Would You Even Know

Bethany had never been to Iceland before; the farthest she’d been from the City was Weehawken. Her friends Erica and Abigail had for years mocked her lack of travel. Apparently, she was depriving herself of a diverse picture of humanity, limiting her understanding of the world and her self. Bethany questioned how leaving everything she was familiar with was going to help her “find herself.” But ten days of bus rides from one life-changing vista to the next; she had a special feeling about this trip, a feeling she hadn’t felt in years. For better or worse she could not decide yet whether to be excited or afraid, but she liked the in-between. It was just the first days of May—the spring’s rainy gloom suddenly beginning to wane.

“Screwdriver please, whatever’s cheapest sir.” She winced at her formality. “Sir,” the guy was barely out of his teens. She had planned to meet her best friends at Harry’s pub on the Lower East Side to send her off. It was ten minutes to Ten. For her, this was right on time. Harry’s was overrun with late-night oglers; football fans all watching burly men steamroll into each other (must have been the New York team winning). Her friends were always late by her standards, but even she admitted her standards were often unreasonable.

She decided she didn’t want to be somewhere familiar any longer. For too long she’d felt caught in a loop, moving from one cycle to the next. It was funny, whenever she told people she was headed overseas they would immediately list everything they knew about Iceland, as though she had already been there and back and would confirm it was all real. That volcanoes really shot right out of the ground and there was not a tree in sight. That the people there really were so friendly and really all spoke English. Luckily for her, everybody (and that included Iceland) accommodated for Americans and their innate desire to view the world in familiar comfort.

“Look at this, put down the phone!” Bethany turned; ready to be offended, until she realized it was her friend Abigail who had so crassly announced her arrival to the entire bar, “Unless you’re buying me a ticket.”

“Sorry Ab, this is a mecation. Nobody else allowed.”

“A drink then?” said Erica, who had also arrived with Abigail. They all nodded.

“Do you know anybody there?” Her friends were often intrusive about who she was seeing, like they were jealous of her.

“Not a soul. It’ll be fine, though, I’ll meet people. You know I’ll be thinking only of you. I just wanna get a taste of the good life.”

Bethany looked towards Erica whose sad-drunk eyes were beginning to lose focus. Bethany had trouble relating to them at times, but her friendships were never seriously in doubt; she just liked to pretend that there was drama between them.

“So are you excited?” Abigail said, turning back to her after a few minutes had passed.

“Yeah, I’m really hoping to find myself over there.”

“You’re so gonna be a different person by the end of it. This is your first time, right?”

“Yup. I’ve never really left the City, but like how different could it be?”

Erica laughed and leaned in, “Girl, you have no idea.”

Bethany tapped her foot as she started feeling self-conscious, “I think I gotta head off now and pack up for tomorrow. Thank you for taking me out, I’m gonna miss this—miss y’all so much…” she shot down the rest of her Screwdriver, her favorite since high school. Simple, but effective, just like herself.

“Baaabe!” Erica yelled too loud, “Don’t leave us like this!” Bethany made a mental note to remind Abigail to call her a cab. She didn’t want to leave Abigail with her like this, but she had to start packing for tomorrow.

“Love ya!” Abigail yelled as she left. Bethany blew them a kiss as she backed out the door, stumbling slightly on the lip of the entrance. She checked around to make sure nobody had noticed and smoothed her orange blouse and her faux black leather jacket before heading off towards 12th Street. The city droned by as she pulled out her phone and texted Abigail; make sure u put her in a cab I’m worried about her, and popped her phone back in her bag. As she crossed Avenue A, the streets grew narrower and she had to skirt around obstructive nighthawks clogging her path past a chic wine bar. It was the fourth new business in this same location since last year, not even enough time to unpack all the boxes. She couldn’t help imagining the boxes—brief summations of their contents scrawled in sharpie front and back—the people forced to move on so soon. Like they were shot by the starting pistol. There was so much she worried about; she worried even when she told herself not to.

“Are you sure that’s okay? You don’t want to find someone else?”

Those were the first words her mother had said when she found out Bethany was moving in with a stranger, and a man at that. Bethany had been scared of Jeffrey at first, living so close to a man for the first time. He was a film student at NYU who usually just watched movies and smoked spliffs with his friends.

“I don’t like the sound of this boy. Where did you say his parents were from again?”

She had assumed they would at least become friends. She tried to be kind; she offered to take him out to dinner the night she moved in. But Jeff was uninterested in sharing anything in his life, conversing with her only when they were completely out of toilet paper. For Bethany, Men—with a capital M—had always been strange creatures.

She gazed out her window at the back of a brick building as her eyes slowly flickered to sleep. Her alarm was for Six, flight at Ten, touch down at Nine PM local time in Reykjavík. She still felt the night stick in her eyes, disobediently forcing them closed the following morning. She was not a morning person, but Bethany knew she wasn’t really a night owl either; she was more of a noon person. She blamed the morning like she blamed her mother; both brutally catapulting her into the world against her will. She took her seat on the plane exactly four minutes past the scheduled departure expecting the pilot to make it up in the air.

