" Synes ligesom hele verden gå temmelig
Og du kan ikke finde plads til at bevæge sig
Nå alle bedre flytte over , det er alt
Fordi jeg kører på den dårlige side
Og jeg fik min tilbage til væggen. "
- Bruce Springsteen
"Seem like the whole world walking pretty
And you can't find the room to move
Well everybody better move over, that's all
'Cause I'm running on the bad side
And I got my back to the wall."
- Bruce Springsteen
1.
Birgitte sat up straight and smiled politely as the flight attendant poured her a glass of coffee. Earlier in her career, she thought that first class was fussy and aristocratic, unbecoming a civil servant. But during her last time out of politics, it became a necessity. No chatty neighbors on either side of you, jabbing their elbow into yours all the way from Copenhagen to Dubai or Hong Kong or wherever else. When you really want to get things done, she thought, you need to get your sleep where you can find it.
Actually getting his sleep was Bent, who had fallen asleep with his iPad on his stomach, rising and falling with each breath. All Birgitte had to do was hold her hand open and wait for three more breaths until it fell off of Bent and cleanly into her hands.
Bent made her promise not to watch, at least until after the awards dinner 24 hours from now. "You need to be more forgiving of yourself," he said. "There is no need to make this harder than necessary. Enjoy the trip!" But she still had two more hours in the air and she was pretty sure that acceptance speech wouldn't get any better with yet another round of revisions.
Headphones in, Birgitte selected yesterday's episode of Juul & Friis from Bent's iTunes library.
"Today, we have only one question: what on earth happened at the New Democrats convention yesterday and what does it mean for Danish politics? Kaspar, you used to work for Birgitte Nyborg, how do you make sense of all this?"
"Let me say first of all, Torben, that Birgitte Nyborg is one of the best politicians in modern Danish history and I think history will look upon her kindly. But you have to admit that on a tactical level, she could be ... unfocused."
Torben leans in, his frog-like eyes picking up on Kaspar's fidgeting hands.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Just look at the election that made her foreign minister. She joined the opposition, left the opposition, attacked the Moderates mercilessly and got most of their seats in Parliament only because Kruse, seemingly out of nowhere, couldn't keep his temper in check on national television. Then she forms a government with the center-right and gets outraged when they hold a snap election to squeeze her from the coalition as soon as she starts making real demands. There is just no plan besides the next initiative. The strategy is new every day. It's purely reactive – Nyborg is adrift."
"But Kaspar, surely you don't think she deserved to have her own party throw her out and then immediately vote to be absorbed by the Moderates."
"Jakob Kruse sitting on top of a parade float outside waiting to greet the new members seemed a little much. But you can't say she didn't…"
Just when she had heard nearly enough, the captain came on the PA system. Birgitte closed the iPad and stuck it back on Bent's lap right before he snorted, grunted and came to.
"Attention ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. As you may know, there has been a little bit of weather along the East Coast of the United States. We hoped to be on the ground before the storm hit, but it appears that the weather system has taken a turn and will be hitting land before we thought it would. All planes are being diverted from Washington Dulles."
The entire cabin let out a simultaneous world-weary sigh. Bent adjusted his glasses and gave Birgitte a slight shrug.
"We are diverting this flight to Newark. When we get on the ground, gate agents will have more information regarding connections to your destination."
2.
A short, balding Indian man in an ill-fitting black polyester suit and an ID badge going down to his too-high belt buckle stood up on a chair in the middle of the terminal. On the chairs to his left, a family of four in matching green parkas struggled to ignore him. On the right, a man cupped his hand around the bottom of his cellphone, looking up with annoyance.
"Attention valued passengers," the man said, his voice already horse from hours of yelling above the tired and angry masses. "This is an update from airport management. Due to the impending landfall of Hurricane Tony, Amtrak and New Jersey transit have cancelled services. Taxis are available, but all Hudson River crossings into Manhattan will close in approximately 15 minutes."
From stage left, an empty hamburger box thudded off the back of the Indian man's head. He ignored it and spoke quietly into his walkie-talke.
Birgitte looked up at the man, then back at her phone. "I understand that you do not have an office in New Jersey, but you need to find a way to get me out of this airport! I could be here for days!"
Birgitte stopped leaning against a large silver pillar at baggage claim, her slate gray pantsuit bearing no signs of the long trans-Atlantic flight. With an earbud in, she spoke slowly into the phone like an old radio microphone.
"Get me a car NU! I mean NOW!"
Over at the baggage carousel, Bent hauled Birgitte's implausibly small rolling luggage to the ground in an exaggerated motion, like Santa pulling his bag onto the sleigh. A small Asian child laughed.
3.
A.J. sat on the hood of his dad's Lincoln Navagator with Angel, who coughed heartily while holding a joint out in front of him.
"Holy shit, man," said A.J. "Surge is up to like 9X man! I could make like $200 for one trip! Shit son!"
Angel caught his breath and passed the joint. "Aren't they closing the Turnpike soon? Shouldn't you just go home and put tape on your windows or some shit?"
"Naah man, we're like 10 minutes from the airport and there's no traffic. I'll do one run and make bank." He looked at his phone. "There are like 10 requests. Later brah!"
Angel gave him an excaggerated faux-gang handshake and walked back to his house, a modest ranch-style with weathered canary yellow siding and a small fence around the property and some un-mowed grass. As he closed the door, his little sister ran in behind him. Overhead, an ominous sky swirled, the color of a salmon's skin, yet somehow just backlit enough to highlight the density of the clouds.
4.
