by Norsebard
Contact: norsebarddk@gmail.com
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DISCLAIMERS:
This little Christmas slice-of-life ensemble dramedy belongs in the Uber/Original category. All characters are created by me, though some of them may remind you of someone.
All characters depicted, names used, and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. No identification with actual persons is intended nor should be inferred. Any resemblance of the characters portrayed to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
The registered trademarks mentioned in this story are © of their respective owners. No infringement of their rights is intended, and no profit is gained.
This story contains some profanity and other derogatory language. Readers who are easily offended by bad or offensive language may wish to read something other than this story.
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NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:
Written: November 25th - December 2nd, 2019.
Thank you very much for your help, Phineas Redux :)
As usual, I'd like to say a great, big THANK YOU to my mates at AUSXIP Talking Xena, especially to the gals and guys in Subtext Central. I really appreciate your support - Thanks, everybody! :D
Description: It's Christmas Eve! Unfortunately for Bettina Hostrup, that's no joyous occasion as she gets caught up in the worst blizzard to hit in a decade. Originally driving north to spend the Holiday at her sister's, the awful conditions on the roads force her to stop at a cozy-looking roadside inn located in a village somewhere in the middle of a very white nowhere. Once there, it doesn't take her long to get acquainted with the charming innkeeper Annika Neergaard and the other people waiting impatiently for the weather to improve…
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CHAPTER 1
'Be careful what you wish for…'
The old proverb ran through the forty-five-year-old Bettina Hostrup's mind as she stared at the horrible world of white that presented itself to her through the windshield of her Opel Corsa. Although the wipers ran at the second-fastest setting, they were barely able to keep up with the masses of snow that swirled down from above.
She had started out having the car's heater running at full blast thinking she needed to remain warm, but she had discovered the warmth impaired her levels of concentration. The conditions were stressful enough even without adding another element of danger to them, so she had clicked the heater's knob down several notches until it was only just producing hot air through the many vents.
The speed limit on the country road she was driving along stood at eighty kilometers per hour, but the unpleasant fact that everything had been blanketed in snow meant the needle on the Opel's speedometer never climbed higher than forty as she puttered along in third gear - and even that seemed hazardous at times. The packed snow and occasional clumps of ice on the asphalt created an unsettling rumbling like she had four flat tires; she knew they were all right, but the constant sound was unpleasant and grated on her nerves.
Bing Crosby continued to croon about the Wonderful White World Of Winter from the Opel's radio. Bettina had had as much of that as she could take, so she briefly took her gloved hand off the steering wheel to turn down the volume. A chill rolled over her; despite her reluctance to turn up the heat, she understood she needed to do it. As she moved her hand back up from the radio, she manipulated the heater controls to add an additional single click of warmth to combat the chill in and outside her car.
She let out a dark grunt as she recalled the telephone conversation she'd had with her sister Anita. If Bettina would like to spend Christmas with Anita's husband and 'littlest' daughter in their bungalow in Allerød in the northern part of Zealand? There would be traditional Danish Christmas dishes, plenty of mulled wine, eggnog, sherry, æbleskiver, citrus fruits, candied apples and pickled pears, Christmas cookies, marzipan and tons of chocolate treats, and they would sing all the good ol' Yuletide songs and dance around the tree on the eve of the 24th! "Sure", Bettina had said, "she'd love to come 'cos that would be so much fun…" - all in all, she had been greatly looking forward to saying a proper hello to the newest member of the Hansen - née Hostrup - family.
Everything would have been fine had the weather decided to play along on the day leading up to Christmas Eve. As Bettina had left her own home in Nysted on the southern island of Lolland - only 140 kilometers south of Allerød which was nothing in the grander scheme of things - the clouds had been threatening but no more than that. The first snow had started coming down once she drove across the freeway bridge spanning the Farø Belt; the five minutes it took her to cross the vast edifice of steel and concrete seemed to transport her into an alien world. On the northern shore, everything was white-white-white, and it only became more so as the snow continued to fall from the sky.
She liked to consider herself an experienced and safe driver - after all, she had never been involved in an incident or accident in the twenty-seven years she'd had a driver's license - but she understood full well there was a limit to everything. The conditions were worse than her skills could perhaps cope with, so when she had reached the first off-ramp, she had left the freeway to continue on the slower but safer country road that ran parallel to the main artery. She would still get to her destination, only slower. That had been the plan, anyway.
A quick glance at the clock on the dashboard proved it was only ten past two in the afternoon. The tone of light outside was a curious mix of dusky-gray and bright-white; the lateness of the year meant the sun was already hovering near the horizon, so the massive snow clouds had had no one to stop them claiming the stage. The bright-white came from the countless millions of crystals and snowflakes that had already spewed out of every last inch of every last cloud above the wide open landscape.
When the radio station's familiar news jingle began playing, Bettina reached down to turn the volume back up. Soon, she wished Bing Crosby had been allowed to carry on crooning.
'Good afternoon. You're listening to Radio Four South Zealand. We interrupt the regular programming to bring you the latest weather and news report. The police and emergency services have upgraded the current snowfall to a class-A blizzard meaning they now strongly advise against all unnecessary travelling. Public transportation on most of Zealand is now affected by the conditions, and travelers should expect a complete standstill around the capital as the front moves further north later in the day. Parts of Southern Zealand have received fifteen to twenty centimeters already, and there's more to come. The next scheduled update will be at the bottom of the hour. And now back to the regular programming.'
Bing was done by the time the message of white doom had been delivered; in his place, the husky songbird Peggy Lee sang a jazzy ditty about how much she and the Benny Goodman Orchestra liked the Winter Weather.
Mumbling a gentle curse under her breath about what the entertainers could do with their beloved winter weather, Bettina tore her eyes away from the white road ahead of her to peek at the even whiter wide open countryside surrounding her Opel. If she didn't know better, the clues presented to her all pointed at her having made a wrong turn somewhere that had seen her end up on the moon.
A golden flash created by oncoming headlights made her eyes snap back to the windshield. She let out a deep sigh at the sight of a car going far too fast for the awful conditions; the driver was unable to keep the vehicle going in a straight line as it raced along the snow-covered road, but it seemed it was the desired effect rather than an unfortunate byproduct. Before long, the fast car roared past her kicking up large plumes of snow that required an extra effort from the Opel's already overworked windshield wipers.
Glancing into the rear-view mirror proved that the fast car's red tail lights continued to fish-tail all over the road behind her. They were soon out of sight accompanied by a mumbled "Good riddance…"
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Three short kilometers later, she reached a roundabout she remembered from an earlier road trip. She took her foot off the throttle to let the car scrub off speed on its own before she applied the brakes as carefully as she could in order to stay on top of the reduction of speed.
The roundabout had been built at the site where a dangerous crossroads had been in the old days. The number of dangerous situations - and accidents leading to fatalities - had been staggering, so the county's bean-counters had finally decided to build the large traffic-calming measure though it had eaten up most of that year's budget for infrastructure.
A gas station had been placed on the western side of the roundabout, but the store itself was closed for the evening. Only the four automatic pumps were open for the public, but there was no point in trying to get fuel there as they were buried under piles of snow.
Bettina let out another sigh as the snow began coming down even harder. She needed to move the wipers up to their fastest setting to keep up, but even that wasn't enough. It was all headed for a big, fat defeat and it took a severe toll on her Christmas spirit.
A dark-blue Iveco van had already met a snowy fate by having skidded up onto the raised central section of the roundabout. Two men wearing fluorescent vests and brown coveralls worked hard to shovel away enough of the snow to get the van's driving wheels back on the asphalt, but they had a long way to go yet.
Though the radio offered Rosemary Clooney's old Christmas hit Suzy Snowflake a shot at drowning out the constant - and highly inventive - cursing that came from the two men, Bettina could still hear the men cuss and moan through the closed window as she trickled past.
Her small, nimble car was steadier on its rubber feet than the unwieldy van had been, so she could navigate the roundabout without dramas. She was soon headed north once more going at a sensitive forty kilometers per hour.
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Fifty kilometers were behind her, ninety were yet to be negotiated. As Bettina applied the brakes once more to come to a halt at what had to be the only set of traffic lights in the entire rural region, her sister's saddened voice had replaced the cheery Christmas music over the car's speakers.
Bettina's smartphone was plugged into the Opel's infotainment system to provide a hands-free service, and she used the freedom to rub her brow using both gloved hands while she waited for the dog-slow traffic lights to change. To make matters worse for her conscience, she could hear her young niece crying in the background of the call. "I know, I know, I know…" she said and let out a deep sigh. "Anita… I'm sorry. I don't think I'll be able to make it today."
'Oh, Sis!'
"It's completely out of my hands. I'm only a third of the way there and it's already taken me…" - she checked the clock on the dashboard - "more than an hour and a half to get here. Even if I do make it the rest of the way in one piece-"
'Don't say things like that! Knock on wood, quick!'
"-I'll be so bombed out I'll pass out from the whiff of the mulled wine alone."
A sigh that was just as deep as Bettina's came through the connection; the crying continued from somewhere in the background. 'We have News24 running constantly to keep up to date. The weather's not great here, but it's manageable. It seems you're bringing the real bad stuff with you.'
"Well-"
'Oh, why did you have to work today, Bettina? I mean, nobody works on Christmas Eve! It's… it's… it's Christmas Eve, for frick's sake! My plan was that you should have been here yesterday already!' The background sobbing briefly turned into giggling instead - it seemed Anita's youngest daughter had been close enough to hear her mom say a naughty word.
"I left as early as I could. I tried to swap my entire shift with some of my colleagues, but it just wasn't possible."
' 'Cos you're single, I know. I keep telling you to find a sweet girl to settle down with, but do you listen? The hell you do.'
As Bettina waited for the gruesomely slow traffic lights to change back to green, she began to wonder if the electronics controlling the lights had perhaps been affected - or even damaged - by the snow. Lost in that train of thought, it took her a few seconds longer than usual to latch onto what her sister had said over the telephone. Merely rolling her eyes wasn't enough; she had to let out a tired chuckle as well. "Ohhhh yeah. It's definitely as simple as that. Right. Of course. Why didn't I come up with that plan?"
'Aw, you know what I mean.'
"Yeah."
Through a Christmas miracle, the traffic lights finally changed back to green. Bettina acted swiftly and took off from the isolated intersection so she wouldn't get stuck again. The Corsa had been only stationary there for just shy of two minutes thirty seconds, but the stay had been long enough to add piles of the white stuff on the hood and the roof. As she drove on, the powdery snow created impressive cascades as it was blown clear. "Listen, Anita, I'm driving again so I can't talk now. I'll call you with another update as soon as I find out what's going on. Okay?"
'Okay. Promise me you'll call!'
"I promise."
'All right. Take care. Love you, Sis.'
"And you, Anita… talk to you later. Bye," Bettina said as she terminated the call which allowed the radio station's Christmas music to once more fill the airwaves. Judy Garland answered the call by wishing that everyone would have a Merry little Christmas.
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Another fifteen minutes into Bettina's interminable journey across the snowy plains and frozen wastelands - at one point, she was positive she saw a pair of Yuletide Elves flying across the sky in a sleigh pulled by reindeer - it became crystal clear to her that she couldn't go on.
Ahead, the country road was only getting worse as it was buried under piles of snow, snow and more snow. Her Opel Corsa was a zippy city car that was great for navigating narrow streets and even narrower parking spaces at the shopping malls; it certainly couldn't be called an all-terrain vehicle, but it seemed that was exactly what was needed from there on.
She trickled on at no more than fifteen kilometers per hour in the vain hope of clearing the worst of the obstacles before they would reach out and arrest her progress, but it soon became evident her journey had come to a premature end. The piles were simply too large for her car - there was nothing she could do beyond trying to come up with an urgent Plan B.
It was only when she performed a three-point U-turn across the center of the country road that she realized she was in the middle of a village of some kind. The snow had been coming down so hard she hadn't been able to see that far off to the sides before then, but there were definitely regular city houses lining the road.
The sidewalks were obviously devoid of human life in the middle of the driving blizzard; most of the twenty or so houses in the village were dark and quiet. It seemed that most people living there had gone into hibernation while the snow rolled over the land - Bettina couldn't blame them. Suddenly, a golden shine off to her left caught her attention.
As she began to trickle in the opposite direction of where she had wanted to go, she strained her eyes to see what caused the wonderfully warm light to spill into the white world of awfulness. The answer came sooner than she had hoped for, and it appeared to her in the shape of a roadside inn that she had gone straight past without noticing.
The inn had been built in the style so popular in the first few decades of the 1900s, i.e. like a small palace with plenty of overly-designed details and other opulent frills. The visible part consisted of three sections: two two-story wings framed a three-story, double-wide main structure that had a parking lot in front of it. A four-step stone staircase led up to a snow-covered windbreak at the entrance.
The large windows that ran along the entire ground floor of the central section seemed to suggest that part was the restaurant itself - Bettina surmised the wings were home to the many guest rooms the inn would have offered weary travelers back in its heyday. The mere thought of lying down in a bed made her break out in a wide yawn. Though she was the only car on the road, she used the turning signal as she drove into the parking lot out of sheer habit.
Once she had found a suitable spot not too far from the windbreak so she wouldn't have to turn into too much of a snowperson while getting there, she plugged her telephone back into the infotainment system and chose her sister's number in the registry.
'Are you still safe? It looks really, really bad on TV now, Sis!' Anita Hansen said within a second of accepting the call.
"I'm just fine, but… this is as far as it goes. I need a tractor or at least a four-by-four to get any further. And the damn snow is coming down harder than ever." Just to underscore Bettina's words, snow had begun to pile up on the Opel from the moment she had stopped in the parking bay.
'I know… we have the TV on as we speak like I said. It's just impossible everywhere south of here…'
"I could've told you that!" Bettina said, looking out into the relentless blizzard. "I'm really, really, really sorry, but… I'm fresh out of miracles. I've found a roadside inn that's open so I'll stay here at least for a while. Hopefully I can drive home before long. In any case-"
'Oh, rats… there's a little girl here who's going to be really, really disappointed now. And a big girl too, for that matter. Oh, well… I guess it just wasn't meant to be this year. Where are you, exactly?'
"Uh, I don't know. But I think it must be…" - Bettina craned her neck to look out of the Opel's windows that were slowly but surely getting covered by the white stuff. The snow continued to perform some sort of ancient tribal dance in the cone of light created by the single street lamp; the constant wind whipped the snowflakes into a nonstop frenzy that saw them go through hundreds of loop-di-loops and other aerial acrobatics before they fell to Earth to join their brethren in the growing piles. "The North Pole or something. I don't know exactly where I am, but I'll go inside and ask. Then I'll call you with another update. Okay?"
'Okay. You better!'
"I will," Bettina said and let out the first laugh since leaving home; it was a tired laugh, but one nonetheless. "Oh, it's getting too damn chilly out here. I'll talk to you later, Anita… bye."
'Bye-bye! And please stay safe!'
After unplugging the telephone, Bettina leaned back in the driver's seat and clicked off the interior lights - the snow provided enough brightness in itself. A deep sigh escaped her as she looked at the vast piles of snow, snow and more snow that rested everywhere outside.
At least it was merely chilly and not cold as such - the temperature hovered just at the freezing point. That fact had been the trigger for the whole calamity. Had it been proper frost, the snow would never have piled that high that quickly; had it been above freezing, it would have been raining. It might have been torrential rain given the amount of precipitation coming from the sky, but it would still have been more manageable than the white mess the various members of humanity had found themselves thrown into.
Working on autopilot, she released her seat belt, removed her right-hand glove and reached into the liner pocket of her winter overcoat. From there, she took a pack of Queen's Favorites and a lighter. Once she had ignited her first cigarette since the breakfast table many, many hours earlier, she took a deep puff, held it and let the smoke trickle out through her nostrils. The nicotine and the rest of the highly unhealthy contents helped soothe her nerves like she had hoped they would.
Another couple of deep puffs followed before she turned the infotainment system back on. The Opel Corsa was soon filled with the dulcet tones of Nat King Cole singing about Mrs. Santa Claus and how she was the real heroine of the old tale by being the perfect wife and housekeeper for Santa and all the Elves. Smoke escaped Bettina's mouth as she chuckled over the cutesy and outrageously old-fashioned lyrics.
Her good mood only lasted for a few moments as the radio station's news jingle interrupted the cute song to signal more doom and gloom. True to form, the newscaster soon delivered yet another depressing message: 'Good afternoon. You're listening to Radio Four South Zealand. We interrupt the regular programming to bring you the latest weather and news report. As already stated, the police and emergency services have upgraded the snowfall to a class-A blizzard meaning they strongly advise against all unnecessary travelling. Public transportation on most of Zealand has now come to the expected standstill. All regions have called in all available hands to clear the roads, but difficult driving conditions should be expected until well past midnight. Most of Southern Zealand has now received thirty to thirty-five centimeters of snow. A few local weather stations have reported forty centimeters, and there's still more to come for the people down south. The next major update will be at the top of the hour. Among other things, we will have news from the press conference conducted by the senior commander of the National Rescue Corps. And now back to the regular programming.'
