One Night

by Tia Wilson

  This man that Jonas was hugging was huge. He was broader and stood taller then Jonas, he had short tousled jet black hair and a handsome square jawed profile. He had the face of a male model and the body of someone who did something very physical. I couldn't wait to tell the girls back home about the men here, they certainly didn't make men like this in San Francisco. These where real men who took charge, worked hard and had the calluses to show for it.

  “Will you be heading straight up North when we get back to Reykjavik?” I asked Gunna turning away from the window. Looking at Jonas was making my heart ache. I knew it wasn't something as grand as love, it was the feeling of closing a door before it even had a chance to open. Leaving now felt like the end of a new path before I had even started to walk down it.

  “I rang a friend earlier. I have a lift organised when we land. Its a fisherman that I work with, an old guy and a total sweetheart. He was in Reykjavik to see his grandkids. Its a ten hour drive but he is good company.”

  There was a tap on my window and then a face ducked down and peered in at me with a beaming smile. It was the man who Jonas had been hugging. His smile was dazzling and for a second he looked like a hungry wolf and I was his prey. I felt a twinge of nerves in my stomach under this mans gaze. I felt woozy and sluggish all of a sudden, I could feel a giggle about to burst forth. Here I am a grown woman about to giggle under this amazingly handsome mans gaze. Gunna made a whistle of appreciation.

  “I better get out and say hello,” I said and took a deep breath and got out of the car.

  A voice like two slabs of granite grinding against each other came forth from this mountain of a man standing before me. “Hi I’m Rafn and I’m like a brother to Jonas. Its great to meet you.” Usually first introductions like this are meet with a polite handshake. These rules didn't apply to Rafn. He wrapped his arms around me in a huge bear hug and gave me a squeeze.

  For a split second while I was in his embrace, feeling his taught biceps pressing into me a thought bubbled up from the depths, this is the man for me. I immediately pushed it away and was a little disgusted with myself. I felt greedy and selfish. I had an amazing time with Jonas and here I was swooning like a schoolgirl when the next physically impressive Icelandic viking shows me any attention.

  The greedy side couldn't be fully submerged. Before I pushed that part of me into the recess of my mind, she got off one more little salvo. You can have both. I felt thrilled and ashamed at the same time.

  Rafn released me from his monster strong embrace. “You really are as beautiful as Jonas told me” he said with a wild twinkle in his eyes and a roguish grin. Jonas mock punched Rafn in the arm and they said a few words to each other in Icelandic. I loved hearing the language, the way they rolled the letter R was music to my ears.

  “Thank you,” I said and tried not to get lost in his piercing eyes.

  Jonas said “This is my very forward friend Rafn. We go back many years”. He looked at Rafn when saying this and Rafn returned his look with a stoic nod. Jonas went on “There is a huge shoal of herring that has moved into one of the next fjords over from this one. The herring swim in here to try to avoid the cooling seas. Rafn heads out now in an hour with his crew to fish them. I am going to take him up on the offer to help”.

  The darkest thoughts flooded my senses for the briefest of seconds and for one tiny moment I nearly blurted out “Please don't go, come to San Francisco with me.” I didn't, I knew I’d come across as crazy.

  Jonas checked his watch and I knew it was time to get going to the airport. We said our goodbyes to Rafn, not before he gave me one more massive bear hug. As we separated he said, “I’ll be seeing you again Sasha Lee of San Francisco”. It felt like he spoke the truth.

  We got to the small airport with only minutes to spare. The check in area was packed with yesterdays passengers from my flight. Most of them were not looking too happy about the overnight stay in Isafjordur. I checked my bags in like a robot, automatically going through the motions. I didn't talk to Gunna as we queued and I couldn’t bear to look over at Jonas sitting on the benches and looking out at the plane being prepped. I didn't want the moment to come when we would say goodbye. Nothing I could do would slow it down and then as if in a flash we were at the dreaded moment. Gunna and I were standing at the door ready to board the plane. She said her goodbyes to him and then said to me.” See you on the plane.” She turned and boarded. I thought I could handle saying goodbye but a wellspring of emotion ripped through my thin veneer.

  “Will I ever see you again” I said feeling the tears start to well up.

  “Yes you will, I am certain of it,” he said. “I will do anything to see you again” he said and pulled me close to him embracing me tightly. I breathed in deeply, his scent filling my nostrils and as ridiculous as it seemed smelling his deep manly musk calmed me slightly.

  From inside his jacket he took out a business card and handed it to me. That gesture and quirk struck me as odd, a fisherman having his own business card. Maybe I was wrong and all fishermen carried cards, Jonas was the first one I’d ever spoke to

  I clutched the card and we kissed for what I hoped wasn't the last time. We kissed slow and deep, all the hustle and bustle of the airport fading away as my world focused on this man. Tearfully we parted and then our time was up, I had to board the plane. The last thing I said to him was “Jonas,” my voice began to quiver and I turned and walked towards the plane not daring to look back and knowing it could send me off the edge and I would be a sobbing mess.