A.J., in the driver's seat, turned back to Bent and Birgitte and smiled a smile so broad, it could only come from someone about to make $200 for doing not too much at all.
So, Ms. Nie-burg, where can I take you?"
"Please take me to a hotel. If we can't get to New York City and it is unsafe to continue to Washington, I will have to stay here tonight."
A.J. turned around and pulled forward to the airport exit. A stray bolt of lightening flashed across the sky. From the back, AJ's man-bun makes him look likes an old cast iron bank - if you press it, his mouth opens to accept your buffalo nickel.
"I bet a lot of hotels will be booked," said A.J. "But my dad is at a hotel now and I bet he can get you a room. He can do things like that."
"Very well then," said Birgitte. "I don't see any other options."
The Emergency Broadcast tone interrupted the radio. A.J. pushed a button on the stereo, switching to the middle of a DMX song.
"Did you do any work on the speech during the flight?" asked Bent, too disturbed by the violent lyrics to allow him to be the only voice in the car.
"Yes, but mostly word choice. The thrust is the same. The only way to really solve the problem of women's underrepresentation in parliamentary bodies across the developing world is to figure out what the obstacles are and the only way to do that is to create a UN commission to study the problem in depth."
"I hope your sentences aren't that long in the speech!" Bent made a half-smirk, waiting for Birgitte to smile. She did not.
"Well, I didn't step on the applause line, which is the always rousing "we need to create a commission to study this!"
Bent's smirk dissipated as he sensed that this was the point at which she decides to scrap the whole thing and take a completely different directions. This is turning into an even longer night.
"What mark did I leave on Denmark? Did I play it too safe? Have I been suckered into being a technocrat by the idea that if we just get the numbers right and the policy language perfect, we can make all of our problems go away?"
"Every poll says you lead the happiest nation on earth," said Bent.
"Did you know I always wanted to abolish the monarchy?" asked Birgitte. "It was too unpopular and far-fetched to actually proposed, but I really think that it's barbaric that some people are supported by the state to literally live like kings while we say we don't have money for refugee resettlement."
"Well, now you're free to say that!"
"Say that, yes, but who will listen? These days, I'm the kind of person you fly in when you need someone to call for the creation of a commission."
5.
The hotel was a four mile drive on the back roads between chemical plants and commercial garages. America does not put its best foot forward for the trip in from Newark Airport. Hours before, warehouse workers neatly stacked sandbags in front of doors and driveways. Extra chains and locks were on every door as A.J. sped along the empty road.
The hotel, an island of weathered concrete and streaky tinted glass in a sea of parking, all beyond a stand of trees from the arterial road, could have been any building of ten stories built in the 1970s. A regional bank perhaps, or a municipal building, or a hospital. Branches blew across the mostly-empty pavement.
A sole hotel employee rolled up the carpet in between the revolving door and the front desk. He gave a limp wave before tossing the carpet on a couch. He ran over to the desk, polyester uniform pants swishing on his scrawny thighs.
"I'm sorry, the hotel is all booked. I understand that these are unusual circumstances, so I'll be bringing some cots down to the dining room in an hour or so. Are all three of you together?"
A.J. turned to Birgitte. "My dad can fix this." He turned to the hotel clerk. "Forget it."
"That is very generous, but are you sure it's ok?" asked Bent.
"Don't worry! He has like 4 rooms on reserve here. Just pay me in cash for the rooms and I'll pass it to him," said A.J.
I'll pay you when I see the room," said Birgitte. Without even noticing what her hands were doing, she removed the Danish and EU crossed flags pin on her lapel.
The three went up the elevator to the fifth floor. Even in the elevator shaft, the sound of the whipping wind made the trip seem somehow treacherous.
As the doors opened onto the fifth floor, the stale smell of old cigar smoke hit them like a smack in the face. Down the hall, three room service trays sat askew up outside the door at the end of the hallway. On them were empty liquor bottles and half-eaten cold cut platters.
A.J. knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again, more insistently the second time.
Tony slipped out of the door, opening it only as wide as necessary, which for Tony, was fairly wide. He closed the door with care and then stood over A.J.
"What the fuck, A.J.? You know I'm in the middle of a … thing? You're supposed to text me if you're coming. More importantly, you're only supposed to come when I ask you for something!"
"Buh..buh.. but," stammered A.J.
Over A.J.'s head, Tony saw Birgitte, her blue eyes beaming behind a forced smile. Having caught Tony's eye, she puffed her chest out and straightened out her back. Bent, at Birgitte's side but firmly outside of Tony's gaze, snickered.
"I'm sorry, I'm not sure what my son had in mind here. Who are you?"
Birgitte said, "I am Birgitte Nyborg. This is Bent and we are from Denmark. Your son brought us here because our plane unexpectedly landed in Newark and no hotel rooms are available. Your son offered to help us find a place to stay until the storm passes."
"Denmark, eh?
6.
"I don't usually drink Chianti, but I have to say this is very good," said Birgitte, her tongue an uncharacteristic purple. "Anyway, like I was saying, I'm leaving politics for good this time. I spent years taking baby steps forward, appeasing every last faction that thinks being an obstacle can get them one more morsel of power or money, then giving up half of what I want in order to claim victory and move on to another version of the same basic game on some other topic."
Tony slouched back in his chair, settling in like a wise old man about to deliver a chestnut of wisdom to an ambitious but naïve up-and-comer.
"Beer-geet, you may not know this about me, and it may not look like this to the former President of Denmark, but I have had some extensive experience with factions and management."
"It's actually Prime Minister," Birgitte interjected.
