13 Little Blue Envelopes(51)

ago, but doctors aren’t always right. I think I



knew that time was soon going to become an issue.

When I was in Amsterdam with Charlie, I

definitely knew something was wrong with me. I wasn’t

sure what. I thought it was something with my eyes.

It was the quality of the light. Sometimes things

seemed very dark. There were little black spots in my

vision, spots that would sometimes eat up my view. But

I was too chicken to go to the doctor. I said it was

nothing and decided instead to keep moving. My next

stop was an artists’ colony in Denmark.

So, your next instruction is to take a plane to

Copenhagen, immediately. It’s a short trip. Send an

e-mail to [email protected] with flight information.

Someone will meet you at the airport.

Love,

YRA





The Viking Ship

She was standing in the airport in Copenhagen, staring at a doorway, trying to figure out if it was (a) a bathroom and (b) what kind of bathroom it was. The door merely said H.

Was she an H ?

Was H “hers”? It could just as easily be “his.” Or “Helicopter Room: Not a Bathroom at All.”

She turned around in despair, her pack almost causing her to lose her balance and tumble over.

The Copenhagen airport was sleek and well organized, with shiny metal plates on the walls, metal strips along the floors, and big metal columns. All airports were kind of sterile places, but the Copenhagen airport was like an operating table.

Looking through the massive glass panels that lined the building, Ginny could see that the sky outside was also a steely gray.

She was waiting for someone she didn’t know and who

didn’t know her. She only knew that he or she wrote English in 233

all caps and told her to WAIT BY THE MERMAIDS. After a lot of walking around in semicircles (the whole place was one big curve) and asking a lot of people, she found statues of two mermaids looking over from one of the second-floor rails. She had been standing next to them for over forty-five minutes, she badly needed to pee, and she was seriously wondering whether this was some kind of test.

Just as she was about to make a run for the H room, she noticed a tall man with long brown hair approaching her. She could see that he wasn’t very old, but his big brown beard gave him a mature, imposing air. His outfit—a pair of jeans, a Nirvana T-shirt, and a leather jacket—was normal, except for the belt of chain-link metal that hung from his waist, with various objects hanging off it like charms, like a large animal tooth and something that looked like a massive whistle. And he was making a beeline for her. She looked around, but she had a pretty strong feeling that he wasn’t charging toward the group of Japanese tourists who were converging next to her under a small blue flag.

“You!” he called out. “Virginia! Right!”

“Right,” Ginny said.

“I knew it! I am Knud! Welcome to Denmark!”

“You speak English?”

“Of course I speak English! All Danes speak English! Of

course we do! And pretty good English!”

“Pretty good,” Ginny agreed. There was an exclamation

point after everything Knud said. He spoke English loudly.

“Yes! I know! Come on!”

Knud had a very modern, very expensive-looking blue BMW

234

motorcycle with a sidecar waiting for them in the parking lot.

The sidecar, he explained, was what he used to transport all of his tools and materials (what they were, he didn’t say). He was absolutely certain her massive backpack would fit in there as well, and he was right. A moment later, she was in the sidecar, low to the ground, tearing down the street of yet another European city that looked (she was ashamed to admit it—it seemed like such a cop-out) very much like the one she had just left.

He parked his bike on a street full of colorful houses, all linked together, that sat along a wide canal. Ginny had to wait until she was unpacked and then stepped uncertainly out of the sidecar. She took a step in the direction of the buildings, but Knud called her back.

“This way, Virginia! Down here!”

He was carrying her pack down a set of concrete steps that led down to the water. He continued down the sidewalk that was along the very edge of the canal, past several carefully marked out “parking spots” where large houseboats were docked. He stopped at one of these. His was a complete little house that looked like a small wooden cabin. There were

flower boxes full of red flowers at the windows and a massive wooden dragon head coming from the front. Knud opened the door and beckoned Ginny inside.

Knud’s house was all one large room, made entirely of red, fresh-smelling wood, every inch of which was intricately carved with small dragon heads, spirals, gargoyles. At one end of the room, there was a large futon bed with a frame made of thick, unfinished branches. The majority of the space was taken up by a wooden worktable with carving tools and bits of ironwork. A 235

small space was devoted to a kitchen. This was where Knud headed, removing several plastic containers from the tiny refrigerator.

“You are hungry!” he said. “I’ll make you some good Danish food. You’ll see. Sit down.”

Ginny took a seat at the table. He began opening the containers, which were filled with a dozen or more kinds of fish.