  Chapter Six

  The plane was buffeted by strong winds as it took off and a few people gasped as the plane was pushed sideways as it navigated out of the fjord. I didn't react. I sat in my chair with my head in my hands sobbing. Gunna held my hand and said nothing. I no longer felt foolish for having such strong emotions over a one night stand, it was real and it hurt.

  After a few minutes the plane was above the clouds and the worst of the turbulence was over. Slowly my sobbing subsided and I unclenched my hand that had been crushing Gunna’s. My nails had been painfully digging into her palms this whole time. She just gave me a smile and I knew she had felt this pain before. In my other hand Jonas’s card was balled up. I smoothed it out and read the front. It was a simply designed card with no distracting flourishes. It had all the usual details and below his email address was a small logo of a boat with a large brooding viking standing on the deck. The viking looked like Jonas and it brought a smile to my face.

  When we landed in the single runway airport on the edge of Reykjavik city it was time for another goodbye. We stood outside the terminal building as a strong wind whipped across us and pelted our cheeks with shards of hail. “If you need a friend in Iceland, call me,” Gunna said giving me a tight hug. For the second time in the space of a few hours I was close to tears. Toughen up I tried to tell myself, people come and go in your life all the time back home. I didn't know why everything was effecting me so deeply, I couldn't understand what was going on with me.

  We hugged for a few more seconds and when we separated I said, “It was great meeting you.” And with that she turned and crossed the carpark to a red pickup truck parked on the corner. A men with a grey beard was behind the wheel and he waved as Gunna approached. They drove off as the painful hail increased in intensity. I strolled to the row of cabs parked outside and I felt heavy and tired as I walked.

  The next two days went by in a whirl of activity and gave me little to no time to wallow in any sad feelings. I flew north and meet with the dean of the university and he was highly impressed with the software my team had designed. He signed the contract there and then and gave me contact details for deans of the two main universities in Reykjavik. He was so impressed with both the product and my knowledge of it that he promised to put a good word in with the other deans on my behalf. After our meeting I had to head straight for the airport and return to Reykjavik. I never got to see the small northern city and I felt a pang as the plane banked ov
er the harbour and I wondered if Gunna was down below working away.

  As I racked up successful meetings in Reykjavik and relayed it to me team back home they made plans for a party when I returned home. The universities would be our first paying customers and possibly the start of a whole lot more opportunities. There was no time for celebration in Iceland as the delay in Isafjordur had messed up my schedule. If I wanted to be back in San Francisco in time for the holidays I had to leave now.

  All this rushing and the various business meetings I had been to had kept my mind off Jonas as much as possible. My heart ached whenever I thought of him. I felt foolish for feeling this way so quickly, but I kept telling myself that it also looked like he felt the same way.

  I couldn't bear to ring him before I left Iceland. I couldn't go through all the tears again, that I knew would come as soon as I heard his voice. I would wait until I got back home before I contacted him again. Maybe when I got back home it would put the whole trip in perspective and I would realise that Jonas was nothing more than one great night. The stresses and the setbacks of the trip could be the reason why I was so emotional I tried to tell myself and only half believed it.

  After two days of high pressure and rushing I felt exhausted and when I got to Keflevik airport for my flight home all I wanted to do was slump in a seat and sleep. I found a corner with a muted TV mounted high on the wall and I slumped into a chair. I had hours to kill before check in and I wanted to switch my brain off and not think about the rollercoaster of the last few days. People bustled by pulling wheeled luggage and the click click of the wheels began to sooth me and pretty soon I started to drift off to sleep.

  Images of Jonas coalesced in my sleeping mind. Jonas was standing outside a burning school building. I was standing behind him and he turned and looked at me and then smiled. He then ran into the burning building. I was rooted to the spot and couldn't move. I tried to scream and only muffled mewlings came out. The flames on the building rose and time seemed to elongate. He was in there too long and I could feel a dark veil of impending doom insinuate its pernicious energy into every cell of my being.

  The schoolhouse flared in flames of bright orange and searing red and then the whole building collapsed. I could see someone moving within the rubble and this time I managed to scream.

  I woke with a jolt and looked around confused for a second, unsure of where I was . A cold sweat ran down my back. An older Icelandic woman sitting near me reached over and put a hand on my shoulder and asked me in broken english if I was ok.

  I held her hand and thanked her and reassured her it was only a terrible nightmare. From the corner of my eye something on the TV caught my attention. It was a news program and a reporter bundled up in winter gear was talking to the camera. I recognised where he was standing as one of the streets in Isafjordur where I had been days before. I felt a band of tension tighten around my chest.

  It felt like a bucket of ice was thrown over my back and I just knew something was wrong. The reporter continued to talk as the heavy snow fell around him. The report ended with some stock footage of the town being battered by a storm and fishermen on a dock taking equipment off a boat.

  I could feel my panic begin to rise and I felt it to my core that something was wrong as if my nightmare had sprung forth to cause havoc in the real world. I frantically turned to the woman and asked her what the report was about. Her english was not very good and she motioned to me that she would go get her husband to help.

