Miles Away from You

by A. B. Rutledge

  It took a literal ass kicking for me to realize that I deserve better things than I’ve been allowing myself.

  And with that knowledge comes the desire to grab all that stuff up and load it back in. My head is still a swirl of ideas, and I’m not even sure where to begin.

  That click of the camera yesterday felt good. Twisting the focus ring, manipulating light. It felt like a good first step, so this morning I tried it again. I draped my camera strap over a lamp, set the focus and self-timer. Then I crouched up on the windowsill and waited for the seconds to pass.

  The light’s shining from behind me in the photo. Me, in your red boots framed by blue curtains and sky. The sunshine was warm on my scalp, and all at once I couldn’t stand my hotel room.

  At breakfast, two more desires clambered up my shoulder blades and down my arms. I found myself desperately aching to capture the mountain view from my favorite table on the patio. I opened my iPad and brought up Sketch Club. Ignoring the gallery of doodles you and I had collaborated on so many nights lying in bed, I opened a new canvas and lost myself for a while, tracing the steepled mountaintops and spindly little trees in my line of sight. I wish I’d thought to bring a stylus, but I did okay with just my fingertips. It took only ten minutes for me to scribble up a messy landscape and siphon away enough tension for me to move on to my next task.

  I took a peek at the Camp Vivian Facebook page. I decided going in that I was not allowed to make myself miserable over it. I would look, absorb, and carry on. No big emotions involved. Sure.

  There are a handful of new faces, but it’s the familiar ones that almost had me in tears. I swallowed my sobs and sat with my hand over my mouth, scrolling down the page. It looks like Tee’s been made art director in your absence, a job that most likely would have fallen to me, had I stayed stateside this year. One of their projects caught my eye. I shut Facebook and Googled around until I found a tutorial and the address for a craft store in Reykjavik.

  And that led me to my second desire: I had to find a way to thank Óskar. The laundry list of favors he’d done for me in the past week was nothing short of ridiculous. And I had a feeling that somehow he was responsible for locating your boots. I mean, how else?

  Plus, it’s not like I have any friends here. I don’t know if Óskar is doing all this shit because of his job, or Mamochka, or general kindheartedness. The kindheartedness seems like a bit of a stretch. Not that he’s hateful or anything . . . it’s more like he normally exists on a level of professionalism that doesn’t allow for human emotion to seep in. At least when he’s not beating up his dad, anyway.

  People like that tend to have a lot of interesting layers. I’ve seen his dark side, so I was kind of dying to see him smile about something. Not his curve-lipped customer service smile, either. A real one, using his whole mouth.

  So, I went to the craft store for fabric paint. At a grocery store I found a bottle of bathroom cleaner with bleach in a spray bottle, a new toothbrush, and some rubber gloves. I also grabbed a free copy of the city arts paper to use as a drop cloth, then headed back to the hotel.

  It was a messy project, and I didn’t want to risk ruining hotel property. Plus, I figured the fumes might be bad. The elevator key was in my pants pocket from last night—I’d accidentally pocketed it instead of returning it to Óskar. So, I went up to the rooftop and spent the next couple hours turning two of the plain black shirts Óskar’d gotten me into DIY galaxy tees. One for him. One for me.

  It’s pretty simple, really. You twist and swirl the fabric, then spritz it with bleach for the stars. After that, take an old toothbrush and use that to splatter blue and purple nebulas all about. I had no way of knowing if it’d be to Óskar’s liking, but I personally thought it looked pretty damn cool. I used the hair dryer in my room to set the fabric paint, then washed them in the sink with a little body wash to get rid of that bleach smell.

  I hung mine up to dry, but Óskar’s got the hair dryer again. That was the longest part of the whole process—getting the damn thing dry enough to give to him. I had a gift bag and tissue paper from my clothing parcels yesterday, so I put the shirt, his pajama pants, and Chucks inside, then headed down to the lobby.

  Atli and a girl were at the front desk, huddled over the Jenga blocks. I asked for Óskar, and the girl walked me to an office around the corner. When I knocked, Óskar said something in Icelandic. I leaned on the door and spouted out a couple sentences I’d learned by poking around on an online translator: “I don’t speak Icelandic. Except for that sentence and this one explaining it.” Sure, it’s kind of a rip-off of a Family Guy joke, but I heard a short, genuine “Ha!” as Óskar opened the door.

  “Your pronunciation is terrible,” he said, gesturing me in. “Come in here, American boy. I have treasures from your home world.”