After the news jingle had petered out, the Andrews Sisters tried to stir up the Christmas spirit by going on a sleigh ride that offered plenty of Jing-a-Ling, but Bettina was in no mood for any kind of vehicular activity. Reaching down, she turned off the radio and let silence fall over her.
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Once she had finished her cigarette, she stumped out the butt in the ashtray and craned her neck to look at the parking lot in front of the roadside inn. A Scania eighteen-wheeler with a refrigerated trailer had been parked a bit further down the lot; the motor on the reefer unit rattled like it literally had a screw loose somewhere in the system.
A fairly new British Racing Green Aston Martin two-seater sports car was parked not too far from the truck - Bettina was glad she wasn't out in such a temperamental roller skate during the worst blizzard in a decade. An old, beat-up Mitsubishi Pajero four-by-four with all-terrain tires and a bull bar carrying several extra headlights had been left haphazardly up against the wall of the inn itself. A Hyundai station wagon and a Ford Transit minibus with a hydraulic lift covering the entire tail section completed the existing ensemble, and now she had added her Opel Corsa to the vehicular chorus line as well.
"At least I won't be alone here… God, I hope they have plenty of hot tea or coffee," Bettina mumbled as she donned her gloves and stuffed the telephone back into the liner pocket. After taking a deep breath to prepare her sensitive being against the white, windy onslaught that would soon strike her, she opened the driver's-side door and bolted out in a hurry so she wouldn't get too much snow on the upholstery.
The ground was slippery so, despite wearing boots, she needed to grab hold of her car's side as she moved to the rear. She quickly opened the hatch and took the bag of gifts she had made for her family; in reality, it wasn't necessary to bring it inside, but there was no need to risk having the contents stolen or damaged by the chill.
A dark grunt escaped her as she looked at the bag that had been decorated like the traditional accessory carried by Santa Claus. She could almost hear the squeals of delight uttered by her sister's daughter when the young'un would have clapped eyes on the bag and the nice lady in the Santa-suit who would have shown up after Christmas dinner. A second grunt followed the first - it would have to be next year.
She wore regular, everyday clothes under the winter overcoat to save her best set from being too badly creased while driving; the high-quality party garments were folded up neatly in a double-layered dress bag down in the trunk.
Yet another dark grunt escaped her. She could never be counted among the world's fashion hounds, but she had to admit it was nice to dress up now and then - she had few opportunities to do so, however, and now one of them had literally fallen by the wayside. Dressing up for a New Year's Eve she would be spending in the company of a bottle of cheap knock-off Champagne and one of the countless Year-In-Review shows on TV seemed a little too extravagant if not downright ridiculous.
After activating the central locking system, she slipped and slid across the snowy parking lot until she reached the stone staircase leading to the windbreak and the main entrance to the roadside inn. The steps were even slipperier so her backside was almost introduced to the snowy ground in a most uncool fashion, but she managed to grab hold of the banisters at the very last moment.
The glass doors at the main entrance beckoned, and she soon reached for the handle that said Pull.
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CHAPTER 2
A dim light fixture in the ceiling grew bright when Bettina entered the hallway beyond the entrance. The hallway was mostly held in shades of brown like it hadn't been given a lick of paint since the mid-1970s. The old paint on the walls peeled in places which gave the hallway a sad look and revealed that it - and perhaps the entire roadside inn - was in dire need of a little upkeep.
The floor consisted of square ceramic tiles laid in a checkerboard pattern that alternated between white and pale-brown. A door to the right carried a metal sign that proclaimed it to be Guest Wardrobe - use at own risk. Another door at the far end of the hallway led off to the public restrooms. The final door, on the left, was white rather than brown and carried a row of metal letters that spelled out Access To Restaurant. Perhaps symptomatically, all three signs on the doors were differently designed and used a different font.
Bettina didn't need to strain her hearing to pick up the sound of cheery Christmas music that wafted through the closed door to the restaurant itself. The happy, nostalgic tones were joined by the clicking of cutlery on plates and the occasional laugh or other kind of exclamation.
Even in the hallway, the air held the typical mix of scents that could be found in any restaurant or roadside inn anywhere in the world: beer, warm food, coffee, perfume, cigarette smoke and the sweet smell of soft drinks. It all came together to remind Bettina that she hadn't eaten a thing since breakfast - the road trip up north was only supposed to have taken ninety minutes or so, so it would have been more than a little overkill to pack a knapsack with a thermos of coffee and a pile of sandwiches.
Then two things happened at once: the light fixture in the ceiling returned to its dim level, and the lovely smell of food made her legs move ahead on their own.
Bettina soon pushed open the door to enter the roadside inn itself. Her first impression was that it was a decent, clean place with nicely decorated tables and a cozy atmosphere. A quick count proved there were twenty-five tables in total; most had been placed in a strict pattern in the center of the room, but eight of them had been lined up by the windows so they had an overview of the parking lot and the country road outside.
Save for a group of seven tables at the back that had been set with all sorts of colorful Christmas decorations and utensils, most of the tables were laid out with high-quality, white tablecloths, artistically folded napkins, shiny cutlery and tumblers that were just waiting to be used by the next customer who showed up. Golden candlesticks designed to hold tealights, or decorative vases carrying bouquets of red, purple and dark-green immortelles had been placed at the center of each table to give everything a touch of class.
The heavy-duty carpet appeared old but was still in reasonable shape. It had originally been uniformly dark-brown, but bald spots had shown up in places to highlight the footpaths that tens of thousands of customers had used over the nine decades the roadside inn had been open for business.
Above all, it was warm, cozy and just what Bettina Hostrup needed after the snowy ordeal outside. Christmas music continued to play from several speakers tastefully installed in the ceiling and elsewhere, and Pat Boone singing about The First Noël accompanied her up to a dark-brown wooden counter at the far end of the room.
On her way there, she nodded a few brief hellos to the people already frequenting the inn; most, though not all, returned the greeting. A burly, unshaven mid-forty-something man - with a dead-tired look etched into the gray lines on his face - wore a trucker cap and a black, long-sleeved fleece sweater that carried the familiar griffin company logo of Scania trucks, so it wasn't a stretch for Bettina to work out that he had to be the driver of the refrigerated eighteen-wheeler outside. He was busy taking a knife and fork to a juicy, greasy cheeseburger, but his gestures were slow and deliberate like he was on the brink of falling asleep while eating. A mug of steaming coffee stood next to the plate, and he frequently took several long swigs from it.
Another table was occupied by two people of vastly different looks: one was a gray-haired, slightly overweight, middle-aged man in an expensive steel-gray business suit. His red silk tie had been pushed to the side, and the top button of his white shirt had been undone to offer a hint that he was frustrated over being detained by something as irrelevant to him as the weather. A pale-brown camel-hair overcoat had been put over the backrest of the chair next to him. He nursed a small glass containing an amber liquid that appeared to be cognac or Scotch, and he could barely find the time to look at Bettina when she walked past the table.
Opposite the businessman, a bleached-blond, mid-twenty-something woman wearing a revealing red dress, dark Nylons, high-heeled pumps and too much make-up on the whole sat with her semi-bare legs close together and her arms clenched tight across her ample chest. Even so, a slight jitter in her shoulders proved she was chilled to the core, so she reached for a fur coat that she'd had on the seat of the next chair. Two empty plates stood on the table carrying a cake fork on each, and judging by the type and color of the remaining crumbs, the businessman and his lady companion had been eaten pastries of some kind.
Bettina hurried past the occupants of the next table: a young man in his early-to-mid twenties and a woman who was perhaps one or two years older - not because they had addressed her in an inappropriate manner, but because she didn't want to give them an opportunity to do so. They both carried all the hallmarks of being classic yobs or ne'er-do-wells who had the clear potential of progressing to proper delinquency if their cards fell right. Bettina surmised the beat-up Mitsubishi Pajero four-by-four was theirs.
As she walked past the table, she couldn't help but glance at the young people. The woman wore black denim nearly from top to toe save for a pair of white basketball boots that were equipped with neon-green laces. Her jacket hung open to reveal a sweatshirt promoting a trash-metal band whose logo and slogans couldn't exactly be called family-friendly. She had a few tattoos on her neck that reached up to the lower parts of her cheeks, and at present, her hair could best be described as not having been combed or even washed since the turn of the century. The young woman cracked a filthy joke just as Bettina hurried along, and her voice was just as crude and grating as her exterior hinted at.
The young man on the opposite side of the table wasn't any better when it came to his looks: it appeared he had fallen head-first into a lawn mower at some point in time because his hair was nothing but a poorly-made one-inch crew cut save for an ungainly, ponytail-like tuft of hair that reached down the center of his back. His cheeks and chin sported plenty of scraggly fuzz that he apparently tried to cultivate into a proper beard. He wore denim like his female companion, but his was held in the classic shade of pale-blue which made the greasy, filthy collar and cuffs stand out in a most negative fashion. His fingers and hands were covered in colorful tattoos that looked to be professionally made unlike his hairdo.
An overfilled ashtray and several empty beer bottles littered the neat table between them; one of the bottles had been knocked over at one point and had left an ugly - and certainly soggy - yellow stain on the formerly pristine tablecloth.
Sighing, Bettina looked at the other guests in the hope they would be regular folks now she was stuck there with them - fortunately, it appeared they were. A young family shared a table at the far end of the restaurant: the husband and wife were both in their mid-twenties and had the air of being recently married. A young girl of no more than two or three years sat on a high chair between the two adults. It was feeding time, but it didn't appear the fruit puree served at the establishment was to the young lady's liking.
A mid-thirty-something disabled man in a wheelchair and his somewhat older female home nurse were the last two people in the restaurant. The wheelchair-bound individual inched around to offer Bettina a wave and a softly spoken "Hello, Santa!" as she walked past their table carrying the bag of gifts.
Bettina replied with a smile before she finally reached the wooden counter that acted as the natural border between the restaurant and the kitchen beyond it. It was clearly the spot where the orders were taken, the checks were paid and the food was handed over. A row of seven bar stools had been put up in front of it; they were all vacant, and every last one of the seven red seats carried a multitude of stains that Bettina didn't feel like getting too close to.
So many items had been put on the counter that it had become cluttered to the point of nearly buckling at the proverbial knees: reed baskets that held tealights and tall stacks of napkins, two unruly piles of brochures and folders from local businesses, a silvery bell akin to one found in a hotel lobby that could be dinged whenever help was needed, spare sets of cutlery wrapped in more napkins, a stack of leatherbound menus, and finally a further reed basket that was filled with countless business cards. A closer look at the cards revealed they were all from different people or companies, so chances were it was a tray of souvenirs of sorts.
The bag of gifts suddenly weighed a ton in Bettina's hand. After putting it down onto the brown carpet, she began to massage her palm while she waited for something to happen.
Before long, a pair of double doors swung open to reveal a tall, slender, gray-haired woman in her late fifties or early sixties. She wore a full-sized, four-pocket apron to protect her classy work clothes from the inevitable fallout of being near sizzling pans and bubbling pots - the glistening stains that littered the apron proved that wearing it had been the right decision.
Beneath the apron, the slender woman's outfit consisted of a black vest over a white shirt, a pair of black slacks that sported razor-sharp ironing creases, and finally sensible shoes that would enable her to be on her feet for most of the hours of the day. The ensemble was completed by a black necktie that was held in place by a perfect knot.
The woman came from the kitchen carrying a tray that held a greasy cardboard box filled with steaming-hot, freshly salted French fries. Her bluish-gray eyes zoomed in on the two ne'er-do-wells before she let out a grunt of disapproval. Placing the tray with the box of greasy fries on the counter, she said: "Steffen, your fries are ready!" in a stern, but far from unpleasant, voice.
As Steffen Børgesen walked up to the counter in a lazy shuffle while a cigarette bobbed from the corner of his mouth, Bettina took a sliding step to the side to give the young man plenty of space. As expected, he had yet to learn the finer points of the usage of deodorant or even soap.
It was only after Steffen had left the counter with his crispy fries that the woman in the classy uniform noticed she had a new customer. "Oh…" she said, offering Bettina a genuine smile. "Hi. I'm Annika Neergaard. Welcome to my inn. Really lovely weather today, huh?"
"Oh, yes… very much so. Just perfect for a trip to the beach…" Bettina said and let out a tired chuckle. "I'm Bettina Hostrup. Hello. I was on my way to Allerød to spend Christmas with my sister, but…" Since every guest at the roadside inn was in the same boat, metaphorically speaking, there was no need to complete the sentence. Ultimately, she settled for shrugging. "Anyway, I'd like to buy a mug of tea if you have any left."
"Sure I do. And better yet, it's free 'cos of the crappy conditions," Annika said and put away the top menu that she had already picked up in anticipation of a sale.
"Oh!" Bettina said, having already found her wallet that held her credit card. "Well, much obliged. Earl Grey. No sugar but a dash of milk if that's all right with you." As she spoke, she slipped the wallet back down the liner pocket of her winter overcoat. The sturdy coat was too warm for the cozy conditions inside the restaurant so she took it off and folded it across her arm. As a result, her long-sleeved, checkered flannel shirt and her dark-blue down vest were revealed. Further down, she wore blue-jeans in a 1990s retro design, and finally a pair of lined ankle boots to keep her twinkletoes warm and happy.
"I'll just provide the mug, the tea bag, the milk and a thermos with boiling water. Then you can prepare it to your heart's delight," Annika said with an apologetic smile.
"Oh… okay. Works for me."
"Good. I'm all alone in the kitchen tonight so I'm not bringing it down to your table either. I'll just call you when it's ready to pick up."
Bettina nodded briefly before she took a step forward to lean her elbow against the counter. She cast a brief glance at the nearest bar stool, but the stains looked as if they would disagree with the clean state of her jeans so she abstained from slipping up onto it. "I'll do one better… I'll just wait here. That way, you can save your vocal cords."
"Deal!" Annika said and broke out in a charming grin. After adding a line on a piece of paper to stay on top of the number of freebies she had served over the afternoon, she moved back through the swinging doors to get into the kitchen.
"Oh! Miss Neergaard! Wait… wait a minute, please!" Bettina suddenly said after the rapidly retreating form of the owner of the inn.
"Oh, just call me Annika. Everyone does," Annika said while she peeked around the edge of the swinging door. "So… what's up? Did you change your mind?"
Bettina had already dug into her shirt's breast pocket to find her smartphone, and she was busy checking the various in-boxes for missed calls or text messages - she knew her sister would be anxiously awaiting the next status report. "No, I just need to know what your village is called so I can call my sister with an update," she said sporting an apologetic smile.
"Oh, I see. That's thoughtful of you. You're in Øster Lønneskov."
"Øster Lønneskov. Gotcha. Thanks!"
"Anything else?"
"Not right now, thank you," Bettina said before she turned her full attention to her telephone; her fingers were already swiping through the various functions and apps to find the registry.
Annika kept waiting in the doorway for a few seconds to see if the newest customer had something else she wanted to know. When nothing happened, she grinned and let out a "You betcha," before she went into the kitchen.
---
Just over five minutes later, Annika put a tray with a silvery thermos of hot water, a ceramic mug, a small jug of milk, a tea spoon, an Earl Grey tea bag and a couple of napkins onto the wooden counter before she returned to tend to the food she was preparing for her other guests.
Bettina took the tray from the counter and began to look around for a table to sit at. She didn't want to be too close to the two yobbish-looking ne'er-do-wells, and the businessman and his escort weren't all that attractive as next-door neighbors either. The dead-tired truck driver had finally succumbed to the exhaustion and had fallen asleep. Having slumped forward onto the table, his head rested on his left arm while his right hand still held the mug of coffee.
The next empty table was located by the windows right up against an old-fashioned metal radiator, so that's where she set off to. Once she had put the tray down on the white tablecloth, she put her overcoat over the backrest of the chair and sat down. The Earl Grey tea bag was swiftly put in the mug, and equally swiftly drenched in the boiling water from the thermos. The metal radiator provided plenty of pleasant warmth, so she unzipped her down vest as well and let it hang loose.
She had always enjoyed her tea on the intense side so she let the bag draw for more than six minutes. While she waited, she let her eyes glide over the restaurant and her fellow motorists.
Like she had already noticed when she had entered the roadside inn, an entire section of the restaurant had been transformed into a Christmas wonderland. Red, green and gold garlands hung down from the ceiling, and the tables carried Christmas-themed dinner and dessert plates, tumblers, wine glasses and cutlery.
The tablecloths were all in a warm red rather than the white of the other tables, and they had been professionally decorated through the use of tasteful flower arrangements, golden candlesticks that carried tall, white candles or squat, red tealights, and even charming miniature Yuletide Elf houses that featured plenty of blinking LED-lights in all sorts of Christmassy colors.
