Miles Away from You

by A. B. Rutledge

  Well, those are my ideas for now. Please let me know if you feel they are silly and stupid, and I will try to come up with something else. Hopefully I’ll see you in the morning. Oh, and be sure to dress in layers, as the weather here can be quite unpredictable.

  Sincerely,

  Óskar

  Chapter Thirteen

  Miles Away to Vivian Girl

  June 11 11:15 PM

  I took, like, a thousand photos today. But I also made sure to look at things outside my lens. I’m trying to find a good balance here, between making art and living it.

  I love having all these photographs, though. When I finish up this message to you, I’m going to load them onto my iPad and tinker for a while. I might set up the Instagram and even post a few of them. I haven’t decided yet.

  I wore my galaxy shirt today. It would have been weird if I’d showed up in the lobby and Óskar was wearing his, but obviously when I saw him, he was dressed for work—shirts, slacks, bow tie. He was busy at the desk, but when he got free, he came out to the patio and sat across from me during breakfast.

  “Are you going to eat zhat?”

  “That was the plan.” But I slid my plate forward. He grabbed a slice of pineapple and bit in. I asked what his deal was with stolen food, and he said it just tasted better. Then he gave me my voucher for the tour—South Shore Adventure, it said. I told him I wasn’t sure about the Instagram, though. “I’m still trying to decide if this constant need for megapixels is detrimental to the human experience, or whatever. But, as you can see, I have this big honkin’ camera around my neck . . .”

  He moved on to a piece of banana bread and didn’t offer any opinions on the matter. I asked him if I could take his picture and he said, “Absolutely not,” so I didn’t, but now I’m dying to.

  The tour was really nice. I was on a bus a lot of the day. Everyone around me seemed to be a couple, and there I was next to an unoccupied seat. So there was this underlying tinge of loneliness all day, but I just shoved it aside as best I could.

  I wish I could tell you every little detail, but there aren’t words. I walked on a glacier, a black sand beach, behind a waterfall. I stood at the base of a nine-hundred-foot waterfall, then sprinted up a staircase and looked out over the top. I browsed the folk museum, went inside a turf house, and listened to a ninety-four-year-old man play the organ inside one of those boxy little Icelandic churches.

  The tour guide said that elves are myth from Christianity—Eve’s unwashed children that she tried to hide during a surprise visit from God. Lately I don’t know where I stand on this whole religion thing, but when I was in that church I kept thinking about how Óskar locating your boots sort of felt like a miracle to me.

  Every time we stopped to see a landmark, I’d try to divide my time. I devoted three quarters of it to “me time,” just sponging up all the things that I needed to experience. The other quarter I’d spend photographing your boots. A few people from the tour group asked me why I kept taking off my shoes. I felt a little awkward, but decided to play the mysterious artist and told them simply that it was “a project.”

  Each time I missed you, or thought the landscape was something you’d love to see, or when I started to imagine you there and began to frame a photo of you in my mind—I would snap a picture of your empty boots instead.

  By the end of the day, my socks were soaked and black with volcanic ash and sand.

  Miles Away to Vivian Girl

  June 12 5:19 PM

  This morning, while searching for a fresh memory card for my camera, I found that sketchbook my moms had given me before the trip. I took it with me to breakfast, stopping to borrow a pen from Óskar at the front desk.

  He was on the phone when I saw him, so I just made a gesture like I was writing in the air and he sort of half smiled and plunked a whole coffee mug full of pens on the counter in front of me. Even though the pens were all the same, forest green with a tree and the hotel’s logo on the side, I lingered over them, like choosing a particular one was difficult for me.

  But, really, I was listening to Óskar speak English to someone on the phone.

  “I haven’t been ignoring you. Perhaps if you had scheduled this visit—No, I hate surprises. You should know that by now.” He was speaking slowly, like the person on the other end was a kid on the verge of a tantrum. My guess is significant other. I tried to imagine what Óskar’s slighted lover might look like, my mind cycling between some haughty European girl with one of those long cigarette holders to, perhaps, one of those old vaudeville weightlifters with the unitard and the tweedly mustache. No actual human being could fill that role, just a caricature who looked good in stripes.

