“I try to keep their memories alive.”
“And you think about them?”
“No. Never.”
“You don’t feel bad about any of them?”
“No.”
“How is that possible? You have no conscience?”
“It’s frozen, I guess. You feel bad about any of your…?”
“My bedfellows?” she says with an icy grin. “No.”
“No? You’ve had forty people between your legs and you don’t feel bad about any of them?”
“I can’t allow myself to. I see them all the time.”
Give me a fucking spring break.
“You’re still seeing them? Forty guys?”
“Not ‘seeing’ them. I just, you know, meet them in the street and stuff. It’s a small town. They come into the café all the time.”
“OK. So, that’s why they hired you?”
She switches from Lewinsky to Britney.
“Hey. Shut the fuck up, will you! We’re talking about dead people here, and yet you make ME look like the guilty one. As if you can compare killing people to making love with them?”
“Love and death. Equally important in life.”
“Love and death? It’s not about love. It’s only about sex!”
“Even more serious.”
She jumps up from the sofa, screaming at me: “OH! Fuck you!” before leaving the room. But she’s back in no time, looking like she just realized that this is her place and not mine. “I don’t know why the hell I’m keeping you here! I really should call the police or Torture or something, but… Argh! Get up! Go upstairs! Get away from me! And shut the fuck up!”
“Sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“Fuck you!”
“Yes, I’ll… I’ll do it later. Please, sit down.”
She goes into the kitchen and stays there for a cigarette’s worth of time. I use those minutes for spanking my green-eyed monkey.
Jealousy is the old and ever-caring aunt that never forgets to show up at my dates. It has long been the driving force in my life, ever since my Hanover girlfriend, the optician’s daughter, dumped me Prussian style. Hildegaard was a Day 8 Girl (as a freshly landed foreigner who spoke little German my chances were limited) who wore turtlenecks half the time, played the violin with an angel’s face, and never used a dirty word, but told me, at the moment of her parting, that she had cheated on me with seventeen men. Seventeen fucking Germans. Ponytail, mustache, and all. It was supposed to make me feel better, she said.
“You should only be happy to get rid of a…”
“…slut like you?”
It took me seven years to bury the bastards in the hard soil of my soul. They’ve hardly bothered me since, but they did turn my mind into a suspicious one forever. As God only knows too well, I’ve a hard time enjoying relationships. I’m always like some fucking secret agent trying to prove that my partner is a counterspy. And when it comes to love I’m like the referee at a soccer match, totally unable to enjoy the game, but always ready with the yellow card.
And here I go again. Aunt Jealousy has ordered Gunholder out in the kitchen. So the old hatch did make it all the way up to Iceland. Still, this should hardly qualify as a date. It’s more like a crash course in the business of shooting people. Killing 101. We’re at the end of our first lesson. The teacher waits for the student to return from her smoking break. In a while she does. Gunholder reappears in the doorway, with red eyes and angry cheeks. She crawls back onto the sofa and lights another cigarette. I watch her inhale and exhale for a while. She makes a small windy sound each time the smoke leaves her mouth.
“How did your parents react when the police came and Father Friendly was gone?” I finally ask her.
“They were in big shock, of course. I mean, they totally believed in you,” she says with a modest laugh.
“Was he angry, your dad?”
“I would say more shocked than angry. And then he started reassuring the police, putting his hand on their shoulders and telling them: ‘God will find him. He will not escape the waking eye of the Lord.’”
She laughs some more. I try to laugh with her. Then all of a sudden we hear the downstairs door open and her smile disappears. She kills her cigarette, stands up, grabs my dish and brings it to the kitchen. I run up the primitive staircase and then pull it up behind me. It comes with a hatch that closes behind it, once the staircase is all up in the attic. I crawl across the splintered floor and get inside my noisy North Face hide. I listen to Truster trot inside the apartment, the poor horse. He’s home early. I hear them exchange the smallest hellos followed by some toilet sounds. He then says something that my wild guess would have as: “Some food left?” She says nay. That’s Icelandic for “no.” She has taught me some phrases already. Tugthúslimur is “good morning” and glæpamaður is “good night.”
Then we have sibling-silence for three hours. They don’t even watch TV together. No music playing, either. What the hell are they doing? Neither of them leaves the house. Are they playing cards? Reading? At midnight there are some toilet sounds again, followed by the sweet sounds of silky underpants gliding down soft white legs. The war gave me a cat’s hearing.
At three in the morning I dial Niko’s number in NYC. I speak with the voice of a dormer mouse, explaining my situation. He listens for a while, but when he finally talks back, he acts like a wannabe Talian on TV: “You callin’ me? Why you callin’ me? Who gave you my number?” Then he hangs up. He hangs up on me. My good old Niko. Niko Nevolja. This is really bad news. Some really, really bad news. I should consider myself dead. At least I should never even think of going back to NYC. Or even Croatia. Fuck. Fucking fucked-up fuck.
I fall asleep at five.
I’m woken at seven by some loud knocking and soft voices downstairs. I’m prepared for this one: Sleeping in my (or Mr. Maack’s) clothes, I pocket my phone and put on my running shoes in less than a second. Two such later and I have thrown the sleeping bag into a dim corner and put away the mattress beneath a box of books. I hear Gunholder acting crazy downstairs.
“QUARY GONGI?!”
Her voice follows me up through the skylight, the small rusty one in the middle of the steep bulletproof roof. It’s freaking cold outside. Gray skies, green trees, and the colorful roofs of Reykjavik. This one is rusty red. I quickly close the window and climb the steep roof. I can spot the white hood of a police car parked on the street below, and I hear the voice of a masculine officer traveling from street to garden. I jump on the other side of the roof, hanging on the ridge by the total sum of eight fingers. Through my belly I can hear the suckers already up in the attic, looking for the hiding man’s hide. Moments later I hear one of them open the fucking skylight. I can’t see him, but he can possibly see my cold white fingertips. I have to let go of the ridge. I do so. I let go. I slide down the roof in a very slow, slow motion, floating down the cold iron on my big Croatian belly. I stretch out my arms and feet, trying to stop myself with my sticky shoes and clammy palms without making a single sound. Two inches later I stop. I fucking stop. I’m spread out on the steep red roof like a gigantic frog.
CHAPTER 15
ICELANDIC ARMS
I should write a thank you letter to the Icelandic police force. How they managed not to find a six-foot, 240-pound frog on the roof of the house they searched is a big mystery to me. The FBI should do some deep thinking before signing another deal of collaboration with them. I did the frozen frog for a freezing hour or so before returning down through the attic. The hatch in the floor was open. I kneeled before it like a ballet dancer in front of an imaginary lake, center stage, and was about to put my head down into it when I was suddenly faced with another head, containing two lusty lips. She was equally surprised to see me, and after a short sigh of relief we kissed.