Red-and-green napkins had been folded into elaborate shapes and put on each dinner plate. Small, but finely crafted, cards had been put on the plates next to the napkins to give the impression the seats had been reserved for a special set of guests.
Bettina loved all aspects of Christmas so she was suitably awed by the Holiday-themed section of the restaurant. A tidal wave of gloom rolled over her as she realized she would miss out on having a proper Christmas Eve for the first time in nearly thirty-five years - the only other time that had happened was when she had spent the important evening in bed battling bronchitis and a bad fever from playing far too long in the snow with her neighborhood friends.
A telephone ringing somewhere in the restaurant made Bettina snap out of her Christmas-induced haze and return to her tea. As she removed the bag from the mug, added a dash of milk and began to stir, the businessman answered the call. The self-glorifying tone of his loud voice soon grated on the final strands of her good mood that had already taken a severe hit by the inclement weather.
It soon became obvious that the businessman spoke so loudly to make sure that everyone present understood just how important he was. The truck driver stirred from his slumber; a probing sip of the coffee proved it had turned cold and stale so he pushed the mug away. Bettina wanted to stick her fingers in her ears, but her hands were wrapped around the hot mug and she didn't want to let go.
The young male of the two ne'er-do-wells spun around on his chair and threw a French fry at the businessman - it fell short and ended up on the carpet. "Shut da fuck up, asshole! We don't wanna listen to ya!" he shouted in a voice that held a promise of swift physical action if the businessman didn't listen.
Bettina grimaced at the sudden tension. It seemed the businessman got the message because he became quieter after that and soon ended the call. The situation called for a cigarette, so she reached into her breast pocket and found the pack of Queen's Favorites and her lighter. The next item on her agenda was to find an ashtray - the nearest one seemed to be up at the wooden counter so that's where she went.
On her way past the table occupied by the two yobs, the female of the two downed half a bottle of beer in one swig. The subsequent belch was so loud and disgusting it made both of them break down into a snorting laugh.
Back at her table, Bettina lit up and took a deep whiff of her cigarette. She only had four left in the pack, so if it would take too long before she could begin the long and undoubtedly stressful drive back home, she would need to buy more.
The positives of the soothing nicotine, the hot Earl Grey tea and the pleasant Christmas music - Gene Autry provided the latter by singing the familiar song about Rudolph and his somewhat unfortunate nose - were locked in hard combat with the negatives of the annoying behavior of the two would-be delinquents and the vast amounts of snow that continued to swirl around under the single street lamp outside. The positives won out, but only just.
Bettina's sweet tooth couldn't care less about that particular struggle - it sent her a strong message that it was high time to feed it. Once the first mug of tea had been downed, she got up and shuffled back to the wooden counter to leaf through one of the leatherbound menus. The various appetizers, starter courses and hot dishes listed in the opening part of the menu all looked delicious, but she moved past the heavier servings to find the sweet desserts.
It definitely wasn't weather for the Ice Cream Surprise, and it was the wrong season altogether for either a Pineapple Sorbet or a Strawberry Puree w. Orange-Flavored Chocolate Sticks, but one item on the list caught her eye at once. She broke out in a wide grin as she tapped her finger against the line on the menu's page and began to look around for Annika.
---
After a while, the owner of the inn exited through the swinging doors to the kitchen carrying a bowl of steaming hot soup of some kind. "The oxtail soup is ready, Mr. Nielsen!" she called out while dinging the silver bell, and that made the young father get up and move away from the table he shared with his family. He was soon at the counter to retrieve the bowl; it was quite full so he had to be careful on his way back.
Bettina smiled as she once more tapped an index finger at a particular item on the menu in the leatherbound tome. "The lemon-flavored sponge cake… would you happen to have a slice or two of that? I really hope you do!"
"Sure I do. I'm always fully stocked when it comes to lemon sponge cake," Annika said with a grin. "Hang on, I'll get it right away."
'Right away' proved to be just that, because not thirty seconds went by before the owner of the inn came back out holding a dessert plate with a cake fork and an extra-extra-wide slice of everyone's favorite variety of the traditional sponge cake - the one that had a thick layer of yellow, lemon-flavored frosting on top.
"Oooooh!" Bettina said as she reached for the plate. She had her credit card all ready to go, but it was rejected for the second time that afternoon. "I mean… no, listen… seriously… I'd really like to pay for it!" she said when the innkeeper just shook her head.
Annika cut off her customer by putting up her hands in the age-old sign of hold it. "Not today. You can pay if you buy a hot dish later on, okay? I have tons of fresh cakes and dairy desserts that I bought especially for the invasion of guests I had expected to swing by for Christmas… but then the weather tripped everyone up. I hand them out for free because if I don't, their final resting place will be at the bottom of a garbage bag. I don't want to do that if I can help it, so I might as well give them to a worthy cause. Right?"
"Right!" Bettina said with a grin as she plunged her little fork into the lemon-flavored sponge cake. The grin only widened when it turned out to be just as yummy as it looked.
It seemed that Annika had a peaceful moment away from the sizzling pots and pans for a change, because she took a reed basket full of tealights and a long-necked lighter designed to reach into the deepest of the countless candle-holders that she had put on the tables. Whistling along to the Christmas music that played from the speakers - Bing Crosby's up-tempo country song Christmas Dinner Country Style - she moved around the tables to put a tealight into each of the holders and then igniting it.
Bettina had nothing better to do so she decided to follow Annika around from table to table. Along the way, she munched on the delightful sponge cake that was just what her sweet tooth had been crying out for. When the two women reached the expertly decorated Christmas tables, Bettina waved her fork at the impressive setup. "Annika, those tables are really amazing… I love, love, love the colors and the quality of the materials. And look at those folded napkins!"
"Thank you. I set them myself late last night so they'd be ready for the big Christmas event later on today. Well…" - Annika glanced at her watch that she kept in a pocket of her shirt - "that was a waste of time. Nobody's gonna show up, I don't think. I haven't heard anything but I doubt they can make it. The police and emergency services strongly advise against travelling, so…"
"Yeah, I heard. I'm guessing you were expecting a big rush-in?" Bettina said around cutting off a bite-sized piece of the cake.
Annika let out a grunt as she put a tealight into a holder; the wick on the little candle was soon ignited. The reed basket was nearly empty by now, but one or two tealights were left. "Something like it. Two large families had decided to hold their traditional Christmas get-together here so the housewives could have the day off rather than spending it all in their own kitchen. They booked seating for thirty. That's why I put five tables together like that." - She waved at the joined tables in a despondent fashion.
"Mmmm," Bettina said, looking at the tables and then back at the owner of the inn. "It's too bad about the awful weather this year. The only other instance I can recall where we got this much snow was way back in 'seventy-nine… that was the winter where the entire island of Lolland was buried under fifteen feet of the damn stuff. Took until March for it to melt enough to see the houses!"
"Yeah? I was elsewhere in the country in 'seventy-nine so I'll have to take your word for it. But I agree it's the worst it's been in the decade I've been here." After the lighter had ignited the final tealight, Annika put the tool into the empty reed basket and moved back up to the counter.
Bettina still didn't have anything better to do, so she followed her hostess back to the row of stained bar stools.
"Believe it or not, this isn't the worst Christmas Eve I've experienced while working," Annika continued as she went behind the counter and put her elbows on the smooth top. "Before I bought this inn, I worked for nearly twenty years as a waitress on the passenger ferries crossing the Great Belt. I can tell you plenty of horror stories about stormy crossings, even during the Christmas period. I can't recall the exact year… late eighties or early nineties, perhaps… but, anyway, one of them was so bad we spent more time cleaning up after sick passengers than we did serving food."
"Oh, Gawd!" Bettina said and let out a croaking laugh.
"Yeah. After the Great Belt Bridge was built and the ferries were taken out of service, I worked as a waitress in a beer hall in Næstved for a while. All those drunken fools meant the job lost its shine pretty quickly. The tips were okay, but… anyway, I did this and that for a few years before I ended up here. I love owning and operating this old inn, so this is where I'm going to stay."
Nodding, Bettina finished her lemon-flavored sponge cake before she put the empty dessert plate on the counter. She opened her mouth to continue their conversation, but before she could add her two ørers' worth, she was literally bumped aside by Steffen Børgesen, the aspiring delinquent, whose social skills seemed to be on roughly the same level as his personal hygiene.
"Yo, Annika… how 'bout another round of beer for me and my date?" he said as he cast a brief, disinterested glance at Bettina. "I'll bet you got plenty of those awesome Longbow XMas Brews back there."
"You can have another two bottles of lager, Steffen. I'm not going to serve you strong beer tonight," Annika said in a chilly voice as she reached under the counter to get two of the familiar green bottles from a plastic crate.
"Aw, why da fuck not?"
"Because you're both pretty loud and loaded already. I don't want any incidents tonight. Not with all these regular people here as well."
"Aw, those buncha dickless fucks. Look at 'em… a Polak, a ho and a freak," Steffen said as he turned around to look at the other customers. Turning back to the counter, he shot Bettina a glance that made her squirm with discomfort. "C'mon, Annika… just a couple of XMas'es?"
"No. And if you begin to act difficult, you won't get any lagers either," Annika said as she pulled the tops off the bottles by using an opener tied to the wooden counter through a metal chain. "That'll be twenty-five kroner, buddy."
Steffen Børgesen grumbled long and hard at the price, but he threw the appropriate coinage on the counter before he grabbed the bottles and shuffled back to his table.
The mood had been soured by the young man's uncultivated behavior, but Bettina managed to break out in a faint smile. "Is he one of your regular customers?"
"Yeah. Unfortunately. He and his ilk show up in droves on the long, hot summer Fridays and Saturdays. Unemployed, weed-smoking, hazy-brained, beer-guzzling nitwits the lot of 'em," Annika said in a growl as she grabbed a rag and began to clean off the top of the counter that was already shiny to begin with.
It was clear to all that Annika possessed little sympathy for the nature of Steffen and his associates; Bettina had even less, so she didn't feel a need to defend him, his actions or his words. "Anyway. I work in the lumberyard of a DIY superstore down in Maribo. It's a great job even it can be a bit samey."
"Yeah? In the office, or…?"
"Oh no. Out in the yard! I love working with wood. I have a turning lathe and a few other machine tools at home so I can keep going once I get home from my paid work! Yeah… I make lots of little things like decorative plates, struts for footstools, legs for classic chairs and tables… that sorta thing. For the first time ever, I tried to make a few Christmas gifts this year. Some of them were meant for my sister's little girl. I guess that's for next year. Or her birthday."
"Mmmm. That's an unusual occupation for a woman, isn't it?"
"I guess. I'm the only one among, oh, eighteen employees at the lumberyard who isn't two meters tall and has a full beard and Viking or tribal tattoos," Bettina said with a grin.
Nodding, Annika returned the grin. "Right. Would you like another slice of sponge cake?"
"Not right now, thank you. Maybe later."
"Just give me a holler and I'll find one for you."
"Ohhhh, don't tempt me!" Bettina said before her ability to speak was nudged aside by a wide, cheeky grin that spread over her features.
Bettina and Annika were joined at the counter by the woman helping the wheelchair-bound man. In her mid-forties, she was dressed in the typical uniform worn by many home nurses: pale-gray slacks and a white, three-quarter-length, long-sleeved coat that featured plenty of pockets for this and that. "Hello, my name is Merete Poulsen. I have a question… is your public restroom out in the hallway disabled-friendly? Mr. Karlsen needs to use it."
"Yes it is. You'll need a key," Annika said and reached under the wooden counter's top to take a square Yale key on a metal chain. "The door can be a little troublesome to use so I'll give you a hand with it. Go ahead and push him out there. I'll join you in two minutes."
"Thank you," the home nurse replied; smiling, she left Bettina and Annika behind to go back to the table she shared with the young man in the wheelchair.
"I'd like to volunteer in case you need an extra pair of hands, Annika," Bettina said, performing the figurative action known worldwide as 'rolling up her sleeves.'
Annika waved her hand as she moved away from the wooden counter. "Naw, I got it. Thanks. But I'd appreciate it if you'd stick around to take any orders that might come before I get back…?"
"Oh! You betcha! I'd love to," Bettina said with a grin.
-*-*-*-
Another thirty minutes of nothing but blizzard-induced boredom went by before the inevitable incident involving Steffen Børgesen and his loudmouthed date - Kamilla Jensen - that had been brewing for a while finally reached boiling point and popped the proverbial lid.
It started as the dead-tired truck driver answered a call on his telephone. The burly man spoke in an Eastern European language that seemed to give the two yobbish ne'er-do-wells a burr in their shorts for some reason. After a while, they began to mock him by holding a conversation between them that consisted of nothing but sounds akin to the language he spoke.
Even that was only fun for a couple of minutes or so; then Steffen Børgesen and his date turned around to wave and smile at the truck driver while they hurled the worst obscenities and ethnic slurs the Danish language had to offer at the defenseless fellow. They deliberately hoped the burly man would misunderstand what they were doing, and their crude mischief was rewarded when the foreign driver smiled back and sent them a thumbs-up.
Bettina held her breath as she took in the scene that had a clear potential of turning very, very ugly very, very fast. Her cheeks burned from being forced to listen to the verbal abuse that spewed from the two knuckleheads; her mounting concern reduced her lips to narrow lines in her face.
It was only when the fresh mug of hot tea began to burn her palms - she had wrapped her hands around it - that she breathed again. She tore her eyes away from the train wreck in progress to look at the wooden counter. Annika had been in the kitchen for a while preparing one of the more extravagant dishes for the pompous businessman and his freezing companion, so she had yet to learn of the latest development.
Bettina gulped hard. Someone had to tell the obnoxious bullies to pipe down before it dawned on the burly truck driver how they were treating him, but she hoped it wouldn't have to be her. She had no inhibitions about raising her voice at work if one of her colleagues had cracked an offensive joke, but this was a completely different situation. In the fairy tales, heroes or heroines never bled or lost teeth when they confronted the villains of the piece, but real life had a tendency to disregard such genre conventions.
Instead of acting, she shot concerned glances at the other customers who were stuck there with her while the relentless blizzard raged outside. Expecting help from the disabled man in the wheelchair and his home nurse would obviously be foolish; similarly, the young family would never get involved in anything with their little daughter there. The businessman was on his fourth Scotch looking as if he didn't give a field-hockey stick about the verbal abuse that was going on right behind him, and his escort just looked down at the table top while her arms were clenched across her ample chest.
The only person there who could be counted on to curb the unpleasant situation before it would get out of hand was herself. Gulping down a bitter-tasting lump, Bettina drew a deep breath that she let out through her nose to ready herself mentally. Then she pushed her chair back to enter the fray. "Excuse me… you've had your fun. Isn't it time to give the poor fellow a rest?" she said in a voice that held just the tiniest of trembles.
Everybody in the restaurant stared at Bettina - even the businessman though she could only hold his interest for a few seconds.
"Da fuck?" Steffen said with a surprised look upon his face; Kamilla outshone her date's eloquence by exclaiming "Whaddafuck's your fuckin' problem, douchebag?"
Bettina gulped down an even bigger, and more bitter, lump. She couldn't back down now though every fiber of her being screamed in her ear to do so. Beads of sweat formed at her hairline, and she had to clench and unclench her fists to take her mind off what might lie ahead. "I just happen to think that-"
"Whyda'fuck dontcha come over here and tell us face to face, ho?" Kamilla Jensen continued as she slowly got up from her chair. The beer bottles clinged and clanged as her knees bumped into the edge of the table, but it didn't stop her progress.
The truck driver finished the conversation and put the telephone away. It was clear that he suddenly understood that all had not been as it had seemed with the two people who had been waving and smiling at him. He cocked his head before looking at Bettina and then at Steffen Børgesen and his date.
Tension continued to mount until it was broken by the arrival of Annika. The busy owner of the inn came through the swinging doors from the kitchen carrying a tray that held a tumbler of cola, a glass of beer with a proud head, and two plates of Filet Mignon with butter gravy, white potatoes and fried mixed vegetables.
It only took the experienced waitress a moment to recognize that something unpleasant was going on. "Steffen, now what the hell are you up to? If you can't keep yourself and your date in check, I'll have to kick you out of here," she said as she put the tray on the wooden counter.
"Aw, we didn't do shit, Annika!" Steffen said, waving his tattooed hand at Bettina. "It's that douchebag ho down there! She's provoking us! Taking the fuckin' Polak's side and whatnot… we didn't do shit."
Annika grunted and looked at Bettina. The brief visual connection between the two women told a different tale. Sighing, Annika turned back to the yobbish troublemakers. "I don't care what you did or didn't do. Just sit down and shut up. Or you can take a hike. Your call."
"It's fuckin' snowing outside!"