"Prime Minister, whatever. Alls I'm saying is that I found out, just like you did, that loyalty has a price and betrayal has a cost. If someone senses the cost of betrayal is less than the price offered, they're gone. All the people who fucked you over tried to get more in exchange for your loyalty. You either paid up or lost them."
"That sounds rather mercenary, Tony."
"But that's how it works. People test you to figure out their value in your eyes."
"So knowing that, what do you do?"
Tony leaned forward to grab his glass. He took a swig, followed by a theatrical "aaah."
"Like I said, there's a price and a cost. If you don't want to pay the cost, you raise the price. The price of disloyalty. It sounds like every time someone hung you out to dry, you tried to prove to the world you deserved to win more than them. All you were doing was showing that they had something of value you wanted. What you should have done was extract some price for being assholes when you needed them. Can't you threaten the jobs they give to their supporters?"
Birgitte poured the last of the bottle into her glass and threw it underhand toward the trash. Sailing wide right, it landed on the carpet with a dull thud.
"Fucking assholes. And fucking functioning Scandinavian civil service system. You can't fire anyone unless you find body parts in their apartment. And even then, the hearings take nine months."
Tony chuckled as Birgitte's words grew more accented.
"Tony, you're a… how do they say… a baaaaad motherfucker."
Tony, like many people, enjoyed watching the buttoned-up careerist get sloppy drunk. Every year, millions of people go to office holiday parties just to see which anal-retentive middle manager warbles "Frosty the Snowman" at the top of his lungs or stumbles back from the bathroom, oblivious that the bottom of his shirt is pulled through his open fly.
Rain beat down on the windows in sheets, reaching a crashing crescendo every two seconds or so. Every now and then, a tree branch could be heard snapping in the distance.
7.
Bent leaned over his pile of disorganized but crisp $20 bills. Cable and Internet went out at around 3 a.m., which meant that A.J. couldn't get any more out of the ATM and was down to his last bill. The fluorescent lights flickered.
"Man, are you fucking cheating or something?" asked A.J.
"It's your deck," said Bent, grinning. "I'm going to turn in. Like we said, I won the coin toss, so I get the bed and you get the cot."
"Yeah, yeah," said A.J., sloughing over to the cot, shuffling his feet.
8.
"Ya see, he doesn't have the money, but he did have a sporting goods store – kayaks, golf clubs, that sort of thing. He was doing OK, but not OK enough to cover what he lost at the Executive Game."
Birgitte leaned in. "So you took his business?" She had changed into a t-shirt. It said "Moderate Party Family Fun Day 2007" in an austere sans serif font. Below the text, broad-brush outlines of children ran forward, trailing kites bearing the Danish flag. A wine spot filled in the "P" in "Parti."
"Not exactly," said Tony. "We did what we call a 'bust-out.' Maxed out the company credit. Bought things to sell elsewhere. Then the store went bankrupt and he got a fresh start. Essentially, the banks paid me for his losses."
"That's horrible! You destroyed his business to pay off money you loaned him to gamble, which you only did because you knew he had a problem with gambling! I should…"
"You should what?" Tony leaned in. The nascent smirk disappeared from his face.
Birgitte did her best to keep a stern face, then cracked up, doubling over. Tony joined in half-heartedly.
"I bet you're going to ask me how I sleep at night, Beer-geet," said Tony.
"I know exactly how you sleep at night," said Birgitte, punctuating the "you" with her finger, landing clumsily in Tony's chest hair. "If I ate like you, I would pass out every day half an hour after lunch!"
Birgitte picked up a ball of mozzarella from a rapidly-wilting antipasti platter and bit into it like an apple.
Tony's grin returned.
"Admit you love it. Admit you wish you thought of that. You're a fucking politician, for chrissakes!" Tony leaned back regally in his black generic hotel work center chair, causing the casters to squeak.
Birgitte put down the ball of cheese and wiped her hand on the side of her shirt. She poured more chianti from the bottle. After about three fingers' worth, the bottle ran empty. She then put the bottle up to her eye, as if there was more wine stuck to the bottom. Another bottle toss to the wastebasket, another miss.
"You joke, Tony, but there have been days. I wake up after four hours of sleep, get ready for work, make breakfast for the kids – always with the breakfast! – and then race-walk through the hallways with one thing in mind."
"Always something very, very crucial to the future of the nation. I had to get some subsidy cut from eight percent to six percent or reform an early retirement pension scheme to free up money for welfare payment adjustments. It's all so very important!"
Birgitte swung her arms like a soldier's march.
"It gets hard after a while, you know, to fight every battle with the same intensity, using the same limited set of tools. When you have a gavel and a pen, sometimes you want a sledgehammer. No head of state, past, present or future, can deny thinking that it would all be so much easier if they were an absolute dictator, ruling with an iron fist while their enemies rot in jails."
"Except for Kruse. His body gets strung up on the city gates as an example to everyone else!"
"A few got to do that, too," said Tony, his smirk widening into a broad grin.
"Always the wrong ones, Tony," replied Birgitte. "The ones who get to be iron-fisted dictators name days of the week after themselves, start wars to keep their military busy and blow all the money on a massive palace compound, which inevitably gets ransacked the day the people finally get fed up enough to do something."
"So you'd be the good guy tyrant, Emperor Beer-geet?"
"I'd like to think I'd use my power for good. Unlike you."
"Hey now, sweetie. I'm letting you stay here, free of charge, rather than sleep at the fuckin' airport. I'm helping a few grown men blow off steam with a simple card game. Everybody who gets on my radar asks for it."
Birgitte hiccupped.
