11

Viva Las Vegas was an overheated casino bar where the morning gamblers clutched slot machines so avidly it looked like they were having sex with them, an impression bolstered by the groans that erupted every time someone won or lost big. I angled between people waiting for a turn at the slots. Judging from their grim faces and sunken eyes, most of them had been there for a while—years, maybe. I wondered how many people died at the machines and whether they just tossed the bodies into a cold back room and waited till spring to bury them.

I scanned the room for someone who resembled Quinn. I tried running a fast-forward, time-lapse loop in my head. The pale-skinned boy who used to sprawl across his mattress and stare at me with hostile eyes: I could no more imagine that boy than I could imagine my seventeen-year-old self inside the gaunt, scarred creature I’d become.

I gave up and grabbed a seat at the bar. A plasma TV played a music video with the sound turned off, a singer in a dolphin mask backed by blue-faced people in space suits. The bartender sang along in Icelandic.

I ordered a beer and got something called Gull. The whole fucking country was like The Birds, if the birds had won. I drank and thought about what Andrés had said: a guy named Quinn, Canadian or maybe American; a guy who looked like me.

It had to be him. Quinn and I used to lie in bed with our hands pressed together, then our arms; chest to breast, groin to groin, aligning ourselves as though we stared into a mirror. His hair red, mine tawny, his eyes fern green and mine gray ice. I flagged down the bartender.

“Another beer?”

“In a minute. A friend’s supposed to meet me, a guy named Quinn. Is he around?”

“Not all week.” The bartender was short, with hennaed hair and a sunburst tattooed on her wrist. “Dagny’s over there, you could ask her.”

She tipped her head toward a very tall woman bent over a slot machine, white-blond braids framing her angular face. She wore a tight red T-shirt and expensive jeans tucked into fur-trimmed boots. Icelandic Casino Barbie. I left some money on the bar and walked over.

“Dagny.”

The woman stared at the icons flickering across the screen as though they measured her vital signs. She cursed and fed more money into the machine without glancing at me.

“I’m looking for Quinn. Is he around?”

“Farðu i rassgat. Go fuck yourself.”

I kicked the slot machine. It flickered then flashed TRY AGAIN. The blond woman whirled, fist raised to strike. I grabbed her wrist and wrenched her toward me. “I’m looking for Quinn. Is he around? Simple question.”

She pulled away, nearly yanking my arm from its socket, and I let go. She straightened and looked at me dead-on, her face a rictus of fury.

I returned her glare but took a step back. I wasn’t used to meeting women eye to eye. She was older than I first thought but still younger than me, her face seamed with lines, none of them produced by smiling.

“Who the fuck are you?” she spat.

“An old friend.”

She stared at me, then laughed harshly. “Then I can ask you the same thing: Where’s Quinn? Stupid fucking question.” She stooped to pick up a lipstick-red handbag. “I don’t know. He owes me fifty thousand krónur. He sold some stuff for me and now he’s holding out.…”

Instinctively I looked at her arm. Telltale reddened pockmarks, like fleabites, and an abscess near the crook of her elbow. She caught my glance and bared her teeth in disdain.

“Fuck you. I gave him a bunch of old vinyl; he sells it on eBay. If you find him, tell him he still owes me fifty thousand krónur.”

“Where could I find him?”

She pushed a blond strand from her face. “Kolaportið maybe. I checked the last two weeks, but he wasn’t there. And I’m leaving for Uppsala this afternoon, so…” She shook her head. “I’ll find him when I get back. Asshole.”

“Where’s Kolaportið?”

She leaned forward and gave me a shove that sent me reeling, turned, and stalked off. When I caught my balance, she was gone.

I made my way back to the bar and ordered another Gull. The silent flat-screen had switched from Cetacean MTV to BBC World. The bartender poured herself a mug of coffee, yawning.

“What’s Kolaportið?” I asked her.

“Kolaportið? That’s the indoor flea market down by the harbor. It used to be the coal warehouse. Big building.”

“Is it far from here?”

“Nothing is far in Reykjavík. Just walk toward the harbor, that way.” She gestured vaguely at the wall. “But it’s not open today. Only weekends. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday?”

I drank my beer. I felt trapped in some bizarre time loop where the clock had stopped and the sky never turned to dawn. The background noise was nothing but electronic chings, the nonsense susurrus of a language I didn’t understand, or want to. Even the oldest burnouts here were younger than me. I was wasting my time along with the remaining stash of money Anton had sent me. I had a valid passport and some ready cash: I could have gotten a flight to Greece or Ibiza. Instead I was holed up near the Arctic Circle in the Casino of the Living Dead.

I glanced at the soundless TV. A woman newscaster stood in a rainy street, talking to another woman with a drawn face. Behind them a crowd of newspeople and cops mingled among emergency vehicles and flashing lights. A man strode past in a blue POLISI windbreaker, followed by another cop with a German shepherd on a leash. A caption crawled across the screen: FASHION MURDER.

I leaned forward. The TV crowd began to scatter, warned off by a cop with a soundless bullhorn. As people dispersed, I could see where police tape sealed off the perimeter of a tidy front garden. A grim-faced man hurried up the steps behind a tall woman in a gray suit, who, in a movie, would be the chief police investigator.

Only this wasn’t a movie. It was Ilkka’s house.

“What the hell.” I waved at the bartender. “Hey—can you turn that up?”

She hit the volume and walked away. At the other end of the bar stood a youngish, well-heeled blond guy in a D&G pin-striped suit, a dark green overcoat slung across his shoulder. He downed a shot and stared at the screen.

“… after last night’s murder of a former Vogue photographer in an upscale Helsinki neighborhood. Police say Ilkka Kaltunnen and his assistant were found dead in his office by his wife when she returned home from an appointment. There are no details as to the murders, no indications yet if burglary was the motivation behind the early-evening slayings, although Kaltunnen’s office and a downstairs work area were ransacked.”

The newscaster signed off, and the screen filled with recent unemployment figures. The bartender picked up my empty glass. “You want another?”

I shook my head and tossed some krónur on the counter. The blond guy turned and looked at me, then back at the TV. I headed for the door fast as I could without breaking into a run, convinced that every hollow-eyed gambler would stare after me and scream for the police.

No one lifted an eyelash. I left the bar as anonymously as I’d entered it, stumbling back into the dark street. I wrapped my scarf around my face and zipped up my jacket as far as it would go.

I knew this was crazy paranoia. No one would recognize me. No one in this city knew who I was; no one cared about a dead photographer fifteen hundred miles away. I had a feeling it wouldn’t just be crazy paranoia for long.