothing. Slunk away.
I’ll punch your ugly snaggled teeth out, Sandemark, you ugly fuck! Come on. You want some of this?
He held his fist up threateningly in front of the bathroom mirror.

But what if he couldn’t follow through? Or worse. What if he went too far? Really hurt the guy?
Why did you do that, Kampman?

Because he called me a dirty name.

That doesn’t give you the right to hit him. And certainly not to hurt him so badly. We’ll have to report this to the police. You might go to jail. And you know what the older men do to the young boys in jail. Maybe that’s what you like.

Fuck you! I don’t!
It wasn’t fair.

Once, at the end of gym class, in the showers, Sandemark and some of the others grabbed that tall skinny awkward kid Hansen, and they hung him naked over the walls of a toilet cubicle and dunked his head into the toilet bowl. And everybody laughed. No one stuck up for him. Afterward, the story got out around the school and people snickered every time Hansen came down the hall, so gawkish, even girls laughed, whispering with their pretty mouths to one another what had been done to Hansen. And one of them called out, “What is that shampoo you’re using, Hansen?” and they giggled, the bitches. Put his head in the fucking toilet, those bastards!

Adam pictured himself barging in on the scene, kicking Sandemark right in the balls so he doubled over, groaning, while Adam elbowed the others away and caught hold of Hansen, lowered him gently to the floor, helped him up, and gave him a towel to cover himself with.
Want me to kick their asses for them, Hansen?

Dogs. Pack of dogs. Boys will be boys. Just a prank. Innocent prank. Don’t be so sensitive, Adam.
Sensitive! They stuck his fucking head in the fucking toilet bowl! How’d you like them to do that to you! Would that be so fucking funny!

Boys will be dogs. Pack of fucking dogs. Like those American soldiers in Iraq. Women, too! Stripping prisoners and making them touch themselves, humiliating them. Stacking them up naked in a pile and that woman soldier there smiling and pointing at them! And she was pregnant, too!

He became aware of himself then, leaned over the sink, gripping the edges and staring at his own face in the mirror, gritting his teeth.

“Adam?” Jytte outside the bathroom door. “Are you okay? Your mom said you were feeling sick.”

“I’m okay.”

“Want me to come in and help you?”

Teasing voice. Was she mocking him? “No!”

“Well, you want some breakfast before you go to school?”

“No!”

“Well, excuse me! And don’t forget your mother left a note for you to get some keys!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He was too tired to shower, too tired to brush his teeth. He cupped his hand under the cold tap and rinsed his mouth, splashed his face and the back of his neck, rolled a stick of Odorono beneath his arms. Two black hairs clung to the ball of the roll-on, and he stood there staring at them, disgust and futility rising like a tide within him.

13. Jytte Andersen

Along Bernstorffs Way, Jytte walked the twins to their Montessori kindergarten, one on either side of her, holding their hands. They were much easier to manage that way. Hanne, on her left, was a little prettier and a little smarter and a little sweeter than Helle, on her right, who was quick to anger if she thought Hanne was getting more attention. As if Helle already knew she had been shortchanged somehow. Their mother had explained this to Jytte, who felt an immediate sympathy for the unhappy twin.

Not that she was
so
unhappy. Mostly the girls enjoyed each other. But there was that wound of nature, and Jytte understood. She herself, when she was a child, had always been favored over her older sister, Sara, who was very plain, and it had always seemed unfair to Jytte. Sara had never taken it out on her. They had been fiercely devoted to each other. But the older girl developed a dark, sarcastic relationship with the world, and the other kids didn’t like her. They called her “Sara Sarcastic” behind her back or “Sarca” or sometimes “Castic,” which developed to “Casti,” and then they started saying it to her face, too.