“Rain?”
“Research from a few years ago, in Seattle, I think. A study uncovered an apparent link between developmental disorders and rain. It always rains in Europe.”
Familiar confusion closing in. What do I say? She remembered Justine in the silk clothing, freezing from the spray of Gullfoss, still smiling. “Sometimes, you smile when you’re not happy?” Her voice turned upward in a question.
“Sometimes.”
Something was wrong. She’s almost in tears. Vienna didn’t stop to wonder how the knowledge came to her. “What is it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure you and I—what we’re doing is right.”
Vienna sorted through the words. “I know two females together is not accepted in America, and it’s little better here but—”
“Not that.”
Vienna sighed. Always so impossible. “Then what?”
Justine looked away, remaining silent. Afraid of what she wants to say.
Vienna was back in Bath. Christmas Eve and the anxiety that meant nothing. She wanted to scream in frustration, but she didn’t like looking childish in front of Justine.
And there was her answer. Childish. She believes that she has committed an unforgivable sin. How could I convince her otherwise, with all she has seen?
“When I was ten,” Vienna said, “I was sent to a hospital in Edinburgh. Men in white smocks showed me yellow cards covered with marker tics. They asked me how many I saw. So I told them, one after another: ‘two hundred and twelve,’ or ‘three hundred and fifty-six.’ Each one was up for a second, maybe two at most. I thought it was normal, yeah? I thought anyone could do it.” She stepped closer to Justine. For once, the right words were there, overheard from countless doctors. “I’m not a creature of my own design. Slipping from viral thought to the world’s blank physicality. Sometimes there’s no connection at all; sometimes too much.”
Justine remained silent.
“You see how I interact with the world, and to you it makes no sense. So you see one mistake after another, and you’re embarrassed for me. You see me cry like a child and you twist love into the worst of crimes.”
“Vienna—”
Vienna held her finger to Justine’s lips—an exact copy of Justine’s motion for silence. “A string of genes that almost worked.” She considered this. “Or worked too well. I see things instantly that you might never see.” She smiled at this new thought, though maybe her smile was as sad as Justine’s.
“It’s more than that,” Justine said. “When we’re together … I can’t tell if you like such things. Or if you are ready for them.” Justine rushed on. “You’re readily compliant, but maybe only because I ask.”
Vienna remembered Davy talking about the porno video. Would you do it if she asked? Not so much a hypothetical question now. “I’m used to you guessing things right and now you’re so wrong.”
“I am?” Justine asked.
“Does it displease you when I am compliant?”
For the first time Vienna could remember, Justine was blushing. “That wasn’t what I was getting at.”
Vienna fought her way through the tortured words, knowing she was missing something vital. Why did Justine blush? “This is flippy.”
Justine’s lips turned up slightly. “Do tell.”
“I know what my body wants. I know what loneliness is. I know that the whitest floors hide ghosts that no one will ever see but me. I know you’re warm and I like your touch. I like hearing you ask for mine. I like how you breathe when I get it right. It makes me feel as if I can do it.”
“It’s just—”
“I don’t think it’s broken to want to feel wanted.”
Justine took Vienna’s hands. “You find your own answers better than I do.”
Vienna shook her head. “Only with you. I don’t understand any of the rest.”
The half smile. “Such as?”
“Why would Lord Davy have David Andries’s phone number?”
Justine frowned. “Andries was a scheming bastard, but Davy is an old-fashioned, cast-iron, dyed in the wool, alpha wolf.”
“He scares you?”
“Right down to my toes.”
“He used to take me shopping along Regent Street, yeah? I remember once, three boys in black leather bumped into me. They made several sexual suggestions. Davy took them to the side and a few minutes later, each one apologized. I think they were frightened.”
“I bet.”
“So what do we do?”
“We go over everything in my BlackBerry to find what Andries was after when he died.”
Vienna bit her lip. Hadn’t she said that days ago? “I can do it tonight if we start back soon, it will be dark before long.”
“That’s the idea. I borrowed a few heavy blankets from the hotel and had a dinner made up as well. It’s in the trunk.”
They spread blankets on the path that was part myth. “I don’t think we’re supposed be here after dark,” Vienna said.
“They can chase us out easily enough.”
They ate a small dinner under the impossibly wide sky, found enough privacy for a lav. The temperature dropped quickly after the rolling sun finally set.
“No posters with tic marks when I was young,” Justine said. “Instead, I had a grandfather who lived in Montana. Baseball on the radio until evening turned to night. No lights for miles. The Milky Way so bright you almost could read by it.”
They pulled the heavy blankets to their chins and lay as close together as they could. It took over an hour for the first star to come out.
“That’s Jupiter,” Justine said when Vienna pointed to it. “It doesn’t count.”
“Count?”
“‘Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.’ Jupiter isn’t a star, so you can’t wish upon it.”
“What would I wish for?”
Justine laughed. “You can’t tell anyone or it won’t come true.”
Jupiter. The alchemical symbol for Jupiter was tin.… A star lost in the planets. Isn’t that what Lina Zahler had said?
