Beneath the Neon Egg by Thomas E. Kennedy Read Free Book Online

white, advanced youth, divorced, children, has no idea
    what he wants, seeks great-looking, bright, like-minded woman,
    object unknown, but chemistry must be right.
    He considers going home to read a book, or to watch a video—maybe get out all the movies Bernard Herrmann did the music for, The Wrong Man , Citizen Kane , Vertigo , Psycho , Fahrenheit 451 , Taxi Driver  . . . He shakes his head, winks at himself in the mirror, polishes his glasses—he wants to have fun tonight!—steps out, crosses to the door, raising his arm to the barmaid. “ Hej hej ,” he calls out.
    â€œ Hej hej ,” she replies, but somehow it sounds more like Fuck off, jerk . Chemistry wasn’t right.
    Â 
    At Kruts Karport, he eats a bowl of chili, and he feels okay, studies the green row of absinthe bottles behind the bar, 136 proof, resists the urge, orders a glass of wine. He looks into a local newspaper to avoid looking at the tables full of beery youngsters in sweaters and leather jeans, grinning and pawing each other.
    Then he is surreptitiously watching a man alone at a corner table, perhaps a dozen years his senior, Sam’s age maybe, little older, drinking a pint of beer. The man lights a cigar, and from a satchel on the table removes a book and begins to read. Bluett cranes discreetly to see the title. Finnegans Wake . Considers calling across to the man, but what? Something about James Joyce. Then the door opens, a woman in a long green woolen coat enters, eyes the green of her coat and smile so light. She crosses to the man, who looks up just in time to receive a kiss on his mouth from her pretty lips. They appear to be about the same age, couple of notches short of sixty maybe, but still youthful, like where Bluett wants to be at their age, and the way their eyes meet, their smiles, touches pleasurable yearning in Bluett. Could happen to you. That old chemistry .
    Relieved he hadn’t spoken to the man, he has another glass of wine, tips the charming, pretty, round-faced young waitress whose name, he happens to know, is Cirkeline and who rewards him with a smile meant for him only. He pastes it to his feel-good shield and sets off past Silver Square to Nørreport, down Fiolstræde, past the university, the cathedral, behind which people queue at a yellow-lit sausage wagon on the dark street to eat steaming pølser with their cold bare fingers. Through Jorck’s Passage, he takes a left on Strøget and cuts across alongside the Round Tower, looks into Café Rex—and remembers a British woman he met there once who invited him home to her tiny apartment into which was crammed a white baby grand piano and who allowed him to undress her to her white lace garters, which, when he saw them, instantly caused him to go down on her. He strolls along PilegÃ¥rden, continues down to the Palæ Bar on New Nobility Street, stands on the dark sidewalk, looking into the bright window at the crowded tables, decides to save that for later, doubles back for a peek into the Bo-Bi Bar.
    Across the half-filled bar room, he spots a familiar face at the back table, two familiar faces. An American translator and an Irish book salesman. The Irishman waves him over. Dermot Cleary, with a face full of whisky veins, map of Ireland on his nose. Bluett notes they are drinking Black Gold beer and Gammel Dansk bitters, orders a round and three hard-boiled eggs on his way back to them. Dermot has channeled a series of lucrative contracts his way in the past couple of years and Bluett feels he owes him.
    Watching their fingers fumble at the brown bits of eggshell, Bluett sees they are a few rounds up on him, reminds himself Dermot has supplied a good deal of his business in the past year. He wonders if the American resents Dermot’s generosity to Bluett. He is a southern Californian who jumped ship and made his way to Sweden during the sixties to beat a tour in Vietnam, then moved to Denmark, which is a