February 7, 2019
Bundled up now, Lilja slows her stride, but she doesn’t stop until she reaches a compact car, parked halfway down the block. She watches Agnes’s approach warily, as though expecting her to thrust a camera or a microphone in her face.
“Sorry,” Agnes says, feeling self-conscious, “for shouting. Can I talk to you for a second? Just person to person.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
A gust of wind yanks away the last of Agnes’s warmth. Lilja gestures for her to get in the car. She settles into the driver’s seat while Agnes gratefully takes the passenger side. In a moment, hot air filters through the vents.
“Thanks,” Agnes says.
Lilja turns as much as the little space in the car will allow, the better to take Agnes in. “So?” she asks. “What do you want?”
Agnes hesitates, thrown. She likes Lilja. There’s something luminous about her, on her own, but there’s also something of Emi in her. Not their physicality. Emi’s curvier, her skin a radiant umber, where Lilja is a jumble of angles, a white shadow. But the dreaminess. Emi volunteers for a community garden near UC Berkeley, and even though Agnes can’t stand the texture of dirt on her fingers, she used to join her, just to observe the way Emi communicated with the sentience of the plants around her. This woman has that same ethereal, almost alien kindness.
“I didn’t know about Ása,” Agnes says, clearing her throat, “until I got here the day before yesterday. I’m sorry this is happening to you. I’m sorry about your friend. You’re going to the search party?”
Lilja makes a soft noise. Agnes takes this for a yes.
“Without Óskar?”
“Like he’s ever joined the search party before,” Lilja says. Some of her earlier viciousness returns to her. “He cares more about his show in Reykjavík than finding Ása.”
“What show?”
“He’s in a band,” Lilja says. “They’re playing in a bar this Saturday in Reykjavík. He’s going, even though Ása needs him.”
“You think she’s out there,” Agnes says. “Alive.”
“She is not dead,” is all Lilja can say.
“Do you think she’s with her boyfriend?”
“I don’t know.”
“This has been bothering me,” Agnes says, warmth flooding through her. The car’s heating flows over her skin, soothing her. “I don’t really understand how you know about him, if he’s a secret.”
There’s no answer.
“Did you see her with him?”
“No.”
Agnes asks, “Are you in love with her?” and Lilja’s expression doesn’t change. The question doesn’t register. She’s staring at something Agnes can’t see.
When she speaks, her voice is resigned. “I have to go,” she says.
“But—”
“I’m not in love with her,” Lilja snaps. “I love her. That’s why I have to go. I have to find her.”
“Where do you think she is?” Agnes asks. When the other woman doesn’t answer, she brings up the medication. “Óskar says she’s stopped taking it. He’s an asshole, but he’s observant, especially when it comes to Ása, right? Is there part of you that thinks she’s done all this on purpose?”
She’s gone too far. Lilja tells her to get out. She has to go.
“Wait,” Agnes says. She searches her backpack for a pen, not quite knowing why she’s doing this, other than this is the most she’s felt like a person in a year. She tears a corner off the book she’d read on the plane, scribbles her name and number on the scrap of paper and hands it to Lilja. “If you—” She stutters, losing her courage. “If you need to talk. Or need help finding your friend.”
Agnes doesn’t wait for Lilja to reject her. She steps out into the wind, watches it play with Lilja’s short hair, obscuring her face. Then she slams the door shut and walks away, back to the apartment building, cheeks burning.