It was a mild and tempting breeze
above a cold and sleeping sea
With strong arms to swim out to the island
anyone knows we were that close
[Sea Birds] by [Burning Hearts]
For the last handful of my final hours in Denmark I have drifted like sea vapor into the rooms, dragging with me a wistful mood and a suitcase. I'm looking for things I might want to take back with me for my short trip home to Portland, for Christmas. In my large, wheeled suitcase I've packed gifts and some underwear. On the kitchen table my office bag and my laptop wait. Everything else I'll ever need is already in Portland.
The shoe box, containing the [true stories] of disintegrated love, will stay behind. This decision to separate myself from the artifacts has left me curiously sad. I'm attached to the materials within the box, to their facts and messages. I put too much into them, surely, but leaving the box behind feels like a discomforting leap of faith.
I have been in my American fortress in the Kingdom of Denmark for weeks, and my excavation still isn't complete. No one is more surprised by that fact than me. I am conflicted about leaving without finishing, but Jake is getting married on Christmas day; I can't miss that miracle. And Ryan has already been in the house for a week, home for a spell from school in Germany, bringing life back into the spaces with his heart and body heat. I expected to come home and find he'd already started building his usual post-shower pile of black socks – all singles – behind the bathroom door.
In 24 hours I'll be there, with him, in my Old Portland-style home under the [St. Johns Bridge], in the kitchen remodeled to make baking a joy. I'll have my loved ones come and sit in the warmth with me, talk to me while I roll out dough for pies and melt chocolate for truffles. And later, when my home is quiet, I'll lay on the couch in front of the fire or wander the dark glossy hardwood floors and peek into every nook, reacquainting myself with "real life."
Like my first return from Denmark, I will come home transformed. And once more I take a final, lingering look around my lodgings for things to take back home with me to Portland. I am only momentarily switching [houses], but there is a familiar sadness to it that moves my feet aimlessly into these rooms of no interest. With the wandering comes scenes flashing of the last time I left Denmark, back when I was still Daniel's girl.
We had easily slipped into domesticity in our two weeks, and had found a groove for our temperaments to slow-dance to. I was comfortable in his apartment, and with Daniel. I loved to see my things mingling with his. The [Eric Kraft] book I had sent him sat on his coffee table. The bone-colored [stone] with amber-stained fissures from [Hug Point] beach that Daniel had kept in his pocket until we were finally together now lay on his bedroom desk. Smoke from the incense which I'd brought from home filled the fibers of the rugs, and strands of my black hair were left in his bedding and between his couch cushions. A large plastic bag from the discount store [Tiger] sat on the floor next to the cracked leather chair. In it were the [nisse] elves and that [small bear] wearing a sweater I've kept in the shoe box, a notepad and pen set for Becca, and a beautiful cherry blossom dish. On the alcove above our bed I had put the tea light candle holder I bought for Daniel – a simple Scandinavian design of four round depressions in a chrome rectangle.
On our last Saturday morning together, Daniel and I went to the strøget in Århus and had brunch at a cafe. We sat in a warm and wonderful glass-enclosed outside seating area in a flood of natural light. I remember sitting there close to Daniel; demanding a kiss and getting one; sipping cappuccinos with pretentiously lifted little fingers; I ordered our meal in Danish when Daniel challenged me to, successfully arranging for two large plates of food for us. Warmth and love, a restrained laugh. We talked about the movie Daniel would begin shooting the following weekend – a big break for him. But the movie would call for a kiss between Daniel and another woman.
"How do you feel about that, Shelley? My kissing other women?" Daniel asked. He'd asked me this before, in one way or another. These questions were really inquiries into how I felt about his [embers] of infatuations, the little crushes which he tended to have on people, places and things.
"Silly boyfriend," I said, "I know you'll always come back to me."
"And my loving Lily doesn't bother you? It's a love for her art, of course. It's not romantic. But it is love," he said. He leaned into me. The churning overcast sky filtered through the glass roof and turned his skin into cream and his eyes a light gray.
"Silly boyfriend," I said, "our love is erotic and eternal. [I believe in love]."
Our time together was dwindling, and the unbearable moment when we had to say goodbye drew closer. In our last days, our last hours, we held the subject at bay. Instead we kept each other wretchedly alive with a calmness that neither of us felt.
After our brunch Daniel commandeered my hand and escorted me around the Århus city center one last time. We went to the nautical shop to buy Ryan a [dannebrog] for his collection. Ryan – himself a world-traveler – collects flags and currency. I had planned to hand over whatever krone I ended up with once home, but was still searching for a flag that wasn't a merely a polyester version of the prominent red and white cross. At the nautical shop I found Ryan a sturdy, medium-sized flag, one designed to withstand a slicing sea-wind.
The shop was around the corner from the Italian restaurant where I had insisted on knowing how I could be sure my order of wild boar was an actual wild boar. Across the street from the restaurant, Daniel pointed out an apartment complex above a sex club; he said he might move into one of the apartments if he couldn't find anything better when his current lease expired in just a few weeks. The things I would be leaving in his current apartment, which I now thought of as our apartment, would shortly wind up in a strange place. I remember realizing then that some of my black strands would be left behind.