            “Nervous?”

            “Yes.”

            “First time?”

            “No, I’ve been nervous lots of times,” Bethany had to physically hold her mouth shut to keep from laughing out loud. Both her seatmates were sound asleep, but she didn’t care. She found that sleeping strangers tended to stay asleep. She just wanted to laugh, even if she had already seen Airplane.

            Normally she could fall asleep almost anywhere; dentist chair, school desk (the kind with the armrest specifically designed to inhibit comfort), but the discomfort of the economy airplane seat coupled with the artificial air, regenerated through mouths and filters countless times during the flight; Bethany soon discovered that this was the one place she could not sleep. This discomfort was new for her, but she assumed it happened to everybody. As the captain announced their arrival time, the pressure in the plane dropped and everything began to feel very heavy, like walking along the deep end of a pool.

“There’s always a line isn’t there.”

“Without fail,” chuckled the elderly woman in front of Bethany.  

“Probably gonna be a while.”

“Right. At this rate we may as well just wait until we land,” the woman spoke with a soft foreign accent, something dark and European. She must have been heading home.

“I bet in first class the flight attendants wait in line for you.”

“May-be,” this woman stressed her may a bit, “that would also explain why they haven’t answered the damn button. I’ve been trying to order a Gin and tonic for a half-hour.”

“That’s horrible! We deserve better.” Bethany liked this old woman; she shared her general resentment for people in first class.

“Greta. Nice to meet you.” She stuck out her hand to shake. She was in her late-60’s, early-70’s, her wrinkles soft, joyous and unaltered. She had the most delicate, bony hands and a slightly lopsided grin.

“Bethany, it’s a pleasure.”

“So, Bethany, how long are you in Reykjavik?”

“Oh, just for tonight, my bus pulls out in the morning. I’ll be back in a few days though, and yourself?”

“Yes, my good for nothing husband, Harold, and I are staying for the week and then we’re off to France. Marseilles. I don’t want to see Paris again. That’s him right over there,” She pointed towards a snoring skinny man with tufted grey hair in his late seventies wearing a baby blue sweater that was at least one size too small, “poor thing, I shouldn’t have let him dress himself. We’re on holiday!”

Immediately Bethany wanted this woman to adopt her. She was the witty, carefree, socialite mother Bethany could only dream of. If she’d brought her own mother, there would have already been an argument about something inane like the meal choice. “They’re awful everywhere, mom,” Bethany would have pleaded, but her mother would have replied, “No, I can’t eat this. Which one did you get—”

“Something the matter? It’s your turn.”

“Oh! Sorry, no—thank you!” She fumbled past Greta and sat in the lavatory, regretting her awkwardness. She could already see Greta returning to her seat, immediately forgetting everything about her. She found an intense ugliness within herself in situations like these. Some darker reality that excluded people like her.

She exited the restroom and, confirming her suspicions, Greta was no longer there. Great, why does this always happen to me? She inched back into her seat and looked at her watch, scratching the side of her wrist. Just a bit before noon, they should be coming around with lunch any minute. She could finish her movie, eat her lunch, and read The Bell Jar until touchdown. Just as she was about to put her ear buds back in, she felt a tapping on her shoulder.

“Ah! Oh, it’s you.”

“You sound surprised? Sorry I left you; I saw that uppity stewardess finally had a free moment. The blonde one, over there,” she pointed with her trembling index finger, “and I had to get my Gin and tonic. But then I turned and you let me.”

“Sorry, I—“

“Don’t apologize to me, I left first. Sometimes I forget to pay attention when I really want something, you’ll have to pardon me.”

“Oh, yeah…” Bethany nodded. She studied Greta’s face—too harsh a name for such an elegant face—the wrinkles that formed seemingly out of nowhere and vanished into the corners of her eyes. Her mouth, creased and delicate, folding over itself like a wave dissipating along the shoreline. Hers was a face of wisdom; a face crafted by privilege, molded by time, and etched by experience. Bethany realized she was getting carried away with herself, her mind’s eye fascinating on these negligent details.

“What’s wrong? You are quiet now. Why don’t you and Harold switch seats? He won’t mind, he’ll just fall back asleep, the bastard. Happens every time we fly and I have to just sit there and watch him.” And just like that, a smile formed across Bethany’s face.

Bethany realized that her seatmates were basically experiencing time travel while she and Greta and the rest of the insomniacs endured the full temporal weight of the journey. People like Harold just dropped into their seats, shut their eyes and awoke twenty-six hundred miles later, well rested and unaware of the torments burdened on the rest of the plane.