"I don't care anymore, Tony," said Birgitte. "I've had my first act, then my second act. You don't get a third. I worked so hard to do the basic, reasonable things the leadership of a developed nation should do to ensure future prosperity and treat everyone with fairness and compassion. And what did I get?"
"You got fucked in the ass, honey."
"Fucked in the ass, Tony! Fucked in the ass! I like that. Some idiots let me run my country, then they fucked me in the ass!"
"Let it out, Beer-geet!" Tony leaned back and chuckled.
"I'm so tired of the procedure, the negotiation, the half-dozen other rinky-dinky parties I need to sign off on in order to take a shit in the morning!"
Birgitte got up and started clumsily pacing around. The rain pounded against the window like a constant snare drum. Water seeped through the poorly-caulked window, staining the patterned institutional carpet beneath it a slightly darker shade of maroon.
Tony got up as well, hunched over but still proud and fearsome, like a vulture. He raised his glass in a half-toast every time Birgitte made a complaint about coalition politics in a multiparty parliamentary system. He didn't understand all the specifics, but the gripes were universal. Nobody with a vision, a clear view of how things ought to be, could get very far without a pack of losers and also-rans trying to bring them down.
"And those fucking Greens!" said Birgitte. "Walking around like they're the … oh, you don't know! You're just a thug from … New Jersey."
"Hey now, Beer-geet." Tony moved closer to Birgitte until they were nose to forehead. "I fought for everything I got, which is more than a lot of people I know. If you want to call me a thug, I can put you right back out in the street in the middle of this fucking hurricane!"
"You wouldn't dare!"
"Wanna try me?"
Tony shifted his weight from foot to foot, subconsciously simultaneously psyching himself up for a fight and trying to tamp down his anger.
"What I do is bring people out of poverty! I help people from different cultures live together! I save the goddamn from SUV driving, pigs like you!"
"You fucking love it," said Tony. "You love yelling at me right at my face, about how good you are, when all you really want to do is put your biggest enemy's head on a pike outside of Stockholm, or wherever the fuck it is you're from. The only difference is that I put my money where my mouth is!"
Birgitte's eyes widened. She thought about slapping him, but his eyes so close to hers, burning with a rage she knew he was doing all he could to contain, had a power over her. There was a good chance he would slap back. Or worse.
His physical presence, all fat, body hair and sweat, was as different as the turtlenecked, immaculately groomed men she usually dealt with. With them, if you talked it out long enough, you could reach a mutually-agreeable settlement to whatever it was got you all agitated to begin with.
But something was different with Tony. His sudden volatility took her aback. Those beady eyes had seen the life drain out of men, killed by his own hand. There was no doubt in Birgitte's mind that one wrong move could kill her, or at least put her in the hospital.
After a lifetime with men who got where they are through impulse control and logic, how do you deal with someone who built a career based on being just crazy enough to make his enemies believe he is capable of anything, yet sane enough to get away with it?
Then all the words drained from her head. The wine made it difficult to focus, but with Tony's eyes locked on hers, she felt locked in.
Birgitte kissed Tony. Messily, like a teenager who didn't know how to keep the air of sexiness while giving in to the instincts that make one want to be sexy in the first place. Partially by force of lust, but mainly out of a desire to no longer stand on her own, she pinned Tony against the door. Her tongue, purple and flailing, occasionally slipped out of Tony's mouth, scraping stubble before finding its way back where it should be.
Tony was taken aback, but he had been here before. He knew how many otherwise self-possessed women found trouble resisting a man they couldn't impress. His hands reached up Birgitte's loose-fitting shirt. Birgitte shuddered, and her knees half buckled.
She reached down his pants, grabbed as much as she could (which was most of it), then stopped.
"Looks like the only thing standing between you and a whole world of pain is one crazy Dane who wants to put her enemy's head on a pike," said Birgitte.
Tony chuckled. "I'll take my chances," he said.
"And Stockholm is in Sweden, not Denmark," said Birgitte. He gave a playful squeeze and shoved Tony down on the bed with both hands.
9.
"Owwwww!" said A.J. "I said I was sorry!" He grabbed his shin.
Bent, his hand holding his side, tried to catch his breath.
"You played with me, I won fairly, and you have the audacity to try and steal it from me when I'm asleep?" said Bent, between gasps.
"I said I was sorry!" reiterated A.J., his eyes watering.
"You had better be," said Bent.
"How do you fight like that? Aren't you, like, 80?"
"Danish Special Forces. We won the Cold War for you Yankee punks. Now go to that little casino your daddy set up next door and get me a beer."
A.J. turned to the door. Bent gestured as if he were about to throw a tumbler at A.J.'s head. He flinched and then slipped out the hotel room door, limping.
"You're one of those people that nobody likes, aren't you?" spitted out Bent. "It's like you exist purely to show how badly a job your entire society did creating someone like you."
10.
The sweat made Birgitte's hair curl and mat to her face. She hated how she smelled like him now. How a fat, ageing American career criminal lied next to her, snoring like an old chainsaw that wouldn't start correctly. How the post-coital endorphins that should have made her feel sated and calm instead bounced up against the stern, logical Scandinavian brain telling her she had just done something impulsive, disgusting and very, very wrong. More than anything, she wanted a shower.
She got up, careful not to disturb the sleeping mound built from rage, lust and thinly-sliced cured meats that lay to her left.
Birgitte flipped on the harsh fluorescent bathroom light and recoiled from the sudden flash. As vision returned, she stopped shielding her eyes from the light to reveal tousled hair, a clown-like mess of lipstick and eyeliner spilling far beyond their usual precise bounds.
