Vienna

by William S. Kirby

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We need to get some protein in you, and fluid as well.”

  Vienna sat up. “You didn’t sleep last night, did you?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine for one day.”

  Justine helped Vienna choose clothes, picking the most unflattering skirt and pulling a mismatched blouse. Vienna would never notice. As Vienna started her shower, Justine went online, tracking down a quote she’d heard back in school. Then a quick text to Lord Davy:

  I know Shakespeare as well:

  “Let us sit upon the ground

  And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”

  Which sad story am I sleeping with?

  Yankee Invader

  Keep pushing and see what breaks loose. Isn’t that what they always did in the movies? She shut down the BlackBerry, ordered a large breakfast for Vienna, and took her own shower. By the time she was out, the BlackBerry had Davy’s reply.

  Richard II is all well and good, but there are kings and then there are Kings. Try Deuteronomy for explanation:

  A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation.

  For further enlightenment ask our girl for the history of Emperor Franz Josef. She has a circumlocutious entry that we traced to a 50s encyclopedia. Heaven knows where she came across it. Time her recitation. She is nothing if not a creature of precision. Seven minutes in is the rest of your answer. Some genes carry true. As for a family name, her descent is strictly paternal. Few people know. Keep it that way.

  Lord Wanker

  Justine erased the message. She’d expected Davy to evade her question. One more piece that didn’t fit.

  Out of the Radisson to the rental. The air smelled of wet pavement and winter. Rain coated the car’s windshield. The sky was the color of seawater, as if the North Atlantic had been suspended overhead and was slowly seeping back to earth.

  Justine wound through the Reykjavík traffic with recklessness copied from other European cities. Highway 5 was four lanes of asphalt that would rate as a minor artery in Atlanta.

  “How are you doing, Vienna?”

  Vienna pointed to a long row of white apartments. “Curtained windows and reflections like a captcha.” It sounded bad, whatever it meant.

  “Would it help to be distracted? Back at the Brussels stylist, you read local history.”

  “I don’t know the history of Reykjavík. Except that part about throwing high-seat pillars—whatever those are—overboard and following them to see where they beached.”

  Justine resisted the impulse to follow that. “Then how about European history? Say, Franz Josef.” It was such an awkward shift she worried Vienna would balk. But the girl fell into search mode.

  “The emperor of Austria? He was very famous in connection with his beautiful wife.” Her voice grew more animated. “Empress Elizabeth, that is to say Sisi, who was murdered by one of Lina Zahler’s friends.”

  “Let’s stick with him for now.” That was all it took. Justine timed Vienna’s recitation on the car’s glowing blue clock. Seven minutes and twenty-one seconds in:

  “… Franz Josef was renowned for his ability to recall the names of people he had seen only once. He applied the same prodigious memory to written works, reading even the longest state documents and instantly memorizing them.…”

  Justine expected Vienna to stop her recital long enough to consider such provocative lines, but she continued on, lost in the words. Vienna of the House of Habsburg, albeit by way of a bastard.

  Not that her regal ancestry made any difference to the forest of corpses being planted at her feet.

  20

  Vienna took distant note of her surroundings as she read to Justine. They climbed a long hill out of Reykjavík. Geothermal plants tapped spigots from hell, sending roiling clouds of steam across the road. Beyond landscaped yards, there were no trees, only twisted channels of volcanic rock covered in emerald moss. The green looked overly saturated, as if backlit by elvish enchantment.

  Selfoss passed in a huddle of wet buildings and long greenhouses. Justine took several turns under direction from her GPS. The result was a narrow, all-weather tarmac leading inland. The terrain became more rugged, waterfalls marking basalt scarps. The road resorted to roller-coastering over hills and around pitched gullies. Everything was green tundra and roiling water and silver-black gravel.

  A band of white appeared in the distance. Vienna thought it was a cloud.

  “Glacier,” Justine said. Her voice didn’t sound right.

  Haldor’s house was at the end of a long side road. A geodesic dome painted bright yellow. “Great,” Justine said. “How are you with Fuller Domes?”

