Copenhagen Noir

He wasn’t the only one waiting for the author. Hannah, busy serving the other customers, had set the glasses and Sebastian Søholm’s favorite whiskey, a Laphroaig, on the bar. The speakers spewed out Nick Cave’s “There Is a Kingdom.” People were already packed in around the small wooden tables. The room was buzzing, and all the cigarette smoke lay like a heavy blanket due to the bad ventilation. Andreas, sitting at the end of the bar, held a hand over his mouth and coughed. Though he tried to be as discrete as possible, it still caught Hannah’s attention. She smiled and waved him over to three men sitting and talking together at the other end of the bar. Andreas knew very well who two of them were, a poet and a critically acclaimed novelist. He’d read them both but had never managed to get into a conversation with either of them. The third, a heavyset man in a checkered shirt, he’d never seen before. He walked hesitantly over to them. Hannah poured him a glass of whiskey. She said that it was Sebastian’s birthday. They were going to celebrate when he arrived. Andreas said hello to the men, and immediately they returned to their conversation.

He looked up at the clock above the espresso machine. It hung amongst postcards and snapshots of bar employees and some of the regulars. His eyes nearly always lingered on the photo of Hannah and Sebastian. They held their heads close to each other. Hannah wore a cowboy hat. Her tongue was sticking out. Sebastian was just smiling that smile of his. The photo had been taken at the summer party. The employees had dressed as cowboys, and a country band played. If he remembered right, the band was lousy. It was the night he’d talked to Sebastian for the first time. Since then they had spoken often. Sebastian had told him about his mother, who was so ill that he’d had to move in with her. They played chess now and then, and one evening, at Sebastian’s request, Andreas had brought along his writing. That had been over a month ago.

Hannah stuck a cigarette between her lips. Andreas reached down to feel in his pockets, but the poet was quick to strike a match. The smoke shrouded her face. Erased it for a few moments. Andreas stared at the small white particles that moved like some dancing organism in front of her. She waved the smoke away and poured a large draft for a man at the bar.

Normally you could set your watch to Sebastian. Hardly an evening went by without him stopping in, if not precisely at ten then never more than a few minutes past.

This evening the expected guest didn’t show until twentyfive minutes past. Andreas spotted him at once. As always, he wore an Iceland sweater and a deep-blue windbreaker. His dark hair had fallen over his eyes, and he ran his hand through it as he stepped in out of the murk. Stooped shoulders and a dragging gait. The usual preoccupied expression on his face.

“He’s here now,” Andreas said, turning to the others. “He just walked in.”

The poet raised up on his barstool and scanned the bar. “Well I don’t see him. Where is he?”

Andreas pointed toward the door. Sebastian must have slipped into the crowd, because he couldn’t see the author now.

“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.