February 7, 2019
Refusing to speak another word, Óskar slinks out of the apartment. Hildur accompanies him, ostensibly to summon Lilja, but Agnes guesses she’s going to try to get more information from Óskar along the way. Has he been this forthcoming with the police? Do they know about Ása’s secret boyfriend? Or her supposed death wish?
Nora doesn’t waste a second of her time alone in Ása’s apartment. She drags the camcorder’s gaze slowly along every corner of the room. She brushes past Agnes, gives her arm a squeeze on the way.
“Sorry that was so unpleasant,” she says. “He’s an asshole.”
“I—” Agnes begins, unsure of what to say. What almost comes out is, I admire you. She hadn’t realized what this all entailed. Nora has interviewed her, but not like this. Nora had somehow gotten information from someone who had decided not to tell her anything. In the end, he had trusted her enough to betray his closest friend’s privacy. Instead, though, Agnes hears herself ask, “Do you think he hurt Ása? There’s something weird there, right?”
“Define ‘weird,’” Nora says, disappearing into the bathroom. Agnes follows close behind. Nora’s nudging the medicine cabinet open, her sleeve protecting her fingerprints. There, among a plethora of makeup tools and containers, are a few pill boxes. Each prescribed to Ása Gunnarsdóttir. Nora records it all.
“Just,” Agnes says, searching for the right words, but finding only, “off.” When Nora doesn’t answer, she asks, “Why did he talk to you, if he thinks Ása killed herself? What’s the point of doing this, if he thinks he knows the truth already? I mean, doesn’t it make you nervous? Like maybe he hurt her? And he’s covering his tracks?”
Nora settles her hip against the bathroom tiles, turning to face Agnes. She places the camcorder on the counter. “You’ve been watching too many crime shows,” she says. “I can’t speak to his motivations. I don’t know him well enough. But, in my opinion, that kid is devastated. He tried to hide it with all that asshole bullshit, but he’s grieving, hard. I think he’d talk to me because he’s hoping he’s wrong.”
“What do you think happened to her?” Agnes asks, pitching her voice low. She can hear Hildur coming up the stairs. This can’t wait, though. Not when she’s seen Nora in action. Agnes has suddenly figured out what it is about the woman that she likes. They both observe from behind their outer shell. There’s a hypervigilance, an acute awareness of what everyone else is doing.
Agnes knows she’s got the tunnel vision Emi resented so much. She knows she’s self-absorbed. In the past year, with her injuries, she’s had to be.
What Emi never understood, what Agnes is only coming to understand about herself, is that this self-absorption is a defense mechanism, a suit of armor protecting her from the constant assault of other people’s expectations, thoughts, and feelings. She recognizes the same suit of armor around Nora. Only Nora hasn’t withdrawn behind her shell to protect herself from her hypervigilance.
She’s withdrawn to weaponize it.
“I don’t know what happened to Ása,” Nora says, shaking her head.
“Do you have a guess?”
“Do you?” Nora counters. She indicates that they should get out of the bathroom. She’s heard the other two women coming, too.
Agnes doesn’t move. “The river. I think she jumped in the river.”
There’s no time to gauge Nora’s reaction. She’s pushed past Agnes, back to her starting position to welcome Hildur and Lilja to the apartment. Agnes reclaims her spot by the window, disappointed and a little bit stung by the brush-off. This is Nora’s job, she tells herself. She’s busy. But, another voice whispers, what if she’s doing the same thing to you? What if Nora’s handling her, just as skillfully as she’s handled Óskar?
Agnes’s paranoia and hurt feelings fade into the background when she hears Lilja’s voice, dismissing Nora’s thanks. “I want to help Ása,” she’s saying. She takes Óskar’s vacated seat without prompting.
Lilja doesn’t have her sketchbook anymore. She’s squared her shoulders, prepared herself. She scans the room. Agnes wonders how she must feel, sitting in the apartment of her missing friend with two strangers and their recording equipment. And Hildur. Hildur, who Agnes can’t help but dislike. It’s a visceral repulsion, in the same way that she has a visceral attraction to Lilja.
The ceiling eyes are on her. Electricity sparks at the base of Agnes’s spine. A short frisson of awareness. Agnes waits for Lilja to move on, but she doesn’t. She’s frowning slightly, staring at Agnes intently. Not angrily, as Óskar did, but curiously.
It’s been so long since Agnes felt like a person. She breaks the stare to assess her own body. The leg she’s spent the past year resenting and treating like something alien to her. She’s become a jumble of separate, malfunctioning parts. She hasn’t thought of someone else, let alone herself, as desirable in so many months. She can’t fathom what Lilja sees, when she looks at her.
