Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [86]
“Whiskey? Cognac? Or … ?”
“Just whiskey, straight, thanks.”
He pushed a thick little glass over to me, flung his arms out, irritated.
“Stupid bitch. Well, it’s over now.” Oddly enough, he looked thoroughly happy at the thought. “Are you married, uh … ?”
I hesitated, it was as if he’d been about to say something more. My name, maybe.
“I have a girlfriend.” Yes, I did. The problem was that she’d just gotten a job in Greenland as a social worker. They were badly needed up there. But I needed her too.
“I’m finished with women.” Rützou finally righted the floor vase, and with a simple, delicate operation arranged the dried flowers or whatever they were, took a pillow that for reasons unknown had ended up on a windowsill, and tossed it over on one of the large, plush sofas. I sipped my whiskey, stood over in the window bay, glanced down at the boulevard, the leafless trees. A single car lurched off, moments later a taxi shot by.
“This is a nice place here,” I said, not even trying to hide my sarcasm, “with the theaters and the cafés and the park up the street. Quiet. The perfect place for the perfect solitary life.”
“You think? Well.”
“And it’s only a ten-minute walk to Vesterbro. If a person needs drugs or sex.”
He laughed shortly. Drank. “Are you insinuating that I’m the type who beats off in a booth at the Hawaii Bio?”
“They have booths in there?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Really? Because we were in there together once, Erik.” Short pause, the famous theatrical pause. “After filming a scene.”
Boozily, half-focused, he stared at me.
I swore silently. The words had just jumped out of my mouth. I hadn’t meant to reveal myself, but the situation had gripped me, it was almost like standing on stage again, or in front of the whirring cameras. With a firm grip on the role. But the feeling was short-lived and empty. I drank greedily, as if I could somehow swallow the words back again.
“We were? Sorry, but I know a million people. And vice versa,” he added, not without a certain satisfaction.
I seethed.
“After filming, you say? Are you a soundman or something? Give me a hint …”
“Forget it,” I mumble.
“Okay, let’s forget it. Such are the times, and the people. Forgetful, and I must pee.” He stood up, brushed back his dark mane, more from old habit, I thought, sent me one of his impish smiles, and then I heard his steps dwindling down an apparently endless hallway.
I don’t know. I could have taken off. He was gone a long time. I could have grabbed his Bodil and smashed everything in sight and continued through the double doors into the dining room, I could … Instead I finished off the whiskey and poured another. I spotted a pack of Marlboros on the coffee table, mine were all gone, I fished one out, stuck the pack in my inside pocket; when I thought about how many he had bummed from me in his time, he’d survive …
Finally I heard the thin sound of a toilet flushing far away, a door slamming open, steps approaching. More steps.
I stuck my head out in the long hallway.
“Did you see where I put that idiotic Bodil?” he blustered, from somewhere. The kitchen, I thought.
“Out in the entryway. The hallway.”
“That’s right.”
He tottered out from a doorway, floundered past me, came back.
I sat down in the living room in a wing-back chair, sniffed the whiskey, drank. Could already make out the bottom.
“It could be I do remember you. Faintly. Søren, isn’t it? I remember being out on a drinking binge with a soundman once after a shoot. Think we ended up at a hooker bar in Vesterbro.