“There!” Justine pointed up. “See it? Bluish-white. Vega. So low. Fall is growing old. Now you can make a wish.”
Vienna couldn’t think of one, so she remained quiet.
“Do you know the constellations?” Justine asked.
“There’s not much to see from London or Brussels.”
“That will not be a problem tonight.”
It was like nothing Vienna had ever seen. The stars awoke in pale hues of blue and red and yellow. Vienna lost count—too many appearing too quickly. He telleth the number of stars; he calleth them all by their names.
For a few breathless moments, her mind drew lines between the brightest stars; shapes defining areas.…
“Let it go, Vienna. Your triangles really are an illusion here.”
Vienna yanked her eyes to the dark silhouette of Justine. “How did you know?”
“Your breathing was shallow. But we can do this.” Justine pointed, her arm easily seen in the glow of the stars. “Do you know the big dipper?’
“I’ve seen it in London.” It took her a few seconds to find the familiar shape in the profusion of stars.
“Look at the second star of the handle. What do you see?”
“It’s just a star. Wait. There are two stars, very close.”
“Alcor and Mizor. The horse and the rider.”
“They’re beautiful.”
Vienna felt Justine’s hand over hers. “Now from the arc of the Big Dipper, we could find Arcturus if we were further south. We have Cassiopeia though.”
Justine told her Cassiopeia’s story, even though Vienna already knew it. And that would have been okay, except as the storytelling spread to other constellations, Vienna began to wonder why they weren’t having sex. Surely she knows I can tonight. Vienna wanted to, out here under the stars. Cecile said it was the best. Am I doing something wrong?
Her fear spoke before she could stop it.
“Why aren’t we making love?”
“We are.”
Vienna was surprised less by the answer than by how it made perfect sense. “This is the part of you not in the photographs.”
“You could say that.”
“Did you share this with Andries?”
Justine was silent for a full minute before answering. “No.”
“Good,” Vienna whispered.
“I heard that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Lovers are allowed to be selfish.”
Vienna was certain she’d never read that. Am I supposed to share my life, too? “I always wanted to learn how to waltz,” she said. “Like the beautiful women in the Cart House.” That seemed to fit.
Justine started to say something, but suddenly stopped and started over. “We’ll have to do something about that.”
“I don’t want other people to see!”
“We can talk about it later. And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“You really did need one more night, maybe two, even if you don’t feel it. Your body needs to catch its breath. Any other time I would have forgotten all the cutesy crap.”
“And felt guilty?”
“Lust always trumps guilt.”
“I was beginning to wonder.”
Justine laughed and squeezed her hand. “Can I ask a question?”
“Yes?”
“What did the dolls tell you when you were young?”
Vienna remembered the comment she had made in Brussels. “That I was flat and my hair was bad and I didn’t fit in.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Excuse me?”
“I thought they might be telling you to kill people or set houses on fire.”
“I’m not that broken.”
“Proof that I’m a prisoner of my fears no less than you are.”
Vienna sensed unspoken meaning. It wasn’t anything she could have believed a few days ago. “What did the dolls tell you?”
“That I was one of them.”
And that was sad, even though Vienna couldn’t pin down exactly why. It was wrong anyway. “You don’t fit that way.”
“Vienna?”
“How everything fits together. You aren’t that way.”
“How do I fit?”
“Everywhere.” She let the words rush out before they were lost. “That’s why it was hard to see, yeah? I thought it had to be wrong, because nothing fits like that. But I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Justine rolled to her, arms tight around her. “Thank you.”
Vienna was ashamed that she’d once believed this moment could be described in a book. She held her breath. Let this last. But her thoughts raced on. When we fit together this way, it keeps my feet warm. She wanted to scream because that was stupidly out of place and it was all slipping away. But then everything turned around, and time did stop. The stars frozen in the Icelandic night. Easy to imagine Justine mentioning cold feet, even at a time like this. It was exactly the sort of snarky remark she would make.
Even now she’s inside me.
Vienna took a deep breath; shifted in just the right way to make Justine hold her tighter. And the universe came unstuck but it didn’t really matter anymore.
Vienna slept most of the way home, the car’s heater blowing at her feet. She woke once to see Justine driving, her hands softly tapping the wheel in rhythm to a silent song. The dying moon, cold and silver overhead, reflected from endless pools of water along the road. She closed her eyes again.
Breakfast at the Radisson was a buffet that looked familiar but didn’t taste right. Vienna missed eggs made exactly the way she liked them. It was depressing even before everyone decided they needed to talk to her.
“Is the food okay?” “Is Justine a nice person?” “How do you like Iceland?” “Can I have Justine’s phone number?” “If I ever see that Jordan guy, I am going to kick his ass so hard he’ll be chewing toenails for a month.” That from a big man with an American accent. It reminded Vienna of Hunter S. Thompson.
The questions stopped when Justine came down.
“Good morning, Little Storm Cloud,” she said.
“Why do you call me that?”
“You show your feelings in your eyes. What were you thinking about?”
Vienna decided on a new tack. Instead of trying to figure out every angle of conversation, she would answer with whatever came to mind. “You always look beautiful and I don’t.”
