Copenhagen Noir

Kirsten smiles at me, clinks her glass against mine. “To Lucille,” she says. We drink. She tells me that she is studying literature at the University of Copenhagen. She is especially involved with poetry. We talk some about American poetry, I mention that I write poems myself. That seems to make an impression on her. “Tell me about them,” she says, “tell me about your poems.” I say that there isn’t much to tell (“Life, death, love, you know”), but I love Walt Whitman-especially Leaves of Grass-and Eliot, of course (I recite from The Waste Land: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust”), but also the great Russians, Blok and Mayakovsky, not to mention Baudelaire. “Very predictable, all of them,” she says with a smile, “and you don’t even mention Anna Akhmatova?” She turns her glass in her hand. “What do you think about Sylvia Plath? You’ve read her, haven’t you?” “I’ve mostly read her husband,” I answer. “That’s a shame,” Kirsten says. She gives me a challenging look. “Listen to this: Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/and I eat men like air. ” She locks onto my eyes, then she smiles, sips her wine, and says: “You must be aware that she was much better than Hughes, wilder, much more talented and original, but she was the one who died and he had the last word. Have you read Birthday Letters?” I nod. “He abandoned her. It killed her,” she says, loudly. I think she’s being too simplistic, that if anything is predictable here-and stupid, and completely unfair-it’s blaming him for her suicide; we discuss, her cheeks turn red, I promise to read Plath. She names a number of younger poets I should also read. She thinks I’m hopelessly behind the times. Which I’m sure she is right about. “Why don’t you read Danish literature?” she asks. My hand is on the tablecloth, she covers it with hers. “Can’t you send me some of your writing? I want to read you.” I take this as a hidden invitation to something more than poems, my stomach tightens, I think I’m blushing. She goes to the ladies’ room. I order another bottle of wine. It feels as if I’m floating. I feel my body clearly, I feel it not at all. And we sit there for another hour and a half, I have a hard time getting the turbot down, I get a little bit smashed, she does too. I enjoy watching her eat her lobster, sucking it all out, we talk and talk, especially her, I can’t take my eyes off her, her sparklingly clear gaze, the smiles racing across her face, we toast again, this time to how she will come visit me in Brooklyn.

I’m giddy from a tickling, prickling anticipation. The imprint her lipstick has left on the glass. The delicate curve of her nose. I forget that dead girl, Lucille, everything. Kirsten’s presence and the intimacy she offers me makes me light and carefree, almost ridiculously light and carefree (and I take note of that, but everything is radiant). Then we have coffee. I feel her pressing her leg against mine under the table. And I ask her if she would like to take a walk before picking up her daughter. She would like that.