What now? The former Prime Minister, founder and leader of a political party, peacemaker for Kharoum, mother of two and, in a matter of hours, winner of the Women for Sustainability Award just had sloppy, sweaty sex with a man who casually confessed to a variety of crimes, both financial and violent.
The ice-blue in her eyes was ringed by angry red. She stared deeper and deeper into her own reflection, seeking some sort of clue how to undo what she had just done. The wind wasn't whipping quite as loudly now, she thought. In a few hours, the hurricane would pass. If she could rent a car, she could be in Washington in five hours, with plenty of time to get ready for the awards dinner.
But what was the point? Did this disheveled mobster's casual lay deserve to be awarded for funding research that decreased the weight and size of several crucial wind turbine parts? Alternately, did this do-gooder politician ever get what she wanted for very long before losing it to someone with fewer scruples?
Birgitte balled up her fists and pounded the sink. The tiny olive-colored shampoo and conditioner bottles fell to the ground and rolled, resting at the base of the toilet seat. She bore her teeth to the mirror, growled a bit, then tears welled up in her eyes. She punched the mirror. It didn't break.
11.
After a shower, Birgitte put her hair up in a towel, hoping beyond hope that Tony had gone to check on the game going on next door. As she opened the bathroom door, those hopes were dashed.
"Good morning, my Viking princess!" said Tony, still in bed. The storm was indeed over, and the first break in the clouds came in through the window, illuminating what part of his gold cross peaked up from his chest hair. He smirked like a guy who knew that he could have any woman out of his league just by being vaguely terrible.
"Oh, hello Tony," said Birgitte. "Now, about last night…"
"I'm going to stop you right there, Beer-geet. I got curious about your friends Jakob and Nete. Turns out when Nete left Parliament, she moved to America…"
"To work as a reporter for Vice. I know that," replied Birgitte, surprised that the lumpen Neanderthal before her took an interest in her former colleagues.
"Well it turns out that not only does she live in Jersey City, but my associates built the building she lives in. If you want to make a house call, you don't need to call ahead."
"I don't know," said Birgitte. "I have to be in Washington pretty soon, and besides, she's not expecting me.
"Come on! She fucked you over! Haven't you ever wanted to give her a bit of a scare, show her who's boss?"
"Like egg her house?"
"Sort of. Listen, I've given up on making my son anything but a fuck-up, and there's nothing worse than a soft fuck-up. So I'm trying to give him some practical training on the finer skills of our thing we do. We'll go over there together, A.J. will scare her a bit, then he'll drive you down to DC. Consider it a token of my appreciation for last night."
"That sounds like great, but…"
"Don't finish that sentence, Beer-geet. Just come with us and I promise you that it will be worth it. You won't get in trouble or nothin'. The power's out over there, so there won't be any security cameras. Everyone who works in the building owes me favors and Nete has made enough enemies reporting on Guatemalan drug dealers that it could be anyone giving her a little scare. And that's all it is, a little scare!"
12.
The streets themselves were clean, the rain and wind having scoured away years of motor oil, caked-in road salt and grime. Even where it was cracked and potholed, the blacktop gleamed. But replacing one mess was another. Leaves matted to the street, large branches lay all over the streets. Half of a large billboard fell face-down on the road two blocks from the hotel. A.J., tired and distracted, veered the black Suburban around it at the very last minute. Looking up, Birgitte saw the other half of the billboard still in place. In big block letters, it read "1-800-INJURED." Above it, wet, jagged balsa wood jutted up against the cloudless sky.
"The Skyway is open, we'll be in Jersey City in no time. We'll be back before Bent gets up," said Tony.
"I can't believe I'm involved in this," said Birgitte.
"I used to say things like that too. All the time," replied Tony.
"Really?"
"Naah."
13.
A.J. screeched the Suburban to a halt, its nose diving as it skid to a halt inches from a downed maple tree. The bough crossed the width of the street, with branches denuded of leaves sticking up to five feet straight up. The street was otherwise empty. On one side, a fence protected an overgrown lot with grass tall enough to almost completely obscure a rusting blue van relieved of wheels and windows, sitting at an angle. Nobody bothered to put it up on blocks. On the other side was an eerily still marsh, covered with leaves and garbage from the storm. A power line tower plunked down in the middle had two of its three cables severed, lifelessly dangling. The whole streetscape looked like it was in a constant state of
This part of North Jersey was usually criss-crossed with container trucks, buses, trains both freight and passenger, and an endless stream of cars going toward all points. Usually, flights overhead roared every few minutes, coming into Newark filled with business travelers, immigrants, tourists and all manner of freight. Everything passing across this stretch of the country was in a rush to get somewhere, but not today. Today, it was Birgitte, A.J., Tony and not a single other soul.
Tony checked his mirror and reversed. At the next intersection back, an even larger bough blocked his way.
"A.J., get out of the car and move that fucking tree!" barked Tony.
"Dad, there's no way I can move that thing!"
"We talked about this, A.J. I tried to send you to college, I tried to get you internships, I tried to get you jobs. You got fired from a fucking no-show job. Three fucking times! The only thing keeping you from being a complete fucking waste of space is the fact that I have a bad back and you haven't managed to fuck up yours now. Move the fucking tree!"
"That's no way to talk to your own son, Tony," interjected Birgitte.
Tony turned back to Birgitte in the back seat. He pointed his finger, then hesitated. Whatever he was planning to say, he thought better.
"If you knew A.J. like I knew A.J., you'd…" he trailed off.