Nora says, briskly, “Off the record, right?”
Lilja nods.
“Okay.” Nora flicks both the camcorder and the microphone off. “Tell me about Ása.”
“She’s everything,” Lilja says, and Agnes feels a burst of envy. Envy for these two women, for their friendship. For the conviction with which this woman described her friend as complete.
“What does that mean?” Nora asks.
Lilja doesn’t answer.
“Is she everything to you?” Nora asks. “Or just—everything?”
“How does this help find her?” Lilja asks. “How I feel about her?”
“I didn’t ask you how you felt about her,” Nora says. “I said ‘Tell me about her’ and you’re the one who took it to your feelings. ‘She’s everything’ is a loaded, emotional statement. That’s what you think, when you think about her. What would she say about you, if I asked her that same question?”
Lilja appears arrested. Then she flushes with color. “She’s everything to me,” she says. “But I am not everything to her.”
“She has a boyfriend she’s kept secret from Óskar,” Nora says. “Do you know who he is?”
A deep inhale, then nothing.
“You’re her closest friend, right? Best friends?”
“Yes.” It comes out small, but defiant.
“Why would your best friend keep her boyfriend secret from you?”
“She’s private,” Lilja says. The words are rote, like it’s something she’s had to repeat often in the past few days. “She’s a private person.”
“So this is not the only secret she keeps?”
“‘You don’t need to know everything about someone to love them.’ That’s what she says. We are more than what we think of ourselves. More than our histories. We are whatever we choose to be in the present moment. You can love someone easier that way. That is what Ása wants.”
“Does she love easily?”
Lilja’s eyes hover somewhere above Nora’s head. “Men use her,” she says. The words are harsh. “She had a difficult home life. The only attention she understands is sexual. That’s why she—” She stops herself.
“Why she loves easily,” Nora finishes for her. “She loves Óskar, doesn’t she?”
There’s no answer, but obviously it’s a yes.
“Does Óskar want more from her? A relationship?”
A shrug.
“I saw you three at the party. Not for long, but I saw the way you moved around each other. Óskar’s jealous, isn’t he?”
“Ask him.”
“I did,” Nora says. “But there’s the problem of the secret boyfriend. Do you have a guess of who he is?”
Lilja gnaws on her lower lip. She doesn’t even seem to have heard the question.
“You don’t have to know everything about another person to love them,” Nora quotes to her. “But this isn’t the past. This is her present-day romantic life. She’s keeping it a secret from her closest friends. I understand being private. I consider myself to be a private person. But this … I can’t help but wonder if there’s another reason for the secrecy. If maybe she’s trying to spare someone’s feelings.”
“Mine or Óskar’s.”
“Exactly. And you don’t strike me as a violent person.”
Agnes shifts in her seat. Her foot’s falling asleep. When she looks up, it’s to find Lilja’s eyes on her again.
“Would Óskar ever hurt Ása?” It’s Nora.
Lilja flinches away. The moment’s over. “No,” she says. “He loves her.”
“That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t hurt her,” Nora says. “It’s never so simple as we think.”
“I don’t want to do this,” Lilja says.
“I know it can be—” Nora begins, but Lilja cuts her off.
“No,” she says. “This isn’t finding Ása. You’re asking me if I’ve hurt her. If Óskar has. You aren’t trying to help her. You’re looking for someone to blame. I have to go.” She comes to standing, and even though Nora and Hildur entreat her to stop, she doesn’t wait. “I have to find my friend,” she insists. “I didn’t hurt her. I don’t know where she is. If you want to help, go into the fields. Look for her. But don’t ask about things you know nothing about.”
Then she’s out the door, slamming it shut behind her, leaving the three women behind in a sudden, pregnant silence.
“This is hitting all of us hard,” Hildur says. “Ása, gone like this. The town remembers your family’s tragedy.” This, to Agnes. “It is our tragedy, too. I’m sorry they didn’t participate.” This last to Nora.
“Oh, no,” Nora says. “They participated. Thank you for arranging this. That was so useful.” She pulls a notebook and pen from her tote bag and starts jotting down notes. “I’d like to talk to them again, actually, if I can. Soon.”
“I will see if they want to,” Hildur says. She’s turning to Agnes, anticipation clear on her face.
“Excuse me,” Agnes says, pushing herself up to standing. “I have to make a call.”
She takes the stairs faster than her knee can comfortably allow, and catches the front door as it’s closing. Then she’s out in the cold air, calling the woman’s name.
Lilja.