The Lover From an Icy Sea (12 page)

As Daneka luxuriated in the sensation of having Kit inside her, and for the few, brief seconds in which they would continue in this state of complete immobility, she involuntarily and without reflection whispered a single monosyllable into his ear, yet drew it out as a virtuoso cellist might draw out a single note with his expert bow: “Ja,” she breathed.

It was the first Danish word Kit would learn—and the only one he would never forget.

*  *  *

Most likely, they both started to twitch simultaneously—although neither of them was in the least distressed by the other’s apparent sense of impatience with their previous state of suspension. After a period of somewhat less than a minute, a natural rhythm started between them. It took only seconds more before they both realized, without the need to acknowledge it one to the other, that both their fit and their individual rhythms in intercourse were perfectly complementary. Consequently, it was not all that many more seconds before both reached a climax in which, had one been notably stronger-boned or the other notably weaker-boned, one of the two might have been hurt.

They then collapsed together in a complete and unmolested calm.

Chapter 15

It was only minutes later that Kit, perhaps because of the state of near-ecstatic oblivion into which they’d slipped, noticed their position on the lake. Their boat had drifted out of sight and out of earshot of all but the most determined of voyeurs, had there been any around whose obsession might carry them to the brink of discovery and humiliation. The boat had come to rest under a natural bower of dense, leafy green—a copse of willows, Kit thought, as the sad susurration of bright green leaves and slender catkins now called up something in him he could only vaguely identify as portentous.

It made no sense—this seed of a doubt—particularly now, when they’d finally concluded what Kit could only think of as a mad chase, a game of emotional tag in which one would pause in the other’s presence just long enough to touch and run again. It wasn’t the conquest he savored as he glanced down at Daneka, who appeared to be fast asleep; rather, it was the fact of their perfect communion. In all the years and all the sex with all partners he’d ever had, no woman had ever taken hold of him like this one.

Kit kept one arm beneath her neck, but moved off and to the side of her as carefully as if he were cradling an infant. He let his gaze wander reverently over her body, starting from her toes and working up to her ankles, her knees, her thighs, her pubis, her stomach, her breasts, her arms and shoulders, her neck, and finally her face. Kit had slept with many beautiful women—with women whose bodies were in every conventional sense as close to perfect as humans in the fickle world of fashion might be defined. And yet….

Daneka’s body was far from any such ideal, and Kit’s professional eye wouldn’t allow him to pretend otherwise. Whatever nutritional and hygienic privilege she had profited from, however favorable her genetic endowment, however much money or science she’d been able to apply, age and gravity were doing their inexorable work. They would never relinquish their day-to-day, hour-to-hour labor of pulling the body towards the grave.

She was probably not more than a decade older than he, and yet that decade of difference was the crucial midpoint in a physical career in which he was still gaining, while she was already losing, even if her wane was only barely perceptible—and then, only to his trained photographer’s eye. And yet, he didn’t care. If she’d allow it, this was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. This was the human being he would gladly nurse through old age, and upon whose death he, too, would gladly expire. This was the one mortal in whose coil he would, for as long or as short as earthly existence might ultimately prove to be, happily lose his own. As much as he might deplore the hackneyed sound of it, Kit realized in this instant he’d found his soul mate.

And yet, this seed of doubt wouldn’t allow him the thrill of his discovery without misgiving. Something nagged at him. Something stuck in his brain like a hook and wouldn’t let go. Was it just his self-doubt, or was there a mystery to this woman that he’d discover only over time, if at all?

His eyes left Daneka and looked up. Their boat had drifted, though he hadn’t even registered the movement in his reverie. They were once again moving out towards the middle of the lake, and Kit could feel just the hint of a summer breeze as it pushed them further away from the bank. Daneka shuddered. With his free arm, Kit made an effort to cover her naked body against the chill, but the effort awakened her, and she abruptly sat up.

“
Where—? What are we—?” As she became fully conscious first of Kit’s presence, then of her state of undress, the expression of quiet bliss that Daneka had carried in her sleep turned rapidly into one of business, then of annoyance, and finally of scorn. Kit didn’t know whether that scorn was directed at him or at herself. He didn’t have time to find out.

“
Take me back, please,” she ordered.

Kit looked at her as if he were suddenly face to face with a stranger—as if what they’d concluded only half an hour earlier had taken place elsewhere, many miles away from this boat and this lake. Could she have forgotten already? Or worse, could she have been transported into some other consciousness in which none of this had even registered?

He was at once frightened and humiliated.

“
Back to what?” he asked. He—and then she—could see at a glance that the Boathouse was closed and that no one was still milling about. The restaurant was entirely dark but for one low beam emanating from what Kit supposed was the kitchen, hence probably an overnight light to discourage burglars and vagrants. Their surroundings, too, were entirely dark except for street lamps burning at intervals of twenty-five yards along the road leading through the park from the entrance at Central Park South and Seventh Avenue, on past the restaurant, and then back up and out through Cedar Hill.

“
Back to what?” he repeated. “You can’t walk out of here now—not at this hour, not alone.”

Daneka dismissed him with a look of disdain. “I know what I’m doing. Take me back to the restaurant,” she commanded again.

As Kit picked up and set the oars in order to row the two of them back to the Boathouse, Daneka rearranged her dress to conceal what only moments earlier had been fully exposed to him and to any one who cared to look. In a matter of a few, quick hand movements, she was once again covered and presentable, and no one except Kit—though even he was beginning to wonder—could have guessed that this staid couple had undertaken anything more exotic than a quiet moonlit cruise in order to escape the bustle of the restaurant.