  “You seem like you’re in a good mood—hey, are those Subway cookies?” I said when he offered me a familiar white paper bag. “Treasures from my home world, huh?”

  I have seen several Subway restaurants in Reykjavik. Domino’s Pizza, too.

  I took an oatmeal raisin and sank into a cushy chair in the corner. “Gawd, this does taste like home. Sorry to interrupt your dinner.” There was a half-eaten sandwich on his desk.

  “It is not a problem. I could use a break from the paperwork,” he said, closing a couple tabs of spreadsheets on his desktop. All of his binders and shit were spread out, too. So I guess what I had once thought was homework was work-work. I wonder how old he is.

  Also on the desk was a framed photo of Bryndis, Karl, and their dad.

  “Wait,” I said. “Is this your office? Are you the manager of this hotel?”

  He nodded, bringing up a browser tab. “Look, one more thing for you.”

  Netflix. He fucking pulled up Netflix like it was no big deal.

  “How?!”

  “Techy computer stuff. You have to create a private network and treeeK your computer into thinking it is in the States.”

  “Huh.”

  “What do you want to watch?” he asked. “Bring your chair here so you can see more closely.”

  “Oscar?” Shit, I said his name wrong. But he didn’t correct me.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to hug you.”

  “No!” He tried to shrink away.

  “Too late!” I crept up behind his chair, threw my arms around his skinny little shoulders, and dropped the gift bag into his lap.

  He ignored my brief embrace and focused on the bag. “What’s this?”

  “Your shoes and pants. And I made you a gift.”

  “Takk.” His ears had turned red. He unwrapped the shirt. “You did this? It’s very cool. I like it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.” He was still a little flushed, which is weird. I imagine with his job people probably bring him gifts all the time.

  “Okay. Well, I just wanted to say thanks for everything. Particularly the boots.”

  “Boots?” he said, picking at his sub. “What boots? Wasn’t me. Must have been the elves.”

  “Elves! I’m not falling for that we-all-believe-in-elves stuff, man. I think your nation as a whole got drunk one Christmas Eve and said, ‘You know what we should all do to mess with people . . . ?’”

  Óskar scoffed. “You shouldn’t offend the huldufólk like that. They are always listening. Quite intelligent creatures—clever enough to know that three cash-strapped, transient women would have little use for a pair of men’s boots. All they had to do, I’m sure, was to get up early in the morning and check the two or three resale shops downtown—”

  “Ah. So they found my boots before you decided we should go all vigilante on the people who stole them?” What was that about? If he found my boots early yesterday morning, that meant he already had them when we went out last night. Did he just need to get me out of the hotel so he could have one of his co-workers sneak the boots into my room?

  “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t always communicate well wi
th elves. But I do believe they also may have hacked our computer systems so that they could charge your room for a rather large finder’s fee. Clever creatures.”

  “Hmm. That IS clever. I guess I’ll have to make a few tiny little galaxy shirts and leave them out in my room like that old shoemaker fairy tale.”

  “That would be wise.” He turned back to his computer. “Do you like It’s Always Sunny?”

  “Uh, yeah!”

  So we watched an episode while Óskar finished off his sandwich and moved on to the cookies. I laughed out loud a couple of times, but the most Óskar ever did was a little scoff every now and then. After the show was over, he told me he had to get back to his paperwork.

  “Well, wait. I have to talk to you about something. And it is work-related.” I leaned my elbow on his desk, as if what I was about to say was all very casual.

  Óskar wadded up his trash and tossed it in the bin under his desk. “Is something the matter with your room?”

  “No. The room is good. I’m sick of it now, though.”

  “You want a different room? They all look quite the same, I’m afraid.”

  “Nah. I just want out of it. I guess I need you to do your concierge stuff, or whatever.” I sighed. “I’ve been thinking about my purpose. The purpose of my trip, I mean.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m here because I lost someone. I mean, you heard me telling the cop about what’s been going on with my girlfriend, right? And I need to, like, process, I guess? Um, she was kinda my first love.”

  That’s how I’ve decided to start thinking of you. Lost. First. Love. It’s poetic, but also kind of . . . normal? Lots of people lose their first love. Maybe everyone.

  “I’m sorry,” Óskar said.

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to unload all my neurotic shit on you. I’ll just say that I’m trying to figure out how to let her go, but, also I want to do something to honor her. I started something, and I don’t really know where I’m going with it.” I told him about the photos I’ve been taking. “Her boots are really important to me. So, thanks.”