  “They’re boring,” Vienna answered.

  “Boring?”

  “In Bath, my foster family had a geodesic greenhouse. I saw it every day, and they’re all the same.” She felt Justine wasn’t convinced. “This is a third-order geodesation of an icosahedron, yeah?” She hoped she pronounced the words right. She’d never heard anyone actually use them.

  “Naturally,” Justine said. “So how many small triangles are there?”

  Was she joking? There was no way of knowing except by asking, and there didn’t seem time as they were almost in the driveway. Vienna spoke quickly. “The number of triangles is found by taking the square of the number of times a line of the original icosahedron is cut. A third order geodesation would result in 180 small triangles. But this isn’t a complete sphere. I’m not sure how far it goes down in the back.”

  “Let’s say ninety and call it good.”

  It would be more than that, but the car was stopping.

  Haldor Stefansson was a nice-looking man, Vienna thought. Barrel chest and a full, red beard. Sandy-red hair and deep brown eyes. “Go than dragon,” he said, or at least that’s what it sounded like.

  Justine reached out to shake hands. “Good afternoon,” she replied.

  “It’s rare to greet such beauty at my doorstep,” he said. His accent was Germanic, stretched over long, liquid vowels. His voice was deep and intimidating.

  “Thank you.” Justine nodded to Vienna, “This is Vienna.”

  “The Brit I’ve read so much about.”

  “Rumors fly.”

  The man smiled at this. “My sanctuary is yours.”

  The interior was a clutter of heavy timbers and thick furs. So much wasted space. Vienna rearranged the room in her mind, throwing a third of the furniture away. Starting with a gaudy two-handed sword in its polished stand—an ornate stage prop with no basis in history.

  Lady Hildur, the Icelandic manikin, stood in the middle of the great room floor. The tupelo girl wore a wig of jet black. Her arms were folded under her breasts. She looked forlorn—like the poster of the girl Vienna had in Brussels. Haldor had left her nude, and Vienna was left to wonder why Christian Bell had taken the time to carve nipples on his statue’s chest. Had he been embarrassed while he did it? At least the manikin had green eyes, so Justine wouldn’t have to wear contacts.

  Vienna placed the sculpture over the Cart House diagram, just as she’d placed the map over Brussels. She saw the shape of each piece. Unless you looked closely at the toes, you would never figure out how to get inside. She enjoyed her secret knowledge.

  “She’s amazing,” Justine said. Her voice had the soft blush Vienna was familiar with from Justine talking too much during lovemaking.

  “She’s spending the night here after a week of getting fit for her new wardrobe,” Stefansson replied. “I’m glad she’s back.” The duplicate has been made. “I had to have her, as she is named for the queen of elves. She has a very Icelandic spirit.”

  “Your country does have a magical temper, as you noted in your last CD. I can see how it inspires your music,” Justine said. “A shame about the rain, I would love to explore.”

  “There’s much to see close by; more beautiful in the rain than sun.”

  “One hundred and twenty-seven,” Vie
nna said. It was all she could think of to draw attention to the fact she was being excluded from the conversation.

  “What’s that?” Justine said, not even turning around.

  “The number of triangles in the dome.”

  “Yes, Vienna. That’s a good girl.” Justine kept her eyes on Haldor. Vienna sensed everything had changed but didn’t know what it meant. Except that Justine was meaner than she ever had been and that was saying a lot.

  She couldn’t see Justine’s face, but Haldor was smiling. “Perhaps we could explore together?” he asked.

  “That would be wonderful.” Justine paused. “We can take our car. Vienna can squeeze in the back.”

  “Or we could take my Porsche,” Haldor said. “I wouldn’t want to trouble Vienna over much. She looks tired and she would be more than welcome to stay here.”

  “A great idea,” Justine said. “Be a good girl and don’t get into trouble, Vienna.”

  “There are a few English channels on TV,” Haldor said. “Mostly BBC, but one or two from America if you want to hear people screaming at each other.”

