Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [72]
“He was right here just a few seconds ago.”
The poet snorted and sat back down. Andreas squinted and tried to make out the figures. Most of them melted into the haze. Until he showed up again. Sebastian. There was no mistaking him. It looked as if he had fallen into conversation with some people at one of the tables. Without so much as glancing at the bar he unzipped his jacket, ran his fingers through his hair several times, and seemed to let himself be drawn deeper and deeper into the conversation. Slowly the clouds of smoke enveloped him, blurring him out.
“He’s here,” Andreas said. “I see him.”
“Then what in the world is keeping him?” the novelist said. “You’d think he’s trying to avoid us.”
“He is turning thirty-nine, poor guy,” the man in the checkered shirt said, laughing.
“Yeah, that’s just it,” the poet said, and asked Hannah to turn down the music. “Come on, boys.” He lifted his arms and prepared to conduct. “One, two, three: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Sebastian, happy birthday to you. ”
The three men sang the birthday song at the top of their lungs, and soon the rest of the bar joined in. Except Andreas. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like singing. Actually, he never had.
Sebastian came into sight through the haze. He gazed stiffly at them. Possibly he considered turning and walking off. That would be just like him, to get up and leave, but no, he nodded to the people at the table and shuffled up to the bar. The men kept howling. Louder and louder.
When Sebastian mounted the one available barstool without batting an eyelid, the men fell silent.
“Happy birthday, old boy,” said the man in the checkered shirt, slapping Sebastian on the back.
“Happy birthday,” the novelist said, and poured whiskey into a glass.
“Happy twenty-five.” The poet burst out in loud laughter. The other two joined in, swept up in the moment.
Sebastian didn’t show any response. He laid a hand on Andreas’s shoulder. The hand was slender and cool. Bad circulation, perhaps, or else the raw cold outside had turned the thin pianist-like fingers quite red and stiff. The cold penetrated Andreas’s shirt and raised the hair on his body. In the six months they had known each other, this was the first physical contact they’d had. Maybe the hand on the shoulder was a spontaneous act, to show that he liked Andreas’s writing, or maybe he was just pleased that Andreas hadn’t joined in on the song. Who could know. Sebastian was not often easy to read.
He removed his hand and turned, smiling at Hannah behind the bar. That classic, boyish smile that was always written about in interviews. The perfect rows of chalky white teeth. A true Hollywood smile. The front teeth were broad and a bit longer than average. It was a splendid unit, that set of teeth.
“Happy birthday, Sebastian,” Hannah said with a gleam in her eye. She raised her glass. Andreas noticed that she had color in her cheeks. Sebastian nodded and held his smile. That’s all it took. That’s how easy it was for him.
The man in the checkered shirt pulled out a present and laid it in front of him.
“How touching,” Sebastian said. “It is touching, isn’t it?” Still smiling, he looked at Andreas. “On such close terms with the editor, indeed, indeed.” He began loosening the ribbon. His fingers were still freezing, almost blue. Though it was warm inside. Very warm.
Several women had bare arms and shoulders, and Andreas took his shirt off, which left him wearing only an old, dingy T-shirt with faded-out printing on the chest. I Love New York, it had once said, but now it was unreadable. As far as Andreas knew, Sebastian always kept his outer clothes on. He had never seen him wearing anything other than the Iceland sweater and the blue windbreaker that he always unzipped when he came in the bar and zipped up when he left.
“Would you look at this,” he said, and lifted a small elephant made from dark mahogany out of the box.
“I was thinking it could sit on your desk,” the editor said.
“On my desk, a cute little elephant on my desk, huh?