"A Piece of Cake 8"

MOVED TO : 2100 COPENHAGEN

by Diana Deverell

 Chapter One – Lydia Meets the Danes

Lydia Nielsen stood behind her mother, so close she felt Mom’s comfy body tremble as she unlocked the front door of their new home.  Lydia was jittery, too.  She’d grown up in a spacious four-bedroom house in Oregon.  Now, she and Mom and Dad and her older brother Toby would be jamming themselves into a four-room condo ten thousand miles away – one found via an Internet ad.  What 13-year-old girl in her place wouldn’t be shivery with anticipation?

The door swung open and she lunged into the foyer after her mother.  Toby was on her heels, Dad behind him.  The smell of fresh paint slammed into her nostrils.  The acrid bite sharpened as they continued into a room she recognized from the on-line publicity for the just-built complex.  FULLY-EQUIPPED EAT-IN KITCHEN was how Dad had translated the bold-face blurb beside the photo.

Strange, that eating in the kitchen was such a big selling point in Denmark.  Back home, Lydia had never been allowed to eat in any other room.  She’d done her homework on the kitchen table, too, with cold milk and warm brownies at hand when Mom was in the mood to bake.  How comfortable she'd been in that cozy room.  Not much chance she'd ever feel that same way in this new kitchen.  A warm, August morning and yet the functional space felt gloomy and cold.

She faced a picture window and French doors set into an ice-white wall.  The glass rectangles framed clouded sky beyond, a veil between her and the outside.  She glanced right, where the charcoal shade of cupboard doors completed the decorator's narrow spectrum from white to gray.  The matte-finish paint absorbed most of the hazy light.  The little illumination striking the pale oak floor clouded that tint, too, so it also fit into the designer's trendy palette.

Lydia saw her mother extend a hand toward the sleek designer cabinetry, her gesture echoing the domestic goddess scene pictured in the ad.  But Mom's gray-streaked brown hair and thick glasses didn't fit the stylish image.  Rosemary Randall Nielsen's cheery moon-face made her look younger than 54 years, but still noticeably older than the model.  In her worn-out jeans and baggy sweatshirt, she was as far from advertising's ideal Danish eat-in-kitchen-user as Lydia could imagine, which didn't seem to bother Mom at all.  “Isn’t it elegant?” she asked Lydia.

Was it?  Eating meals in Oregon, Lydia'd been surrounded by sunny yellows and bright blues.  She'd need time to adjust to sleek non-color.  Turning from Mom’s happy smile, she glimpsed her frown reflected in the stainless steel refrigerator door.  Automatically, she reached up to pull her honey-colored hair into a pony tail.  Still not long enough.  She released the strands and turned to explore further.  Time to examine the bedroom they’d marked on the floor plan as hers.

Toby brushed past her, headed for the French doors.  Her brother was a month away from turning 15, and skinnier, blonder and taller than she was.  Recent growth spurts had brought him to within one inch of Dad’s six-foot-three.  He was all elbows and smelly feet and given to calling Lydia Troll, though she’d grown beyond the five-foot-five mark on their old kitchen wall, making her only an inch shorter than Mom.

Toby pulled open the door and rushed outside onto a terrace running the width of their condo.  Curious, Lydia followed.  Concrete steps led down from the terrace to a paved walkway with a 10-foot high temporary cyclone fence at its far edge.  Her brother was transfixed by the sight of two huge diggers noisily excavating the central park-like area of the complex.  The odors of wet soil and diesel exhaust replaced the smell of paint.

She caught a whiff of cherry-flavored tobacco smoke and Dad moved in close beside her.  Tall and lean, Keld Nielsen had thick blondish hair which was only one shade away from the white bristles he hadn't had time to shave off his chin this morning.  He waved his pipe at the mud hole.

“Putting in an underground parking garage,” he said.  “Be a few months before they plant that garden.”

“But we sold our cars.”  Lydia glared at the gaping pit.  “You said people don’t need cars when they live in a big city with sidewalks, bike lanes, and public transportation.”

Dad puffed out smoke.  “Some do, I guess.”

Lydia sighed.  The Nielsen family would be on foot while their neighbors roared past in cars.  And the builder’s promise of barbecue grills and picnic tables was months in the future.

For a year, her parents had insisted the move to Dad’s native land would be good for all four of them.  But they’d been guessing what living in Copenhagen would be like.  Guessing wrong, she concluded darkly.  Her brain began editing the fantasy she'd created of life in Denmark.

Delete, delete, delete. 