“You want to know a secret?”
“Okay.”
“I’m not a creature of my own design either. I like hearing that you think I’m beautiful though. You can say that all you want.”
As if being beautiful equated to seizures. Vienna took a deep breath. “Why did you book an extra day in Iceland? You’re always in a rush, yeah?”
“Back when the project got underway, I wanted to be here on a Friday night for the runtur. Adelina—she handles my travel—knew this, so she kept the extra day in our itinerary. I was too distracted to notice.”
“Runtur?”
“The Reykjavík pub crawl. Legendary craziness. We’ll do something more quiet though.”
“Let’s go out.” Justine raised a single eyebrow, which Vienna thought of as a question. She answered. “When other people see me with you, they can be jealous instead of me.”
Justine smiled. “You are red in tooth and claw. I like it. I’ll look my best.”
After breakfast Justine worked out for two hours. “I should have been born twenty years ago, when anemic was in,” she said when she got back. “Though I’ll pass on cigarettes and the Technicolor yawn.” Not even worth guessing what that was about.
Then Justine was on the phone for over an hour. “I can’t get James, which means he’s working.” Another two calls and then: “An offer from Madrid. What about a week in Spain?”
It amazed Vienna how Justine casually mentioned such a huge undertaking. “I would like to see the Plaza de Cibeles, there’s a statue of Cybele.” And because this seemed incomplete, she added a touch of history that had always eerily fascinated her. “Males castrated themselves before her to appear more female.”
“Bravo! I’ll forward the request to James. A small show on December sixteenth, some up-and-coming accessories designer I’ve never heard of. Hardly Hong Kong or New York, but I’m not out of work yet.”
Then she was off to get the right clothes, even though she already had enough for a Shakespearian company.
Vienna had two hours alone to play with Justine’s Kindle. She read Mark Twain, having heard he was as American as Americans could get. He liked cats, which surprised Vienna as she thought Americans preferred dogs or snakes or whatever. He was supposed to be funny, but Vienna saw his writing as a plea for compassion in a world where it was already in short supply. She decided Twain had been broken in a sad but beautiful way and that maybe she could be, too.
Little Storm Cloud.
Justine returned with a handful of bags. “It stopped raining, if you can believe it. Off to the shower. Tonight’s mode will be semiformal party.”
Over the next hour, Vienna was again transformed into the girl that was not quite her. “You look great,” Justine said. “My turn. New Jimmy Choos tonight.” Which must have been exciting news.
Justine ended up in a modest dress that somehow showed off everything she had. The fabric was heavier against the cold night, black fading to dark gray at the collar. Her makeup was different—slightly shaded around her eyes, though nothing near as dark as what Vienna had seen her coworkers wear. She was as beautiful as a fallen angel.
Vienna wanted to ask how Justine could forget all the terrible things that had happened long enough to enjoy the evening. But she knew she wouldn’t understand the answer anyway.
Into the cold Icelandic night, where the taciturn populace had gone insane. People singing and shouting. Some of the
women wore next to nothing despite the cold. One was pressing her bare chest against the window of a pub. And maybe Vienna would be expected to do that and she didn’t really want to. She was about to suggest turning back when Justine took a proprietary grip on her hand. There was no mistaking it for a friendly clasp.
I will take what I can. It bothered Vienna because she wanted it so much—to be with Justine. To belong to her? Was that okay? It wasn’t a question you could ever really ask anyone.
Justine sailed through pubs, crowds materializing around her. A man had the poster of her with the diamond shoes. Justine signed it with a laugh.
There seemed little dancing and a lot of drinking. Justine let Vienna have two cocktails, called cosmos, which made everything swirly bright. “No more for Vienna,” she said when the second one was gone. Something in the way she spoke made everyone ask if Vienna was okay, or if she needed water or something to eat. She accepted water and noted that even Justine drank less than she seemed to, despite the fact that everyone was buying her alcohol. Another one of her tricks.
All this in a whirling cyclone of perfume and cologne. Mock squeals of distress and staccato peals of laughter. Rugby on the telly; mud and muscles and crowds cheering. Vienna skated on the thin film of sexual tension, feeling it tear under her.
Midnight came and went. Olifur appeared at a discreet distance just after one thirty. If Justine noticed, she didn’t say anything. The decibels rose another notch. Justine rode the wave of noise and light, poised at its highest curl.
Vienna snuck another drink, something she could have sworn the bartender called “black death.” It tasted terrible, so she drank it all at once. And suddenly she was outside her head and floating inside a pub with a shoulder-tight crowd of Icelanders. Looking from disembodied distance, she saw again that no one was comfortable around Justine. They wanted to talk to her and be seen with her and sleep with her and that didn’t leave any time to just be with her. Those who kept their distance hissed poisonous envy. Vienna wanted to slap them.
I will not ruin her night.
And she didn’t, though she worried when Justine’s new clothes ended up in a wrinkled heap on the hotel room floor. So much for waiting another night. And because Justine would feel guilty, Vienna encouraged her to just do what she wanted. Which only made Justine talk in tedious length. Finally it was too much.
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