  She was gone less then a minute but it stretched out to infinity for my jangled nerves. The woman brought back a grey haired man wearing a traditional Icelandic sweater. “What can I help you with” he said in his beautiful lilting accent. I told him about the news story and he nodded and listened.

  He had caught the story earlier and as he relayed it to me, my heart sunk and then shattered into a million pieces. “The news was about a ship lost at sea yesterday. It went fishing for a shoal of herring and it hasn't been heard from since. The weather is too bad to send the rescue helicopter out. The boat had a crew of ten on it and all anybody can do is wait until the storm ends. We are all praying for the fishermen” he said.

  I fell back in the chair as my body was shaken by sobs. I knew with every fibre of my body that Jonas was on that boat. While I started to cry the woman consoled me.

  “Are you all right my dear?” the old man said with a concerned look on his face.

  I pulled my phone out and said, “I need to call my friend.” The elderly couple sat across from me as I dialled my phone with shaking hands.

  “Is that you Sasha?” Gunna said when she picked up.

  “Yes,” I said trying to hold back the tears.

  “You saw the news then,” she said in a flat tone. “I don't know how to say this to you Sasha,” she said and paused, “Jonas was on that boat. He and all his crew are missing at sea.”

  The news hit me like a kick to the chest. My hands shook as I held my phone up.

  “I have to go back to Isafjordur, I have to go back” I sobbed.

  Chapter Seven

  Two people made a huge impact on me when I was a young girl. One stayed with me up until I was a teenager and the other left me when I was eight years old. As I get older I have started to reflect on the impact they both made on me. The first person to change me was my uncle Tyron or big T to his friends. My memories of him spool back to some of my earliest recollections. He was a force in my life for as long as I could remember and then just like that he was gone. He was my mothers brother and when the car plant he worked in shut down he found it hard to find a new job and had to move in with my family. If there was any kind of friction with my mother and father and their new lodger it never filtered down to me. All I remember is this being a golden hued period of my life. Tyron had worked with his hands all his life, all menial jobs from mopping floors to flipping burgers. The position in the car plant was his longest continuous period of employment and up until the closure it was a life changing job.

  The amazing thing about Tyron and I only realised this when I was older, was even though his life had taken a downturn and he was sleeping on a fold out bed in his sisters basement he never let it get to him or acted hard done by. His beaming positivity when faced with his lot worked its way into my personality and had a long lasting effect.

  Having Tyron living in my house was like the wildest adventure for my young self. I would spend winter evenings down in his room while my mother prepared dinner upstairs and Tyron never seemed to tire or become annoyed of my endless questions. It was this second trait of his that moulded me into who I am today. Tyron read and he read constantly and at an incredible clip. He always had a paperback sticking out of the back pocket of his trousers and I used to love watching him working in the garden during the summer with my father. The two men would work side by side, cutting the grass and trimming back the ever sprawling bushes. When it came for a break from the labour my father would take his tobacco tin out of his pocket and light up a smoke. What always stayed with me was Tyron and his break time activity. He’d lean against the corner of our house in a nice patch of shade and take his rolled up book out of his back pocket and start reading. Every time he stopped working he would be reading, waiting for a bus he would be reading, at the dinner table, after the news, sometimes even as he walked down the sidewalk if the book was particularly good.

  He didn't discriminate on his reading material. I say him reading everything from the classics, science books, memoirs and yellow edged pulp crime fiction. He made multiple trips to our local library every week. He spent any spare money he had on books and any time he saw books for sale at garage sales or markets he would buy armfuls. When I was down in his room leafing through the books in stacks by his beds I would ask him endless questions and to my young mind he was a genius. If he didn't know the answer I could be sure that when he came back from a trip to the library he would of researched it. I loved my father but I think I loved my uncle even more in a full
on childish intensity. His thirst for information and knowledge spoke to my core and I would find myself immersing myself in reading to an extreme. He would often tell me that he left school when he was twelve and that you should never let anyone think you are a lesser person if you don't have a piece of paper from a college. “These are the only pieces of paper that are important,” he would say holding up a copy of great expectations and twelve years a slave. “This is all you need to better yourself and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.” He would slide his library card across to me and say, “Once you have one of these, there is no stopping you.” I’d hold up the blue rectangle of stiff card and run my fingers along the edge as if I was holding aloft a holy relic or an item from an archaeological dig.

  The time spent in my uncles makeshift room while he sat on his favourite stiff backed chair reading and I sat on a squishy bean bag in the corner across from him, this was one of my most cherished memories when I got older. It was a memory that caused me nothing but heartbreak and confusion when I was still young. My uncle was part of my life and then he was not.

  I was seven years old when he sat me on the edge of his bed and said, “I am going away for a long time.” I looked at him confused and tears already started to spill down my cheeks. “I have gotten a job on the other side of the world in a country called Australia.” I looked at him as my tears flowed. I wasn't stupid and knew how far away the country was.

  “I don't want you to go,” I cried.

  “I have to go to build a better life for myself. I cant stay here,” he said motioning to the basement he had called home for nearly two years.