A boyish shout drew her gaze back to Toby.  He’d discovered three neighbor kids and was relaying their names from the adjacent terrace.   Looking at her with interest were his new acquaintances – Marc and his younger sisters, Christine and Sara.  Marc was no taller than Lydia, but his shorts and tank top showed off the muscular arms and legs of an athlete.  Turned out he was in the eighth grade too, and he’d studied English since third.  His sisters were five and seven years younger, and their heights stair-stepped down past bespectacled Christine to Sara, who couldn't have cleared four feet.  All three had thick hair the color of coffee liberally laced with cream.

Marc had quickly grasped that the two Americans spoke no Danish.  His English was good enough to get all five kids down on the walkway and into a game of soccer.

Marc turned out to be a noisy athlete.  He commented on every play and yelled the “F” word when Lydia fumbled and the “A” word when Toby blocked a goal kick. He grinned so widely that Lydia guessed he didn’t mean to insult anyone.  She supposed his family didn’t have a rule against swearing.

She glanced back at the terrace, but neither of her parents was visible.  Probably waiting on the street, looking for the truck bringing their furniture.  Marc blurted out another bad word and she caught Toby’s eye.  He winked at her and missed a pass from Christine.

“Shit,” Toby shouted, exuberant.

Lydia felt a matching rush of excitement.  Being outdoors playing with the neighbors seemed familiar, yet here it also felt exotic.  She ran after the loose ball, but tiny Sara beat her to it.  “H-E-double-hockey-sticks,” she began.  “Hell,” she corrected herself, following Toby’s example.  “Dammit all to Hell,” she muttered.  Her spirits lifted.  She'd left small-town America for an international capital.  Who knew what lay ahead?

School, she reminded herself.  But she was good at school.  Maybe tomorrow would go okay. 

At 8:00 AM, she and Toby would start in the neighborhood elementary school, which housed grades kindergarten through ninth.  In long distance phone calls with the principal, Keld Nielsen had successfully argued that the best way for his children to become fluent in Danish would be by taking normal classes with native speakers.

He assured Lydia and Toby they’d have no trouble going cold turkey.  They'd easily overcome any difficulty arising from their arrival two days after the official start of school.  Because Toby had a September birthday, he'd begun U.S. kindergarten at age six, the same age as his Danish classmates.  He'd fit perfectly into ninth grade.  Born in June, Lydia'd started kindergarten at age five, so she'd be a year younger than other eighth-graders.  Dad claimed that because she was such a good student, she'd have no problem with that.  What's more, all Danish children studied English and Dad was sure they'd love to help the Americans adjust.

More bad guesswork, Lydia discovered the next morning.  Not many of her new classmates spoke English as freely as neighbor Marc.  And he wasn’t among them because he was continuing at his old school instead of transferring to the one closest to the housing complex.

Kirsten, the eighth grade teacher, was a lithe and wiry woman in her thirties, her tanned face capped by a crisp brown bob.  She told the other students to question the new girl in English.  Lydia’s answer to “What’s your name?” prompted Kirsten to write Lidia on the chalkboard.  Lydia corrected her, and one by one, classmates spelled out their names and wrote them on the board under hers. 

Niklas, a neatly-dressed boy with a designer haircut, asked, “Where are you from?”

Lydia's answered puzzled the others.  Kirsten pulled down a roll-up map of North America so Lydia could point to Oregon.  After a half-hour focused on Lydia, Kirsten returned to her lesson plan and began discussing a short story.  In Danish, of course.

Lydia pasted an attentive expression on her face and stopped listening.  The classroom was on the third floor and through the dusty windows, she saw only cloudy sky.  The indoor view was equally dreary.  The school building was one hundred years old, the interior modernized at least a decade ago.  The yellow paint on the walls was faded and smudged with hand prints and an unpleasant odor lingered in the air. Her one-student wooden desk and matching armless chair were stained and chipped.

During the mid-morning break, she sat outside in a cluster of girls at the edge of a blacktopped area where younger children played games.  She spotted Toby among some older boys who were laughing and smoking cigarettes by the trash bins.

Her classmates were polite but their English petered out after five minutes and they spent the next ten speaking to one another in Danish.  Climbing the stairs back to the classroom, Lydia told herself that the girls were tired of speaking English.  They couldn't have decided that fast not to like her.

At 11:30, everyone put schoolwork aside and pulled food containers from their backpacks.  Lydia realized they were going to eat in the classroom and she arranged her meal on her desk.  Mom had packed the same things that Lydia had been taking to school since she was six.

