Copenhagen Noir

Nabil can’t have been here more than a few minutes. He’s still wearing his overcoat and hasn’t recovered from the shock yet. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He repeats it slowly, to himself. Only when I’m all the way in the room can I follow his eyes, down to the girl in bed. Maria. Christian’s sister. Her eyes are closed, but her sleep seems more drug-induced than peaceful. Her head is held motionless by a big white collar. Her nostrils are filled with dried blood. One of her cheeks is swollen, almost twice as big as the other. The hospital gown gaps and I see red and purple marks on the small patch of skin visible.

At first I think, traffic accident. A bad one. But something isn’t right. I haven’t seen Christian for several years. Well, once after I got out. At a bar in town, we said hello and agreed to get together soon. Which of course didn’t happen. But why would he call me after a traffic accident? He has new friends now. People who understand him better.

Christian breaks the silence.

“They found her down by Fuglebakken Station. She was just sitting there, bleeding from her nose and mouth. Didn’t have… all her clothes on. Head hanging down on her chest. Then somebody called an ambulance.”

“What happened to her?” Nabil asks. Christian doesn’t answer at first, walks over to his sister and smoothes a lock of hair behind her ear.

“The police were here a few hours ago. I couldn’t help them. I don’t have any idea…” He turns toward me, pulls me in, hugs me. His eyes, dead and distant until now, turn moist. “It’s so damn good to see you guys,” he says. “She had this in her pocket.” He opens his hand, holds out a small DV tape, a videotape from a camera. “The police can have it tomorrow. I want to see it first.”

We take the car, my car, an old Peugeot. Down Hovmestervej, Tomsgårdsvej toward Borups Allé. A ride through our old neighborhood. I could slow down and say, There’s where we smashed a few windows, there’s where we broke into a car. There’s where I beat somebody up, there’s where I got beat up. There’s where we wrote our names on the wall.

The rest of the kebab sits on the dashboard, the greasy wax paper flutters above the air vent. None of us speak. I roll down the window and throw it out, watch in the rearview mirror how it hits the street and explodes into small pieces of lettuce and meat. Someone honks behind us. There was a time when that would have been enough for us to stomp on the brakes.

The boys ride again. The boys from the Bird section of Northwest. From Stærevej, Swallow Street. The boys from the block. There was a time that would have made me happy. Us, back together.

Your first friends are your best, you’ll never have better. That thought warmed me while I was in prison. The thought that someday we would meet again, Christian in a shirt and tie, Nabil who had finally figured out what he wanted to be, a driving instructor maybe, pointing at a blue Audi parked and shining in the sun. I would pull out my wallet, show photos of a girl in her late twenties, a pretty girl. Another photo of two kids. Maybe just a boy who looked like his father. We would sit in a café, toast with beer. Talk about old times, laugh, and feel just a little bit ashamed of all the shit we did. Boys’ pranks.

It’s still quiet in the car, no one says a word. No one laughs. This wasn’t how I pictured our reunion.

Maria on the screen. She’s dancing without music. She pulls the front of her dress down, gives a shot of her breasts. Dances some more, shows her ass, striptease. She’s much better than the first girl on the tape, and though she almost falls a few times from her heels, she’s always showing a naughty smile.

“Now you’re going to suck my cock.” The voice comes from the man behind the camera. Maria grabs a pillow from the sofa and lays it on the floor. I would never say it out loud, but she does it so naturally that this can’t be her first film. The camera shakes and turns upside down a moment when it’s taken off the tripod. Then the man films down on himself. Films Maria with her knees on the pillow, reaching out for the zipper of a pair of dark blue jeans, pulling a half-stiff cock out of the gap in a pair of boxers.

The phrase for this is POV. Point of view. A subcategory of gonzo. I’m not trying to remember this industry lingo. But the words pop into my head, and I’m ashamed to think about them while Christian’s little sister gives head on the screen. If I hadn’t seen her in the hospital bed this would be hot. I try to hold the image of her in my mind as the little girl going to confirmation class in Grøndal Church. Nabil and I took turns following her there when Christian couldn’t. Because we thought it was too far and because we knew the ugly side of the neighborhood better than she did. Knew boys like us. She laughed and said that we were being silly, that she could walk there just fine herself. But she never refused us. I think she was proud to have an older boy escort her.