  Óskar finally plucked a pen out of the cup and handed it over with a look that suggested I be on my way, so I pocketed the pen and cruised off to the breakfast buffet. I’ve got this whole thing down pat now. First thing I do is make my tea. A white porcelain cup filled to the brim from the hot water dispenser and a bag of Earl Grey from the basket sitting on the bar. Let that steep while I load up my plate. This morning, though, I grabbed a second, smaller plate and loaded it up with fruit and cinnamon bread.

  Then I slid the extra plate into the spot across from me and waited for the fairies to arrive.

  “Uh-uh-uh. That’s for the hidden folk,” I said when the Breakfast Thief showed up. “You know, the ones who retrieved my shoes.”

  “I think fairies eat only icicles,” Óskar said, munching on a strawberry. “Or honeysuckle dew.”

  This is going to sound weird, but Óskar, like, has this silence that comes with him. He’s like that moment at the movie theater, right when the lights first dim. It’s a hush that demands attention but doesn’t expect anything in return.

  I finished my plate and sipped my tea. Óskar took a butter knife to his food, slicing the grapes in half and dicing the bread into smaller and smaller squares. There was no sound except the clinking of silverware and some birds overhead. It’s a rare thing, I think, to find someone you can really talk to. And even more rare to meet someone whose silence complements your own.

  After a while, I cracked my sketchbook open—literally cracked because the spine does make such a lovely noise. I sat, pen in hand, but I didn’t know where to begin.

  So I pushed the book across the table and offered Óskar the pen. He started drawing lines, another labyrinth, but just along the edges of the page, creating a frame. He left the center blank and passed it back to me.

  “What does this say?” I asked, pointing out the foreign words he’d woven into the maze.

  “If you find yourself lost in a forest in Iceland, stand up.”

  I looked past him to the landscape surrounding the hotel, where the trees are so small and sparse. “Right on.”

  After breakfast, I walked downtown and took the elevator to the top of that big church that’s in all the travel brochures. I spent some time looking out over the city, sketching those colorful rooftops that Mamochka had shown to me. I used the same page Óskar had started, so my drawing was inside of his.

  It’s not at all how I thought it’d be. All this art I’m slowly making without you. I thought the actual act would bother me, the drawings, the photos. But they aren’t the problem. Getting started is the hard part. That second before the shutter snaps. Or the distance between the pen and the page.

  I’m closing those gaps now. And it feels pretty good.

  While I was up there sketching, the bell in the tower rang. Noon. It was the loudest sound in the world, something that jostled my whole body. I felt hollow, then filled with sound. It shook me, V. Maybe even woke me up.

  After I left the church, I went to the craft store again and got some of those nice, inky watercolor pencils. I think I might want to try filling that drawing in sometime.

  Then I walked around for a while, took a few more photos of your boots. I like the city. I think I’m getting a good feel for it. It might be time to leave. To go bigger. Get out.

  I
’m thinking about renting a car sometime and just driving out along the countryside. The thing is, I don’t want to do it by myself. Who road-trips alone?

  Miles Away to Vivian Girl

  June 12 9:32 PM

  Earlier I was sitting on my bed, eating dry cereal and watching bad Icelandic music videos, when Óskar showed up at my door. “Put your shoes on. We’re going for a beer run.”

  “Well, look at you. You look like the fuckin’ sixth Ramone.” He had on jeans, a white T-shirt, black leather jacket, and his Chucks. Also, a nose ring. And his hair was down. Friday Evening Óskar is very different from Rest of the Week Óskar.

  “Shoes,” he said, like an impatient parent. Then, “There were only four Ramones.”

  “Riff Randell was the honorary fifth Ramone,” I said, lacing up my boots. “Not to mention the other real members that came and went throughout the years.”

  On the way to his Jeep, Óskar asked me if I knew a lot about music, or just the Ramones. And he also asked if I’d heard much from his favorite band, R.E.M. Interesting choice.