A skinny girl on her left frowned at Lydia’s lunch.  “Peanut butter will make you fat,” Emilie – pronounced Amelia  –  said.  “And white bread is not healthy.”  Emilie wore a T-shirt sporting the phrase 69 is My Favorite Number.  She'd have been sent home to change if she'd been at Lydia's old school.  In this new one, no one seemed to notice or care.   Having verbally trashed Lydia's lunch, she took delicate bites of liver paste smeared on dark rye bread, a combination Lydia's father loved and she long ago determined was disgusting.

She nibbled her raisins and watched Silje – one of the best English speakers, who pronounced her name Celia – eat a whole cucumber as though it were a banana.  Her hair was woven into tight French braids that went well with her preppy-looking plaid blouse and wrap-around skirt.  After finishing the cuke, Silje enjoyed a slice of rye topped with salami.  Lydia knew that the little white specks in salami were pure fat.  Peanut butter was a superior source of protein.  Lydia had learned that in fourth grade during Black History Month when her class studied George Washington Carver.  But would anyone believe her if she argued the merits of peanut butter?  Not likely.  She unfolded the cling-wrap containing a dozen Pringles.

“Potato chips give you cancer,” Silje announced.  She switched immediately to Danish and began an animated and giggly exchange with Emilie.  Foreign words bubbled around Lydia and she deliberately concentrated on her lunch, glancing up only when the faint, nasty scent in the classroom exploded into an intense cat-food odor. Two seats to her right, Niklas was unwrapping rye bread covered with rust-red chunks in a gluey tomato paste.  The foul fish smell made Lydia’s stomach churn.  Niklas took a huge bite and she worked hard not to gag.

She endured until school ended and reached home at the same time her mother returned from taking a placement exam at the language school for new immigrants.  Mom had prepared for the test by trying to speak Danish with Dad.  Now, she announced triumphantly, “I start in an advanced class tomorrow.”

“Good for you,” Dad retorted from the living room where he was watching television.

“Let’s chat in Danish,” Mom urged.  “I need to learn it fast.”

Lydia didn't wait for Dad's reply.  “I'll pass on that.”   She hurried through the living room to her bedroom and shut her door firmly.  At least yesterday Dad had kept his promise to buy her and Toby TVs of their own.  Good move, because he kept the family set tuned permanently to gray-haired men arguing with each other.  He claimed that in order to re-enter Danish society, he had to immerse himself totally in Danish culture before starting his new job on September 1.

Lydia'd had enough Danish immersion for one day.  She found a re-run of Beverly Hills 90210 on her TV.  Lines of writing across the bottom of the screen translated the dialog to Danish.  It was an early episode, when twins Brandon and Brenda Walsh moved from the dull Midwest to a Spanish-style mansion in California. 

Lydia focused on the palm trees casting shadows across the lush lawn.  Soon Brenda and Brandon would be hanging out with the coolest kids at West Beverly High.

Lydia turned off the TV.  The show was too depressing.  Her parents had made all the wrong choices.  Instead of zipping around sunny California in a funky car with her new gang, she was stuck in a cramped condo in dull gray-sky, unfriendly Copenhagen.  Was any place farther from Beverly Hills?

* * *

Chapter Two – Toby Keeps His Cool

Toby was only five minutes into his first field trip on a Copenhagen city bus when he figured it out.  Dad's mockery of the old-fashioned yellow behemoths that hauled Oregon kids to school had been total crap.  This Danish clunker was no improvement and you needed a ticket to ride it.  What, did somebody believe opening a single roof vent on a sweltering mid-August afternoon would chill a standing-room only crowd?  Hello, Denmark, ever heard of air conditioning?

At least he was sitting.  All twenty-two kids in his ninth grade home room had boarded together.  He'd had to move fast to squeeze past an old lady huddled in the aisle seat and claim an empty spot by the window.  Which was sealed shut, but he hadn't known that.  Most of his classmates were on their feet in the aisle, swaying and shouting Danish at one another.  Kids and noise ebbed and flowed around him as the bus lurched along the avenue, stopping too often to let passengers on and off.

Three stops later, his luck ran out when the old lady left and a fat stranger mashed himself into her seat.  A sweaty blotch darkened the front of the dude's dingy once-white tank top and his huge thighs lapped over into Toby's space.  Toby trained his gaze on the passing storefronts and breathed through his mouth, trying to escape the sickening blend of diesel fumes and funky clothes.

A class outing to a first-run movie on his second day of school beat pretending to listen while the teacher droned on about Danish literature.  At least no film actor would keep hitting the name of one dead writer like a hammer.  Herman Bang, Bang, Bang – the world-famous author.  What a joke – as if anyone outside of Denmark knew that name.