A.J. got out of the car and started yanking at the thick end of the tree. It didn't move. He went to the other side and grabbed one of the medium-sized branches, hoping to swing it out of the way. With one heave, he lost his grip and fell backwards.
Birgitte, scanning the street, saw two bicycles strapped to the back of a red Subaru parked in front of a warehouse a few yards down from the intersection, next to the overgrown lot.
"I know what. We'll do this Danish style. A.J., Tony, come with me!"
There appeared to be nobody near the car or in the building. Birgitte gestured the other two over to the car as she untied the bicycles from the back of the SUV.
"I'm sorry hon, but there is no way I'm going to Jersey City on one of those," said Tony, chuckling.
"Then I'll go with A.J." said Birgitte, hands on her hips. "Come on, A.J., we can go together and show your father that you can do this all by yourself!"
"Umm, isn't that a little patronizing?" said A.J.
"Shut the fuck up!" Birgitte and Tony said simultaneously. They both then laughed.
"OK, A.J., you want to be a big shot bicycle guy, be my fucking guest. I already called ahead and they know to expect you. It's apartment 1405. Try to look intimidating. You have the brass knuckles?"
"Yes, dad," said A.J., in the manner of a middle schooler being reminded to pack his lunch.
Birgitte and A.J. got on their stolen bicycles. Before taking off down the street, Birgitte looked back at Tony. She didn't smile. He did. Whether she could admit it or not, he thought, this little adventure was not just what she really wanted, but what she needed.
14.
The two arrived in front of the modern apartment building in Jersey City. Birgitte looked up at its modern façade, unweathered poured concrete broken up by sleek white balconies. A little shorter and more angular, perhaps, and that building could be at home in Denmark. Three of these buildings were arrayed around a central red brick courtyard with a fountain in the middle. The fountain was off, filled with branches and newspapers. A solitary custodial worker struggled mightily to fish out what he could with a net.
Next to her, A.J. huffed and puffed from the excretion, his puffer vest heaving with each breath.
"Are you ready for fourteen flights?" asked Birgitte.
"Just give me a second." A.J. put his hands on his knees.
15.
A.J. arrived first on the 14th floor stairway landing , sweat dripping from his center-parted hair. He flopped down and spread his arms out, as if to signal complete defeat. Birgitte, still wearing her wine-stained Moderate Party t-shirt from the night before, also looked a bit fatigued, but the lack of makeup made her look more athletic than fatigued.
After a few heaves, A.J. reached into his pocket and fished out a small baggie filled with white powder.
"Cocaine?" asked Birgitte, incredulous.
"It's really going to help. I've only done this a few times before and it helps you act first, before you get all in your head about things. Makes you feel invincible, at least for a few minutes. You know, like Scarface. I'm going to have some. You wanna?"
"Didn't Scarface die?"
"Not from the cocaine." A.J. pulled out a ring of keys, scooping one in the baggie. He then raised the small mound of powder to his nose and inhaling like a reverse sneeze.
A.J. passed the key and baggie to Birgitte, who paused, staring at the two items like they dropped off of a space ship. He thought back to Tony and how disgusting he was. The back hair, the rolls of fat, and how irresistible he had been at that moment last night. It was because he saw what he wanted and took it, like that sporting goods store. Birgitte wanted to get high as hell, show Nete that there are consequences for betrayal, take a shower and accept a prestigious award, in that order.
She took the biggest key, dipped it in and carefully pulled it out so as to keep the largest pile as possible on it as she brought it to her nose and huffed.
Her eyes widened. She wetted her index finger in her mouth, ran it along the key, then rubbed the finger on her thumb.
"I saw it in a movie," said Birgitte, smiling devilishly. "So, what's the plan?"
"We put this bag over her head…" A.J. dug into his jacket, halted, then dug some more. He patted down his jeans. "I don't have a bag."
"You're fucking worthless, A.J. I believe in the potential of all people to reach their goals and be productive members of society regardless of background and even criminal history. I believe society has a place for everyone if we can all learn to support one another as a nation and a community. But you, you, you're just a little fucking shit." Birgitte was speaking so fast that A.J. didn't understand most of the second part and got up to head to Nete's apartment, slipping on the brass knuckles.
The two walked briskly and wordlessly to Nete's door. Just as A.J. made an attempt to speak up to coordinate, Birgitte knocked on the door. Birgitte looked at A.J., her pupils pinpricks in a sea of vicious red veins and hair falling all over her shoulders at odd angles. A.J. was taken aback by the knock, since he didn't know what his role would be. He took a step back, assuming that Birgitte would lure Nete out to the hallway.
After some rumbling from within the apartment, barefoot footsteps on hardwood drew closer. Birgitte heard the peephole open and smiled her fakest smile.
Nete swung open the door.
Her apartment was a mess of dirty laundry, papers, electronics wires and half-melted candles from the blackout. It had the look of a place where the occupant moved in but didn't unpack, only removing what was necessary for the day's needs. The walls were still bright white and completely unadorned. Floor-to-ceiling windows to the right flooded the apartment with light. On the other side, pizza boxes covered the kitchen counter island. A stainless steel range and oven sat completely unused.
Straight ahead, a mattress sat on the floor with nothing on it but an unzipped sleeping bag. A moving box served as a nightstand, holding a blank alarm clock, a pack of cigarettes, a bag of marijuana and an ashtray.
Nete wore an oversized t-shirt with the name of some forgettable band-of-the-minute. She grew her hair out a bit, and it was in a bun. All told, Nete looked well-rested, if temporarily groggy. "Birgitte, what a surprise! I can't believe you're…"
Before she could finish her sentence, Birgitte head-butted Nete with a force that sent her staggering back and collapsing on the floor. A.J. gasped, covered his mouth, then stifled a laugh. Birgitte smacked him on the back of his head.