"No shit, Steffen! Mr. Markham, your dinner's ready," Annika said, dinging the silvery bell before she added a pair of napkins and two sets of cutlery to the tray.
While the businessman - Wilhelm Markham, a name he had bought to sound more important. His original name of Anders Andersen just wouldn't cut it in the circles of international business that he traveled - sent his escort up to the counter to collect the tray with the exquisite dishes, Steffen grumbled long and hard about the unfairness of the world. He eventually went back to sulk into his latest lager.
Kamilla joined him back at the table, but her grumbling, cursing and questioning the sanity of everyone else there didn't let up. Then she spoke up: "Whaddafuck are ya defending that fuckin' Polak for, Annika? You know fuckin' well those people only come here to take all the jobs so us regular folks can't make a decent living."
"Oh, so that's why you can't get a job!" Annika said in a voice that made it clear she had just solved the Riddle Of The Sphinx. "And there I was, thinking it was because of your frequent arrests for being drunk or stoned and aggressive in public… or for the time you stole money from your employer! Silly me."
Kamilla's jaw worked hard as she digested the answer, but she remained silent which came as a surprise to everyone there. After downing half a bottle of beer in one go, it was clear by the fire in her eyes that the last word hadn't been said yet in that particular conversation.
Bettina let out a deep sigh of relief before sitting down. For the past two minutes, her knees had been knocking so hard she had needed to hold onto the table or else she would have dropped like a sack of potatoes. Her most recent mug of hot tea beckoned, and she took a long swig to calm her frayed nerves. It wasn't enough, so she reached for her pack of Queen's Favorites at once in the hope the nicotine would take care of business.
*
*
CHAPTER 3
It seemed that a higher being - undoubtedly a mischievous one - had decided it would never stop snowing. As the hands of time crept closer to seven PM, the blizzard carried on in all its relentless, merciless, gruesome glory. Snowflakes numbered in the hundreds, thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands were sent through all kinds of wild and woolly airborne acrobatics under the single street lamp that continued to cast an orange cone of light down onto the blocked country road; not that it was needed as the snow was brighter than the orange light had ever been. Predictably, the world seemed devoid of human life as not a single individual had dared to venture out into the awful conditions of the early evening.
The parking lot outside the inn had changed appearance: the refrigerated eighteen-wheeler, the minibus, the four-by-four and the regular-sized cars had all disappeared. In their stead, white, car-shaped piles of snow had been formed free of charge by Mother Nature and Father Winter. The wind had picked up slightly, so large and small banks of the white stuff had piled up against the outside wall of the inn as well.
Bettina observed all the white misery while warming her hands on the metal radiator by her table. The empty tea mug had been pushed away, and the crumpled-up pack of cigarettes proved she was all out of those, too. A long sigh escaped her as she stared into the grim, but eerily beautiful, world on the other side of the double-glazed window.
The cheery Christmas music kept playing from the many speakers installed around the restaurant. Eddy Arnold sang about Jolly Old Saint Nicholas before his spot in the airwaves was taken by Hank Thompson and His Brazos Valley Boys who reported that Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town in their typical Country & Western style.
Even though Bettina loved all the old Yuletide hits, she had to admit it was slowly getting to be a little too much of a good thing - especially since the levels of frustration and subsequent tension continued to grow among the people stuck in the roadside inn.
Steffen Børgesen and Kamilla Jensen had gone off on another verbally abusive tirade when the disabled man in the wheelchair, Johannes Karlsen, had accidentally dropped the plate he had been eating from. The words the aspiring delinquents had used to describe his mental capacity were much better suited to their own limited brain power, but the irony had gone clear over their heads and none of the other guests had felt it safe to point it out.
The businessman had only grown more inebriated, louder and thus far more tiring to listen to. Like a self-appointed king, he held court at his table though no one could be bothered to pay any attention to him - the cold shoulders he received from around the room didn't faze him a bit, however. The stories he told the unwilling listeners about all his managerial successes in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan and as far away as Cape Town were self-glorifying to the Nth degree, and yet none of his soliloquies earned him any respect or even sympathy from the others.
A rush of chilly wind that swept across the carpet heralded the return of the truck driver. The burly man had been outside to check up on the rattling motor on the reefer unit, and the way he spent the next thirty seconds - brushing snow off his cap and shoulders - gave a strong hint of the nature of the weather. He mumbled a few words in his own language that could easily be interpreted as "Damn snow!" or something to that effect before he shuffled up to the wooden counter to get a steaming hot mug of coffee.
The hands of time crept along at what had to be slow-motion. The seconds felt more like minutes; the minutes felt like hours, and the hours felt like they went by at the speed of the average glacier. Bettina suddenly remembered that the radio station she had been listening to out in her car usually provided the major news updates at the top of the hour. Grabbing the crumpled-up cigarette pack, she made a beeline for the wooden counter intending to ask Annika if she had a radio, and if the Christmas music could be paused just for a little while.
Both items on Bettina's agenda were carried out without needing to speak but a single syllable. As she approached the counter, the Christmas music faded down and was replaced by a commercial she had already heard countless times out in her car - Annika had apparently had the same thought and had switched over to the radio station.
The owner of the inn came back out into the restaurant itself a moment later to fiddle with the volume controls that were installed underneath the counter's top. "Listen up, everybody! The news is almost on!" she said loudly to get everyone's attention. It worked - she was even able to make the inebriated businessman fall quiet which was no mean feat.
Bettina only had time to shoot their hostess a brief smile before she happened to notice a cigarette vending machine she hadn't seen before. With all the high-quality speakers around the room, she didn't need to be at the counter to listen to the news, so she shuffled over to the vending machine to see what kind of cigarettes were for sale.
The brands were mostly new to her - she only knew one of them: Knight's Crest that she had tried and strongly disliked once upon a time - but Red Erik, Oklahoma, MacCallum's and Coronet King-Sized all seemed interesting. According to the wonderfully old-fashioned cover art on the latter pack, it contained Genuine Virginia Tobacco that she knew she enjoyed smoking, so she inserted a twenty-kroner coin into the slot and pulled the appropriate lever. Nothing happened. "Oh, man," she mumbled, pulling the lever again. When she couldn't get the machine to do anything, she gave it a thump, a bump and a whack. Nothing helped. "Oh, man!" she said a little louder.
"It doesn't work, Bettina… it's only for show," Annika said from her spot behind the counter.
"Oh… damn. I put a twenty in it!"
"You shouldn't have."
"Damn!" Bettina exclaimed as she turned back to the vending machine.
The commercial block had yet to give way to the news update on the radio, so Annika had time to walk over to her frustrated customer at the recalcitrant vending machine. Taking a full key chain from her pants pocket, she needed to go through nine wrong keys before finding the right one. It was soon inserted into the lock which made the front of the vending machine swing out - all the racks were empty which would have made for a very long wait if Bettina had been stubborn enough to do so. "Twenty kroner coming right up," she said as she reached into the coin slot to take the shiny twenty-kroner piece. After buffing it even further on her vest, she handed it back to Bettina with a grin. "And here ya go."
"Thanks, Annika… do you have any cigs at the counter? I'm all out."
"Sure. But none of those brands," Annika said and pointed her thumb at the machine. "I wouldn't be surprised if those covers have been in there since 1920 or so!"
"Ohhh… that would explain why I hadn't heard of any of them. Well, except Knight's Crest," Bettina said and nodded absentmindedly at the cover in question.
"Oh, that's true… that's still around. I don't think it's the same product, though. Anyway. What were you smoking before?"
"Queen's Favorites."
"You're in luck. I have plenty of those," Annika said and moved back to the wooden counter. The brand-new pack of cigarettes was soon swapped for the very same twenty-kroner piece that had survived the ordeal inside the ancient vending machine.
Bettina unwrapped the pack in a hurry before she pulled out a cigarette - then she reconsidered and stuck it back down among the nineteen others. "I've been smoking a little too much already tonight… I better give it a rest," she said and broke out in a shrug.
Before Annika had time to answer, the news jingle started playing from the radio. Everybody, even Steffen and his abrasive date, clammed up to listen to the latest news and weather reports.
'Good evening, this is Radio Four South Zealand with a weather update,' the familiar male voice said in a tone no less somber than it had been over the course of the afternoon. 'The class-A blizzard has stalled over the region rather than moving further north as initially forecast. Public transportation has come to a standstill in the southern parts of the region and is suffering from severe disruptions everywhere else. The most affected areas of South Zealand have received thirty-five to fifty centimeters of snow, and the Royal Weather Institute forecasts that another fifteen to twenty centimeters may fall-'
"Da fuck?!" Steffen cried; the others shushed him.
'-until around midnight where it is expected the front will finally have moved further north. As we have been reporting all evening, the police strongly advise against all travelling except for grave emergencies. Twenty armored personnel carriers from Home Guard posts scattered across Zealand have been put on a high state of alert in order to assist the rescue services in getting to remote or isolated areas. Vordingborg, Næstved and Faxe municipalities have called in all available hands to clear and grit the roads, but the crews will not attempt to do so until the worst of the blizzard has passed. The next major update will be at the top of the hour at eight o'clock. We will now return to the regular programming. Merry Christmas.'
"Merry Chrishtmash?! They give ush that shit and shay Merry Chrishtmash? Thish ish intolerable!" Wilhelm Markham cried in a voice that held a distinct slur. Standing up straight - or as straight as the quantum of Scotch he had consumed allowed him to - the inebriated businessman continued: "I need to be in Leip'zhig at the shtroke of ten tomorrow morning! I have important papersh to shign! I will not ak-shept being shtranded here in Bunghole while the world keepsh turning!"
"Too fuckin' bad, asshole!" Steffen Børgesen growled, and for once, the other guests at Annika's inn didn't feel a need to counter the ne'er-do-well's comments.
Huffing, Wilhelm bumped back onto his chair. He downed the last few drops of his latest glass of the potent amber liquid before he crossed his arms over his chest and stared out into the raging blizzard.
Even Bettina felt her heart plummet into her boots. She had already accepted that she wouldn't make it to her sister's in time for Christmas Eve, but now it seemed she might not even make it back home until the next day, if that. The depressing prospects of being forced to spend perhaps a few days and nights at the roadside inn - or worse, at an official rescue shelter - before the worst of the snow had been removed made a strong wave of fatigue roll over her. To combat it, she took the first cigarette of her new pack after all and lit up at once.
---
To kill time until the miserable weather made a turn for the better, Annika put the overly cheery Christmas music back on though it didn't exactly stir the guests' holiday joy the way it had done earlier in the afternoon. Still, Perry Como, Brenda Lee, Bobby Vinton and all the other vintage artists tried their best to keep everyone's spirits high by offering It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, I Wanna Lasso Santa Claus and The Bell That Couldn't Jingle respectively.
Bettina moved away from her preferred spot by the radiator. She cast a quick glance at the other people there who had once again spread out through the inn's restaurant: Annika was busy sorting the leatherbound menus up at the counter. The truck driver had fallen asleep again. The businessman argued with his escort about something Bettina had very little interest in getting involved in. Steffen and his date Kamilla played games on their smartphones and kept up a running commentary that featured a constant barrage of profanity and obscenities. The disabled man in the wheelchair spoke into his telephone while his home nurse rested her eyes, and the young family seemed to be playing the classic family card game Black Pete.
The latter had the strongest pull on Bettina. Concealing a yawn with her hand, she shuffled over to the family's table to watch the game for a while. Once she was there, she nodded a quick greeting at the young pair before she bent over to introduce herself properly to the young lady in the high chair. "Hello there, Miss! I'm Bettina Hostrup. What's your name?" she said to the young girl whose sparse hair was curly.
When all that came out of the question was a blush and a quick shaking of the head, Bettina stood up straight and smiled at the parents instead to show she wasn't a mean, old bat.
"Her name is Mathilda," the young husband said in a pleasant voice. In his mid-twenties, he wore a dark-green pullover that covered a button-down shirt in a dustier shade of green. His brown hair and full beard were well-groomed and neatly kept, and the round reading spectacles that rested on his nose in a nut-brown frame were certainly modern and seemed to be of high quality. "Hello, I'm Brian Nielsen. This is my wife Pernille. We didn't want to risk our lives out on the freeway so we turned off and crossed over to the country road. Unfortunately, that didn't get us very far. Can you believe this weather?"
"Frankly, no. That's pretty much my story as well. I was supposed to spend Christmas Eve at my sister's up in Allerød," Bettina said and reached across the table to shake hands with the fellow. Once that had been accomplished, she turned to Brian's wife Pernille who was roughly the same age as her husband.
It was easy to see from where their daughter had inherited her shyness as a blush spread over the woman's cheeks during the traditional greeting. Pernille Nielsen wore blue-jeans and a knitted woolly sweater with a Christmas motif, and she had a full head of curls that gave her a look of rosy-cheeked sweetness and innocence. "We were on our way to my parents' home in Roskilde when the snow storm hit," she said in a soft voice. "At least the food is really good here. And most of the company is enjoyable…"
"Mmmm-yes," Bettina said, sneaking a peek at Steffen and Kamilla who seemed to have a wonderful time spewing profanity while playing on their telephones. "You wouldn't happen to have room for a fourth player, would you? Black Pete is such a fun, old-fashioned family game."
"Oh, of course! Have a seat," Brian Nielsen said and waved at one of the empty chairs.
"Thanks!" Bettina said as she sat down. The game in progress was soon stopped and the deck reshuffled to allow for the additional player. Grinning, she sent a knowing wink to the young Mathilda while she was dealt the colorful playing cards.
---
A little later, Annika moved around the restaurant pushing a cart loaded with a battery of thermos' containing coffee and hot water, twelve mugs so there would be enough for everyone, several plates carrying slices of various sweet desserts, and finally a handful of bottles of regular and diet soft drinks in case anyone needed to wet their whistle in a non-alcoholic fashion.
Bettina eyed another slice of the lemon-flavored sponge cake she'd had earlier, so she waved Annika over to the table she continued to share with the Nielsens. Once a mug of coffee, a dessert plate and a cake fork had made the short journey from the cart to the table, Bettina dug in while she played on.
She could tell by the downcast look on Annika Neergaard's face that something had given her spirits a further knock, so she decided to excuse herself from the game after the next round of Black Pete to get the news directly from the source.
---
"Hey," Bettina said once she had caught up with the Coffee Cart Express. Her mug of coffee had already been drained down to the last drop, but she had deliberately eaten the sponge cake slowly to savor its great taste. Thus, she brought the dessert plate with her and used her cake fork to cut off a bite-sized chunk while she spoke on: "You look like your cat has run away. You wanna talk about it?"
Annika let out a short sigh. Though she shot the friendly customer a long, despondent gaze, she soon averted her eyes so it wouldn't look as if she was checking her out. "Well, I've never had a cat, but… nah, I don't want to dump all my sorrows in your lap."
"It wouldn't be a problem. Honest. Let's find a table and sit down… how about that one over there?" Bettina said and pointed her fork at a vacant table.
Annika looked silently at the table like she was trying to make up her mind about what to do. After a few moments of indecision, she seemed to arrive at the conclusion that talking to Bettina about it might help, because she left the cart with all the thermos' behind and shuffled over to the table. As she sat down, she ran her hands through her gray hair in a clear sign of frustration. "It's just that the families called me to cancel their reservation for tonight. I mean, I don't know why I feel so surprised. Santa Claus and all his merry Elves couldn't fly in this shitty weather! The two families want their money back which is understandable. It's just that…"
"Yes…?"
"I've already spent it all," Annika said and reached up to rub her face. Sighing, she leaned forward to prop her head up on her arm. "I spent it on buying food and beverages for tonight. Obviously. That's what it was supposed to cover, after all. I have twelve liters of pre-mixed thickened asparagus soup, another ten liters of oxtail soup and forty wheat rolls to accompany the starter courses… an entire stack of fresh pork roasts and whole pre-roasted ducks, three liters of golden syrup and twenty-five kilograms of potatoes to go with it. Ten liters of whole milk for the brown gravy, and seven kilograms of red cabbage for the main dishes… and five liters of ready-made rice pudding a la almond, five liters of cherry sauce and four packs of vanilla pods for the first choice of desserts… ten liters of Tricolore ice cream, five liters of whipping cream and fifteen packs of wafers in several different flavors for the second choice of desserts… and ten liters of ready-mixed apple sauce, four packs of chunky breadcrumbs and four jars of redcurrant jelly for the third choice of desserts."
"Holy shit!" Bettina exclaimed loudly enough for several of the others to look in her direction. When she noticed she was at the center of attention, she snickered and turned back to Annika.
"And six cases of wine that I already had in storage," Annika continued, using the fingers on her free hand to count off. "Thirty bottles of Burgundy, six bottles of non-alcoholic red. Six thirty-bottle crates of regular lager beer. Four twenty-four-can crates of strong Christmas brew. Countless bottles of port, sherry and Madeira. Several bottles of schnapps and various bitters… not to mention twenty crates of a wide selection of regular and diet sodas in cans and bottles."
