February 7, 2019
The staircase is wide, carpeted. They have to walk up three flights, and by the time they reach the top, Agnes’s left leg is shaking uncontrollably. Whatever relief the pills had afforded her is gone, metabolized in this one painful activity.
The door that awaits them sits ajar. Nora, ahead of Agnes, knocks on the wall before entering. Agnes trails in behind her, breathing harshly through her nose. The apartment is little more than a single room, with a kitchenette on one side of the rectangle, and a bed and chair on the other. The walls are bare, except for a few posters of bands Agnes has never heard of. There’s a desk in the corner by the bed, its surface overrun with books and papers. This is unmistakably the studio apartment of a student.
And there are the students. Just two of them. A woman and a man. The man, a redhead with dark circles beneath his eyes, lounges on the bed. The woman, a brunette, straightens up in a chair beside the bed. She’d been curled over something, a notebook. Agnes can see the sharp lines of a woman’s face etched in black ink before the brunette clutches the notebook to her chest.
Agnes scans the room for a chair. Her knee’s throbbing, and she’s not confident it won’t buckle underneath her. But the redhead and the brunette have all the seats in the house.
Nora starts to introduce herself, but she’s interrupted by the sound of a flushing toilet. A second later, an older woman emerges from the bathroom. She greets Nora like an old friend, swooping in for a hug. Her skin’s lined, her straw-colored hair bundled into a messy bun. She reminds Agnes of the wealthy women in the Bay Area who drive white Range Rovers and have abs of steel. Everything they wear and own is a bit scuffed up and anonymous, but their outfit would cost you more than a month’s salary.
“Thank you so much for arranging this,” Nora’s saying, her body absorbed into the older woman’s thick sweater.
The woman’s eyes light on Agnes. It’s obvious she recognizes Agnes as Marie’s doppelgänger. Agnes braces herself for the cry—You look exactly like her!—but the woman recovers herself.
“I’m Hildur,” she says, disengaging from Nora and extending a hand to Agnes.
Agnes grips the woman’s unwashed hand and mutters her name in response. There have been so many meetings, so many new names. Under this woman’s scrutiny, Agnes has an overwhelming desire to go home, where she can swallow her pills in peace, where she doesn’t have so much responsibility, where no one stares at her like she’s a dead woman.
The man on the bed clears his throat loudly. He directs something to Nora in Icelandic.
“I’m sorry?” Nora says.
He groans dramatically. “How can you expect to help us if you don’t speak our language? If you don’t know anything?”
Hildur chastises him, but in Icelandic. Her gaze begins on the redhead, but it slowly drifts back to Agnes. Then, in English, she says, “Óskar, this is Einar Pálsson’s granddaughter. These women may be Americans, but they know more than you think.”
The spotlight, sudden and bright, lands on Agnes. The redhead’s lip curls in disgust. “Einar Pálsson’s granddaughter,” he says. He might as well be uttering a curse. “What are you doing here?”
This earns him another reprimand from Hildur, but he’s not paying her any attention.
Part of Agnes would like to leave, right now. The other part of her, the part of her that thinks this man doesn’t even deserve to say her grandfather’s name aloud, would like to tell him as much. She compromises by saying nothing.
This doesn’t impress the redhead. He turns to Nora. “Hildur said you wanted to interview us for your show. She said you want to help us find Ása. How does bringing the murderer’s child back to Bifröst help anyone?”
Nora ignores his question. “You’re Óskar, right?”
He grunts. He gestures to the brunette woman beside him. “Lilja,” he calls her. Then: “What do you want? How can you find Ása by talking to us?”
Nora introduces herself, formally. She’s Nora Carver, the host of the popular true crime podcast, The End, here to document the 1979 murders of Marie Hvass and Agnes Einarsdóttir. She heard about the disappearance of their friend and has decided to offer her considerable skills to help find Ása. She tells them about her podcast in depth. It’s an effective tool, Agnes thinks, as she loses focus. Nora’s bombarding the students with her credentials, taking control of the conversation.
Agnes finds herself staring at the brunette. Lilja. She can’t figure out her relationship with this man, the odd push and pull of their bodies, as though they were opposite poles of magnets. They must be friends. But Agnes can’t imagine choosing this man as her friend. There’s a familiarity in the way they’re situated, so close, but the woman, to her credit, seems to flinch away from him. Maybe they aren’t friends when they aren’t with Ása. Maybe she’s the glue.
There’s something more about Lilja, though. She’s beautiful. Stunning, even. She’s cropped her dark brown hair close to her jaw, the tips of her ears poking out of the curtain of hair. Her eyes, also dark, track Nora’s movements, but she has what Agnes’s grandfather would call “ceiling eyes.” Always staring slightly too far up, dreamy and sleepy.
Nora concludes her speech by handing the students waivers to sign. “Agnes,” she says, “is just as concerned as I am about Ása. She’s here because she cares. Is that fair to you, Óskar?”
The man grunts again. From the sound of it, Agnes understands he’s not conceding. The argument just isn’t worth his time. He signs his waiver. He tries to give Lilja the pen, but she doesn’t take it. She’s holding her own waiver, but like a spiderweb. It’s connected to her, but she’s not aware of it. Óskar pesters her in Icelandic until she seems to come back to them all.
“No,” she says, finally, in English. Her voice is fuller than her ethereal presence would suggest. Firm. “I am not participating in a film.”
“It’s a podcast,” Nora corrects her. “And that’s absolutely fine. Would you still be comfortable speaking with me if it were off the record, though? Your name would never be released, nor your voice. I’m well-versed in investigations. I can help you. I want to find Ása. Like you do.”
Lilja stares at Nora’s forehead, as hard as her soft gaze will allow. “You were there,” she says. “I recognize you. You saw what I saw.”
“But I didn’t know Ása,” Nora says. “I wasn’t with her at the party, like you were. I wasn’t with her before the party. I don’t know who she knows or what she might have been dealing with in the weeks leading up to this party. Only you and Óskar can provide valuable information like that.”
“It’s a waste of time,” Lilja says, “to be talking when we could be looking for her.”
There’s a new voice now. Hildur’s. She keeps it in Icelandic, among the three of them. Whatever she says, it has a marked effect on Lilja. She lets out a deep, long breath. “Off the record,” she says.
“Of course,” Nora says. She sends Hildur a subtle, questioning look.
Hildur shakes her head, her expression grim. “Ása is in trouble,” she says in English. “She would want us to do anything we could to find her.”