It was almost Nine PM, Iceland time, soon to touch down on the outskirts of Reykjavík. Bethany and Greta were currently transfixed by the luminous skyline, and they’d been talking for close to two hours. Bethany had learned about Greta’s kids—lawyers—New York City elite that made her feel unaccomplished. But Greta was also one of those elite, a gallery curator who travelled often to France and Spain, who subsisted on a diet of wine and cheese, who had Jeff Koons and Tania Bruguera in her contacts and even went on a date with Frank Stella way back. Bethany recalled her old paintings gathering dust under her bed, wondering if it was too early to bring them up, ultimately deciding those pieces were too raw. She’d have to find some of her works before she got all dark and moody.

And Greta had gotten a bit intrusive, but she’d also had three Gin and Tonics so Bethany forgave her.

“I could never deal with artists. You must have the patience of a saint.”

“Yes, well consider me the patron saint of bad luck ‘cause it seems to follow me everywhere.”

“Oh, how so?”

“I shouldn’t complain, I live a lot better than most. But my last three shows have been cancelled, all because this Peruvian bastard’s decided to have his mid-life crisis at 26,” she raised her glass in an imaginary toast, “This one’s for Fernando, may he choke on it wherever he is.” Greta had been a very intense presence, but not an off-putting one. “You get out of the city very often?”

“Actually this is my first real trip if you can believe that.”

“I don’t believe it, your first time out of the city? But you’re so young and beautiful, you need to see the world. It’s the best thing you can do with your time, before you’re old like me.”

“Well, that’s what I’m doing now, aren’t I?” Greta looked at her like she was crazy, “I guess I just always liked the City, what’s not to like? I wanted to go on trips and see the country, but every time something fell through, was never in my control really,” she wiped some condensation from her plastic cup.

“It’s a disgusting city really.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s that bad. Why do you still live there if—” Bethany started.

“You haven’t been anywhere, let me tell you. You’ll see Iceland and then you’ll know, you’ll know that nowhere else are people so mean as New York. Nowhere.”

“But there’s mean people everywhere.”

“Not like New York,” she shook her head, “You think I ever had it easy? New York is a man’s world. It takes twice as much work in a man’s world.” Bethany was unsure how many drinks she’d had, but she was sure it was too many.

“How’s that?”

“There’s three types of pain that are the worst,” Bethany could barely keep up with Greta’s ramblings, “and I’ve had them all; family, love, and death. They’re the worst because you’re helpless to stop them.” Greta was looking off toward the front of the plane.

“What about physical pain?”

“You take a pill. You cannot take a pill for love, you cannot take a pill and make death go away. Or maybe you can, I haven’t had such a pill in my life.” Greta’s dark blue satin dress wrinkled with her back and forth rocking, “So tell me, which pain is yours?”

            Bethany thought to herself for a moment, “I guess you could say all of the above, but mostly death.”

            “Oof,” she winced, “that’s the worst one.”

            “I don’t know, family can be pretty shit too…”

            “Yeah, and men,” Bethany laughed as she wiped her eyes, looking around at the other passengers for comfort. There were a lot of tourists, mostly rich Americans hitting the hotspots of life.

            “My first husband died in his sleep. God how that man snored—first time I woke up feeling rested in years,” Bethany snorted shamefully, “he was a nasty man, after our honeymoon things fell apart but it took us six years to realize and then the bastard’s heart decided to give out, right in the middle of the divorce—can you believe that?” She stamped her foot.

            “Oh I can’t even imagine. Any kids with that one?”

            “No, thankfully. Didn’t have the kids ‘till I met Harold. I make fun of him, but really, deep down, he’s the best man I ever met. He does well for himself and he raised the kids singlehandedly while I was travelling. I guess that was kind of vain, but they all turned out all right. You never know how things are going to go, you just have to look out for yourself,” she patted Bethany’s knee, “You want kids?”

            Bethany just shook her head and pursed her lips, accidentally accentuating her mousiness.

            “I was the same at your age, only interested in the art world, kids would hold me back, all that. What do you do?”

“Nothing that special…” Bethany trailed off.

            “It’s a lot more work than it sounds; curating. Not a job for everyone, you know. You have to go to school for a long time and then your chances are still only 1 in 1000. I entered the art world to avoid politics and bureaucracy, but the more money there is, the more artists become like businessmen,” her tone was becoming vitriolic and Bethany couldn’t help but wonder if Greta was an angry drunk, “Difference is artists can't live with bureaucracy, bureaucracy and confronting the idea that their art takes money away from people who could actually use it. But anyway,” Greta waved the whole thing off and smiled, “not to talk your ear off, it’s just, it’s taken me a while to get to a good place in life so when I see you hurting like this all I can think about is how much time you have to turn things around.”

            Bethany answered Greta with nods and smiles. She hadn’t told Greta about any of her pain, but Greta had been able to see right through her, almost immediately. “Now it’s your turn, Bethany, I shared my secrets. If I remember you said it was death ailing you?”

            “What?” Bethany shook her head.

            “I asked what your pain was, and you said ‘all of the above, but death mostly,’ if I remember correctly?”