Bettina just shook her head. Unable to come up with a verbal answer, she put her arms out wide and broke out in the biggest shrug she had ever attempted.
"That pretty much sums it up, yeah," Annika continued before letting out a dark, depressed chuckle. A few moments went by where she practiced her thousand-mile stare before she focused on her captivated listener once more. "The worst part is that I transferred all the perishables from the freezers to the regular refrigerators last night so they would be ready for tonight… long, long, long before the weather forecasters began their tale of doom and gloom. I knew it would snow for Christmas, but… hell. Not like this. And now the people who canceled want their money back. Damn. I'm not exactly running the Golden Goose Café as it is, you know?"
"I'm sorry to hear that, Annika… I mean… there must be something we can do! Can't we… huh," Bettina said, narrowing her eyes down into slits while a hundred different vague ideas and concepts battled to be at the head of the line. One idea in particular seemed promising, and certainly conquered the other ones to be presented to the world: "Perhaps if we all donated, say, four or five-hundred kroner? I know it wouldn't cover all of it, but you'd get some of- no?" Bettina came to a halt when all Annika did was to shake her head.
"No. I'm not going to ask complete strangers to cover my losses," Annika said and tapped an index finger into the white tablecloth to make her point. "Besides, Steffen and that date of his would freak out. They don't even have that kind of money between them. The young family, perhaps. The fellow in the wheelchair and his nurse, perhaps. The businessman and his… well… temporary lady-friend over there would obviously have access to five hundred kroner, but I guarantee you he'd never part with as much as a bent one-krone piece to help either one of us. No. I appreciate your effort, but… it's not going to work."
"Darn. All right, I see your point. Hmmm…" Bettina said and leaned back in the seat. Several deep furrows developed across her brow to prove she was already working on other alternatives.
The brainstorming session was interrupted by the truck driver who got up from his table to move over to the wooden counter. Once there, he took one of the leatherbound menus and waved it in the air to catch Annika's attention.
The owner of the inn acknowledged him by waving back and pushing her chair out. "I have to go back to work, Bettina. Thanks for the chat. I needed it."
"You're welcome. You're very welcome…" Bettina said before she fell quiet again; the furrows across her brow only deepened which was a clear sign of rapidly increasing activity among her gray matter.
-*-*-*-
The concept of time, always so swift on its feet, had slowed down even further and was now barely moving ahead by a crawl. The snow continued to fall heavily from the clouds above so there was no salvation in sight for the motley group of strangers who were stuck in each other's company at the roadside inn.
Each of them tried to make the seconds, minutes and hours go by faster by carrying out small, insignificant tasks and routines that would take their minds off the boredom: Wilhelm Markham, the oh-so-important businessman, had finally had one Scotch too many and had fallen asleep. His ungraceful posture - leaned back on the chair with his yap wide open to let the snores out - would ensure a severe crimp in his neck once he woke up.
His scantily-clad escort had kicked off her high-heeled pumps and had pulled her legs up underneath her on the chair's seat. She had wrapped her fur coat around her and had curled herself up into a ball of humanity to try to remain warm - it hadn't worked at all as she was still shivering. Annika had taken pity on the semi-dressed woman and had offered her a warm blanket, but she had been told 'no thank you' in a voice that held a clear Swedish accent.
Johannes Karlsen had needed his regular evening injections of various medicines, and his home nurse Merete Poulsen had carried out the task with her usual steady-handed professionalism. To avoid having them gawked at by all and sundry - and by Steffen and Kamilla in particular - Annika and Bettina had helped pushed the wheelchair into the disabled-friendly restroom once more.
The truck driver had finished his second helping of a double-decker cheeseburger and fries, and he was busy sucking the final few drops out of a bottle of cola. Looking at his wristwatch, he let out a muted curse in his native language before he rubbed his gray, lined face.
Brian Nielsen and his family had finished playing Black Pete. It was far past the young Lady Mathilda's bedtime so she had grown petulant and difficult. Everyone else there could sympathize with that fact, so they didn't say anything to the little girl's high-pitched, high-volume tantrums - everyone except Steffen Børgesen who had told the family in no uncertain terms to make the princess shut up or else they could spend the rest of the night out in their car.
Annika had nixed that particular notion rather quickly using a few choice words, but her swift interference had only made the two ne'er-do-wells grumpier. They were down to their last drops of beer, patience and civility. It was clear from their tense body language that something was brewing. Kamilla Jensen glanced around the room with a hard stare; it was equally clear she hoped that someone would keep eye contact with her so she would have an excuse to spring into action - not that she needed one.
Bettina and Kamilla shared the briefest of looks, but Bettina averted her eyes at once to concentrate on doodling a pattern on the white tablecloth. Her earlier run-in with the volatile and abrasive woman had shown quite clearly that it would be best for all involved, and herself in particular, if the two yobs were left alone.
To have something to do that didn't involve inane doodling, she reached into her shirt pocket to find her telephone. The time read seven forty-five, PM. A grunt escaped her when she realized that it hadn't even been an hour since the depressing weather report.
Up north at her sister's place, they would still be sitting at the mahogany dinner table in the stately room enjoying the final part of the extravagant Christmas servings. Soon, they would move into the cozy living room where they would sing the traditional Danish secular and religious Yuletide favorites - like the original Hustle And Bustle Song, A Child Is Born In Bethlehem and Christmas Bells Chiming - before they would exchange gifts. After that, they would make coffee and eat a ton of walnuts, mandarins, chocolate, wafers and cookies.
Thinking about what her sister would be doing created a spark of inspiration inside her mind. Sitting up straight, she looked at the beautifully decorated section of the restaurant that Annika had worked so hard on. "Now wouldn't that be fun… and it would definitely take our minds off the miserable weather," she mumbled to herself before she fell back against the backrest to give the idea a little more thought in order to make it presentable to the owner of the inn.
At the same time down the other end of the room, Kamilla dug into her jacket pocket to find a chillum, a lighter and a small pack containing regular tobacco and a chunk of cannabis. After preparing the special pipe, she lit up and took several deep whiffs. Liking the effect it had on her, she grinned and passed the chillum to Steffen. Soon, the characteristic sweet smell of pot spread through the restaurant.
The truck driver didn't want to be exposed to somebody else's excesses, so he donned his trucker hat and zipped his black fleece sweater before he left the table mumbling a few cusswords in his native language - if any of the customs officers at the border control into Germany could smell cannabis on him or his clothes, he would be given a temporary driving ban by the notoriously strict German police while a drugs test was carried out; that could easily take hours that he would spend in a holding cell.
Kamilla kept her eyes on the burly man as he left the restaurant. As she received the chillum for a second pass, she leaned in close to Steffen to whisper a few inspirational words to him.
Steffen nodded and got up from his chair at once. He remained there for a moment or two to make it appear he just needed to use the restroom or something similar; then he strolled out of the restaurant in the truck driver's tracks.
Before Kamilla could follow her date, Annika entered the restaurant from the kitchen. Her experienced nostrils picked up the familiar sweet smell at once; it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where it came from. "Kamilla! Put that out! You're not smoking your shit in here, you hear me?" she said strongly as she slammed down a stack of napkins on the wooden counter.
"Da fuck?"
"Now!"
"All right, all right… buncha fuckin' nuns around here," Kamilla mumbled as she knocked the contents of the chillum into an ashtray so she could extinguish the embers. Once everything had stopped glowing, she scooped up the tobacco and the remains of the cannabis and stuffed it back down the special pipe to have it ready for later.
Now that Annika was finally away from the busy kitchen, Bettina pushed her chair back to present her bright idea to the owner of the inn, but before she could take as much as a step away from the table, the door to the restaurant was slammed open and Steffen Børgesen staggered inside pinching his bleeding nose.
"Da fuck?!" Kamilla cried and rose at once to intercept her date. The two ne'er-do-wells met in the middle where they both let out a long barrage of profanity and obscenities that only grew juicier and more offensive as they egged each other on.
"That fuckin' Polak!" Steffen groaned in a muffled voice; in addition to his busted nose, he had a split lip and the early indications of a gorgeous shiner around his left eye. "The fuckin' Polak hit me… that rotten fuck!"
"Now what the hell's going on with you two?" Annika barked as she stomped across the well-worn carpet to find out for herself.
Bettina jumped to her feet as well to help, but Annika waved her hand dismissively to get her guest to settle down - Bettina took that as her cue and sat down again though she was ready to move fast in case she was needed.
Steffen's facial injuries were too painful for him to do much more than moan, so his ringleader - or instigator - Kamilla took it upon herself to make matters clear for the world: "It was that fuckin' Polak! He hit Steffen for no good reason! That fuck! I say we throw his foreign ass out in the snow for doing that!"
"He hit you for no good reason, Steffen?" Annika said pointedly.
Steffen could only nod and groan, but the message was underscored by a "Fuck, yeah!" by Kamilla.
Annika shot the two yobbish delinquents a hard glare. "And how the hell would you know what happened out there, Kamilla? You were in here!"
"Da fuck? It's so fuckin' obvious! That fuckin' Polak-"
"This is your last warning… the next time you cause trouble, you're out of here. Snow or no snow. You get the picture? D'you hear what I'm saying?" Annika said calmly. Before the message could filter through the cannabis-haze in Kamilla's abused brain, their conversation was interrupted by further commotion at the door. It proved to be the burly truck driver who came back inside nursing a bleeding cheek and a row of skinned knuckles.
Now Bettina really did spring into action. Though she knew she would not be able to communicate directly with the truck driver, she ran over to the cursing and bleeding man to tend to his injuries. "Annika, do you have a first aid kit or something?" she said as she broke out in a reassuring smile to make sure the foreign man would not misunderstand her. After he had nodded in acceptance, she went ahead and touched her own cheek in a similar spot where the man bled.
He nodded again and shuffled over to the table he had been sitting at the whole afternoon and early evening. Once there, he unzipped his fleece sweater and took off his trucker hat that still carried plenty of snowflakes. His knuckles were clearly painful, so he sucked on them to remove the worst blood.
"Yes, it's in the top drawer on the right," Annika said, pointing at the wooden counter. She kept Steffen and Kamilla in check while she spoke - so far, nobody had lifted a finger to treat the young bully's own bleeding injuries.
Bettina looked over her shoulder to see where Annika had pointed, but she had been a little too slow in reacting and had missed it. "Oh… darn, I didn't catch it… where?" she said, but Brian Nielsen came to her assistance by hurrying up to the counter and reaching into the drawer in question. Bettina smiled and sent the young father a big thumbs-up as he delivered the first aid kit to the truck driver's table.
"Thanks, Brian! Okay, let's see what we've got here," she continued as she popped open the plastic lid to look at the contents. It held all the regular things one would expect in a kit distributed by the Falcon Emergency Services, the largest private operator in the trade: elastic bandages, clamps, a roll of skin-friendly adhesive tape, band-aids of several different shapes and sizes, plenty of absorbent cotton, several tweezers of varying widths, a pen light and a stack of perfume-free wet wipes. She started by taking a piece of the absorbent cotton and dabbing the blood off the man's cheek.
Even more commotion at the door turned out to be Nurse Poulsen who pushed Johannes Karlsen back into the restaurant after helping him with the second round of injections of his evening medicine. The experienced nurse soon understood what was going on; after wheeling Johannes over to the chair, she hurried over to Bettina to offer her professional assistance.
"Thanks, Nurse Poulsen," Bettina said as she pulled back to make room for someone who did that sort of thing all the time. "Oh… this is embarrassing 'cos you've already mentioned it, but I can't remember your first name… I'm Bettina Hostrup, by the way."
"Oh, that doesn't matter. We didn't really speak before. I'm Merete. Hello," the nurse said with a smile.
The truck driver looked from one lady to the other before he tapped the index finger of his good hand against his chest. "Ivailo Dimitrov. Not Polish. Bulgarian," he said in a gravelly voice before he leaned back in his seat to allow the qualified nurse to carry out her work.
*
*
CHAPTER 4
The drama had only heightened the tension and latent aggression that continued to rumble between the two short-sighted bullies and the rest of the stuck guests. Kamilla and the badly bruised Steffen huddled up at a table the furthest away from the others so they wouldn't have to speak to, look at, or even listen to those Polak-loving traitors - Steffen's words - and the feeling among everyone else present was mutual, only going in the opposite direction.
Annika's face was set in stone as she leaned against the wooden counter to practice her thousand-mile stare. She had a clear view of one of the windows overlooking the forecourt of the inn, but the snow that kept falling beyond the pane made her wish she had invested in heavier curtains to block out all the white evil that had come to threaten her business.
Bettina had finally collected her thoughts enough to present her case to the owner of the inn, so she shuffled up to the counter and leaned against it from the other side. "Hi again. Tell you what, Annika, I have an idea about… uh, what to do about… well, all this. You can turn it down if you wish, but I definitely think you should listen to it first."
"Right now, I'm open for anything… shoot."
"Okay! Okay," Bettina said and stood up straight. "Instead of just throwing out all that good food, how about we cooked it and served a real Christmas dinner for those of us who are stuck here? Maybe not those two over there, but… anyway, we could sit at the decorated tables and… well, have a real Christmas Eve. We would have the soup, the main dish and the desserts. Plenty of beverages too, of course. And maybe some chocolate, heh. We could sing all the good, old songs and… and… everything!"
"I suppose…"
"Yes, and then we could each pay maybe one or two-hundred kroner for the privilege. That's affordable for all of us, I think. I know it would only cover a fraction of your loss, but you've been so gracious and kind to us. We have to pay you back somehow!"
Annika let out a tired chuckle as she looked at the people in her restaurant. All she saw was dead-tired people who would much rather be anywhere else than at her roadside inn at that exact point in time. "Well… thank you for the vote of confidence, but… I don't know. It's going to be an awful lot of work, Bettina. The kitchen assistants I hired for tonight haven't shown up either. I'd need to operate, oh, fifteen roasting pots, frying pans and the ovens all at the same time. Not to mention stir about twenty liters of soup, and-"
"I'd love to help. In fact, I'll bet that if you asked the Nielsens over there," - Bettina pointed at the young family - "they'd love to help too. Annika, I think we can do this. Wouldn't it be a Christmas fairy tale come true?"
Annika sighed and looked at the wonderfully decorated tables that she had worked so hard on setting; she would be darned if all that hard work had been for nought, but the alternative presented by Bettina was no less strenuous. She let out a grunt that could mean anything. "Well," she said as she scratched her cheek. "It's tempting. I'll give you that. But make no mistake, it won't be a walk in the park out there in the kitchen… even if we are far fewer than thirty. It's going to be a lot of work. A hell of a lot of work… you might change your mind halfway through-"
"Not gonna happen."
An amused chuckle escaped Annika at the determined expression on the face of the younger woman. "You're a real go-getter, aren't you? Well… oh, why not. Why the hell not? You're on, Bettina. I hope you know what you're getting yourself into!" she said and leaned across the wooden counter to put out her hand.
"You got a deal!" Bettina said and performed the traditional greeting. "Okay! I'll hold a little speech to stir up some interest, and then… uh… we can take it from there."
"Sounds like a plan."
"Yep!" Bettina said and bounded into the center of the restaurant. She had already taken a deep breath to begin talking when she realized she needed to do a little more to get everyone's attention. Undaunted, she pulled out a chair and climbed up on it. "Hello! Ladies and gentlemen! May I have your ear, please?"
Not all of the guests could be bothered to look at her - Steffen and Kamilla made a big production number out of turning away - but those who did seemed to be interested in hearing what she had to say.
Since nobody told her to shut up, she continued: "I think we can all agree this situation we're in is terrible and aggravating, but a solution has presented itself that might give the evening a positive outcome for all of us. Look at the Christmas tables over there… aren't they lovely? In a short while, our hostess Annika will fire up the pots, pans and ovens to prepare a real Christmas dinner for us! Yes, that's right! And we will all sit at the lovely tables and eat and drink and try to have a good time… or at least a better one than we're having right now. Now, all of this Christmas splendor will only cost us one or two-hundred kroner each, but I find that to be a very fair price for all Annika has done-"
"Da fuck?!" Kamilla barked from her lonely table at the back of the room. "Have ya lost ya fuckin' mind, ho? Two-hundred fuckin' kroner? No fuckin' way that me or Steffen are gonna give you, or her, or anyone else two-hundred fuckin' kroner! Fuckin' rich bitch! Who da fuck died and made you queen?" she continued in the same grating style she had employed until then. When nobody else - apart from Steffen - agreed with the caustic statement, she flipped everyone the finger and sat down in a huff.
Bettina took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had fully expected such a response from the peanut gallery, but it still smarted. The other guests seemed to be more in favor of the idea, but they remained silent while digesting the news.
