Falling Sideways (25 page)
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
Worse still, his idiocy was being backed up by the system. Kampman had been on the phone with Viggo Sand, the filial director at his bank, only to learn that Adam’s access to his account was not only legal but also confidential. Kampman got the information, but only obliquely; it seemed Adam had withdrawn the not yet invested capital—“a certain amount, but only a smaller portion of the account”—and there was no way to keep him from taking the bonds in three months when he turned eighteen. His only recourse was to freeze further deposits, but what was in was in. “Those eggs are scrambled, Kampman, but I wouldn’t panic.”
“I’m not,” said Kampman. “I’m examining the situation. Can I change the access date to when he’s thirty?”
“Sorry. You can only freeze further payments.”
“Well, you do that for me, then.”
The conversation with Adam’s high school principal yielded even less. They could and would release no information on Adam’s status or grades without the boy’s permission.
“But I can tell you that for his first two years your son has the third highest average in his class.”
Kampman wanted to know about the
third
year, about
now
. “Is he attending?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I’m asking you.”
“It would not be correct for me to tell you.”
Kampman was surprised to see his hand trembling when he laid down the telephone receiver again. It offered little consolation, though a certain grim satisfaction, imagining the expression on the face of the alumni fund treasurer when he saw the much reduced figure on his next check to them. And when the treasurer phoned him for an explanation, he would be pleased to give it to him.
He had no idea where to turn now. The boy’s mother hadn’t a clue, either. As far as they knew, Adam had not made a single close friend in his two years at the high school. And no girlfriend.
The face of the au pair surfaced in his thoughts. Jytte. Of course.
It seemed to Kampman that this was something of an exercise in perception management. He was convinced that the girl knew where Adam was. Something about the way they’d been chatting over tea the other night. She was out to get her nails into him, thought she could make her fortune here. But getting the information would be tricky. She was a self-important little tart; he’d get nowhere trying to intimidate her. It would be all about how she perceived his approach. He would be the concerned father appealing to a young woman he had come to respect; then when he had the information, he would offer her a lift home. In the car, she would have her notice. The employment agreement the girl had signed with his wife required them to give her thirty days, which she would receive as a check and no need to meet up again. She would no doubt tell him that she had been hired by his wife and would prefer to hear
this
from her, too.
Feel free to give her a call. She’ll tell you the same thing, though no doubt less directly.
He left the office at six—and still he was the last to leave, he noticed with scowling pleasure, glancing into each office along the hall to the elevator. No, Claus Clausen was just stepping out of the men’s room, buttoning his coat. Kampman’s nod was gauged not to invite chitchat, and they stood silently, side by side, in the elevator car as it descended.
“Good night, Mr. Director.”
Mr. Director. What are you kissing my butt for?
“Night.”
As the Mercedes glided north on Bernstorffs Way, Kampman chatted with the chauffeur.
“Do you have children, Karl?”
“Two sons, Mr. Director.”
Kampman thought he should have known that. And their ages. “How old are they?”
“Twenty-two and twenty-eight. The young one’s in business school, the older one’s a plumber with his own business and two kids of his own.”
“That must be a pleasure.”
“Nothing like it, sir. Those little ones are the jewels of my eyes.”
“Well, sure, but I meant it must be nice that the two boys are all settled in their work.”
Karl glanced back in the rearview mirror. “As they say, Mr. Kampman: Little children, little problems; big children, big ones.”
Kampman chuckled. He watched the back of the man’s neck, ruddy skin crosshatched with wrinkles, his black gray hair curling up in back.
Time for a haircut
, Kampman almost said, annoyed at himself for soliciting succor from his driver.