them, with their villas, respectively, in Brønshøj and Albertslund, three kids between them so they jointly matched the national average. They didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, went out running every day, mountain biking on the weekends (in the flats of Zealand). They watched television in the evenings, had voted central right, both of them, flat and happy as clams with kids to match. No doubt in ten years or so they would divorce to match the statistics in that sector of this disintegrating society, too. A terrible confession he would never make, secret observations locked inside the vault of his skull.
Only Adam (what a handle to give a kid!)—named for his mother’s brother, middle named for Breathwaite’s beloved dead brother, Jes, the name he went by—only Jes gave him cause for concern and hope. But the kid didn’t have a chance. Too many dreams. He’d dabbled in post-modernism, and he’d dabbled in post-traditionalism and in post-colonialism, and he’d dabbled in post-ethnicity and in behavioristic post-ethicism and no doubt in post-postism, too, leading up to pre-ism, retro-ism, which could end only in now-ism, and then on to neo-nowism ad infinitum, until time stops its survey of all the world. As far as Breathwaite could determine, he was a very bright kid with an understanding of everything and a grasp of nothing. The boy had all the right ideas and not a chance of realizing them. He worked in a bloody key-and-heel bar run by a Pakistani, and every year that passed, the limb he was out on grew farther from the trunk. At least he had an apartment. He’d invested in a three-room on Blågårds Place at a time when such a place was an idiotic investment for a quarter million. Breathwaite had tried to talk him out of it, but the boy would not be swayed. Twenty-one-year-old Marxist capitalist. Breathwaite only wished he himself had had the good sense to follow the boy’s lead and buy three such condominiums, for he would have quadrupled his money already. At least the boy had that to fall back on, but you needed someplace to live and you couldn’t eat bricks.
Breathwaite crossed the lakes, chiding himself for his hard and pessimistic frame of mind. What the hell? Just been fired. Got a right to be sour. He followed Nørrebrogade past the grimy streets where he’d had his own first apartment in Copenhagen, he and Kis when they’d started out, a two-room on Peder Fabers Street that they’d bought for nothing, sold for triple what they paid, but which now would have been worth a cool million. Mistake to sell that, too. Now, apart from their summer house, they had nothing, a rented luxury flat. Money out the window every month.
Mistake.
He paused on the avenue to gaze across through passing traffic. In the gaps between the cars whizzing past, he could make out the broad face of a burial association. Danish terminology always made him smile, straight from the shoulder as it was. No portentous purple metaphors here. No funeral parlors—which was to being dead, he thought, as a cocktail lounge was to being crocked. This particular shopfront advertised, ARBEJDERNES LIGKISTER—literally, “Workers Corpse Boxes.”
At Blågårds Place, he stopped at Café Flora and ordered a pint, sat in hopes his son might happen by, and found himself thinking about his conversation with the CEO. Shit-canned at fifty-nine.
“Unfortunately we have to cut from the top as well as the bottom,” Kampman said. “I’m sorry.”
Breathwaite had entertained this possibility but considered it a long shot. The international work at the Tank had grown increasingly important with the growth over the past decades of the European Union from six member states to nine to twelve to fifteen to twenty-five, soon to twenty-seven. How in the world could they do without his experience? Well, clearly, they could. His salary was second only to the CEO’s and equal to the administrative chief’s. He had counted on staying until he was
Only Adam (what a handle to give a kid!)—named for his mother’s brother, middle named for Breathwaite’s beloved dead brother, Jes, the name he went by—only Jes gave him cause for concern and hope. But the kid didn’t have a chance. Too many dreams. He’d dabbled in post-modernism, and he’d dabbled in post-traditionalism and in post-colonialism, and he’d dabbled in post-ethnicity and in behavioristic post-ethicism and no doubt in post-postism, too, leading up to pre-ism, retro-ism, which could end only in now-ism, and then on to neo-nowism ad infinitum, until time stops its survey of all the world. As far as Breathwaite could determine, he was a very bright kid with an understanding of everything and a grasp of nothing. The boy had all the right ideas and not a chance of realizing them. He worked in a bloody key-and-heel bar run by a Pakistani, and every year that passed, the limb he was out on grew farther from the trunk. At least he had an apartment. He’d invested in a three-room on Blågårds Place at a time when such a place was an idiotic investment for a quarter million. Breathwaite had tried to talk him out of it, but the boy would not be swayed. Twenty-one-year-old Marxist capitalist. Breathwaite only wished he himself had had the good sense to follow the boy’s lead and buy three such condominiums, for he would have quadrupled his money already. At least the boy had that to fall back on, but you needed someplace to live and you couldn’t eat bricks.
Breathwaite crossed the lakes, chiding himself for his hard and pessimistic frame of mind. What the hell? Just been fired. Got a right to be sour. He followed Nørrebrogade past the grimy streets where he’d had his own first apartment in Copenhagen, he and Kis when they’d started out, a two-room on Peder Fabers Street that they’d bought for nothing, sold for triple what they paid, but which now would have been worth a cool million. Mistake to sell that, too. Now, apart from their summer house, they had nothing, a rented luxury flat. Money out the window every month.
Mistake.
He paused on the avenue to gaze across through passing traffic. In the gaps between the cars whizzing past, he could make out the broad face of a burial association. Danish terminology always made him smile, straight from the shoulder as it was. No portentous purple metaphors here. No funeral parlors—which was to being dead, he thought, as a cocktail lounge was to being crocked. This particular shopfront advertised, ARBEJDERNES LIGKISTER—literally, “Workers Corpse Boxes.”
At Blågårds Place, he stopped at Café Flora and ordered a pint, sat in hopes his son might happen by, and found himself thinking about his conversation with the CEO. Shit-canned at fifty-nine.
“Unfortunately we have to cut from the top as well as the bottom,” Kampman said. “I’m sorry.”
Breathwaite had entertained this possibility but considered it a long shot. The international work at the Tank had grown increasingly important with the growth over the past decades of the European Union from six member states to nine to twelve to fifteen to twenty-five, soon to twenty-seven. How in the world could they do without his experience? Well, clearly, they could. His salary was second only to the CEO’s and equal to the administrative chief’s. He had counted on staying until he was
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