They rowed to the dock in silence. Once there, Kit stood up to lend Daneka a hand in getting out of the rowboat. She ignored his offer, stepped out unaided, and proceeded up through the terrace and out towards the restaurant entrance.

“
Wait!” Kit shouted after her.

Daneka’s only acknowledgement of his command was a half-hearted wave back over her shoulder. She didn’t turn; she didn’t pause; she simply lifted her hand, rotated her wrist, and let her fingers drop to her palm. Once. As she made her way along the brick walkway leading from the restaurant to the street, a limousine appeared out of nowhere and stopped at the curb. Kit recognized it immediately, even at a distance. He also recognized the driver, who opened his door and got out just as Daneka was approaching the end of the walkway, then opened the rear door of the car to let her in. He closed her door almost soundlessly, climbed back into the front seat, closed his door just as soundlessly, and slowly pulled away from the curb.

But for the steady glow of the streetlamps, Kit’s view was presently limited to two red taillights pulling off into the darkness and then vanishing around the bend in the park road. Unknown to him, Daneka had issued only a one-word command to her driver as soon as he’d put the car into gear and glanced up into his rearview mirror for directions.

“
Downtown,” she’d said.

At this hour, he didn’t need to ask which side of downtown.

Chapter 16

It was past midnight when Kit came up out of the subway at Eighth Street and Broadway. Though the end of a workweek, weariness didn’t dampen the spirit or energy of any of the sidewalk revelers on the street. Quite to the contrary. In the city that mythically never sleeps, this much could be said about the East Village: however many thousands of nightlights might be turning out at this very moment sixty, seventy or eighty blocks to the north, no windows were going dark here just yet.

When Kit finally reached his apartment building, he found two young men and an even younger woman sitting on the stoop. He excused himself as he nodded, indicating that he wished to get past them and up to the front door. The men returned blank stares as if they either couldn’t fathom what he might want, or resented his intrusion into their space. The woman, however, stood up and stepped aside, clearing the way for Kit to ascend. At the same time, she gave him a smile that suggested she might be persuaded to join him if he were prepared to give her even half a smile in return. Kit smiled back, but it was not an invitation. Rather, his was a smile of simple gratitude that she’d chosen courtesy over confrontation. As he made his way past the two men and reached the step on which the woman was standing, he leaned down slightly and whispered “Thanks!” into an assortment of metallic baubles nesting comfortably on her ear. He felt suddenly old—until, that is, she quickly turned her face towards his, looked into his eyes, brought her arm up and ran an index finger and black lacquered fingernail the length of his jaw from ear to chin.

“
Any time,” she said, and flashed a set of perfectly straight white teeth that belied the condition of Gothic decadence she might otherwise have liked to convey with her make-up, wardrobe and collection of metal jewelry.

That which we call a woman by any other name would smell as sweet, Kit thought to himself as he inserted his key into the front door and stepped through, chuckling at his own trivial paraphrasing of Shakespeare, yet also grateful for the truth of it.

He bounded up five flights of stairs to his apartment, moved by a force he couldn’t yet understand, but knowing at least that he needed something, some answer, some clue—and that maybe he could find that clue if he looked in the right place. He put his gear away; went to the refrigerator for a beer; popped it open; took out a Lucky and lit it up; then leaned back against the kitchen counter to think.

In a moment, it came to him. He sat down at his computer and logged on. He thought he might find something through Google, some possible roadmap perhaps, and typed in her name. What he retrieved in a matter of seconds was several thousand listings. He scrolled down the first page, then the second, and indeed all of the English-language entries were clearly about this Daneka Sørensen. The same name appeared as the subject—or at least as part of the article—in a number of Danish-language entries as well, but Kit couldn’t even begin to decipher the subject matter of any of them. He opened a couple of the English-language entries and learned that she was the Managing Editor of a well-known fashion magazine; was on the board of a number of other publishing companies; that she served as a senior member of several industry-related organizations. Busy girl, Kit thought to himself and wondered if this fact might have something to do with the distance she now apparently wanted to keep from him.

He quickly dispelled that thought, however, as a non-starter. Sport fucking was not something a woman in Daneka’s position would have risked. Moreover, there’d been a moment that evening when he was certain he was more than sheer amusement to her. It had been a fleeting moment, but it was there—and he was absolutely certain of it and of his own not insignificant part in it.

He decided to try a different tack, combining “Sørensen” and “Rønne”—her birthplace and the location of her childhood as he’d learned only this same evening—to see what the combination might yield. This second attempt at Google got him half a dozen entries, but they were all in Danish. There were, in fact, several entries for “Sørensen,” but only a couple that combined that same last name with “Daneka.” He found something that looked official—possibly a government document—and was able to identify what looked to him to be a date of birth. It also placed the last-known residence of this particular Daneka Sørensen as New York, and the date of her arrival in the U. S. as a little over two decades earlier. Kit was fairly certain he was looking at data that corresponded to his Daneka Sørensen.

There was a name and date of birth for someone, Kit decided, who would likely be her mother: “Dagmar,” née “Kristiansen,” apparently still alive and well in Rønne. Next to the entry for father was the name “Poul Urik Sørensen,” deceased, with a day, month and year of death. Kit made a quick calculation and arrived at the astonishing conclusion that Daneka’s father would have died at the age of only thirty-five. He then looked again at Daneka’s date of birth, made a second quick calculation, and realized she would have been a mere kid—sixteen, in fact—when her father’s death occurred.

While there might be some perfectly natural cause for this, Kit couldn’t figure it out. He decided to move the document to AltaVista for a Babel Fish translation, where he copied it into the appropriate pop-up screen and settled back for the result.