  “Perfect,” Justine said. “She loves watching the news.”

  And then, arm-in-arm, they were gone. Just like that. Vienna stood motionless. She felt her pulse thrumming in the back of her throat, driving shame through her body. Scattering her thoughts and leaving her mouth dry. Memories of men who’d come to her door in Brussels. They all left, too.

  “Stop it!” she shouted into the empty room.

  Deep breaths, like her doctors always wanted. Talk it through inside your head. Justine had said she was going to trick Haldor into believing she might care for him. And isn’t that what she’d just done? It’s okay. That had been the plan.

  “It’s okay.”

  Vienna tried to remember exactly what Justine had said, except now she got stuck on Justine’s parting comment about watching the news.

  “You didn’t even remember that I don’t like the telly,” Vienna yelled at the empty house. “I’ve only told you a hundred times and if you really cared you would have remembered.” And before Vienna could be still or do any of the things her doctors were always on about, she saw another truth. Justine had admitted that Haldor knew a lot about women. So how could he have been fooled by the flimsiest of pretense? Unless it had been no pretense at all.

  “It’s okay,” she repeated.

  What were they doing right now? Kissing? Were his hands already on her?

  “It’s okay.” Because this had been predictable. How many times did I tell Grayfield that moving out was a bad idea? Of course Justine was the same as the men who had come to Vienna’s door. Bleak satisfaction in being right.

  “She already left me once.” And that was true, too.

  Tears everywhere.

  I want to go home.

  There had to be some way to Keflavík, and then London, and somehow to Brussels. Doubtless it could all be arranged with money, which Vienna didn’t have because she didn’t have a job thanks to Justine.

  Lord Davy!

  If the Cart House really was a hideaway for rich people, then Lord Davy had to be wealthy. He’d even said he wanted her back in London, and he never liked Justine, so it worked perfectly. He could call her a taxi and pay for it with a credit card number. Or maybe he had his own plane—one of those ones from the military that didn’t need a tarmac. It could land close by and then fly right to London. That would be best, especially if Justine saw it. Vienna imagined herself waving out the window as the plane took off.

  She pulled out her cell phone, relieved to find she had coverage. Davy answered on the first ring.

  “Hello, Vienna. How are you?”

  She spoke through her crying. “Justine left and I want to go home.”

  There was more of a pause than distance could account for. “Tell me what happened.”

  “She wanted to come to this man’s house to look at this stupid manikin from her pictures and she said she wanted me to take it apart and see what was inside and she doesn’t even remember that I can’t watch TV and I am tired of her being mean and I want to go home.”

  Another long pause. When Davy spoke, he used that calm voice airline pilots used when they told passengers to fasten their seat belts. “I want ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. She said you liked television?”

  “She told him I liked watching it, and she knows—”

  “You are alone with a manikin from one of Justine Am’s Clay to Flesh projects?”

  “In this puke yellow geodesic dome in Iceland with nowhere—”

  “Vienna. I’m trying to think, and I’m not sure how much time you have.”

  “Time?”

  “Justine wanted you to take the statue apart? I didn’t know they could be disassembled.”

  “It’s a simple—”

  “How long for you to do it?”

  “One hour to take it apart and one to put it back.”

  “And she wanted you to find something inside?”

  “Yes, but she doesn’t know—”

  “What did she suspect?”

  “She didn’t say. Maybe something about the Star of Memphis. I don’t care anymore. I hate her. I want—”

  “Vienna. Take the statue apart and see what is inside. You must start now.”

  “Why?”

  “You have to trust me. Please, I need you to do this. Promise me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Vienna. Promise me now.”

  “No.”

  “Vienna.” He used that voice that meant he had lost the argument but he was going to get his way anyhow.

  The back of Vienna’s throat hurt, like it did just before she threw up. Everyone hated her. “I promise.”

  “Do it now and don’t tell Justine you called me. It can be your way of getting back at her.”