As we wandered from shop to shop half-heartedly, not caring what was for sale, I stole long drinks of Daniel's features. I tried to memorize the choreography of his confident swagger, and observe his lips and eyes for every sign of enjoyment in the repartee between us. Daniel was subdued, forcibly nonchalant, and trying too hard. He filled his escort role with gusto, and I smiled each time he grabbed my hand to gallop down another street, hoof down yet another road lined with slate-colored cobblestones, trying to cram whatever I wanted to do into the day.
We bought groceries for our last candlelit dinner, and decided that spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread would be a wonderful compliment to the bottle of [Gulden Draak Ale] Daniel had already purchased – a triple brown beer with a caramel taste and served in tulip glasses. On the way to the checkout counter, Daniel stopped me. His hand was wrapped around an item on the top shelf of a rolling wire basket. He'd spied some small glass jars of peanut butter – a rare treat in Denmark. Stacked beside the peanut butter were jars of strawberry jam.
"Let me make you breakfast," Daniel said. "For your trip to the airport."
The next morning I was boarding the 8am bus for the nearly two hour trip to the [Billund airport].
"It's not necessary," I said. "You don't have to go through the trouble for a couple of sandwiches."
Every weekday morning in Portland I made a PB&J sandwich for myself and Ryan. I considered it the perfect breakfast food – I still do. I had mentioned this to Daniel months ago, in fact back when we were not yet in love. He had remembered that small detail from what felt like centuries past. I was instantly intoxicated by the sweetness of the gesture. He looked into me, the jar still in his hand, imploring me to say yes. My nipples hardened under my heavy powder-blue jacket. Somehow he noticed this; his eyes dropped to my buried breasts. How did he always know?
We bought our groceries, including the jam and peanut butter, and raced home to our apartment three blocks downhill. The soft kisses that began outside the door to the apartment became urgent in the few steps to the main room – a room so full of light that our bodies were enveloped in brightness. Kisses turned white.
"Do you want to make love now, or later?" Daniel said in kisses. I couldn't have both? He pinched my ass for an answer. I unbuckled his pants and bit the freckle on his sloping lower lip in response.
Daniel sunk into the couch, and I kissed him gently on the lips before enjoying my last moments exploring every detail of his cock. It would be the last time for a long time. Who knew when I'd fellate my Danish lover again? I took my time in the brightness – a heavenly light – licking and suckling as if Daniel wasn't even there. It was just me and a delicious treat that I wanted to savor as long as possible.
When he'd had enough, when the skin of his phallus was swollen from the wetness of my mouth and stretched thin from engorgement, Daniel raised me from my knees and out of my spell. He massaged my breasts and kissed my moistened lips. I moaned and raked my fingers through the thick, tangled hair below his navel, above his cock. It was an invitation to take me.
I was suddenly on my knees again, breathless, excited, and bent over the edge of the couch. The waist of my jeans were pulled down and Daniel was behind me, taking me with clutching hands on my hips and him cock inside me. I was ready to be made love to, always ready to be possessed by him. I arched my back to raise myself higher for him and was rewarded with several pleasing slaps to my right ass cheek.
And then, for short, wonderful moments Daniel stopped moving inside me, to experience my body's solo in our song, my sliding, encircling communication of feverish desire. I began to wish, more than ever, that the hands of time would slow down their progression between the hours.
Gently I was laid on the rough gray upholstery of the couch. Daniel was between my thighs, hungry for honey, his face pinking in the purity of white. He was still wearing his white shirt, his faded jeans and his blue suede shoes, but his arousal could not be contained by his clothes. Daniel stroked himself as his long fingers and tongue memorized the shape and taste of my slit. I could not help but surrender to the endorphins before long, needing to embrace a long series of pleasure waves, needing to ride the white carpet of light in the room and inside me.
Daniel looked down at me with [soft eyes] as I mewed and shimmered with pleasure under his hand. My climax squeezed the fingers he still had inside me. His tender eyes traveled around my glowing skin, from where my jeans and panties lay bunched at my feet, to where sweetness flows, to where my belly shakes from fast heartbeats, to where my shirt had escaped over my bra. My eyes, drunk from orgasm and the bright daylight, could see Daniel marvel that my body had turned to sparkles under his magic hand.
Daniel pulled his shirt up over his nipples, like my shirt was, and laid on top of me, touching his dry, cool skin to my damp, hot skin. He took me again, now solemnly, looking at me in the whiteness. We made love now with eyes locked and wide open, not wanting to miss a detail, trying to say things with pleasure that we could not say with words. I looked into the space between us, between where our bodies joined and retreated, again and again.
"It's beautiful," I said.
"Yes, so beautiful."
Daniel's body shook as his white, warm sperm poured inside me. He collapsed against me, his arms pulling me into an embrace, his lips kissing the sweat from my face. "So beautiful," he whispered.
We straightened our clothes slowly – with effort – and then intertwined on the couch, sleeping away our last afternoon together in Denmark.
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The Miracle in July is the work of author Michelle Anderson.
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