After the workout, we got a coffee. “Want to do me a solid?” he asked. “Want to be my Redshirt?”
I didn’t understand.
He sat back in his chair, eyed me skeptically. “A Redshirt,” he said. “You know, Star Trek. The one-episode extras who always got killed. Their uniform was always red. That’s what I need. Someone to take the hit so I can survive the night.”
“You need a wingman.”
“Exactly. You distract the ugly girl while I score the pretty one.”
Why not? I didn’t feel like being alone.
That night, we made a tour of the clubs, moving swiftly from one place to another, never staying more than a half hour. “It has to torch,” Rick said. “Seven seconds. If you aren’t talking with her within seven seconds of making eye contact, forget it.”
At the fourth club, he saw his mark—tall with a head of hair that made me think of a silk pillowcase. The girl’s features were blank, forgettable, a screen on which you could project whatever you wanted. She was attractive enough, but not really my type. Rick, I had realized, had only one type: double X chromosomes.
Pretty Girl’s friend was infinitely more interesting. Her face seemed to flash every emotion, every thought. She could tell you everything without ever saying a word.
The plan was for me to wedge myself into a conversation with the second girl while Rick made his play. “If I don’t greenlight in two minutes, I’ll give you the signal. We’ll retreat, move on.”
We made our approach.
Rick sidled smoothly up to the bar and dropped his line. “I feel I know you. Have we made out before?” Unbelievably, she actually laughed.
I held my hand out to the other girl, introducing myself as Clement Martin. Disgust filled her face, which threw me off guard. It was like she could see right through me, knew I was lying.
I held firm, smiling with my hand outstretched.
Rick had maneuvered the other girl away, splitting off from us.
I introduced myself again, said, “You probably didn’t know, but Italy has only been a country since eighteen sixty-one. Prior to that it was just a bunch of city-states.” I didn’t move my hand.
Reluctantly, she shook it. “Actually”—there was the tiniest slip of a smile—“I did know.”
Her name was Pansy, which she hated. “My mom wanted Nancy, my father Patricia. I got stuck with the resulting travesty.”
Rick called over to us. “Hey, we’re heading out,” he said, his arm around his girl. His look made it clear that “we” didn’t included Pansy and me.
Pansy glared at the two as they left, then her face fell blank, emotionless. After a moment, she turned to me. “You don’t have to hang around,” she said, her eyes cutting away. “I can make my way home.”
The night was just starting. I couldn’t leave her, not like that. Not so obviously.
I scouted the scene. The zooming lights, the thumping music. It was too much for me. “Is there a pub or lounge around here, someplace quieter we can get a drink?”
We went to a place a few blocks away, an old-man bar, the kind with a jukebox quietly playing and a floor canoed down the center from decades of people stumbling from the bar to the bathroom and back. We slid into a cracked, red pleather booth. Pansy ordered a vodka cranberry. I got a beer. She asked what I did for work.
“I’m in between unemployment right now,” I said.
She laughed. “You temp, too?” she asked. “It’s the same with me. I don’t really have a career so much as a paycheck. I temp at a law firm. Make calls, file documents, send out invoices. My boss charges a hundred and fifty dollars an hour and what do I get paid? Nine. It’s a farce.” Born and raised in Cincinnati, she’d moved to Oregon after college, had only recently moved back. “Really loved Portland, but my family kept complaining that they never saw me, kept crying over the phone all the time. So I gave in, quit a job I really liked, gave up a nice apartment, left my friends, and moved back.” She fiddled with the plastic stick in her drink. “There was something so nice about being able to slam the phone down on someone without the fear of them driving over and banging on the door, demanding to know why I hung up on them.” She smiled. “At least my sister’s here.”
“That was your sister at the club?”
“God, no. That’s just a friend. Or not so much a friend, but just someone I can’t help but hang out with.”
I liked Pansy. I ordered another round. She was funny. Dark, but funny.
She apologized for initially coming off cold at the club.
“I think you actually snarled at me.”
She laughed. “Sorry. It’s just, when I saw Rick—” She broke off, gazed across the lounge.
“How’d you know his name?” I hadn’t told her.
“Rick and I use to date,” she said, then amended her statement. “Dating is probably too strong a word. We used to fuck. Also,” she said, “I know you’re his Redshirt.”
I sat back in the booth. Rick hadn’t looked twice at Pansy, hadn’t even acknowledged her. “Go on,” I said, interested. “Tell me the story.”
She looked down at her drink. “It’s my sister’s fault. She’s much prettier than I am, but when I first got back to the city she was going through an awful period. She’d ballooned twenty pounds, had a terrible dye-job, and a swollen face from having her wisdom teeth removed. She wanted to go out on the town. I said sure, thinking it would cheer her up.”
“So you got Rick and your sister got the Redshirt.”
She nodded. “And the sad thing was that I really took to Rick.”
“He’s a good-looking guy.”
“He’s an asshole.”
Then why’d you let your friend go with him? I wanted to ask.
