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

NATO member, previously off limits, when Jimmy Carter let all ship-jumpers off the hook. But the American—Milt Sever—is listening raptly to the story Dermot is telling about a Danish poet who has just returned from Brazil where, Dermot reports, the writer has reported to him in considerable detail that he had paid children to have sex with him.
    Bluett cracks his egg on the edge of the table and rolls it between his palms, peels away the shell in one crackling sheet, pinches on finger salt from a stone bowl on the table.
    â€œYou wouldn’t actually consider such a thing yourself, would you, Dermot?” he hears himself ask and regrets being there.
    Dermot blushes, clearly surprised. “I but tell the tale that I heard told,” he says and looks at Milt Sever. “What about yourself, Milt? Would you ever consider such a thing yourself?”
    Milt’s smile is buttery. He is a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired man. He clearly enjoys looking at Bluett in light of what he is about to say. “Well, now, I’m sure I would hate myself in the morning, but . . .” He shrugs serenely. Bluett is surprised to find himself having to resist the urge to take a swing at the smug mouth, realizes he would probably miss or be blocked and find himself engaged in a humiliating and ridiculous tussle, realizes he is in danger of screwing himself out of money, a lot of money, and hears himself say, “Well, I think a man ought to burn in hell’s river of boiling blood for a thing like that.” He holds his breath.
    â€œYou’re an honorable fellow,”  says Dermot, and Bluett starts calculating an exit that might cut his losses.
    But Milt is not finished with him. “Have you seen Andreas Fritzsen’s new novel?” Fritzsen is a Danish-Anglo writer living and teaching in Denmark, a novelist who makes his living in the university. Bluett has read the first chapter of the man’s new novel in some literary journal. It is about the brief legality of child pornography in Denmark in the late sixties and early seventies and it includes a scene in which an adult male engineers penetration with a ten-year-old child which, when Bluett read it, had inspired him to write a letter expressing distaste to Politiken . Bluett’s letter had evoked a surprising response from people who called upon the immortal beauty of Nabokov, Genet, and others in defense of sexual love between children and adults, all of which makes Bluett realize he has walked into a trap here. He begins to prepare an argument against the stance that Humbert truly loved Lolita by pointing out that Humbert extorts sexual favors from the child in return for her allowance, but in that direction lies rage and loss of income.
    He shrugs, raises his Gammel Dansk, says, “Gentlemen. I drink to your very good health,” swallows, chases it with Carlsberg draft, and as he retreats from the Bo-Bi Bar, wonders whether he has ruined his economic stability. First Benthe, now Dermot.
    Human beings , he thinks, are not to traffic with. And where does that leave me?
    Moving toward Kongens Nytorv, he refuses to think about these people, takes a long loop behind the Royal Theater to see if there are any attractive joints back there. He notices then, just across from the New Scene, on the edge of the square, a scooped-away corner with a door on which is mounted a brass plate that says,
    Â 
    SATIN CLUB
    10:00 P .M. TO 4:00 A .M.
    RING BELL .
    Â 
    He stares, wondering, crosses the square, past the French Embassy to Nyhavn. Your problem , he thinks, as he climbs down the steps into the half-basement of the Mermaid Bar, is a classic one: Lackanookie. Well, not exactly lackanookie, but lackalove-nookie. Forget these provincial fools. Have fun until you meet someone who has the chemistry.
    Here he continues with beer, orders a pint of draft lager and sits on a stool at one of the high drum tables. The place is filling up.