            “Oh, well yeah, death. Death and I go way back, back before I even knew what death was,” Greta nodded, “anyway, Anatola—Ann or Ana I called her…” she had to stop for a moment and collect herself. “Sorry, I have a hard time saying her name, even thinking about her.”

            “Go on, at your own pace.”

“She, she and I were together, oh…almost three years. She was everything for me, the first everything. It was like life was something new, that first time, during those High School years, when you think everything’s against you. I could tell the moment she’d entered a room, some kind of glow about her.”

            “Two young people in love. You were together?”

            “I’m idealizing a bit, she hurt me. We were on and off, but it was High School, you know? First love, that sort of thing. I hurt her too, we were so new at everything, it takes time to really know how to care for someone. But she wanted to go on a trip. Now my mom’s liberal, but she’s still my mom, so she said absolutely not. I was too young, or it was too expensive. Like her fucking nose job wasn’t expensive. It was all lies; she just couldn’t live with me seeing a woman while she had nobody to love for herself.”

            “You never talked about it?”

            “We did. She wouldn’t budge on any of it. So I told Ana, I told her she would have to go alone, and she was heartbroken. She was afraid of leaving the country by herself, it was her first time. She’d been counting on me going with her. But I thought she could handle herself, she was always so strong. I’d watch her run in gym class, she’d just fly past the boys even, in those loose white gym shorts. She had enough strength for the both of us; I was always the problem. I told her she had to see it through; she couldn’t let my mom win. It was only Canada for God’s sake, I told her they basically didn’t even have crime in Canada,” Greta put her arm on Bethany’s shoulder, “Why did I let her believe me? I couldn’t even believe it myself.”

            “What happened?”

Bethany inhaled sharply.

            “I sent her off at Penn Station, kissed her on the track, the whole deal. She didn’t have a phone so we had no way of talking, but it was only a week—less than, if I remember.” She put her hand on Greta’s, grasping her fingers with assurance. “Got the call three days later from the principal, he’d talked with the police. They’d spoken French so he couldn’t understand at first but,” she wiped a tear off her cheek, “she was gone. Just disappeared. She never made it back to her hotel that night—last she was seen was at a bar talking to some people around our age, I think she was trying to find some clubs or something, and then she was gone.” Bethany stared dead-eyed out the window.

            “I guess she’s still technically missing, but even if they did find her, she’s died so many times in my head. That first week, every day I wished she’d just died. I felt horrible about it, thinking that way, but when I thought about what else could be happening to her, about all the shit she was probably going through, her father and all the shit he did to her, her brother who was barely hanging on—he’d attempted suicide the year before— and how her father blamed her for it, made her feel responsible. It made me sick to think that she’d tried to get away from it all, that she would’ve wanted to get away from me, too. Oh God—I thought it would be easier to talk about, so much time has passed. When I look out the window I can still see her down there somewhere, just waiting for me to find her. But she’s dead, she has to be.”

            “You will overcome this Bethany, I promise you. You’ve already lived through the worst part.” Greta was in tears; she stroked Bethany’s hand, like a mother praying with her child. Bethany looked up for the first time at Greta staring intently at her, but all she could see were Greta’s hands, those wrinkled, veiny hands that looked so fragile, but had done so much. The years had woven a topographic image right there on her hands, her hands that lifted into the air, like a ghost, and came down on Bethany’s face, gently rubbing a tear from her cheek.

            “I’m okay…it feels good to say it out loud, get it out of my head.” Bethany said with her eyes closed, savoring the intimate human contact. It had been a long time since someone had touched her this way.

            “Now I understand, Bethany, I see your pain. Thank you for telling me.”

As the island of Iceland came into view, they made plans to meet again in four days, when Bethany would circle around the northern part of the island and arrive back in Reykjavik; a city where mountains punctuate the skyline like towering icebergs equidistant from the moon at any vantage.

The brutal winter had almost fully thawed through and though it was still a bit cold, hibernating foliage had finally emerged from underneath the layers of frost. Bethany checked in to her first hotel, a three-star Hilton, and asked the concierge when the tour bus would be leaving the next day.       

            “All bus tours leave at precisely Eight AM sharp. Continental breakfast is available starting at Six-thirty AM sharp, madam,” She sounded as though she’d learned English from a Brit who learned it from an Icelander. Her voice was both formal and foreign and made Bethany uncomfortable.

            “Eight AM, really?”

            “Yes, I’m sorry. If you would prefer, madam, I could put you on a tour for the next day? It will only cost—“

            “No, no, that’s alright. I’ve already spent enough money,” she looked around hoping some miracle would delay the bus and sighed, “I guess I’ll keep it.” Trudging up to her room, she tried to imagine what kind of hotel Greta would be checking into. A five-star Marriot maybe? Or a cozy BNB? She wished she’d asked for Greta’s phone number or some other way to reach her, if only to talk more. And it only took one bite of the continental breakfast for Bethany to realize it would not start her day the way she’d hoped. Mixed in with the hard bagels and the fruit coated in a weird white filmy substance were some local specialties. There was Hafragrautur, also known as oatmeal. She heard the word “grout” in the name, which she found appropriate and there was Skyr, a sort of cream cheese-like yogurt. She actually enjoyed the Skyr, which came out of her mouth as, “Skyore?” when a woman behind her asked what it was. It had a slightly sour, sweet taste, and it reminded her of home in an odd way and she felt sad. The coffee was so thick she thought it was chocolate sauce at first.