Birgitte didn't know whether to take in the scene of her messy apartment as a hopeful new beginning or a descent into sloth, but her brain wasn't mulling thoughts, let alone holding on to them for more than a few seconds at a time.
"Put her in the sleeping bag," barked Birgitte. "She needs more than a good scare."
16.
Nete woke up in an unfamiliar part of the building gagged with her hands tied behind her back, propped up in a plastic deck chair.
The room was windowless, cinder-block gray and immaculate, designed like a hundred thousand service rooms in new-ish apartment buildings all over the world, with nothing on the bare walls but two safety signs bearing familiar stick figures flailing cylindrical limbs as they are immolated and electrocuted by line-art fire and lighting.
The ceilings were low and a huge, perfectly square brushed metal box dominated the room, roaring like a lion who never had to stop for air. It smelled like new carpet, but more so.
On one side, a large angled tube fed in from the wall, sealed on the top and sides with insulated silver tape. On the other, a series of smaller tubes and wires and valves connected to the far wall. In the middle, a touch screen displayed a series of color-coded numbers that were constantly changing.
"I'm so glad to see you are ready to talk," said Birgitte. "Now that you have joined the press, I have a story pitch for you."
Nete mumbled and struggled, her trademark smirk no longer in service.
"Do you know what this is?"
Nete shook her head to indicate that she did not.
"This is an advanced waste incineration and energy generation system. Unlike landfills, it has no risk of leaking chemicals into the groundwater. It burns cleanly and creates a minimum of greenhouse gases. All over the world, municipalities and private landlords like yours are switching to systems like this to decrease costs and increase their green profile. All of your garbage goes in here and you can barely smell it!"
"Danish technology feeds the heat from the incineration directly into a self-contained turbine generator that can power the security cameras and lighting for the public areas of a large apartment building like yours. It's an impressive achievement and shows to the world the ingenuity of Danish business."
"But this building does not have a Danish waste to energy incinerator. This is a French model. In order to generate power, it needs a hookup to the municipal water system for water to heat into steam that turns the turbine. See, it's not self-contained. All the energy being generated now is wasted."
Birgitte tapped one of the valves trailing from the machine with her nail, making a high "ping" sound. Nete whimpered.
"So if the power goes out, in a hurricane for example, the water pump fails and no electricity is generated. Now that we find ourselves without any power from the grid, it really would have been nice to have one of those Danish systems that provides self-contained generation without external water, wouldn't it?"
Nete nodded rapidly, hairs loose of the bun matting to her reddening forehead.
"I should add that the Danish model has a safety feature that prevents anyone from opening the incineration chamber while operative. On the French model, all you need is a screwdriver.
Birgitte nodded at A.J., who then began unscrewing a panel about three feet square to the right of the control panel. With each screw removed, the incinerator grew louder and the room became hotter. Birgitte and Nete watched A.J. unscrew all of the screws, one by one, until the panel came off, revealing a wall of flame angrily burning straight inside the generator.
"So, my dear Nete, my former biggest supporter, why do you think this apartment building has this French piece of shit and not the Danish version?"
Birgitte pulled the gag from Nete's mouth. She immediately screamed, so Birgitte quickly stuffed it back in. The room was starting to get hot. Sweat started dropping from Birgitte's nose. Her face was beet red from a combination of lack of sleep, drugs and heat from the incinerator. Without makeup, pores opened. Her chest heaved. Not knowing what to do with her hands, she brushed her hair back.
"I'll tell you why. The Danish version was too expensive because the Moderates, whom you helped, stripped out a subsidy from the New Democrats' proposal last year. That fucker Kruse knew how I felt about the green profile and worked with the Greens – the fucking Greens! – to strip it from the budget in exchange for some changes to fisheries quotas. So you fuck me over, now you're fucked."
"Was it worth it? Did you fuck him? No, I take that back. That's a terribly demeaning thing to say to a female politician. I'm sure you had very important, thought-out, even feminist reasons for selling me out to Kruse. Reasons that have nothing to do with your … god, the only thing that sickens me more than thinking of your duplicity is thinking of you naked with that weasel."
Birgitte put her hand out, and A.J. handed her the bag of cocaine. Dispensing with need for the key, she poured what powder remained on the back of her left hand and snorted it, pulling up right in front of Nete's face. A white ring clung to the bottom of her nostrils. Her eyes didn't seem to focus, looking through Nete as if she was scanning a distant field for wildlife.
Then, Birgitte grabbed Nete by the collar and threw her toward the open end of the incinerator. Nete landed with a thud about two feet from the hulking metal box. Unable to break her fall, her chin absorbed the bulk of the force. Blood rushed out on the bleachy floor.
With hands and feet bound in duct tape, she squirmed, but could not create any distance from the base of the machine. Birgitte straddled Nete, put both hands on her neck and pulled her up. Nete started coughing furiously, though the coughs were stifled by her gag. Drops of blood fell from her chin to the floor, landing on the smeary pool of blood she had just been pulled from Both women were inches from the incinerator, faces illuminated by the white-hot glow of the open device.
Birgitte's hands were starting to get hot as they held Nete by her collar at the mouth of the now deafening incinerator. She looked for somewhere else to grab farther down on Nete's body, and settled on her arms. She switched one hand while still holding Nete's neck, then moved to the other. Nete's head dropped, then picked up again as Nete struggled to see how close she was to the flames. Veins popped on her temple and neck and her eyes watered. She made as much noise as she could behind the gag.
