10

There were only two flights a day to Reykjavík. Icelandair wouldn’t let me pay cash, so I was stuck with a smaller operation that appeared to service vacation destinations near the Arctic Circle. No one seemed to want my money. When I tried to trade some of my euros for krónur at the currency exchange, the woman gave me a bored look.

“We don’t do krónur.”

“Is there anyplace else?”

“No one is doing krónur.”

I found a quiet corner, finished my Jack Daniel’s, then went through security. I got checked out thoroughly, presumably because I’d just paid cash for a one-way ticket to a country so broke it made me look like Bill Gates, if Gates traveled coach on a plane that had rolled off the assembly line back when Bono meant Sonny. The flight was nearly empty—four Japanese girls, a few people I assumed were Icelandic because they smiled more than the Finns, and me.

I dozed fitfully for several hours, woke when we hit some turbulence and one of the Japanese girls behind me started hyperventilating. I looked out the window and saw a shimmering archipelago of lights far below—Iceland’s coast. A few minutes and the lights were gone. I searched for some other sign of life below us, but there was nothing. I fell back asleep and dreamed of gazing at an immense photographic negative, a vast sheet of black glass that splintered at my touch.

*   *   *

It was past midnight when we finally touched down. The Keflavik airport was empty, except for a single clerk at Border Control. I exited into what seemed like an abandoned shopping mall—shuttered duty-free shops, deserted seating areas, empty escalators moving up and down. The currency exchange was closed, and when I tried to use an ATM, it refused to convert my euros into krónur. I wondered what the black-market rate was for foreign money.

Outside, a solitary bus idled in the pouring rain. The driver asked for a ticket. I gave him a couple of bills and clambered on board.

The trip to Reykjavík was like a bus tour through Mordor. Black lava fields, an endless waste broken here and there by ruined machinery or a building of stained corrugated metal. No trees. No towns. No stars, no moon; nothing but black sky above and desolation below. Occasionally a streetlight shone through the rain, ominous as a UFO. Desultory ’70s music dribbled from the radio between the rhythmic shriek of the wiper blades. The Japanese girls tried in vain to get a cell-phone signal. One of them staggered on tippy-toe heels to the front of the bus and asked the driver about the northern lights.

“Not cold enough,” he said.

Finally we reached a stretch of suburban strip malls—gas stations, fast-food joints, an Icelandic megastore—and pulled onto a spur road into the city. At the bus station I followed the Japanese girls into a minivan that took us downtown. Narrow streets crowded with SUVs and Audis; sidewalks even more crowded with drunken kids. The van stopped in the middle of what looked like the main drag, where a neon HOTEL sign glowed above a metal awning. The girls straggled out, retrieved their luggage, and went inside. The driver looked at me.

“Where to?”

I realized I had no idea where to stay. I was too exhausted to think of looking for Quinn, too tired even to find a bar. I pointed at the hotel awning. “This place expensive?”

“Yes.” The driver leaned out the window to spit.

I stared through the rain at a guy who repeatedly pushed his weeping girlfriend against a wall. Behind us, a car horn blared.

“How about someplace quiet?” I asked. “And cheap.”

“Cheap?” The driver eased the van forward. “In Reykjavík?”

“Just as long as I’m not sleeping in the bus station.”

We crept past more drunks, another guy shoving around his girlfriend, a huddle of teenagers smashing beer bottles against the curb. “Is it always like this?”

“Everything is worse now.” The driver swore as a boy lurched across the street, oblivious of oncoming traffic. “You chose a bad time to visit.”

The van turned down one side street, then another, and at last drew up in front of a nondescript corner building. White stucco had flaked away in patches, revealing gray cement mottled as lichen. Limp curtains hung inside grit-spattered windows.

“Hotel Kátur,” the driver announced.

Inside, a worn modular sofa was pushed against one wall, its cushions faded to the same dingy gray as the cement exterior. There were stacks of tourist brochures on a battered coffee table, an empty beer bottle, and one wool glove. Everything reeked of disinfectant and cigarette smoke.

“Halló, gott kvöld.”

I turned to see a middle-aged man behind a small counter. “Yeah, I’m looking for a room.”