There was a skinny man with a dark-blue beret waiting for the bus and several people in clothes far too warm for the weather. To make up for the terrible start, she’d put on her favorite vintage floral-print sweater that was so comfortable she didn’t need to wear anything underneath. She wore a blouse, just in case, matching it with her comfortable beige jeans. On time, the bus pulled up to the front of the hotel and a uniformed man exited the bus and helped her schlep her bulky suitcase into the cargo hold.

            “Ready for the tour to start?” he said tour with a deep rounded ou sound, typical of the Icelandic accent. He was a rather burly man with short blonde hair.

            “Yes, hi! Are you the guide or the driver?”

            “Just the driver. The guide is on his way.” She thought it weird they wouldn’t come together.

            “Will he be much longer?”

            “Oh he’s usually on time, nothing to worry about.”

            “It’s just, we all got up so early, I don’t see why we should have to wait—“

“Okay, stretch your legs now, we’re gonna be on the road for a while before the first stop. Lots of beautiful things ahead!” He announced to the world and boarded the bus.

            “All right…” she said to herself, at least one of them was excited. She boarded the bus passing 30 to 40 identical tourist faces staring up at her. There were some couples mixed in, a few families here and there, but mostly there were people with backpacks travelling alone. There were some dark clouds in the horizon, storm clouds just beginning to creep into the sky. Soon they would burst over Reykjavík.

There was an empty seat in the back where she inserted herself between a middle-aged white man chatting with his wife and an Asian couple (the only two races represented on the bus, she observed) whose attire seemed more appropriate for a mountain climbing expedition. The other travellers—there were about 50 in total—all seemed to be in a state of unrest, buzzing in entropic bursts. As she watched them, struggling to breathe in the surrounding bedlam, she saw children unable to stay put in their seats and a group of students talking excitedly about the refugee crisis and taking selfies. Bethany recalled what she’d told Erica and Abigail about “meeting new people” and tasting “the good life” and she felt her arms begin to tense up and retract.

Her attention finally rested on a woman who looked a lot like herself. It was an accurate comparison considering her small, pointed nose and condensed facial features made only more petite by her black circular glasses. Her long brown hair was often in a ponytail or flying loose in the wind, curling under her arms and around her body, which was small, like a mouse, and inherited straight from her mother. She observed that this woman had too many bracelets and her mouth was set in a semi-permanent under bite. She was starting to hate this woman and she didn’t know why. She saw her long, elegant face, like a horse’s, and she wanted to pull her big nose and poke her beady eyes. The woman reminded her of the people who’d tease her about her face. In High School, John K. had said, “No way, her face is like Minnie Mouse, no thank you,” and then Sarah Michelle told Abby G. who told John C. who told Bethany’s friend Abby who told Bethany who cried the whole night and was suspended the next morning when she threw hot water all over John K’s crotch. But now she accepted the comparison—she thought she made a pretty cute mouse.

At last, almost a half-hour late, the tour guide drifted in carrying a wireless microphone and a green duffel bag. He was a short man, his shortness made all the more apparent by his slouch and stooped gait. This man looked the part he played at the imaginary used car lot in Bethany’s mind. He had stubble, a highlighter-yellow vest to match his Eurotrash sportswear, enough layers to start a clothing drive, a sizeable paunch to compliment his gleaming face, and vintage Ray-bans folded neatly over his collar. If he’d looked any different she may have asked for her money back.

            “Sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard. My name is Jakob and it is my personal responsibility to ensure that every single one of you has a good time and we all stay safe, ya?” He had a slight nod when he talked and his teeth were full of gaps and fillings, but nevertheless, Bethany trusted him entirely. He handed out some cheap chocolates for everyone to enjoy, so he couldn’t be that bad.

            “And here we can see the Iceland Parliament, called in our country Althing. It was originally founded in the year 930 and is one of the oldest parliament in the world. The building was first outside Reykjavík, but it was restored and relocated to the city in…” Jakob growled into the microphone, holding it far too close to his face, mushing his words together. As Jakob continued to expound the past, present, and future of the single most important building in Iceland, Bethany stared out the opposite window where a team of randy ducks were swarming an old woman with a headscarf who wanted nothing more than to feed them.

“Oh!” Bethany exclaimed as the seething mass of waterfowl violently nipped at the woman’s bag wherein lied the seed and bread she’d brought. The woman fell over and her bag spilled onto the grass and the ungrateful ducks crawled over her to get to the crumbs. They appeared to be feasting not on the millet she’d brought, but on the old woman herself, who was flailing and scrambling to right herself. Bethany couldn’t help but giggle; there must have been at least 30 ravenous ducks. She captured the ordeal on video, unable to look away or any closer. She knew she shouldn’t be laughing, but there was no way she could help herself. 