"That's a great idea, Bettina! Mr. Karlsen and I are all for it!" Nurse Poulsen said after a short while; she was soon followed by similar messages of approval from the Nielsen family and even the businessman Wilhelm Markham, but that had most likely something to do with the fact that he hoped he could persuade Annika into serving him another round or two of Scotch. Markham's escort said little either way, and Ivailo Dimitrov hadn't understood a word of the announcement - the dead-tired Bulgarian truck driver just sat there yawning and scratching his brow.
Bettina noticed the burly man's confusion and made a mental note of it. "Great! That's so great!" she said and clapped her hands several times. "Okay! I need a volunteer or two for kitchen duties… anyone? Anyone?"
"That's my cue!" Brian Nielsen said and waved his hand in the air.
"Thank you… I'll let Annika know," Bettina said and jumped off the chair. First on her agenda was to inform Annika of the positive development; then she needed to find a way to explain the details of the matter to the truck driver in case he wanted to take part in the Christmas celebrations.
-*-*-*-
"-but he was down to his last ten-Euro bill, and it didn't feel right to take it when he didn't really understand what was going on," Bettina said with a shrug. She and Brian Nielsen stood by the wooden counter while speaking to Annika who was busy polishing the flat surface with a rag.
The small stack of one-hundred and two-hundred-kroner bills in Bettina's hand were put on the counter; the money soon disappeared into Annika's pocket. "But I just doubled up what I had already paid, so it all worked out in the end," Bettina continued. "Everyone else was willing to pay. Well, not you-know-who… they told me to get F'ed. I don't know why I bothered to ask them, really." She shook her head as she remembered the outburst of the crudest and most profane words in the Danish language that had come from Steffen and Kamilla - it had been a torrent, and none of it had been pretty.
"I could've told you that would happen," Annika said and let out a quiet chuckle. "All right. We've set the whole thing rolling. Now we need to deliver the goods… or the food, to be precise. Mr. Nielsen-"
"Please, call me Brian," the young man said as he took off his expensive pair of reading spectacles, folded them up and put them into a breast pocket underneath the neat pullover. Without the glasses on his face to add a little intellectual gravitas, he looked to be seventeen years old - if he ever shaved off his neatly-groomed full beard, he would most likely get carded at the door of nine out of ten bars and other establishments that employed age-restrictions.
"Brian. All right," Annika said with a smile. "We might as well get started. I welcome you into the hallowed grounds," she continued and held the swinging door open so her two temporary kitchen assistants could enter the kitchen that was usually strictly off-limits for all but Annika Neergaard and her hired staff.
"Now… before we get started for real," Annika continued as she closed the swinging door behind them and stepped into the center of the kitchen floor. "I don't suppose either of you have the certificate that proves you've passed the compulsory course known as Proper Hygiene & Practical Safety For Kitchen Staff ?"
"Uh… no," Bettina said; she looked at Brian who could only shrug and shake his head.
"Didn't think so. It's actually required by law for everyone working in a public kitchen, but… eh. Who'll know, right?" Annika said with a grin. "However, I really must demand that you use your head and follow all the regular rules on hygiene and those things. Wash your hands in hot water, always clean the tools you've used before they're put back into the drawers, and scrub the carving boards thoroughly at regular intervals. The last thing we need is for everyone to get the trots. That would really make this a Christmas to remember… it would also kill my business."
"Uh… yeah. Will do," Bettina said with a nervous grin.
"Oh, and another thing. Like I mentioned before, I have enough wine, spirits and beer to satisfy an entire regiment of thirsty souls, but with Steffen Børgesen and his abrasive date already pretty loaded… and the businessman too, for that matter… I think I'll pass on serving more alcohol tonight."
"That's probably a sound plan."
"We have plenty of soda pop so we won't be running out anytime soon. All right, let's get this show on the road. I hear a duck roast calling my name… I better answer it."
While Annika moved over to the refrigerators to get the first items out, Brian went over to the kitchen tables to get acquainted with the various tools and utensils they had at their disposal. Bettina remained where she was to give the kitchen an excited once-over. It wasn't as large as she had expected, but everything was spick-and-span.
The only experience she had of such an establishment was when she had worked in a fast food parlor a few summers as a teen, but that had been a completely different - and far nastier - working environment. Back then, every wall and flat surface had been covered in old, ugly-brown grease and general muck, and rats the size of ponies had infested the storage room at the back. It had been a disgusting place to work in, and Annika Neergaard's kitchen seemed like a royal palace in comparison.
The floor was made up of pale-brown tiles; similar tiles held in white had been put on the walls in the spots that weren't covered by cabinets. The various counters were made of brushed aluminum as were most of the pots and pans that hung on racks above the counters. A few of the larger pots were cast iron, and a few others had a bronze tone to them. An entire table was devoted to a battery of plastic jars and buckets of all shapes and sizes that contained many of the basic ingredients used for most dishes: several types of mustard, ketchup and other non-perishable seasoning sauces and dressings; flour, sugar, salt, several different kinds of spices and even dried fruit like raisins, glaceed cherries and pickled orange peel.
There were heating cabinets, refrigerators and proper deep-freeze units everywhere. One wall saw no less than four full-sized ovens that were all ready to be put into use; one of them had a label above the handlebar that said Bread only, but the other three seemed to be for general use.
"Make way, please!" Annika said as she returned from a back room holding a roasting pan featuring a duck roast that had already been partly prepared. The roasting pan was soon placed on one of the aluminum counters before she reached for a measuring cup and one of the buckets of spices. Going through the process with an expert's touch, she had soon finished mixing the seasoning sauce that she proceeded to pour over the large fowl to make it pool at the bottom of the pan. Once she was done, she washed and dried her hands before she turned back to her two temporary helpers. "Guys, this is your last chance to back out. From here on in, we're committed to doing this. Are you with me, or what?"
"I'm definitely in, Annika!" Bettina said, nodding hard.
"So am I," Brian said.
"Okay. Let's get crackin'. We've got a lot of work to do and a short time to do it in. There'll probably be tears… but it'll hopefully only be from peeling onions," Annika said with a big grin - then she turned back around to get to the next item on her lengthy work sheet.
Bettina gulped; Brian scratched his hair. Both shrugged and went over to the nearest sink to wash their hands so they could get started.
-*-*-*-
There was no end to the ooooooh'ing, ahhhhhh'ing, cheering and whistling that burst forth from the guests at Annika's roadside inn when she, Brian and Bettina began wheeling in cart after cart of high-quality Christmas food.
Everyone had reconvened at the decorated tables to be ready for the grand feast - except for Steffen and Kamilla who sat by themselves; they could only curse, grumble and snort disdainfully as they nursed a pair of no-name diet colas - and they were all more than ready for a little quality time after the dreary afternoon and early evening they had all suffered through.
All the tealights on the joined tables had been lit, and all the miniature Elfin houses had had their LED lights turned on. The colors on display were almost kaleidoscopic in nature as blues, greens and reds flashed on-and-off inside the houses while warm cones of light spread from the tealights.
Annika had put the Christmas music back on to give the proceedings an even cozier feel. While the break in listening to it had been a relief for most of the guests, it once again served as a cheerful background to the goings-on. Bing Crosby opened the Yuletide celebrations by singing the classic Frosty The Snowman, and Sonny James soon claimed that he had A Pocket Full Of Mistletoe.
The mood had improved considerably when the food and drink had appeared, and it didn't let up as Annika moved from chair to chair pouring a healthy, steaming-hot portion of either thickened asparagus or oxtail soup into the deep bowls. The oxtail soup proved to be the most popular dish at one end of the table, but it was pretty much even-stevens as the asparagus soup was a hit down the other end - why it was so, she had no idea, but it wasn't unusual in the least. The miniature meatballs and flour dumplings were hits regardless of where people sat. Each serving of soup was accompanied by a wheat roll or two, and the traditional crusty bread was broken at once to soak up the soup while it was still hot.
Annika had turned down Bettina's offer of hands-on assistance while filling the guests' soup bowls, so she sat down, unfolded her Christmas-themed napkin and stuffed it down her shirt. Grabbing her spoon, she looked at the soup cart with wide, excited eyes as it was wheeled around the table. She had yet to make up her mind about which of the two soups she should go for, so chances were she would wind up with a bowl of each just to compare.
Over on the other side of the restaurant, Steffen - whose face was beginning to turn black-and-blue from its initial purple-reddish tone - threw one of the bent bottle tops through the room to show his annoyance with the whole thing; the piece of metal clinged off a table before it came to a rest on the carpet. "Yo! Me and Kamilla want some fuckin' fries!" he said loudly to be heard over the cheers of the other customers. When Annika's only reply was a pointed glare, he leaned back in the seat and let out a few more curses and grumbles.
---
Once everyone's soup bowl - or bowls - had been emptied and the crusty wheat rolls had been devoured, Annika moved around the tables pushing the three carts that contained the dishes that just about everyone in Denmark considered their favorite Christmas food. The first cart held trays loaded with steaming-hot slices of pork roast where the crackling had obtained the perfect degree of crispiness. The second cart held the whole duck roasts in seasoning sauce, and the third cart held a multitude of accessories that went with both dishes: well-filled bowls of potatoes fried in golden syrup, large sauceboats with steaming-hot brown butter-gravy, and even larger bowls filled to the brim with chopped red cabbage.
The cheers only grew louder after that; then everyone piped down like someone had flicked a switch - it was high time for one of the most beloved parts of Christmas Eve, namely the traditional dinner, and as everyone knew, there would be no room for speaking while stuffing one's face.
Bettina didn't care much for duck roast, so she moved two slices of the pork over to her plate at once. A fair-sized portion of syrup-fried potatoes soon followed as did a even bigger one of the red cabbage - she liked it cold and tart, but there were several bowls of hot, sweetened cabbage as well for the guests who preferred that variation. The brown butter-gravy came last as tradition dictated so it could be poured over everything and drench all the other items on her plate.
After cracking open a Sprite and pouring it into her tumbler, she raised it high in the air and let out a: "Merry Christmas! And let's all thank the chef for the wonderful feast! Thanks, Annika!"
As everyone responded to the call, Annika grinned from ear to ear. She hadn't thought the idea would work, but it had. A rare blush spread over her cheeks as she offered the guests a brief, shy wave. She had experienced a million wild, weird and wonderful things in her life and her lengthy career waiting tables or cooking food for others, but she had never seen anything quite like what was happening at that moment in time - at least some good had come out of the terrible blizzard. With everything going just fine at the improvised Christmas party, she sat down at the end of the table to get some of the food she, Bettina and Brian Nielsen had worked so hard to prepare.
Bettina smiled at the hostess who had taken the seat to her immediate right; it was returned in kind. The Christmas dinner was exquisite and she had to admit the company was no less excellent. As she glanced at the cheery people around the table, she could hardly believe how well everything had come together. The only drama in the kitchen had come when she had accidentally added a handful of chipped almonds to one of the bowls of rice pudding that had been meant to be free of nuts. Annika had taken a deep breath like she was about to say quite a lot, quite fast and quite loudly, but she had ultimately shrugged and grinned. Instead of delivering a five-star bollocking, she had simply taken another bowl of nut-free rice pudding and put it on the far end of the kitchen counter so the accident wouldn't be repeated. Bettina chuckled at the thought as she crunched on one of the wonderfully crisp strips of crackling. If only the blizzard would come to an end so they could move on - or go home, in her case - everything would be perfect.
Bobby Vinton took care of the musical accompaniment by singing about Christmas Eve In My Hometown which seemed a good mirror of what was taking place in Annika's roadside inn. The only flies in the ointment were Steffen and his abrasive date, but as Annika poured some of the hot, sweetened red cabbage onto her plate next to two slices of duck roast, she decided to let them stew for a while - after their crude, offensive and anti-social behavior all evening, they didn't deserve any special attention and certainly no French fries.
-*-*-*-
As the evening went by and the true Holiday spirit fell over the guests at the decorated tables, Kamilla Jensen and the bruised Steffen Børgesen grew ever grumpier and meaner as they sat by themselves at the far side of the large room. The very obvious fact that everyone else was able to extract great enjoyment from the grand feast only worsened their belly-aches. Dark scowls had become permanently etched onto their faces, and their body language was unmistakable - something nasty was about to happen.
To kill time, Steffen had tried over and over and over again to drain the last few drops from the bottles of beer they had already emptied, but his split lip and busted nose caused him so much pain he had to give up trying. Kamilla had gone one better: she had set fire to a stack of napkins just to watch them flare up and burn. That was only fun a handful of times, so she progressed to letting the lighter's flame run across the tablecloth which turned the pristine whiteness into a scorched brownish-black.
The ugly stain that had been formed when Steffen had knocked over a bottle of lager earlier in the afternoon reeked of stale beer when the flame came close to it. The foul stench that rose sent the same notion into the hazy brains of both ne'er-do-wells at the exact same time: they were determined to chug down some cans of the potent Longbow XMas Brew, and if they couldn't get them through Annika Neergaard, they would certainly get them through dishonest means.
Nodding to his date, Steffen shoved the chair back hard and got up from where they had been sitting. He sort-of loitered around the wooden counter for a minute or so doing nothing in particular - in reality, he was inching closer to the swinging door leading to the kitchen. Although he could easily have snatched a couple of bottles of lager from the open crate below the counter, he had his mind dead set on the XMas Brew. With Annika still eating at the joined tables, he knew that nobody would be out in the kitchen to stop his search for something worth stealing.
After a minute and a half of nothing but suspicious inactivity, he nodded at Kamilla for a second time; the recipient of the nod set off creating a diversion at once.
Taking one of the empty - but ketchup-stained - plates that had held their first serving of French fries much earlier in the day, she threw it hard against the nearest wall. The plate shattered into half a dozen pieces and left ketchup-smears all over the wallpaper. "Da fuck?!" she cried. "A cockroach! There's a fuckin' cockroach over here!"
Annika jumped up from her chair and raced over to the other table. Her fists balled up as she got an eyeful of the shattered pieces of plate on the floor and the red, sticky mess on her wall; then a thunderous look fell over her face as she pinned Kamilla to the spot with a death glare. "A cockroach? The only cockroach here is you! You got ten seconds to cough up enough cash to cover for the damages to my wall!" Before Kamilla had time to reply, Annika happened to see the burn marks on the table and the piles of ash that had once been napkins. "Jesus, what the hell did you do to my tablecloth?!" she cried as she took a long step closer to the abrasive woman.
"Calm the fuck down, bitch!" Kamilla said and reached out to give Annika a strong shove on the shoulders to get the irate owner of the inn away from her. "You didn't wanna serve us, so we decided to get even!"
"By burning my tablecloth? You stupid crackhead!"
"Who you' calling stupid, bitch? You want some? You want some, ho? I got plenty for ya!" Kamilla roared directly into Annika's face. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Steffen Børgesen come tearing out of the swinging door to the kitchen - he carried a bottle of schnapps and what seemed to be a half-full cardboard frame of their beloved Longbow XMas Brew under his arm.
Mission accomplished, Kamilla gave Annika another hard shove before she pushed her way past the older woman and made a beeline for the main entrance. Running in Steffen's tracks, she had time to flip the entire Christmas party a pair of middle fingers and cry an abrasive "Fuck you, assholes! Fuck you!" before she left the restaurant behind.
Cursing under her breath, Annika rubbed her shoulder where Kamilla had shoved her. She quickly moved over to the nearest window to see where the two ne'er-do-wells went - out to their Pajero was the short answer.
After spending two seconds brushing the worst of the snow off the windshield, Steffen jumped behind the wheel and tried to start the four-by-four. It rattled, coughed and belched smoke but eventually came alive. Once Kamilla had jumped onto the passenger seat, Steffen reversed away from the wall and took off in a vast cloud of loose snow that was blown off the large vehicle.
The Pajero's diesel engine roared as a whooping Steffen had the four-by-four drifting and sliding around the parking lot to get to the exit. On their way there, Kamilla saw fit to throw an empty bottle at Ivailo Dimitrov's Scania. The missile impacted on the lower part of the driver's side door and shattered into a dozen glistening fragments that rained down among the piles of snow - then they were gone into the darkness of Christmas Eve.
"Goddamned brainless idiots," Annika mumbled as she continued to massage her shoulder. Sighing, she turned to face Bettina who had just arrived at her side to come to her rescue. The fracas had made the celebrations at the decorated tables come to a sudden halt, but the music played on - the cheeriness of Andy Williams belting out the theme song from the classic movie Holiday Inn seemed curiously out of place given the dramatic development.
"Are you all right?" Bettina said and put her hand on Annika's elbow.
"Yeah. I'll bruise, but I'll live," Annika said through clenched teeth. "Steffen stole a bottle of schnapps and half a frame of Christmas brew. That moron. Perhaps he figured I wouldn't notice. Couple of no-good weed-smokers… if the world wasn't so crazy tonight, I'd be on the telephone already calling the police."