  “They’re the Smiths of the American South,” he said.

  “I’m from the South. Sorta,” I said.

  “Me too. South Iceland.”

  I laughed. He zipped out of Reykjavik and onto the road toward the airport. When I asked why we didn’t just get booze in the city, he told me his cousin works in one of the shops at the airport and would sell us the alcohol duty-free. I still don’t fully understand what “duty-free” means, but I guess it makes things a hell of a lot cheaper. Also, there’s a limit on how much alcohol one person can buy, so that was why he was dragging me along. Not that I minded, but . . .

  “What’s the, uh, drinking age here?”

  “Twenty.”

  “I’m too young, man.”

  “Really? You look older.”

  “I didn’t get carded on the boat the other night,” I said. “Must be my old soul.”

  I’d brought my camera with me. After I snapped a couple shots of the lava fields out the window, Óskar pulled over and said I should try walking on the moss.

  “But don’t be an asshole,” he said. “Any damage you do takes decades to heal.”

  “I’m not an asshole. I’ll be gentle with your precious moss.”

  We crossed the street and climbed up the hill to the lava field. It was glorious, spongy and soft, like walking on a trampoline. Or the moon. Óskar said the US government sent the astronauts to Iceland in the 1960s to study the lava fields in anticipation of the moon landing. Very cool.

  He watched me photograph your boots against that green alien landscape and said nothing in his Óskaresque way. And when I was done, he asked if I wanted him to take my picture. I don’t know why, but I hesitated for a minute, then handed the camera over.

  I gazed out at the little baby mountains while he snapped my photo. I felt so self-conscious. Then I thought screw it and laid myself out in the moss, which was kind of what I’d been wanting to do all along. It’s inviting stuff. So soft.

  Óskar raised his eyebrows and snapped another pic. Then I got up and dusted off, and he gave me my camera back before we headed to the car. He crossed the road ahead of me, and I ended up having to wait for a bus to pass. While I waited, I took a photo of him walking away from me in long strides. The highway is really close to the shore in that area and the angle of the photo kind of made it look like Óskar was wandering off into the ocean. It’s a really cool picture, but I was afraid to show it to him.

  “Are you going out tonight?” he asked. “You have to do the rúntur at least once. Some of the pubs are all ages.”

  “Yeah, probably.” I hadn’t thought about the barhopping tradition since my night with Shannon.

  We talked for a little bit about the tour he’d sent me on. I thanked him again, told him I was getting closer to figuring out . . . whatever it is that I’m supposed to be figuring out.

  “So, are you going to sleep with my roommate?” he asked when we pulled into the airport.

  “What makes you think that’s on my to-do list?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “No eighteen-year-old man goes alone to a foreign country for a month without intending to get laid.”

  “Might as well sample the local fare.” I grinned and shrugged, as if getting some action would not be a life-changing experience.

  “Lucky for you, Björk will be at the rúntur tonight. She’s an artist too, you know? And she is a little freaky. We once went to an orgy together, she and I. We didn’t fuck anyone, though. Nobody was using condoms. I guess it makes sense. Who has time for condoms in an orgy? But, we had both recently finished reading Just Kids, and we figured we were the next Patti and Robert—though, I am not sure who is Patti and who is Robert, since she is the artist and I am the musician. But neither of us wants to die of AIDS, so we left.”

  Besides his volcano speech, that is literally the most Óskar has ever said to me, and I love that it was about orgies and Patti Smith and condoms and shit. Seriously??? This guy, Vivian . . .

  “So, what? Did she, like, say something about me?” I asked. “I mean, what brought this up?”

  “Yeah, she thinks you’re cute.”

  “Cute? Is that the exact word she used? Not, like, ‘ruggedly handsome’ or ‘panty-dropping’ or anything?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe cute isn’t the right word. She said it in Icelandic. At any rate, suffice it to mean she probably wants to sleep with you.”

  Hello, world. I’m banging Björk in Iceland tonight.

  “I’ll bring condoms,” I offered. Derp.

  “Good idea.”