She chewed on her swizzle stick. “But like you said, he’s good-looking. And a musician,” she said. “He’s very upfront about the fact that he’s an asshole. He told me he wasn’t into a long-term thing. I guess I hoped he was lying—to himself, you know?” She shook her head. “I actually thought I could make him change. The truth of it is I can’t even make myself change.” Her eyes found mine. “You want to hear something terrible?”
I nodded.
“He used the same line on me, the one he used tonight on my friend. And it worked.”
A silence rose between us. I thought of asking why she didn’t stop her friend from making the same mistake, why she didn’t call Rick on his bullshit. I wondered if Rick even recognized her. Probably not. Pansy had been the number two girl, invisible. Fodder for me, the Redshirt.
She said, “I wish I’d never left Portland.”
Then she invited me home.
In the cab ride back to her place, I asked about the last Redshirt, the one her sister got stuck with.
“Jerry,” she said. “His name is Jerry. He’s kinda like you.”
“How’s that?”
“Nice. A little bland.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You make me feel like a winner.”
“You might be,” she said, staring out the window. “Jerry was. My sister dated him for almost six months.”
“Then what happened?”
“They got married.”
As the cab slowed to a stop in front of her place, she said, “Moving back here, dating Rick, taking a shitty temp job. You know what? I’m done making bad choices.” She took my hand. “Are you coming up?”
I wanted to. I had a terrifying erection. I felt a kindling of something for Pansy. I liked her. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
The reason eluded me. Then my phone chimed. A text. Book 3. Be there Thursday. Higgles.
“I’ve got work.”
“Right now?”
I nodded.
She gave me a brief kiss, the kind you’d give a brother. “I’d give you my phone numbe
r,” she said, opening the door and sliding from the cab, “but that would create expectations.”
“I could give you mine.”
“That’d be worse.” The cab door snicked shut.
Snow banked against the apartment building. The icy wind raced the street. I watched Pansy unlock her building’s front door and then disappear.
Chapter 41
Book three. The Frozen Gnome: A Reykjavik Thriller by Arnaldur Hegason.
Higgles texted me instructions when I landed in Iceland. I was to meet my contact at an espresso bar: a man carrying an orange trumpet case.
He was late. And when he finally arrived, he shot through the door in a rush, out of breath and his pale face flushed. An albino.
An ambulance raced by outside, then a police car. The sound of their sirens seemed to nail the man to the spot, his white hair standing in tufts like frayed nylon rope.
He scanned the place from the doorway. I made the agreed-upon gesture—scratching my chin—when his gaze struck me.
He strode over, said, “Rye bread makes the best toast.”
“Not when you’re diabetic.”
I expected him to hand over the case, leave. Instead, he took a seat at the table next to mine, and set the case on the floor.
I reached for it.
He stepped on the handle.
Not good.
He grabbed my espresso and swallowed the dregs.
Another siren sounded far off.
“People think I’m an albino. I’m not.” His pinkish eyes met mine. “Not technically, at least.”
I looked away. The situation reeked. I wanted to walk away. “Well, at least they don’t think you’re an asshole,” I said, staring out the café window.
“Oh, people think I’m an asshole. But I’m not that either. Not technically, at least.” He handed me the case. “Go, flyaway. Be free.”
I stood.
He grabbed at my jacket sleeve. “Listen, it’s not the solitude,” he said. “It’s not the living with the awful thoughts of what I’ve done. Nor is it that this is a young man’s game and I’m no longer a young man. All that I can handle. The number one worst thing about it all, the part I can’t handle, is that there’s no one I can talk to about what I do. That’s the worst. I make handshake hand-offs to people who don’t even acknowledge me, people who don’t care to know my name.” He held up my cup. “Foul espresso and clandestine meetings. It’s not much of a life.”
I stared at him. What should I say to that? I sat down again. “What’s your name?”
He glared. “My name? That’s the number one worst thing.”
“You said the isolation was the worst thing.”
“I misspoke. My name is even worse.” He held out his hand. “Look at me,” he said. “I’m a ghost. So guess what my parents named me?”
I thought. “Casper.”
He sat back in the seat, folded his arms over his chest. “Casper.” He smiled. “And what would be my last name, then?”
I thought. “White.”
“Casper White,” he said, the name rolling about his mouth. He got up from the table. “You’d best get a move on and take care of whatever you need to take care of.” He nodded to the case. “I had to dirty my hands to get you that. Everything in there is souring as we speak. Come tomorrow, it’s going to smell pretty bad.”
After the door shut behind him, I took inventory of the case. It held a wallet, a passport, credit cards, three cell phones, a neatly clipped wad of cash, and an envelope with a certified check. For the orphans, the memo line read, with a number after it. But no trumpet. There was also a business card for the Blu 1919 Hotel with a handwritten note on the back that read, We’re fired from an unknown gun, shot at a target unseen. Life is making the best of a bad trajectory.
All the identification held the name Wellem P. Steertal of Reykjavik, Iceland. Age twenty-eight. The photo gave me pause. Wellem looked eerily like me.