"What was it you yelled about-" Bettina never made it further than that before she had spotted not only the smashed plate and the gross ketchup-stains, but the pile of ash and the ugly scorch-marks on the tablecloth. "Oh… my… hell! Why did she do that?!"
"Why? That's how she ticks, that's why. Sociopathic so-and-so. Miss Shit-For-Brains."
"Uh… yeah. I agree. And it's still snowing. I wish spring would hurry up and get here… like in five minutes' time," Bettina said as she looked out onto the parking lot and the street lamp - a myriad of swirling snowflakes were still caught by the orange light that shone down from the metal post.
Annika's hand moved up from her shoulder to her brow; the latter was given another strong rubbing that ended when she let out a long sigh. A resigned grimace flashed across her face at the thought of the mess she would have to contend with once the age-long evening was over. "Oh, there's no point in crying about spilled ketchup… or stolen beer… or all the rest of this shit. It's going to be a much better evening for the rest of us now those two you-know-whats are gone."
"Can't disagree with that, Annika," Bettina said with a solemn nod.
"Yeah," Annika said and turned away from the grim world beyond the window. "C'mon, let's get back to the dinner table before the hungry horde back there gobble up all the sweet desserts. Which reminds me… the cold apple charlotte you made is really creamy and tasty, Bettina."
"Oh, shoot… thank you! Yes, that's one of my autumn and winter specialties. It gets even yummier with a little sherry in it," Bettina said with a broad grin on their way back to the last course of the grand Christmas feast.
-*-*-*-
"Are you all ready? Are your telephones or cameras up and running?" Annika said with her finger literally on the button. When she received a full round of nods, cheers and other affirmative answers, she went ahead to flick the switch.
"No, wait! Wait, wait, wait!" Bettina cried, waving both hands in the air to catch Annika's attention before it was too late. Though she held her smartphone ready, it seemed she had something else on her mind as she ran over to Annika and put a hand on the older woman's elbow.
A disappointed chorus of "Ohhhhhh!" came from the assembled crowd of guests, even Wilhelm Markham whose watery eyes proved he had managed to beg another Scotch out of Annika. Ivailo Dimitrov had just barely finished eating his third helping of cold rice pudding with almonds and cherry sauce - it was the first time in his life that he had tried it, and it had obviously been a pleasant surprise - but he soon wiped his lips vigorously and dug into a pocket to find his own telephone.
"Can we dim the ceiling lights?" Bettina said; Annika shook her head. "Uh… okay. Then let's make it a countdown!" she continued. "From five! Annika, go ahead, please…"
Chuckling, Annika moved her finger away from the light switch to begin the requested countdown. "All right… five… four… three! Two! One! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand… Merry Christmas, everybody!" she said, finally flicking the switch.
The simple gesture made the ninety-five LEDs come alive all over the two-meters tall, fully decorated Christmas tree that Annika and Bettina had dragged into the center of the restaurant from its lonely place at the far side of the room - that it was a reusable plastic tree rather than a real one didn't detract from the experience.
Soon, the entire Christmas-section of the inn was illuminated by a bright and wonderfully cozy visual symphony of reds, greens, oranges, purples, blues, and even a few yellows that all perfectly supported the grandeur of the silver, gold, green, white and Yuletide Red ornaments on the tree itself.
Everyone present clapped and cheered before they concentrated on snapping countless photos and shooting plenty of video snippets of the tree, the decorated tables and the people whom they were stuck there with.
Bettina ran around the tables filming everything; she ended up at the tree and Annika Neergaard who stood next to it adjusting one of the rows of paper Dannebrog flags that had become entangled in a branch like they inevitably did. "Say hi, Annika!" she said while looking at the moving images on the display rather than what was going on in real life around her.
Annika turned around and offered the bouncy camera operator a broad grin, a big thumbs-up and a warm "Hi, Bettina. Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas! Awww, look at that tree," Bettina said as she marveled at the countless angels, Dannebrog flags, drums, trumpets, paper cutouts from some of H.C. Andersen's most beloved fairy tales, meters of lametta and ornaments of every imaginable shape, color and size. Some of the LED lights blinked fast, some a little slower, and some shone continuously, but every one of them was just right for the occasion.
Moving away from the tree, Bettina suddenly realized that it was all exactly what the doctor had ordered for the small group of strangers who had been brought together by circumstances far beyond their control. To hold Christmas Eve in the company of complete strangers was nobody's idea of a perfect Holiday, but they had all banded together to get the most out of it. Once the disruptive elements had left, the rest had become like an extended family - and that was in perfect tune with the core message of the very event they were celebrating.
Bettina nodded to herself as a warm feeling rolled over her. It had been a good choice to go ahead with the dinner after all - though she had expressed a few doubts once or twice when she and Brian had been in the kitchen helping Annika - and the cozy mood and sense of community that had spread among the people there were the just rewards.
While Annika began to wheel a few of the empty food carts back into the kitchen to get to the next stage of the evening's servings, Nurse Poulsen took everyone by surprise when she broke out in Christmas Hath Brought Blessed Word, one of the most traditional of all Danish religious Christmas psalms. One by one, the rest of the group joined in - except Ivailo Dimitrov, but even he could certainly understand the sentiment - until everyone sang the centuries-old psalm to the best of their abilities. Once that had finished, they went into a rousing rendition of the original Hustle And Bustle Song, a ditty that every single Dane knew by heart from kindergarten onwards.
Several more Christmas songs were sung with plenty of effort and in high spirits before Annika wheeled a full cart of goodies into the restaurant: in addition to several thermos' of coffee and hot water for tea, she brought several trays and glass bowls loaded with clementines, mandarins, blood oranges, walnuts and hazelnuts as well as candied apples and small chunks of pickled pears.
Further trays carried a wide selection of marzipan, chocolates and Christmas cookies. Among the seven kinds of chocolate were the Christmas-only peppermint Water Lilies, hand-cut pieces of rum-laced Studenterbrød and everyone's number one favorite, the harlequin-rings. The cookie jars contained peppernuts, brown Ginger Stars, genuine crullers cooked in pig lard, vanilla rings, cinnamon-coated cookies, caramel-flavored cookies and even a large pack of traditional Spekulatius that Annika had bought on a trip to Germany.
Everyone let out a wild cheer and dove for the fruit baskets, the chocolate treats and the cookie jars at once - that they had just eaten a three-course meal seemed to be forgotten already.
Bettina stuffed a entire handful of her beloved peppernuts into her mouth; the crunchy cookies made her unable to speak for several minutes, but she filled the time by snapping more photos and shooting more video. The chocolate harlequin-rings went fast like they always did, so she made sure to nab a few once she was close enough to the tray. As she savored the rich taste of the dark chocolate as well as the nice sugar rush of the multi-colored sprinkles that gave the treat its name, she suddenly remembered the bag of gifts she had brought into the restaurant when she had first arrived.
Moving over to the table where her winter overcoat was still folded across the backrest of a chair, she took the bag and peeked into it. She had wanted to make the gifts personal rather than the typical plastic affair bought in a random toy store, so she had worked hard at her turning lathe to create a few unique presents for her sister and her family. That part of the equation had been lost, but the presents in the bag were still solid. Letting out a "Hmmm!" she put away her smartphone, swung the bag over her shoulder and walked back to the decorated tables.
"Laugh and cheer! Mrs. Santa's here!" she cried as she put the bag of gifts down onto the floor next to the tree. Though it was several hours past the young Mathilda's bedtime, her eyes lit up at the sight of the wrapped presents that were transferred onto the table. "Now, I know it says Emma on the gift tag… that's my sister's little girl… but what's in it will work just as well for a young girl named Mathilda," Bettina said as she gave the first of the wrapped packages to the young lady who promptly let out a squeal.
Mathilda's mother Pernille helped her daughter unwrap it and take out a pair of twenty-centimeters tall, home-tooled, hand-painted wooden dolls; it was a boy and a girl whose clothes were tailored after those worn by children in the 1890s: a pale-blue sailor's uniform for the boy and a white dress with pink highlights for the girl. Their faces were traditional rather than modern, and Bettina had aged the wood to give it a little patina.
The way the young Mathilda picked up the wooden figures and clutched them to her chest proved they had been a hit. A shy, squeaking "thank you!" soon followed; Bettina grinned from ear to ear as she dug into the bag of gifts once more to find another two wrapped presents.
"Annika, you've done so much for us today and tonight… you definitely deserve a gift or ten. These next two are going to look a little silly considering what you already have out there in your kitchen, but my sister just loves all this stuff. Merry Christmas," she said as she handed the two gifts to an astounded Annika.
"Whoa… that's not necessary, Bettina. I'm just doing my job," Annika said as she took the presents handed to her. They were both neatly wrapped in Yuletide-red paper and thus offered few clues as to their nature, but it was clear by their weight they were of high-quality like the wooden dolls.
"Less talking, more unwrapping, please," Bettina said with a grin.
The grin was mirrored on Annika's face as she began to tear the paper off the presents. The first turned out to be a large ladle made of polished darkwood; a string of red silk - that had been tied into a neat bow - had been inserted into a hole drilled into the thin end of the shaft. The ladle was meant for decorative purposes rather than any kind of hardcore soup-stirring, but it was certainly of high quality like she had expected from its weight. "Awwwwww! This is neat… thank you, Bettina," Annika said before she added "You shouldn't have!"
"I'll be the judge of that, thankyouverymuch! Now get to the next one!"
Everyone chuckled as Annika unwrapped the second present - a home-tooled set of salt and pepper shakers in an old-fashioned design came into view. Just like Bettina had done with the dolls, the shakers were painted so they were easily recognizable: the one meant for pepper was black, the other one white.
Annika opened her mouth to thank Bettina again, but before she could get that far, the semi-inebriated Wilhelm Markham butted in with a short message: "That'sh what I call top-quality merchandishe… tell me, Missh… have ya ever conshidered shelling your handiwork on the Internet? You could make a bundle, I guarantee it."
"Uh… no. This is just my hobby, Mister," Bettina said and broke out in a shrug.
"Aw, you should reconshider… that'sh definitely high-quality shtuff… you oughtta shet up a webshop ash shoon ash you get home," the businessman said in a clear slur before he pulled back to resume his quest of finding another of the halved, rum-laced pieces of Studenterbrød.
"Uh… yeah. I'll give it some thought."
After putting her Christmas presents on the table, Annika turned back to Bettina and her other customers who had initially been there only because they had been forced into the situation. That it had turned into a family Christmas after all was a true miracle, and she had a hard time wiping the broad, content grin off her face. One thing had yet to be done, though - it would require a little effort on everyone's part, but the results would earn them a lot of joy.
"C'mon, everybody! Let's dance around the Christmas tree!" she cried and set off on her own in the hope that the others would follow her.
After a few stunned seconds of no activity whatsoever - and a few shy blushes - Brian Nielsen grabbed the hands of his wife and their daughter and set off after Annika. Nurse Poulsen pushed the laughing Johannes Karlsen's wheelchair around the tree at a more sedate pace, but Wilhelm Markham set off on a somewhat unrestrained adventure while holding onto his freezing escort's cold, dainty fingers. Ivailo Dimitrov scratched his stubble a couple of times before he shrugged and set off after the others. Bettina waited for the next pass so she could grab Annika's hand when the owner of the inn came dancing past; several grins were exchanged.
The energetic moment called for some energetic singing, so just like tradition dictated, a stirring rendition of Behold Our Glorious Green Christmas Tree was soon belted out by everyone as they danced around and around the decorated tree that was indeed green - and not to mention glorious.
*
*
CHAPTER 5
When the hands of time reached ten to midnight, the fruit baskets were empty and even the second restocking of the trays of chocolate treats and Christmas cookies had vanished like the morning dew. Two crates of regular soft drinks and a single crate of the diet sodas had been emptied, and all the coffee was gone, too. There was still hot water left for more tea, but nobody seemed interested in getting a mug.
Annika had turned the Christmas music down low so it wouldn't be intrusive, but the horrendously upbeat cheeriness of Mama's Twistin' With Santa Claus by Mark Anthony & The Elves still clashed with the general mood that permeated the establishment.
Everyone had retired to various chairs with a dead-tired but sated look upon their faces. Brian had volunteered to help Annika with the vast pile of dirty dishes, but she had declined his offer due to having not one but two highly efficient dishwasher machines. Wilhelm Markham had finally succumbed to his frequent consumption of hard liquor and had fallen asleep slouched across a chair. Bettina had taken pity on the businessman's semi-dressed - and fully freezing despite the fur coat - escort by offering her the winter overcoat that she didn't need while indoors; the Swedish lady had accepted it and had put it on at once.
The lines on Ivailo Dimitrov's face had only grown deeper and darker by all the unusual, and certainly hectic, activity he had been through over the course of the afternoon and evening. The band-aid on his cheek bothered him, so he ripped it off with little remorse, crumpled it up and threw it onto an empty saucer that had held a stack of the caramel-flavored cookies once upon a time.
Yawning, he scratched his stubble and checked his wristwatch to try to work out when he needed to go outside to check up on the rattling motor on the reefer unit. Another yawn cracked his face wide open as he got up from the chair, zipped his fleece sweater and donned his cap. Moving in a tired shuffle, he walked across the dark-brown heavy-duty carpet to get it over with.
Bettina tracked him with her eyes, but she couldn't be bothered to get up from her chair. The last three trips to the cookie jars had perhaps been two too many because she was quite literally loaded to her full capacity. A yawn snuck up on her, but she concealed it with her hand. Instead of doing anything that would require actual, physical activity, she slid a bit down on the chair, crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes.
Five seconds later, commotion at the door made her snap back to the real world. Fearing that Steffen and Kamilla had returned with like-minded company to make everyone else miserable, she stared at the doorway where Ivailo Dimitrov came bolting back inside. The Bulgarian waved his arms in an excited fashion while letting out a long string of words in his native language.
Bettina couldn't understand a syllable of what the burly man was on about until she happened to follow his pointing fingers to look out of one of the large windows that offered a view of the parking lot. "Buh…" she cried and sat up straight. "It's… it's stopped snowing! Hooray, it's stopped snowing!"
The others merely grunted at the unexpected hubbub, but Bettina defied the heavy load of cookies in her tummy by jumping to her feet at once and tearing over to the window to get a better view of the white world outside.
Sure enough, the orange cone of light that shone down from the lamp post was suddenly free of swirling snow. Although there were still gray clouds above, the sky had turned black in spots rather than the steel-gray it had been all day and evening. If she squinted, she could even see a star or two twinkling down to her from somewhere far beyond the boundaries of the Earth. "Everybody, it's stopped snowing… Annika! Come check this out!" she said, waving everyone else over to her.
Annika flew out of the kitchen holding a tea towel in one hand and a semi-dry dessert plate in the other. "What's going on? Where's the fire?" she said, whipping her head around several times to see where all the excitement came from until she spotted Bettina and Ivailo performing an impromptu victory dance at the window.
"No fire, and no snow either!" Bettina said, pointing at the window. Ivailo threw his trucker cap in the air to celebrate; it got away from him and ended up on the floor, but it only prompted a belly laugh from the big man as he bent over to pick it up.
"Oh… that's pretty good news," Annika said as she continued to wipe down the dessert plate. "That means I can get rid of all you people!" she continued while winking several times at the two excited guests.
Bettina was already on her way over to the businessman's Swedish escort - who had finally revealed her name to everyone: Kristina Holmgren - to get her winter overcoat. "Oh haw, haw! I'm just gonna go outside to see if my car's still out there, or if some of Santa's Elves mistook it for their sleigh!"
"Yeah, huh? Well… I could use some fresh air. I think I'll join you. Hold your horses for two minutes while I get my jacket," Annika said and disappeared back into the kitchen.
---
It took four minutes, but the extra delay was long forgotten when Bettina, Annika, Ivailo and Nurse Poulsen stepped outside into the crisp midnight air to get a feel for the unrecognizable world around them. Bettina took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then released it - she marveled at the way the plume of steam escaped her mouth and drifted across the parking lot.
The old Christmas spiritual Silent Night came to Bettina's mind at once as the abundance of snow did indeed make the world around them silent - silent and sublimely beautiful. The village surrounding the roadside inn was still devoid of life, so the four people who stood on the landing atop the stone staircase seemed to be the only ones left on the entire planet.
The conditions weren't overly chilly despite the massive amounts of snow on the ground and elsewhere. That would change if and when the cloud cover continued to dissolve, but at present, the temperature hovered around a fairly pleasant one or two degrees below freezing.
All the vehicles in the parking lot had vanished underneath a thick layer of white; most of it had come directly from the heavens above, but quite a lot had been created by the swirling winds that had driven the snow into vast, pristine piles. The winds had died down as well so Christmas Night had finally turned quiet and peaceful like it should be.