  So, we went inside the airport, and Óskar bought ALL THE BOOZE, then we headed back to Óskar’s apartment in Reykjavik to drop it off. I was kind of hoping to see Björk again, but Óskar told me she was working.

  “This place is hella swanky, man.” Hardwood floors, slanted ceilings, and all fancy modern furniture. A grand piano in the living room.

  “I’m moving sometime,” he said, with his back to me as he stocked the fridge. “It doesn’t suit me anymore.”

  “No, it suits you perfectly. It’s all nice and composed at first glance, but somewhere . . .” I turned and bolted down the hallway. “Somewhere around here, there’s got to be a really messy bedroom!”

  “No!” Óskar chased me down the hall.

  There were three doors in the hallway. I skipped the first one, figuring someone as guarded as Óskar wouldn’t choose the bedroom closest to the living room. The next door was either the other bedroom or a bathroom, but I decided on the latter, heading for the third. Óskar beat me, skidding ahead and blocking me so that his back was to the door.

  We were standing really close. Practically chest to chest. And there it was again, that stupid electric jolt of attraction. I could feel something else from him, too. A boundary that I wasn’t allowed to cross.

  “Huh,” I said. “You hiding a body in there?”

  “A painting. I didn’t want it to catch you off-guard.”

  Whatever sexy electric body chemistry I’d been feeling instantly turned to lead, and my stomach churned. I could think of only one reason why Óskar’d be concerned that a painting might throw me for a loop. I swallowed hard and pushed past him, into his bedroom. It was tidier than I’d figured. The bed was made, and all the furniture matched. He had a few guitars hanging on the wall.

  No skeletons in the closet. Just one of your paintings hanging over his bed.

  “Well, fuck.”

  He plopped down on the corner of his mattress while I went in for a closer look. So, I guess Óskar is the proud owner of a print of Winged Embrace. Now that I think about it, I do remember Mamochka telling me that one of them had sold to someone in Iceland, a seemingly insignificant detail that had slipped my mind until it hit me in the face. How was I to know that I’d someday be standing in that person’s bedroom staring up at this painting of me and you wrapped
in each other’s arms?

  “You know what’s funny? I always think of these things as hers—Vivian’s paintings. But looking at it . . . I designed her wings. I made them out of an old bed sheet from the thrift store—I even used a sewing machine. And my horns—cardboard and craft foam. I posed us and took the inspiration photo. Hell, even . . . Look, see those green brushstrokes right there in the background? I did that, too. There is so much of me in this painting, and it’s so fucking weird that it’s in your bedroom. Goddamn, why am I looking at this right now? What the fuck?” How could he have this painting, this piece of me—of us? Seeing it made me almost certain my mothers had had a hand in this somehow. Did Mamochka bribe Óskar with a painting in exchange for looking after my sorry ass? The beer run suddenly felt manufactured, and that kind of stung.

  I shot Óskar a glance and waited for him to concoct the perfect lie. Which, of course, he did.

  “I got it a year ago, during the fundraiser for Vivian. It was a gift to me from my boyfriend. My hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. He’s a collector of LGBT art and artists. He found the print online, and I liked it. I like Henry Darger, and Vivian’s story touched me, so he bought it for me. He buys everything I want. It sickens me.”

  I frowned and decided to let the subject of the conversation drift to him instead of me. I still felt unsettled by the painting, but to be honest, I was intrigued. I mean, even if my theory is true and he IS babysitting me, it’s sort of fascinating to wonder why someone like him would ever agree to that. I mean, does he like our art that much, or what?

  “So you have a sugar daddy, huh? I wasn’t even sure you were gay.”

  “You can’t tell?”

  “I . . . maybe? I dunno. I think my gaydar got damaged on the plane. All you Scandinavian hipster types seem pretty queer to me. Anyway, you have this nice guy buying you shit all the time, and you’re sick of it?”

  “I don’t feel comfortable discussing my relationship problems with you.” The way Óskar can just shut down and shut me out is almost a visible, tangible thing. He’s so damn weird and interesting that I just want to, like, hold him upside down and shake him. See what kind of cool stuff falls out.