As Higgles had instructed me to do, I bought a business class ticket for a 10:00 a.m. flight to Boston the next day using Wellem’s credit card and passport information. There, I’d leave the case in a gym locker.
I checked into the Blu 1919 Hotel—an old world, four-story white stone building—under the name Wellem Steertal.
At the bar, I settled in with a group of young Icelanders who were trying to make it through this moment of life, joyfully complaining about the collapse of the economy, the volcanic eruption, the relationships that had turned bad. I’d bought a round. The drinks kept coming.
One of the girls shifted her chair close to mine, blocking us off from the rest of the group. Her name was Layla. I told her mine was Wellem. “That’s my ex-husband’s name,” she said, adding, “You even resemble him.”
“Just the good parts, I hope.”
I liked her, liked her laugh. Her hair was the color of a perfectly prepared crepe and her plump cheeks were covered in a light peach fuzz. She reminded me of a seal cub. And she liked me. “We are all depressed,” she said, smiling. “An entire nation of depressed people. It’s hereditary, in our genes. We’ve been bred to be depressed.”
Layla had endured some tough breaks as of late. Freshly divorced, she’d lost her job and her apartment, and both her cat and mother had died. “Wellem, my husband—my ex-husband—used to handle everything,” she said. “He kept me secure and comfortable. If it wasn’t for the fact that he kissed me with his fist, I’d still be with him.”
“He beat you?”
She rattled the ice in her glass. “Just around my face, neck, back, and legs. Still,” she said, “I spoke to him this morning and he said he loved me. He wants me back.”
“And I’m sure he promised he’d never beat you again.”
Layla laughed and I lit up. It was a beautiful laugh. “No,” she said. “He said he was certain there’d be times when he would.” She lifted her shoulders. A shrug. “Telling the truth is one of his better traits.”
“Are you going to go back to him?”
“He’s coming to me. Or is supposed to.” She looked around. “We were to meet here and talk about getting back together. But I’m going to tell him no.” She paused. “Or yes. I really don’t know.” Her voice wavered. “You see, badness seems to pile up on me.” Her eyes cupped with tears. “I’m not asking for all that much. Just want someone to appreciate me, someone who wants to be with me. Someone to spend the remaining minutes of the world’s end with me. I could take my ex-husband back, or I could never see him again. I feel like a traveler trapped on an island.” She laughed, trying to shake off her sadness. “Iceland. I guess I am trapped on an island. But I want to escape. Tell me, how do I escape?”
Leaving Iceland wouldn’t solve her problems, I wanted to tell her. There was no escaping what plagued her. You have to face the bad things head-on, wrestle them down quickly, and make them your own. If you don’t, if you try to keep them as something outside of you, something that unjustly came at you—which they may well be, though the truth won’t change your luck—then they fester and spoil and serve as food for more bad to feast on.
I knew firsthand that, unstaunched, those bad breaks escalate. The world tastes blood. You become a continuous victim, and contrary to what all religions and governments and nonprofit organizations claim, mankind loves a victim, a loser, someone downtrodden—it loves someone to pick on.
Easy prey is just that—easy.
Instead I said, “Hold firm for a while. Things have a way of working themselves out.”
While we talked, her friends had wandered off, heading out for a late dinner or to another bar or club. Layla and I drank more.
“Your friends seem nice,” I said.
“I don’t know any of those people.” She opened her purse. “I just met them here tonight.” She pulled out a set of keys, thirty-plus, packed tight on the ring, a
nd laid them on the table. “That’s my entire life here,” she said, slurring slightly. “A key to everything I’ve entered or exited.” She told me to pick one.
I set my fingers on a slim silver key.
She smiled. “Any one but that one.”
“What’s wrong with that one?”
“It’s the one key I still use. It’s to my storage locker.”
I picked another one.
“Two twelve Kleinbaugur, apartment thirty-three, third floor,” Layla said. “I lived there for five months with a girl I knew from school. We had big plans. We were going to open our own store, sell our own clothing line. Beautiful space but sad times,” she says. “Pick another.”
I picked another.
“My preparatory school locker. Locker three-oh-four. I loved the boy who had the locker next to mine more than anything else in the world. Or maybe it wasn’t love, but it was whatever it is that tears you up inside when you like someone and they don’t like you back.” She looked away. “He runs a gas station now. He got really fat.”
We continued the game, Layla telling me the story of each key, precisely and with detail. The joys and heartbreaks and expectations and accidents. We drank. We laughed. She pulled the key to her storage locker off the ring, and handed the rest to me.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
She took my hand, and placed it to her cheek. The fuzz on her face was soft. “Keep them. Toss them. Do whatever, I don’t care,” she said. “Each one is some reminder of some part of my life I don’t want to remember, some mistake.” She kissed the palm of my hand. “No one should ever have so many keys. Especially useless keys. They don’t unlock anything anymore.”
“They unlocked your memories.”
“I’m ready for new ones.” She kissed my palm again. “Take me home?”
I took her upstairs.
She stripped, and standing in front of the lamp, a halo engulfed her entire body. Seal cub fuzz. It covered every inch of her. She crawled into bed, called for me to join.
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