Night settled over Copenhagen, its pungent aroma of puffin and shrimp unmistakable in aurora's boreality. Svena stirred the last of her latte, flickering an edge of foam from the cup's porcelain while a Salsa band beat the last pulsing rhythms of this year's top merengue.
"Another please."
The cabana boy whisked the cup away, white linen flapping in his efficiency. Svena looked past street light reflections in polished glass to admire moonlight's gleam over piled snow.
"Svena?" Civilization's posh velvet snapped her from her reverie.
"Hans."
"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in Oslo?" Hans slipped into the crack between table and wall. Trapped between his presence and the door, she had no choice but to answer.
"Yes. But the trains aren't running. I leave tomorrow. They tell me at eleven." She shrugged. "Who knows. Maybe it will be at twelve. Life is so unpredictable these days."
"True. Do you think you'd have time to stop by the Little Mermaid statue in the morning?" Hans dropped cheek to hand. Svena took time to notice his five o'clock shadow, then blushed to remember how it prickled against silk.
"Everybody knows the Little Mermaid statue is in Denmark, not Sweden." She tapped a pensive finger to table, worried his question might be more significant that she presumed.
He fingered the deep-fried puffin-bits before selecting a particularly large one. With a slow motion, like wind raising a crest of wave from the deep, he drew it through the cheese sauce to slide it past his lips with a moan of satisfaction.
Svena looked away from dark eyes that bore down on her, the familiar tingle moving through her beneath their intensity. How she longed to whisper to him her heart's truths, but first he must follow her to Oslo. She smiled to think of the stiletto strapped to her thigh.
A light flashed nearby -- someone snapping pictures. She turned her head, confused, staring at the Japanese tourist. Has to be Japanese, she thought, for only they carry those tiny camera-phones.
"Sorry," the Japanese tourist said, bowing his head. "So, sorry," he repeated, clicking madly on his phone.
Svena sighed and winked at Hans, mouthing, "Here we go again."
"Excuse me" the tourist continued, bowing again. "Please forgive me," he added, his Swedish accented by an odd mixture of Japanese and American English, with Somalian undertones.
"How flattering." She smiled in a demure way, murmuring low to Hans. "Another tourist thinks he recognizes me from somewhere." She flipped her hair, deciding the L'Oreal Red Dye #2 had indeed been the right choice.
"I was wondering -," the tourist stammered, taking out an electronic translator. He fumbled with the package held tightly under his arm. Wrapped in brown paper and tied up in string, it appeared to be one of his favorite things. It also smelled funny.
The whole setup struck Svena as fishy -- snow, puffins, Japanese tourist, out-of-place reference to the Hans Christian Anderson Little Mermaid statue. The only item needed to complete the picture was mackerel. Spanish Mackerel, she reminded herself. And maybe a lutefisk or two.
"What are those?" the man asked, pointing to Hans.
Svena glanced to Hans, wondering what the tourist meant, inwardly chuckling at the tourist's broken Swedish. Hans smirked.
"These?" Hans asked, proffering what he held in his hand. "Why, They're puffins."
A shot rang out. The patrons dove under the tables. The tourist blushed, then muttered something about having eaten a bad taco the night before.
Svena gagged delicately. Hans offered her a perfumed silk handkerchief, while the two of them crawled back into their seats. The tourist scuttled off, leaving the tang of Mexico in his wake.
"Odd," Hans commented, eyes narrowing at the tourist's back. The man flagged a taxi, hopping from one foot to the other in his impatience.
"What do you mean?" Svena asked, tilting her head ever so sensually at him.
"His accent..."
"Hmm?" Svena didn't hear a word he said. Instead, her mind wandered around his sticky fingers gently holding the half-eaten puffin. If only it were my breasts held in those thick, nail-bitten digits. Ahh. She sighed.
"Did you hear a word I said?" Hans interrupted, drawing her back from her tasty daydream. "I asked you, where would a Japanese tourist with a poor command of the language find Mexican food in Copenhagen? And wasn't that bag he clutched so carefully under his arm filled with mackerel?"