            “Excuse me, do you mind moving so I can get a clearer shot?” asked the wife of the middle-aged man, breaking Bethany out of her spell.

            “Not at all.” 

            “No, I meant the other way…” the woman signaled with her hand.

            “Oh! Sorry.” Bethany tried to shift out of the way again, but in the process she spilled the chocolates that Jakob had given her, leaving a greasy mess on her thighs. She cursed her clumsiness and, trying to wipe it away with her hands—she should’ve used a napkin, she realized—spread the moist, sugary mayhem all over her favorite jeans, wiping it uncouthly on her sweater. She had assumed the woman was trying to photograph the ducks, but she had actually been trying to photograph a building. Now Bethany’s pants were ruined and her sweater a mess, all for some stupid photos of a building that wasn’t going anywhere. At least the ducks were cute, if a bit licentious. The rain had really begun to come down hard.

            About an hour outside of Reykjavík the bus arrived at a “scenic rest area” and Bethany took the opportunity to pull some extra clothes out from her luggage. It actually was quite a scenic rest area neatly situated between two competing fjords. Several plain white bridges poked out in the horizon connecting the two sides of the gorge that could have been in two separate countries they looked so different. They had been riding along the Western bank on their way to Sauðárkrókur, which was a smaller fishing town in the North with volcanic hot springs.

Bethany felt inspired for the first time in a while, wondering why she had ever stopped drawing and writing like when she was a kid. A year ago she’d found some of her old paintings left dust-soaked under the bed, some old etchings and collages she’d done in art class. Her work was highly suggestive, impressionistic but vague; likely the result of teenage self-awareness reaching into her troubled thoughts and spitting out brushstrokes. She was immediately reminded why she had stopped painting and threw them back underneath the bed, where they belong. The only thing keeping her rooted in the present were modern cars on the road and wind turbines in the distance.

The landscapes they passed, if in another life she had continued to paint, may have offered her a subject. She was most inspired by the hidden worlds each passing frame represented. The thousands of onlookers like herself that had passed through here over the years and felt the same rush of euphoria, the same physical need to paint the land. She’d never felt that way in the ever-photogenic city of New York. Now wearing a turquoise fleece and her backup jeans, Bethany snapped a few shots of the scenic view as a flock of grey geese flew by, eventually making her way back onto the bus. 

            It was around 4:30 when the whispers began making their way through the aisles like smoke from an inferno unseen. From her seat at the rear of the bus, Bethany witnessed the genesis and subsequent growth of the whisper. Small, idling conversations, like a game of telephone in elementary school, beginning at the front where Jakob asked a few of the elderly couples something discreet. Dripping slowly from there, the whispers snaked their way past sleeping children and the students arguing about pronouns until they reached the back where Bethany was finally privy to the same realization that had now condemned the bus in paralytic stupor. Someone was gone—missing. She was white, not very tall, no more than five-feet-three, maybe four, and she had brown hair and no distinguishing marks. She could have been anybody, one of about 15 different women, including Bethany.

            “All right, I’ve spoken with the driver and he says it will take us about an hour to retrace our path to the rest area in Hvalfjörder—where we all agree we last saw this missing woman. Does anyone have any idea where she could have gone? Her name? Anything?”

            The air hung stagnant in the wake of Jakob’s questions. Scanning over the passengers, Bethany couldn’t put a face to the disappeared—she was anonymous by description, a Jane Doe or a John Deer, a wallflower. A headcount, in hindsight, should have been Jakob’s responsibility, as he sat patting his head with a tissue.

            “Ok…ahh, well I don’t know what else to do,” Jakob continued after the awkward silence, “so we’re just going to have to go look for her ourselves.”

            “Shouldn’t you call the police?” A concerned older woman asked.

            “We’ll be there in less than an hour. I’m sure she’s waiting for us at the rest area, she probably went for a hike and lost track of time.” Bethany watched a series of affirmative nods follow his comment. The lost woman could have been waiting right there at the rest area (where else would she have been?), but she could have also been trying to disappear on purpose, or worse. The prospect of a warm bed and relaxing music now seemed distant like the volcanic peaks jutting seemingly straight from the curvature of the earth on the horizon.

            Bethany stared through the window as the bus came to a halt at almost the exact time they were supposed to have arrived at Sauðárkrókur. The rest area was deserted as they’d left it; no luggage, no note, no lost woman.

            “Oh fuck, FUCK!” Jakob pulled at his hair, cursing the air as he paced and sweated in front of the bus. It didn’t matter how many layers he removed, there was always another sweatier one underneath. He muttered into his cell phone, to someone, "Nei. No, ég veit ekki, ég-No, ég-við gert aðeins einn veg! Ég gerði ekki, I-OK!” He slammed his phone shut and scurried back on board with a look in his eyes that made Bethany wish she’d stayed in the States.