"Oh boy, we're going to need a gigantic broom to get the cars cleaned off!" Bettina exclaimed as she took in the sight of the igloo-shaped, snowy lumps that took up space on the parking lot. "Holy shit, look at that mountain of snow over there!" she continued as she pointed across the parking lot at one of the houses on the opposite side of the country road. Only the second floor and the roof were visible; the rest had been covered in a vast pile of snow that had been forced up against the outer wall by the driving winds.
Ivailo let out a muted curse as he set off toward his Scania; in all the excitement, he had completely forgotten that he had gone outside to check up on the rattling motor on the trailer. It needed to be done, so he grabbed the banisters and fumbled down the stone staircase like he had already done several times that night. The depth of the snow reached above his boots which didn't improve his mood.
The distant rumbling of an engine proved that the rest of the world was still inhabited by humans. It was too dark to see from which direction the vehicle came, but the slowly increasing sound proved it was definitely getting closer.
Merete Poulsen pulled her own coat closer around her shoulders as she looked up at the sky that continued to grow less overcast by the minute. "Isn't this romantic? Christmas Night and all the stars are out in force. I think it's romantic."
"Well, I'm not the world's most romantic soul, but I guess it's kinda neat," Bettina said as she looked up at the myriad of little dots of light that littered the black cloth above. "Actually, I'm happy to see the stars 'cos that means the damn front has moved on… I might even make it back home before New Year's Eve!"
The three women chuckled at that for a moment or two before Merete decided the winter weather was too chilly for her after all; she excused herself and went back inside.
After closing the door behind the nurse, Bettina moved back to Annika to cast an uncharacteristically shy glance at the owner of the roadside inn. "So… despite everything, I've had a pretty good Christmas Eve here. Thank you for all your hard work," she said as she stuffed her bare hands deeper down the pockets of her winter coat.
"Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for the helping hand in the kitchen and for having the notion of going ahead with Christmas dinner in the first place. And for the great gifts too, of course."
"Aw, they're nothing. Just stuff I like to fiddle around with on the dull, rainy autumn Sundays."
"Perhaps so, but it's damn fine craftsmanship, Bettina."
"Well… thank you," Bettina said while a blush tainted her cheeks.
A short distance away out on the country road, the familiar reflections of a rotating beacon light came into view from the south; the blinking orange light was soon joined by a pair of strong searchlights and a bassy roar from a large engine signaling the imminent arrival of help of the snow-battling kind.
Bettina tried to get up on tip-toes, but she was unable to see much apart from huge piles of snow everywhere. "About time," she mumbled, but the words got stuck in her throat when the source of the deep rumbling finally came into view. "Buh!" she cried as her eyes flew wide open.
Not one, not two, but three dark-green, tracked armored personnel carriers from the Home Guard strode undaunted through the masses of snow out on the country road. The one at the rear of the column had a large Red Cross painted onto its flank to show that it acted as an ambulance.
Hearing the tank tracks jingle and jangle as they traveled along the snow-covered road instantly created an image in Bettina's mind of Santa Claus arriving in his sleigh - it would obviously be pulled by Rudolph and all the other well-known reindeer, and they would all carry jingle bells on the yoke and their tack. The sight of an armored column in the middle of the peaceful village was quite surreal, and she had to let out a croaking snicker at the whole thing.
A commander dressed in winter fatigues stood with his upper torso poking through a port hole atop the first of the three all-terrain vehicles. While manipulating the two searchlights that were strong enough to turn night into day, he uttered a constant stream of commands into a radio so the driver who was somewhere down below - boxed in by armor plating like a sardine in a tin can - could literally keep the big, heavy thing on the road. The other two vehicles just followed in the tracks laid down by the first one, so it was vital the leader didn't stray too far off the proverbial beaten path.
"Well, there's something you don't see every day," Annika said and let out a chuckle.
"I'll say… hey! Hey, we're over here! Hey!" Bettina cried, jumping up and down while waving both hands high in the air to catch the commander's attention.
-*-*-*-
After acknowledging the cries for help by dropping off a squad of winter-clad privates from the local Home Guard armored regiment stationed at Vordingborg some twenty kilometers south of Øster Lønneskov, the small column drove on so the six-strong convoy of civilian snowplows that followed them could carry on clearing the important country road. A gritter-truck acted as Tail-End Charlie, and the massive amounts of salt that spewed out of the distributor mounted on the back of it would soon begin wrestling with the hard-nosed snow.
Bettina grinned from ear to ear as she stood idly by while two privates worked hard cleaning the snow off her Opel Corsa. Using a shovel for the big piles and a hand-brush for the sensitive parts of the car, the soldiers from the Home Guard were fast and efficient and soon had the small car ready to take off once more.
"Well, let's see if it'll even start," Bettina said and reached into a pocket to find the keys. The central locking system worked as it should which was a good sign. The seat was icy when her rear-end came into contact with it, but the well-serviced four-cylinder engine came to life at the first try. Before she climbed back out, she turned the heater to maximum and set it to defrost the windows to clear off the last traces of snow.
Ivailo Dimitrov's Scania started as well - it should as it was equipped with the full winter package - and the eighteen-wheeler's five-hundred-and-sixty brake horsepower V8 engine soon went into a guttural purr akin to a griffin just waking up from a slumber. After turning on the four main headlights and all the smaller running lights to help the others see what they were doing, the veteran driver climbed up onto the back of the tractor unit to perform yet another inspection of the rattling motor on the refrigerated trailer.
Johannes Karlsen and Merete Poulsen's Ford Transit minibus had bigger problems: the battery had gone flat. Johannes was unable to get up into the vehicle in his wheelchair without the hydraulic lift attached to the Ford's rear, but it couldn't operate without power - in short, they needed a battery boost to get the minibus started and running. After getting jumped by the Nielsens' Hyundai station wagon, the diesel coughed, skipped and rattled like it couldn't make up its mind on whether or not to run, but it eventually settled down into a steady idle. Once enough power had been restored, the lift at the back could be lowered which meant that Merete could wheel Johannes Karlsen inside and lock the wheelchair into the four safety clamps on the floor.
The high-strung motor in the equally high-strung Aston Martin sports car was another story entirely; it took nine tries and plenty of cajoling by a gearhead among the privates to get the twelve cylinders to fire. Once it did, the next problem presented itself at once: Wilhelm Markham was simply too inebriated to drive. Kristina Holmgren had wrapped her fur coat twice around her meagerly-clad body to remain warm, so she had a hard time getting the semi-sleeping Wilhelm onto the passenger-side seat by herself.
Luckily for all involved, the privates sent out on snow-rescue patrol didn't seem to mind helping the attractive woman with her problem, and the whole thing was dealt with in record time. Wilhelm had soon been shoved onto the right-hand leather seat, and once his belt had been clicked tight, Kristina strolled around the British Racing Green two-seater and slid her long, Nylon-clad legs and the rest of her exquisite being in behind the steering wheel.
The sports car's traction control systems worked overtime even as Kristina left the parking lot at ten kilometers per hour, and it proved that the new driver needed to drive gently to wherever they were headed.
Bettina and Annika watched it all unfold sporting similar, broad grins. While an army truck came to a halt out on the country road to pick up the squad of privates from the Home Guard, Bettina's Opel Corsa had reached its regular operating temperature. It suddenly dawned on her that not only was Christmas Eve coming to an end, but that the entire adventure had reached its final chapter - if nothing else, it had been an intriguing, eye-opening experience.
Shoving her gloved hands down into the pockets of her winter overcoat, she shuffled around on the spot like she didn't know what to say or do. It was most unlike Bettina Hostrup to be tongue-tied, but that was exactly what she had become. She cast a shy glance at the mature woman in whose inn she had spent a highly unusual Christmas Eve. They had clicked well almost from the start, and despite only knowing Annika Neergaard for a handful of hours, she felt curiously reluctant to leave - and that had to be some kind of world record.
Annika glanced at Bettina at the exact same time as a matching look went the other way. Before either of them could speak, the moment was ruined by a police four-by-four that drove into the parking lot with its blue emergency lights flashing.
An annoyed frown fell over Annika's face, and she let out a brief grunt that proved she would much rather have explored where the conversation between them might have led. "Oh, I better see what that's all about," she said and began to shuffle through the deep snow. She had already taken a few steps before she stopped, turned around and added: "Please don't drive off before we've had time to say a proper goodbye."
"No risk of that happening, Annika," Bettina said with a sincere look upon her face.
Annika slipped and slid over to the police vehicle; the driver's side window was lowered just as she got to the four-by-four, so she leaned down to look at the uniformed fellow behind the wheel. It was a fairly young police constable whom she hadn't spoken to before - it didn't mean anything as it was a safe bet that the freak weather had brought the regular patrol patterns into complete disarray.
"Good evening. I need to speak to a Miss Neergaard…?" the constable said as he checked and subsequently updated the assignment computer mounted on the four-by-four's dashboard.
"You've found her."
"A short time ago, a canine patrol unit came across a Mitsubishi Pajero that had been driven into a ditch some two kilometers south of here. The driver," - the constable needed to scroll through a few pages of text before he arrived at the name - "a Mr. Steffen Børgesen, was found slumped over the wheel. He and a passenger, Miss Kamilla Jensen, reeked of beer and were both well over the legal limit. Several empty cans of beer were found in the vehicle. Both individuals claimed they only drank the beer after driving into the ditch to remain warm, and that Miss Annika Neergaard at the Øster Lønneskov Inn could confirm they had not been under the influence when they had left the establishment a short while earlier."
"Huh. Well… that's blatantly not true, constable. They had been drinking beer since mid-afternoon and all through the evening."
"I see," the constable said and updated the computer.
Chuckling, Annika looked back at Bettina whose wide-open expression proved she was equal parts curious to hear what had happened and reluctant to come across as nosy. "In fact, they stole a bottle of schnapps and half a frame of Longbow XMas Brew from my kitchen when they left, so if that's the kind of empty cans your colleagues found in the car, I'd say they shared the spoils of war."
"Hmmm," the constable said as he read through the electronic case file. "It doesn't say in the initial case entry what type of beer was found, but I'll check."
"Okay. I'd like to report Mr. Børgesen for stealing as well as Miss Jensen for several instances of vandalism. Can I do that through you, or do I need to call the police station in the morning?"
"I can do that electronically from here, Miss Neergaard."
"Great. Then I'd like to do that, please. Miss Jensen set fire to one of my tablecloths and deliberately smashed a dinner plate against a wall."
"All right," the constable said as he began to go through the appropriate menus to find the proper form needed for such a task.
Bettina was unable to contain her curiosity any longer so she inched closer, closer and closer still to the scene to get a feel for what was going on. When they had to wait for the policeman to access the form, she had time to whisper out of the corner of her mouth: "Psst! What's going on?"
"Steffen and his lovely lady drove into the ditch a little south of here. They're okay, but apparently drunk off their you-know-whats. I'm about to report them for the theft and the vandalism…"
"Oh… typical. Drove into a ditch, eh? Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke," Bettina said decisively.
Annika chuckled at the hard, cynical tone to the younger woman's voice. "I agree!" she said and leaned over to bump shoulders with Bettina.
---
A while later, Ivailo Dimitrov's Scania was the penultimate vehicle to leave the parking lot in front of the roadside inn. The friendly Bulgarian truck driver saluted the two remaining women by yanking the cord for his airhorns, and the two-tone fanfare nearly woke up the entire village as he was finally able to resume his journey - his next stop was the ferry port at Gedser some ninety kilometers further south. Following the two-hour crossing, he would spend the rest of the night and the entire following day on the German Autobahns headed for home with his haul of semi-fresh produce.
It all left Bettina standing alone on the parking lot next to her idling Opel. The heater had done its job and had defrosted all the windows; the temperature inside the car was still on the chilly side, but it climbed steadily and would be pleasantly toasty once she began her trip home.
She had to chuckle at the improbability of it all. When she had made breakfast nearly seventeen hours earlier - bleary-eyed and wild-haired like she always was at that time of the day; she had barely been able to figure out on which side of the toast the jam should go - she could never have imagined the surreal situations she would find herself in over the course of the day and into Christmas Eve.
She'd had the fascinating experience of meeting complete strangers who had become acquaintances; some had proven to be pleasant, other distinctly less so, but that was humanity in a nutshell. She had prepared an improvised Christmas dinner in a real roadside inn's kitchen, and she had eaten more than her fair share of that, the fruit, the chocolate and the cookies. She had belted out all the good old songs and psalms, and she had even danced around the Christmas tree in the company of friendly folks.
She could have done without the stressful drive north through the worst of the blizzard - and the unpleasant confrontation with Kamilla Jensen in particular - but those were really the only negatives over the entire course of the day. Her only regret was that she had been unable to meet up with her sister and her young niece for Christmas. They would have to catch up and spend a full weekend together as soon as the weather allowed.
The door to the roadside inn opened to reveal Annika who came back out into the wintery night holding a thermos of hot coffee. As predicted, the temperature had dropped as a result of the clouds breaking up, and the plumes of steam that escaped their mouths and the Opel's exhaust pipe were impressive. "I made you some coffee. I figured you could need it… be careful when you drink it 'cos it's hot," Annika said as she gingerly walked down the slippery staircase. The fresh snow creaked under her boots which proved that King Frost had now assumed full reign over the snowbound landscape.
"Thanks, Annika! This is definitely hot-coffee-weather," Bettina said as she took the thermos and put it into the largest of the cupholders in the center console - it was a snug fit, but at least it wouldn't rattle around while driving.
Annika stuffed her hands into the pockets of her thick down jacket. "You're welcome. So you're going home and not up to Allerød to your sister?"
"Yeah. I'm too tired to drive the rest of the way up there. Who knows what the roads are like," Bettina said as she closed the driver's side door. Turning around, she leaned against the Opel so she could look at Annika while she spoke. "It's just too much hassle. It's a lot shorter to go back home, so…"
"I guess this is it, then."
"I guess."
The women fell quiet for a moment before they stepped closer to one another. Bettina put out her hand for the traditional greeting, but Annika did one better: instead of accepting the hand, she wrapped her arms around the shorter woman and pulled her into a fair-sized hug. "Merry Christmas, Bettina. The day started out on the rotten side for me when the damn snow began to fall, but it definitely ended up smelling of roses… or red cabbage, butter-gravy and pork roast to be precise!"
Laughing, Bettina pulled back from the hug but kept her hands on the elbows of Annika's down jacket. "Yeah, it's been quite the Christmas Eve, hasn't it?"
"It has. I hope and pray we don't have an encore next year!"
"Gawd, no…"
Another brief hug was shared while they chuckled at the exchange. Pulling back once more, Annika smiled warmly as she continued to gaze at the younger woman. "Now… before I'll let you leave, you have to promise me one thing… make that two things," she said with a grin.
"Sure!"
"One, please drive carefully. Even if the gritters have been by a couple of times, I'll bet it's still super-slippery out in the countryside."
"Oh, I'll definitely do that. I've just finished paying for my car, and I hate dealing with insurance companies!" Bettina said as she tapped her gloved knuckles against the Opel's door.
Annika grinned. "Yeah, I hear you. I have enough of that in my immediate future for both of us. Which brings me to the second thing you have to promise me."
"Anything," Bettina said and offered Annika a small slap on the down jacket.
"You have to promise me that you'll swing by once the weather improves. I mean… I feel like we hit off pretty well today. Uh… I'd like to see you again to be honest," Annika said while shuffling around a little on the spot. Almost as an afterthought, she added: "And besides, I need my thermos back, so…" while a big grin spread over her features.
"Haw! I'll definitely return your beloved thermos! I'll even give it a buff-job so it's nice and shiny!" Bettina said before she broke out in a loud laugh.
"That's neat. Drive safely, you hear?" Annika said as she opened the Opel's door for the younger woman.
Bettina nodded as she sat down at a crooked angle so she could knock her boots against the doorsill to get rid of the worst of the snow; then she slid onto the seat and got comfortable behind the steering wheel. "I will, Annika. Bye-bye for now. And Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas, Bettina," Annika said and closed the door. The owner of the roadside inn took a step back to allow the Opel room to maneuver.
After reversing out of the parking bay she had entered half a day earlier in far worse conditions, Bettina rolled down the window and stuck out her entire arm. A couple of enthusiastic goodbye-waves followed before she rolled the window back up, honked twice, and eventually drove out onto the country road. At first, she had her eyes glued to the rear-view mirror to get the final impressions of Annika and the old-fashioned roadside inn, but then she concentrated on driving home at a safe thirty-five kilometers per hour. It would take a while, but now that she was homeward bound, everything would be all right.
A warm smile spread over her face as she drove into the darkness of Christmas Night. She was definitely looking forward to seeing her soft, warm bed, but perhaps even more so to meet the fascinating Annika Neergaard again.
She had a sudden, and decidedly pleasant, feeling that the future would see her spending quite a lot of time driving on the country road between her home in Nysted and the charming roadside inn in Øster Lønneskov. It had the potential of being her life's most intriguing Christmas gift - and she could hardly wait for it to be unwrapped…
*
*
THE END.