Not that Toby expected to get anything from a Swedish movie with Danish subtitles.   Supposed to be a comedy where kids from the Middle East try to adjust to life in Scandinavia.  He'd find that funny, you bet.

Still, Mom had opened her tight fist and shelled out her idea of lunch money.  As if 20 crowns would buy much  from a cinema snack bar.  Still, a coke would make him happy.  He'd find solid food when he got home.  For the next two hours he could be a normal teenager at a movie.  He rubbed a hand over his hair, the blond strands damp and limp.  How many more stops before they reached the theater?  He craned his neck, looking for a familiar face to ask.

And didn't see a single kid he knew.

Damn!  The rest of the class had gotten off the bus without him.  He twisted in his seat, half-standing to peer back down the sidewalk.  Empty as far as he could see, except for two women draped head-to-toe in black robes, only their eyes showing.  Not classmates, neither of them.

So the others had been gone a while.  He might be ten blocks past the right stop.  If he hopped off, could he walk back and find them?  Doubtful, he hadn't been memorizing landmarks.  And where was the theater, anyway?  Western Bow Wow was what he'd read off the chalkboard.  He hadn't asked the address.  Seemed to be a place everyone else knew, why sound stupider than they thought he was?

He wiped moist palms on his cargo shorts and peered out the window, searching for any landmark he recognized.  But except for the ten-minute walk to school, he'd seen Copenhagen only from the airport to the train station nearest their condo.

He couldn't ask the driver for help.  The class had traveled on a group ticket and as soon as he revealed he was separated from the others, he'd have to start paying for his ride.   

He jingled the coins in his pocket.  What did a bus ticket cost?  Would his lunch money cover it?  He spotted a taxi out the window.  He'd never ridden in a cab, but he was sure a couple of coins wouldn't be enough to get him  home.

The PA squawked, the driver garbling an announcement as the bus stopped.  His seatmate grunted and heaved himself to his feet.  Toby watched El Chubbo shuffle across the aisle and down the steps.  He felt abandoned, as though he were looking at the backside of his last friend on earth.  He glanced glumly outside.

Wait!  He recognized that big red sign with the white capital S.  The bus had stopped at a station on the city train system.  An electronic buzzer signaled that the exit doors were closing.

”Stop!”  He shoved into the aisle, stumbled down the steps and tried to force the door open.  ”Let me off.”

The driver spat out an irritated retort.  But the bus didn't move and the doors slowly re-opened.  Toby landed happily on the sidewalk and raised a clenched fist in the air.  Yes,  a giant step for mankind!  Now, to find the train going to the station nearest home.  He studied the Seven-Eleven window and spotted the decal indicating that train tickets were sold inside.

Toby forced his shoulders to relax and pulled his sunglasses from his shirt pocket.  He sauntered through the automatic doors, relishing the blast of refrigerated air.  Of course, an American chain would understand how critically important temperature is to customer satisfaction.

The dude handling the counter was no older than 18, his black hair thick and straight, as though his ancestors might have come from Asia.  Yet he was as tall and broad-shouldered as most young Danish men.  A mixture like himself except that all Toby'd inherited from his non-Scandinavian mom was a jaw too small for his huge Danish teeth. 

Toby gambled that he was facing someone who understood English and plunked his coins on the counter.  ”Ticket to Nordhavn,” he added.

In response, he got his ticket and a few crowns in change.

Heartened, he repeated a question he'd heard Dad ask at the airport.  ”Which platform?”

”Two, man.”  The counterman's Asian-looking eyes narrowed further as he took in Toby's cargo shorts, T-shirt with The Offspring's latest album cover, and shades.  Must have pegged him as a clueless tourist because he pronounced his next words slowly and distinctly.  ”You want the train to Farum.  Nordhavn is the fifth stop.”

The train clattered through Central Station, passed colorful buildings, dove underground into darkness, crawled back into daylight.  Toby rode standing up by the exit door, carefully counting the stops, double-checking with the overhead digital display.  Half-a-brain was enough for that and he used the rest to make a good story of today's adventure.  He increased the passenger count to make the bus more crowded.  He added a group of marching demonstrators on the sidewalk and police vans lurking in side streets, accounting for his moment of distraction when the others disappeared.  He gave El Chubbo a ghetto blaster propped on his inside shoulder to explain why he hadn't heard classmates calling to him.

At home later, slathering peanut butter on white bread, he tried it out on his mother.  Mixed results – but that was Mom.  On the plus side, she listened to his whole spiel without interrupting.  But instead of praising him for getting himself home, she fussed that he'd paid adult fare – double what the law allowed!  Lucky for him she had to cut it short and zoom off to her Danish class.