            “Ok, we checked the bathrooms, we checked the whole thing; she’s not here so we need to start the search in teams. Police are coming with flashlights and walkie-talkies. We are going to split up and we are going to find this missing woman. I know we are all thinking the worst thing right now, but she could have decided to go for a walk and got lost or something…” Bethany, meanwhile, thought only about the darkness they were plunging into. About what could possibly await them, venturing through the same gloom this woman disappeared into. In her trembling hands rested this lost woman’s fate, and in her fate lay Bethany’s as well.

            Once the police arrived, they formed a perimeter around the surrounding area, an area made mostly of grey glacial boulders and stagnant ponds of mud and rainwater. Around the rest stop were hills blocking the horizon in most directions, sloped at insurmountable angles. The recently thawed ground was sludge-like in areas, blocking off many promising pathways. Bethany split off with a group of four other people, two police and two passengers—a couple—(the man in his mid-thirties held the woman with both hands like she was trying to get away and the woman wore a space-dye sweater and looked at everyone as though they had something important to say) searching towards the south, south-west in the chance this lost woman had taken off for the coastline. There wasn’t much off in that direction, in any direction in fact; the nature of the countryside revealed it had nothing to hide.

The officers were more ragged than she was used to, weary from years of enduring these same feelings. She wondered if it ever became easier. One officer was significantly older and more mustached than the other, blonder one. She had an intrinsic distaste for interacting with police, but being in a foreign country and one so liberal as Iceland, they didn’t feel like real authority figures, similar to the way she handled foreign currency like play money.

            “Hvað finnst þér?” the blonde muttered under his breath.

            “Um hvað?”

            “Þú heldur að hún verður að snúa upp í kvöld?”

            “No…” the officer’s pouting, furry lip betrayed his dialect.

Bethany didn’t need to understand the language to understand the sentiment that the officer’s tone betrayed; they weren’t going to find a woman—they were searching for a body.

“We’re here!” she yelled into the cold night air. Midnight was approaching and the search would have to run double time, as hypothermia would quickly become a reality for the lost woman, wherever she was.

            “We’re here! Where are you?” the couple yelled in unison.

            As Bethany hoisted herself over a copse of wiry bramble, she felt the wind dying around her. The sudden burst of silence whipped her around. The pull of darkness in opposite directions called her name in syllables and haunts. A shape unmistakable emerged from the shadows behind her. She let out a wounded whisper, “A-Anna—“

            “It’s no use, there’s nothing over here. No trees, not even rocks anymore,” the blonde officer appeared behind her, shaking his head, “there’s no use—at least, not this way.”

            “Yeah, I think we should rejoin the group. It’s getting cold out here.” She looked back at the shadow, a log from an old split-rail fence. This direction was pointless; she wouldn’t even find a deer this way. She gave one final shout before heading back to the rest area.

            By the time Bethany returned it was close to Three in the morning and the children were asleep on the bus. She noticed a small campfire and took a seat with six other weary individuals. Some were taking turns sleeping and eating crackers and biscuits while others played cards, smoked, or talked in short sentences, heads bowed in contrition.

            “Any news?”

            “Nothing,” said a young man with a beret as he cleared some space for her, “not a trace—we looked all over the ridge, about a mile from here, and I heard the police branching out in every direction. Nothing.” Dissonance hovered between them, suffocating their words—nothing—as if they blamed each other for allowing this to happen. Bethany studied this man in the campfire’s light. He looked sweet, an innocent face matched with short, brown hair, peeking through his beret. The French cliché could have looked comical, but he made it work. He couldn’t have been much older than she, mid-20’s, maybe late-20’s. He could’ve been an artisanal baker in Bushwick or a singer-songwriter in Park Slope.

            “What’s your name?”

            “Ted,” he said, not looking directly at her, but more off to the side towards the fire.

            “Like the bear?”

            “Yes,” he smiled, “and like the American President.”

            “You’re not American?” she surmised.

            “No, Canadian,” she saw the difference now, easy to miss, like Coke and diet Coke, “you’re American I’m guessing, like the rest here,” he said with a sweeping gesture. The other Americans were all watching nature’s most wholesome entertainment, the crackling flames of the campfire.

            “Should’ve been obvious when I assumed you were,” they shared a laugh, dissolving back into silence. 

“Maybe I’ve been going over this in my head too much. Do you think it might be possible she wanted to disappear? What if we’re actually doing her a disservice by searching?“ They were almost all asleep now besides Bethany and Ted.

            “Who knows,” Bethany shook her head and yawned, “if she were really trying to escape from…something, she’d be leaving her whole life behind. Those people would want us to search for her, no?”

            “Well, yes, of course. But don’t you think she has the right, like if you or I wanted to suddenly disappear from the world? I think we’ve all had that desire at some point.”