"You fuck me, I'm back, Nete! I'm running for Queen, bitch!"
"Doop-de-doop-de-doop-de-doop!"
Somehow, over the industrial din, Nete's stifled howls and her own fast-beating heart, Birgitte somehow heard her cell phone ring. Service had been spotty due to overturned cell towers, and she hadn't heard it go off in what seemed like ages, especially considering how tethered to it she used to be.
Birgitte froze, realizing that her hands were occupied holding Nete up to the open incinerator and her phone was inaccessible in the handbag she had carelessly slung next to the chair.
Did Magnus hurt himself? What if Laura was suicidal and she missed her chance to save her own daughter by being too busy with politically-motivated homicide to comfort her in her time of need? Thoughts swirled in her coke-addled head, each more horrific than the one that came before.
After the third ring, she dropped Nete, who again hit her chin, and ran to dig her phone out of her handbag. Without looking at the screen, she picked up.
"Laura, no!" she screamed, to nobody in particular.
"Birgitte, this is Katrine. Ekspres is about to run a story on a massive bribery scandal with the Moderates, but they were scooped by the police, who led Kruse out of his house handcuffed and in a bathrobe! Best of all, and you're never going to believe this, Nete was the one who turned him in and tipped of the press and the authorities! Nete, can you believe it!"
"And why are you breathing so heavily?"
Up until then, the heady combination of adrenaline and cocaine gave Birgitte the feeling of exquisite control. The tips of her fingers felt like they could register minute changes in wind direction. Her eyes focused on far-away detail; it made her feel like a leopard surveying the jungle. The precision was an illusion, but she didn't realize it until she tried to register the meaning of what Katrine had just said.
Her eyes fixed on the letter "M" on the control panel screen, independent of context or comprehension. Then her hand, which looked far weathered and crinkly than she had remembered. Then, the back of Nete's head as it lay on the ground, a chaotic blob of orange, individual strands going in and out of focus.
"Hello, Birgitte?"
"Yes, yes, I'll check out the paper. I'm in the middle of something right now. Thank you, Katrine."
Birgitte hung up the phone and put it slowly back in her purse. The drug-fueled thug bent on revenge and the former Prime Minister of a prosperous small European nation became two people trapped in the same body, each desperately unsure of how to live with the other.
So she ran. Out of the incinerator room, up the basement stairs. Every step and labored breath echoed off the bare walls. Every time she grabbed the handrail to steady her suddenly unstable frame, the clank of gold ring against bare stainless steel reverberated. She didn't notice Tony running the other way until his hand clasped her bicep, enveloping it like a blood pressure cuff made of olive loaf.
"Whoa whoa whoa. Beer-geet, what's going on? Your head is bleeding! And you're soaked!"
"Let go of me!" cried Birgitte. She jerked her arm out of Tony's grasp and continued up the stairs. She yanked on a door at the top of the landing, but it would not budge.
"Only opens from the outside," said Tony.
"Tony, I've done something horrible! Nete turned in Kruse! I got a call from Denmark telling me she turned on Kruse and he's in jail and she's downstairs and I almost threw her in the stupid French incinerator and and and…"
Birgitte shoved Tony away. Tony made half a lunge to grab her again, but then stopped. He steadied himself and looked right in Birgitte's eyes like a football coach to a crosseyed and half-concussed quarterback before the final play of the game.
"Look at me. You stay right here and I will sort this out. Nete ratted out Kruse?"
Birgitte nodded, her lower lip quivering. Tony let go and Birgitte collapsed to the floor.
17.
Ten minutes had passed and Birgitte was starting to feel the physical effects of all she had done. The head-butt opened a gash on her forehead that was now mingling with sweat and getting in her mouth. She noticed that she had been clenching her jaw so hard that not only was it sore, but she couldn't un-clench it. All of her clothes were soaked through with sweat, to the point at which there was nothing dry with which to blot her bloodied face. She tried to wipe it on her shirt, but felt the graininess of hair. Nete's hair.
She took out her phone and opened the Ekspres website. Just as described, she saw Jacob Kruse, dazed in a terrycloth robe and smudged glasses, walking down the steps from his front door. She had seen that door before, many years ago, splitting a cab with Bent on the way home from a rally when she and Kruse were both backbenchers. She was surprised how familiar it looked. Anything was more familiar than this.
Tony and A.J. walked up the stairs. A.J. was pale-faced and taking one step at a time behind Tony, who puffed with every three-step stride he took.
"Where's Nete?"
Tony took two more steps to make it to the landing where Birgitte was sitting. He took a knee and locked eyes once more.
"Nete was a rat. She ratted you out. Ratting out your enemy doesn't make her your friend again. It just makes her a bigger rat. And rats are dangerous."
"So you killed her?"
"Beer-geet, you have to understand the risk here. Whether you know it or not, keeping your mouth shut is a life-saving skill. And she didn't have that skill."
"So you killed her?"
"She wouldn't have hesitated to rat us out. I saved your life, Beer-geet. Even if you don't know it yet."
Birgitte tried to bring in all the air her lungs could hold, but only managed quick, shallow breaths. A feeling of overwhelming heat engulfed her face, pressing down on her cheeks and forehead. Suddenly, her brain felt too big for her skull. She could feel her heartbeat in her eyeballs.
Tony leaned in, never once breaking eye contact.
"This is how things are now. Just listen to me and everything will be fine. Everything will be better than fine. Do you hear me, Beer-geet?"