“But this is Reykjavik?” Father Friendly asks her, adjusting the stiff collar to his thick neck with one hand while pointing out the windshield with the other.
“Yeah, now we’re in Reykjavik.”
“They say it’s a Tarantino town?” Oops. This sounds a bit too cool for the churchman. I quickly add, “I mean, Tarantino’s favorite city?”
She quickly looks me over—wondering whether she’s sitting in a car with some famous Scientology pastor, a man who spends his holidays playing golf with Tom Cruise and John Travolta—before saying:
“Yeah. He was here for New Year’s Eve. My girlfriend knows him. He’s OK.”
I’m glad I didn’t kill him.
Across an islanded bay, a long mountain guards the city to the north. It has the shape of a giant whale stranded ashore. Further north and out east, more mountains surround the city, lying out along the horizon like blue leopards dotted with white snowdrifts. Though they are as far away as the Hamptons from Harlem, I can see them as clearly as the tips of my shoes, for the air is as clean as a Trump Tower window. The ocean is a strong blue, and I can see waves forming and breaking as far as the eye can fly. Everything around here is crystal-clear. Like in the mind of a cold-blooded killer.
The car radio delivers Justin Timberlake. The streets are buzzing with traffic, but the sidewalks are totally empty. Kind of reminds me of Sarajevo during the curfew. Excellent conditions for roof-to-sidewalk hits. The cars are mostly Japanese or European, and all of them look brand new. These people have money. Every other one is an SUV, and many of them are driven by butter-blonde ice-queens like Gunholder. Where are all their husbands?
“Did you have a war recently?” I ask.
“A war? No. We don’t even have an army.”
Tell me another one.
“Why do you ask?” she asks.
“I just wonder where all the men are. I only see single women driving those cars.”
“Most people have two cars. One for him, one for her.”
I look at the black Range Rover in the lane next to us. One of those Virginia Madsen types is at the wheel.
“I see. But that’s not exactly a lady’s car?”
Gunholder gives me a fierce look.
“In Iceland women are equal to men.”
I look at her for a moment, and judging from the determined tilt of her ice-cream nose, I should at least try to believe her. Equal to men. No shit.
She is clearly pissed at me and only gives the shortest possible answers to my following questions. Yes, five degrees is a bit cold for this time of year. Ten degrees is normal(!). Yes, she was partying last night. And yes, Justin Timberlake is quite big in Iceland. (I seem to have decided that Father Friendly is a pretty boring guy.)
Gunholder enters the old town. Here the trees are taller and the streets more narrow. She parks her Škoda on a steep side street, outside a small green house with a rusty red roof. Like the other downtown houses, this one is covered in curly-waved iron on all sides, dressed to kill in a suit of armor. Actually, we could have used this back home: bulletproof vests for buildings.
Gunholder lives on the second floor. Father Friendly does the sign of the cross in front of her door before unlocking it with a small kitchen knife from her mother’s collection. The girl looks at him as if she just witnessed a miracle.
“Here you go,” I say in the most blessed way and open the door for her. She tells me to wait and disappears inside. Her place is the total opposite of her face; it’s a complete mess. I notice a tower of empty pizza boxes on the kitchen worktop; underwear, jeans, and jerseys on the floor; a half-used lipstick and a half-eaten sandwich. The smell of beer that has been sitting open for a week. Yet, in some strange way, this apartment seems much closer to Christ than her parents’ place. It’s much more believable as an apostle’s den.
Gunholder works in a café downtown. She’s a fellow waiter. She offers to drive the miracle man back to the holy house, but I can’t stomach going back to Silence Grove. Anyway, she’s already late for her shift. I walk her to work. The priest and the preacher’s daughter. She walks like a nutty New Yorker, and Father Friendly needs all his energy to keep up with her. Before I know it, we pass the American Embassy; a building as long as Laura Bush’s smile, and as white as her teeth. The front is decorated with six surveillance cameras. Some duck-eyed imbecile in uniform guards the entrance. I lower my head and shift sides, passing the embassy with Gunholder as a human shield, LPP style. She voices her surprise at my sudden move, and her sweet fucking face brings out my own fucking self: I accidentally murmur a “fuck.” She hears it.
“A priest that says ‘fuck’?”
“Sure,” I say, “we can say it. We just can’t do it.”
She slows down a bit.
“Oh, right. So you’ve never… you’re a virgin?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Her café turns out to be a pretty cool bistro in the heart of town called Café Paris. It looks like a three-star Starbucks with a smoking section, but I’m happy to be inside, wringing my hands like it was January. They’re not kidding about the arctic spring. Gunholder puts on her apron and brings me an All Icelandic Latte with a double shot of irritation. Despite all his miracle-working, she still seems to hate Father Friendly and his deflatable stomach. He gives her a stupid holy smile.
“Does your father keep a gun in the house?”
“A gun? That’s a strange question.”
“Yes. In the States we all keep a gun in the house. You never know. Especially if you’re a priest.”
She rolls her great eyes.
“Nobody has a gun in Iceland. It’s a safe country.”
Safe country, my ass. I make a few calls and within a week it’ll be a Croatian colony.
It’s 10:30 AM on a Wednesday morning and there are three of us in the café. I count two people out on the street. If this is downtown, no wonder the suburbs are silent. Cars sail by in slow motion. I can’t get over all these driving ladies that look like millionaires’ wives or daughters, with Prada sunglasses, Barbie hair, and airbag lips. On my scale, they all range from Day 2 to Day 4.
It reminds me of my week in Switzerland, when my architectural studies took me to a small village in the Alps to research a brand-new skiing area. The week felt like a month. It was even calmer than the fucking Belarus. The only people out were some totally unfucked housewives with Gucci hairdos doing hundred-dollar lunches in the village restaurant. Their husbands spent their days in the city, locked up in their bank safes. They reminded me of the queen of Spain, these ladies in fur and heels, as they slowly passed the jewelry stores (rich people always walk slowly, because of the deep pockets, I guess). They were all Day 26 types, but by the fifth day, I was on the brink of a mass rape. I pictured the headline in the International Herald Tribune: “Student Fucks Fifteen, Then Self.”
I finish my coffee and put it on Igor’s card. Gunholder doesn’t seem to notice. I ask her for things for the Friendly tourist to do. She points out the window.
“It’s all there: the cathedral, the parliament, the statue of John Secretson, our national hero…”
She must be joking. The cathedral is the size of God’s dog house (I imagine he has a tricolor Chihuahua), and the parliament building is no bigger than my grandfather’s country house in Gorski Kotar. I’m on Lilliput Island.
I try to dive into the downtown area, but it’s only three blocks square. It’s easier to lose it than get lost in it. How am I to keep up my LPP in this town?