            “No, I don’t think that’s okay.” Bethany shook her head, “It’s totally irresponsible to run away from your problems, no matter how bad things get.”

            “I’m just saying, she must have some reason for wanting to disappear. Not saying she’s innocent, but…”

            “I don’t buy it. You look deep enough, there’s always someone who cares about you, someone who doesn’t want you to disappear.”

            “But what if she didn’t have anybody like that? What if she was alone, or like cast out of her life or something?”

            “No!” Bethany startled herself with her volume, “There’s always somebody…”

            “Hey! I know you can’t believe a cliché like that!” They laughed again, something she’d tried to do more often, and watched as a young underdressed woman walked towards their fire.

            “Hi. Anyone bum me a cigarette?” she asked.

            “Sorry, can’t help you,” Bethany smiled.

            “Right here,” the beret’d man, Ted, said as they sauntered away from the group to smoke and think together. They could have known each other they were talking so close, but Bethany couldn’t tell—everyone seemed somewhat familiar at this point. But they kept looking at Bethany as though she were noteworthy, as she pretended not to notice their staring. They peered over their shoulders, squinting their eyes at Bethany and whispering to each other as their smoke formed a small, noxious cloud. It was unnerving to where she was about to walk over and say something but they disbanded and joined a group who had just returned from searching the jade-green northern hills. She saw Ted and the young woman exchange hushed whispers with more people at a distance she couldn’t quite hear, all while pointing her way (as if anyone could ignore them). With each new person they approached, the same result. They would look over to Bethany; exchange a few words, some nodding, and then move on to the next person.

            “W—what’s going on…” as the group marched towards her she crawled back a few feet.

            “We found the missing woman,” Ted said, without a smile or even a hint of joy.

            “That’s great! Where was she? Is she alright?” Bethany couldn’t understand why nobody else seemed happy.

            “She’s been over here the entire time,” he replied.

            “I don’t understand. What do you mean ‘she’s been here?’ I thought you said you found her?”

            “It was you…”

“You mean…” she started quasi-hyperventilating. One man turned around and yelled, “Fuck!” as the rest just looked down at the ground as though something would burst out and swallow them and save them from the realization. Ted smiled in recognition of the absurdity they’d just revealed. Ted acted surprisingly calm for a man coming to such an infuriating realization, but maybe he was still internalizing it, maybe he was one of those people who didn’t show their anger.

“But how is that possible?”

            Bethany opted to take a different bus back to Reykjavík and skip the rest of the tour, letting Ted and Jakob and the rest of the group disappear from her life. They couldn’t look at her as she said goodbye and she didn’t want them to. There was nothing left for her in Iceland. The bus ride back she remembered she’d set a date to meet Greta the next day. If anyone could empathize with her in such a vulnerable situation it would be Greta. She smiled as she looked through the rain-dropped window; maybe there was still some good left in Iceland.

            They had agreed to meet at a “young people’s bar,” as Greta called it, that was near Bethany’s hotel. After nearly breaking into tears on the bus listening to “Nowhere Man” Bethany knew she needed something much stiffer than coffee or even a Screwdriver. She figured Greta would only offer encouragement in this regard; as Bethany arrived right on time—ten minutes to Ten—at the Bar Exotique. The first thing that struck her was the enormous marine aquarium behind the bar, which she knew she would inevitably end up staring at during their conversation. The place was absolutely packed with all manner of attractive clientele. They filled the dance floor, which looked like an early-morning subway car crammed with smiling, eager faces, many of which were only on their first stop of the long, long night.

The whole bar was filled with these people almost too beautiful to really exist: stunning women in long dresses, coiffured hair in genderless extravagance. Some of the drinks required almost a half-page of florid description. Phrases like, “subliminally intoxicating” and “creatively crafted,” belonged in a gallery placard and had no place on a drink menu. It was now almost half-past Ten as her foot tapped against the bar.

Bethany thought she saw Greta for a second, but it was just an older tan woman, her green dress scraping across the floor. A couple more minutes went by and Bethany began to wish she’d asked for Greta’s cell phone number. She could go back to the hotel and use the phone there, or even ask the bartender, he seemed like a nice guy.

The lights were beginning to hurt her eyes as she looked at her wristwatch. Greta was an hour late now. She wasn’t coming. Bethany ordered one more Screwdriver. She’d teared up in front of this woman. She’d told Greta things that she herself could barely come to terms with. The least Greta could have done was have a drink with her. But maybe she’d just forgotten, maybe it was a miscommunication, she could have said three days by mistake. These were the questions weighing her down when she landed back in New York. Greta had not been on the plane, nor had she made any new friends. Once again it was just Bethany by herself, and she liked it that way. It suited her. She wasn’t ready for something new, she needed time. Time was going to heal all, she just needed to wait. She watched a live news report while waiting at baggage claim. Two children had died in a school bus accident in Weehawken. She could do nothing but watch, as her luggage travelled around and around the carousel, waiting patiently for her to reach down and pick it up.