He poured a glass of milk to go with the sandwich, and slid through the door to the terrace to watch the machines raising dust on the other side of the fence.  The roar of diesel engines was music after hearing Mom rattle on.

No point in trying to explain to her.  He'd done what he had to do.  He'd needed not to be a little kid so he could get himself home.  He knew he'd succeeded when the Asian dude treated him like another guy, called him man.  No way would he have ruined everything by asking for a child's ticket.  Even if he had remembered the discount.

“Big guy!” came a shout from the ground-floor terrace next door.

Toby turned and spotted Marc coming out of his bedroom.  Toby's parents had assigned the identical bedroom in their apartment to Lydia.  Toby occupied space on the other side of the condo.  His room was probably designed as a study because it was divided by a pocket door and had no closets.  Fine with him.  Sure, he'd have liked a private exit to the outdoors like Marc had but Lydia's bedroom was beside the one his parents used.  He'd surprised them last night watching the soft porn channel.  They'd jumped apart, red-faced and silly.  He didn't want to hear what they got up to when they were alone.  Or imagine it for a single second.

He swallowed his last mouthful of peanut butter and bread. “Little guy!” he hollered at Marc.  “Get your ass over here.  I need answers!”

Seconds later, his neighbor bounded up the steps and dragged a deck chair from under the umbrella.  He pulled off his T-shirt and sprawled across the chair so the noontime sun heated his tan chest.  Marc might be a year younger than Toby and seven inches shorter, but Toby doubted he could take the kid.  Marc had announced five minutes after they met that he'd been lifting weights and running laps all summer to get in shape for soccer.

Now, when Marc used both hands to smooth his mocha-colored hair and clasped his fingers behind his head, muscles formed hard lumps in his upper arms.  “What's up?” he asked Toby.

“I got to find a better Internet connection,” Toby said.  “My mom fell for some free dial-up bullshit where we pay by the minute for the phone call.  She won't let me stay on long enough to talk to everybody I need to talk to.”

“Large problem,” Marc agreed.  “I know.”

Sympathy!  Toby's spirits lifted at the easy progress.  Maybe he could get on-line next door.  He opened his mouth to make his next move.

Marc cut him off.  “My Dad forbids anyone to use the net when he's working.  Says it cuts the speed in half.  He's finishing a screenplay and he won't allow anything to slow him.”  Marc paused and his eyes widened.  His next words came out in a rush.  “But you are soon 15.  You can go over to Jernhesten.”

Toby blinked.  “Jernhesten?  What, that place across the street with the camping gear in the window?  I'm not Boy Scout material.”

“Nobody in there is, either.”  Marc snickered.  “Jernhesten is a place for kids 15 and older to spend  free time.  They have their own bar and music and very fun parties.  Those things in the window are for when they are out in the woods, role-playing.  What you want is upstairs.  At least 20 computers hooked up to the net and each other, for members to use.”

“Damn,” Toby breathed.  He was turning shit to gold today wherever he went.  He grinned at Marc.  “Thanks for telling me.  I'll check it out.  So you have to wait another year?”

“At least.  Depends if I stick with football.  My dad wants me to skip over beer and tobacco when I'm training.”  He scoffed.  “The pros don't, I can't see what's the big deal.”

Beer?  Tobacco?  Unlimited Internet access?  Not like any youth club in Oregon.  But Hell!  He wasn't in Oregon any longer.  He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head in imitation of Marc's relaxed pose.  “My class ditched me this morning,” he said.  “Snuck off the bus and left me on my way to nowhere.”

“You are not making a joke?”  Marc dropped his arms and leaned forward.  “That was not nice.”

Toby shrugged.  He didn't want to come across as paranoid.  Or worse, a total loser people played practical jokes on.  “Ah, probably wasn't on purpose.  See, this is what happened.” 

Marc listened raptly to Toby's embroidered account and laughed often, though not at those places when Toby thought he was funniest.  He guessed Marc's English wasn't quite good enough to appreciate American humor.  But he was a better audience than any other Danish kid Toby had met.

A male voice shouted Marc's name from the terrace next door.  A slender guy with bushy gray hair was pointing at his wristwatch.  “Fodbold!” he added.

“Time for training,” Marc translated for Toby as he headed for the steps.  “See you later.”

Toby watched him hurry away.  He stretched luxuriously.  Damn, it felt good to make somebody laugh with him, not at him.  He'd never be good enough at Danish to crack people up.  And his classmates weren't good enough at English to get his jokes.  Well, he was resourceful, he'd proven it today.  He'd find a way to get over.