In other words, they had two and a half hours to go.

“INTO MY ARMS, O Lord. Into my arms…”

Nick Cave’s husky vocals filled the little atelier. Jenny Kaliban turned up the music and closed her eyes, smoked, and sang along, letting the music alleviate the restlessness in her body the way only music can. Under her rib cage the fear gnawed like a parasite, threatening to devour her. Her worries were starting to show in the fine wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, in her graying hair and her worn knees. Today she had woken up with a knot of regret in her chest and was having a hard time shaking off the sorrow. As a mantra, she tried to tell herself that she didn’t have much to lose, but of course that was a lie. Everyone has something to lose.

She opened her eyes, switched off the music by pressing a button on the old-fashioned boom box, and tossed her cigarette into the sink. Today was a rare full day in the atelier, and she shouldn’t waste it on self-pity and negative thoughts. Finances were tight, if not to say disastrous. She had to start teaching evening classes again, take more shifts at Thorvaldsens Museum, find new sources of income. The job as a custodian suited her well enough, but it didn’t pay much. Her landlord’s notice to vacate lay on the filing cabinet, smoldering like a stubborn fire that threatened to burn her life to the ground.

Jenny pulled a smock off the hook by the door and looked around at the little workroom. It was situated on the first floor of a dilapidated town house that had been left standing in the Østerbro neighborhood, when all the other ones had been torn down in the sacred name of modernization. One entered from the courtyard at the back of the building. The dusty windows didn’t let in much light, and over the years she had filled up the room with pictures, sculptures, and drawing materials. The art filing cabinet with its deep drawers took up a lot of room, and so did the little kiln she used to fire ceramics. She had put shelves in front of the windows for etching needles, pastels, and charcoal sticks, each in their own jar. The darkness and denseness suited her fine. The light she needed came from the paper and the music—from inside—not from the sun in the sky.