“Okay.” He set a clipboard on the counter and pointed at a rate sheet in English. “Just one night?”

“For now, anyway.” I pulled a few bills from my wallet. “Euros okay?”

He nodded, handed me a key, and pointed to a stairwell. Upstairs, I found my room, tossed my jacket and boots on the floor, and fell into bed.

I awoke to the sound of a truck idling outside. I checked the time on the bedside clock. A bit after ten, but was that morning or night?

I stood, head pounding, staggered to the bathroom, and forced myself to drink several glasses of sulfurous water, which made me throw up. I felt slightly better after I took a scalding shower that stank of rotten eggs. Then I dressed and went downstairs. The same man was behind the counter, hunched in front of a laptop.

“It’s supposed to snow, maybe,” he said without looking up.

“There a place where I can get coffee and something to eat?”

He pointed at the door, flicked his hand to the right. “That way. Laugavegur.” I traded him some euros for krónur and stepped outside.

The street acted like a wind tunnel for the gale blowing from the harbor. I’d forgotten my watch cap, so did my best to cover my ears and face with my scarf as I hurried uphill. I’d gone only a few steps when a piercing cry rang out behind me. I looked back.

Whirling white shapes filled the black sky above the harbor: a cyclone of seagulls and wild geese, thousands of them rising and falling as though trapped inside a huge snow globe. I watched, mesmerized, until the cold got too much for me, then turned and trudged up the street.

There seemed to be more birds than people in this place. I didn’t see another person. No dogs or cats, either, and not a lot in the way of vegetation, besides some shrubs and depressed-looking birch trees. Apart from the cries of seabirds, the city felt muffled. I started at the sound of horses’ hooves, then saw it was an SUV, its studded tires ringing against the cobblestones.

And the air had no smell. No exhaust. No smoke. No dog shit or rancid grease from fast-food joints, none of the city reek and fume you absorb without knowing.

But also no green smells, trees or grass or wet earth. I couldn’t even smell the ocean, close as it was. The city was a kind of sensory tabula rasa.

I reached Laugavegur, a deserted street lined with shops that offered some protection from the wind. Spindly evergreens were strung with forlorn fairy lights. The blocky buildings looked like cheap toys, their colors slightly off—sallow green, brownish red, baby-shit yellow. I passed a shuttered tattoo parlor, a vacant art gallery, a bar. Dust-covered vitrines filled an abandoned jewelry store. The evergreens turned out to be lampposts, the fairy lights arranged to mimic the shape of Christmas trees. In a darkened boutique, bald mannequins wore artfully distressed clothing. I squinted to read the sale price on a tattered T-shirt.

ÜTSALA 400,000 KR. What a fucking deal.

Nobody was buying. Block after block, SALE and FOR RENT signs flapped in the wind. ÜTSALA! TIL LEIGA. A string of Christmas lights formed a noose around a plastic Viking doll. Shattered glass glittered on the sidewalk, broken beer bottles, broken headlights. It was like a scene from a disaster movie, a city everyone had fled after the plague struck.

After a few minutes I reached a stretch that seemed relatively prosperous, with clubs plastered with gig posters, several jewelers, and a few shops catering to tourists, their windows filled with Lopi sweaters, toy puffins, reindeer-hide mittens. A pizza joint, only open for dinner. Across the street, a metal sidewalk sign rattled in front of a dingy corner diner. A sudden gust sent the sign flying. I dodged it and hurried inside.

The room smelled reassuringly of coffee and fried fish. A few people huddled at the counter; others sat at scuffed tables beside the windows. I found an empty table in the back, a chair repaired with electrical tape. A platinum-haired girl wearing a sweater knit from what looked like green yak fur came over and handed me a menu.

“You got one in English?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure.” She flipped it over. I ordered fried eggs and sausages and coffee, for about what my flight over here had cost. A shot of bourbon would have covered the return ticket, so I decided to hold off for the nonce.

The breakfast reminded me of that line from Quadrophenia about fried eggs making you sick first thing in the morning. Still, the coffee was good.

“Nice sweater,” I said when the waitress returned to clear the table.

