Kafe Kys

Kafe Kys, downtown Copenhagen, 2200 on a weekday evening, mid-summer. The terrace is filling up with late evening coffee drinkers. A woman wearing a long black coat approaches the terrace looking for trouble. She's carrying a plastic bag. She looks anything but Danish, somebody you would address first in English. People quit chatting as though we have been speaking of the devil. The Heebie Jeebie Lady stands behind me, over me, in my shadow, then enters the Kafe Kys. People start talking again. HJL reappears in the doorway just behind me. HJL comes to our table and points to my friend's pack of cigarettes on the table."Would you care for one?" HJL takes it from him and waits for a light. A deep drag, a sigh, then a scream. HJL bolts around my back into the street. Glass breaks. Shards of an empty wine bottle fall into the street. A male Kafe Kys employee comes out to tell HJL to stop harassing the customers. HJL gets angrier. Customers wonder what she will do next. Once again she screams, in perfect Danish. Customers wait for the police to arrive. HJL stands in the middle of the street staring down customers as though they are her hostages. A car comes down the street, the driver on his mobile phone. He sees HJL in time and stops for her. HJL refuses to move and stares him down. He flicks his headlights to bright, hits the horn. Customers expect to hear the sound of a windshield breaking, perhaps a gunshot. A female employee comes out and gets HJL to move out to the way. The driver passes her, driving over the broken wine bottle. HJL goes over to another table and points to the cigarettes. She is given one, a light, a sigh, a slight smile. HJL looks to the tables in back and points at a woman, then scowls at her as though she feels ridiculed. We decide it is time to leave Kafe Kys. As we walk further down Strædet the neighbors are hanging out of windows to see what there had been to see, safe from the terror of the HJL who a) was just drunk or high and refused access to the toilet in Kafe Kys, b) was a regular pest the Kafe regulars and the neighbors know well or c) had chosen this as her final theatre exam with her professor in the audience, in which case, please give her the Oscar.