  Vienna closed the phone without saying good-bye and went to the statue. Everyone asking her to do things and no one ever giving anything in return and it had always been that way. She thought about breaking her promise, but it was clear Uncle Anson wouldn’t help because in the end he was just like everyone else. And now Vienna had to take the statue apart because he bullied her and people who broke promises went to hell forever. Where they could meet Justine Am when she ended up there.

  Vienna was able to tip the manikin to the floor without letting it drop too hard. A plate, star, and unicorn horn tattooed in the left foot. The wooden holding pin in the big toe was almost invisible. She pulled it with an anticlockwise twist, and the toe popped loose. The fourth toe slid forward. That was enough to release the big toe. Vienna yanked it out and threw it across the room. The ankle dropped revealing a grooved track of wood, and now the foot was loose. She rotated the knee joint clockwise until the foot loosened further. Push the outside ankle in. Rotate the heel. Pull the small toe all the way out and the foot dropped free. Vienna threw it across the room as well.

  Didn’t you ever play with dolls?

  Vienna worked her way up to the chest, throwing each piece as it came free. Behind the left breast there was a small box of red wood. It was not on the diagram. How had Justine guessed its existence?

  Were all women like this? Things hidden away? Could the Star of Memphis be inside? Justine hadn’t believed it, but she had to be wrong sooner or later.

  Vienna slid the rounded lid off. Inside were two small cylinders of metal. One golden and the other dull gray.

  Not golden. Real gold. It had to be—the weight of it and the way it caught the light. Maybe ten grams. Enough for a plane ticket. Vienna sat still for several minutes after cylinders found their way into her skirt pocket. They belong on Julian Dardonelle’s list. The slip of paper he’d shown her back in Brussels. Gold and silver, gold and copper, gold and iron, gold and lead. He must have pulled each pair from the shattered remains of manikins in Rome, Paris, Budapest, and Prague. And somehow Sinoro had the weights of gold and mercury from the Brussels manikin. It didn’t make any sense, and anyway if Just
ine thought Haldor was so much better than she was, let him figure it out.

  I’m going home.

  She scampered across the floor, collecting the manikin’s scattered anatomy. She lined the pieces up and slid them into place as quickly as she could. It went together faster than she’d predicted. One hundred and fifty-three minutes since Justine left. If Justine stayed out for the three hours she promised, she would not be back for another twenty-seven minutes.

  Vienna spent several frantic minutes trying to set the statue back upright, but her arms shook under the weight. She gave up and ran out the door. Across a mosaic of moss-painted lava.

  The rain had retreated to the clouds. A strip of blue stretched in a broken ring around the horizon. It seemed like a good sign.

  She kept running until she could no longer see the house.

  21

  Vienna was gone when they got back.

  Should have expected it.

  The manikin was tipped over, glass eyes contemplating the tragedy of faux-Viking interior design. Justine sighed. “I’ll pay for any damage.”

  Haldor easily righted the statue. “It looks fine. Will the girl come back? She seems a nuisance.”

  No wonder she hides away. “She likely panicked after pushing the manikin over. I better fetch her. Thank you for a wonderful time.” If nothing else, Haldor had behaved the true gentleman, overriding an obvious desire not to.

  “It was enjoyable, even taking into account your antiquarian ideas of courtship.”

  “Our national hang-up.”

  “Nonsense. Americans are fine people when you stop trying to convince everyone you are.” He favored her with a condescending smile. “I shall attend your photo session and hope for more luck on a second date.”

  Justine forced a tight grin. “Fair enough. For now, I better get the girl.”

  “How will you find her?”

  “Never sell me short.”

  Zoomed out, Justine’s GPS showed a loose web of roads around Haldor’s dome. Vienna wouldn’t be on any of them. She’d take the shortest route to Reykjavík, calculated along a straight edge of tears and anger. No time to consider lava escarpments or glacial runoff. Justine called up the GPS’s topographic overlay and saw a nightmarish maze of contour lines. The closest town was Hveragerdi, a collection of geothermal greenhouses that may as well have been on Mars for all the chance Vienna had of reaching it before dark.