She stuck the bill under my coffee mug. “My boyfriend gave it to me.”

I wondered if her boyfriend had bought it from Bigfoot. I dropped some cash on top of the check. “I’m supposed to meet a friend here, but he hasn’t shown up. An American.”

“What’s he look like?”

I frowned. What did he look like? “About my age,” I said at last. “Guy named Quinn O’Boyle.”

The girl surveyed the room. “I don’t think so. Only a few people have been in here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” She tilted her chin toward the counter. “Want me to ask?”

“That’d be great. Quinn O’Boyle.”

She went behind the counter and stuck her head into a pass-through piled with dirty plates, yelled at someone, then turned to wave me over. “Ask Andrés; he’s here more than I am.”

A burly man strode from the kitchen. Grizzled reddish hair topped by a black ski cap, beard flecked with cigarette ash, face weathered to the color of raw meat by sun and wind. His stained apron featured a picture of Jamie Oliver embellished with horns and a Hitler mustache.

“Yeah?” He smelled strongly of fish.

“I’m looking for a guy named Quinn O’Boyle. I was supposed to meet him a little while ago, and…” I shrugged.

“O’Boyle?”

I nodded. Andrés stared at me, his expression impossible to read. After a moment he looked over his shoulder and shouted into the kitchen, then cocked a thumb toward a dim staircase. “Come on.”

Upstairs was a bigger dining room with grimy windows overlooking the street. Andrés kicked open a door behind a karaoke deck and stepped out onto a fire escape. He propped the door with a chair and dug into his apron pocket for a pack of cigarettes. “Can’t even fucking smoke inside a fucking bar anymore.”

He held the pack out to me. I shook my head and he lit up, leaned against a precarious railing, and stared down into a driveway crammed with trash bins and empty liquor cartons.

“Fucking nanny state. You American? Americans all think they’re going to live forever. You’re fucking going to die of something.” He exhaled and turned his back to the wind. “I know Quinn the Eskimo. The Mighty Quinn.”

“Is he American?”

“Canadian, I think. Maybe American.” His breath mingled with the smoke. “Are you his sister?”

“Not if he’s Canadian. Or an Eskimo.” I tried to find a place out of the wind, gave up, and leaned against the door.

“You look like him.” Andrés tossed his cigarette and reached into his apron pocket. He withdrew his hand and opened it to display a mass of something white and glistening. I caught a whiff of putrefying fish as he tossed the lump into the air. A brilliant white gull dove to snatch the fish and soared off before I could draw a breath.

“Arctic tern—it should have migrated months ago. Hungry little bastard,” said Andrés. “They’ll attack if you go near their nests.” He stared admiringly into the empty sky.

“In Helsinki I saw a talking raven.”

“I have never seen that.” Andrés lit another cigarette. “But the Finns—they’re sorcerers. In the old days, that’s what they said. The Finns are sorcerers, like we are Vikings. The men, anyway.” He pinched the match out between his fingers. “Old women are witches. And some young ones I know, too.” He laughed.

“Like Valkyries?”

“Sure. Valkyries talk to ravens, too. In the sagas. ‘We sisters weave our cloth with the entrails of men, their severed heads: corpse carriers, our bounty chosen from the bodies of the slain.’”

He turned, and a spill of light struck one side of his face. Shadows sheared away the rest, save for a scatter of what looked like glitter across his cheek. His cell phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it. When he returned, I saw that the glitter on his face was fish scales.

“Back to work. I haven’t seen Quinn in a while. He moves around, but usually he comes into the bar. He used to be at Sirkus every night, before the motherfuckers tore it down.”

“Is there someplace else he hangs out?”

“Yeah. Every bar in Reykjavík.” He stepped toward the door. “Viva Las Vegas—he’s there a lot.”

I followed him downstairs. Andrés headed for the kitchen and stopped. “What’s your name? In case I see him?”

“Just say an old friend.”

“How good a friend?” I didn’t reply. Andrés stared at me, then lowered his voice. “You should be careful. It’s a small place, Reykjavík. Easy to find someone here. But outside the city, it’s easy to get lost for a long time.”

I nodded, pulled up the collar of my leather jacket, and stepped back into the cold.