  Óskar sat up a little straighter in his chair. He was doodling on a yellow legal pad, and he wasn’t looking at me, like he was trying to give off the impression that he didn’t care. But I’m starting to think that maybe Óskar acting uninterested means just the opposite.

  I’ve never met anyone so benevolently shifty before.

  He glanced up. Brief eye contact, and his voice was really soft. He knew he was venturing into rocky territory. “What was she like?”

  I hesitated, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there, either. He nodded and went back to his legal pad. He was drawing a spiral, or a labyrinth, maybe. A maze.

  “She was electric. She was really extroverted and outspoken and emotional. Just really alive. That’s why it sucks so much to see her in a hospital bed. All these tubes and machines, man. The sound.” I imitated the Darth Vader noise of your respirator. “That’s it. Just this awful, inhuman sound.”

  Poor guy didn’t know what he was getting himself into. It was like once I had given myself permission to talk about you, I just couldn’t stop. I did a sudden 180, switching subjects from Hospital Vivian to the girl once who seemed more superhero than human. “I fell in love with her at a music festival. My best friend, Brian, was supposed to go with me, but he ended up having to bail, so Vivian bought his ticket. And she changed the whole experience for me. Like when me and Bri go to a show, we usually just chill out in the back. But V’s one of those people who pushes her way through the crowd. And she dances and gets really drunk. She talks to strangers and makes friends. She did mushrooms one night and wandered off, scared the shit out of me, but I honestly don’t know if I was worried about her, or just chickenshit about being alone. So when she finally showed up at our tent that night, I freaked out on her. And she was like, ‘You finally like me.’ Because I guess she’d had a crush on me for a really long time. And then she kissed me.”

  Óskar kind of almost smiled at that. His maze had spread out, covering a quarter of the paper. I felt like I was in that drawing of his, and I’d somehow blocked myself in. But my walls were made of words, and I didn’t know how to find the end of the story anymore.

  What if I do something with those photos? Share them somehow? Will people like them? Will they be disgusted, think I’m riding your coattails or somehow profiting from what happened to you? And if you, the strongest, most incredible person I’ve known, couldn’t handle the trolls, how will I?

  “She kissed you.” Óskar’s voice brought me back to the story I was trying to tell. “And then what?”

  “And that kind of freaked me out. Because this whole sexuality thing has always been kind of wonky for me. Like, it’s hard being a mostly straight guy in a really gay environment. Sometimes I just need to escape that bubble. And other times, I feel like I have to project ‘gay’ just to fit in, which is sort of the opposite problem that most people in my life have. There have been long stretches in my life where I’ve been like, ‘Nope, I’m straight, totally straight, la la la,’ and all that. But, like, right now, I’d say I’m queer. Technically, pansexual. And if you want to get really accurate, demisexual, maybe. But I just like ‘queer’ because it’s sort of old-fashioned and hilarious.”

  I paused to see if any of that jargon was making sense to Óskar. But, as usual, his face was a blank slate. I still have no clue where he sits on the Kinsey scale.

  “But, anyway, Vivian always seemed very sure of herself in that respect. Like even when her parents didn’t agree, she was still adamantly screaming, ‘I’m a girl. I like boys.’ She was an activist, and she made this huge, amazing website. She just knew how to make ripples, you know?” I said. “Like, if I toss something out there, it’d just stick to a wall. V could make stuff bounce. She was really creative, and she liked to document everything. I helped her with that—like I helped her brainstorm and filmed her YouTube videos and worked on her site design—stuff like that. She was getting pretty internet famous, especially with other queer kids, but I wasn’t really into that aspect so much. I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, you know?”

  Óskar nodded. Maybe I hadn’t lost him yet. His labyrinth wandered toward the far corners of the page.

  “Um, I guess you could say that we fought fairly often, but that’s not something I want to focus on, or anything. But it does sort of say something about our relationship. I mean, she drove me up the wall sometimes, but I loved her so much that the good outweighed the bad. But now I’m sort of buried in the bad, and she’s not here to dig me out. So, yeah . . . sorry. I just said a lot. And nothing at all, somehow.”

  Óskar raised his eyebrows. When he realized I was finally done blathering, he blinked a few more times and said, “It’s interesting. And I think your intentions are noble.”

  I didn’t feel very noble, but I just nodded along. “Vivian’s website is gone, and that’s pretty much my fault. I don’t think I could ever make anything as good as Mixtape on my own, but I want to do something. For her. For, like, closure. Does that give you a better idea of my purpose? I mean, do you think you can help me with that?”

  “I will figure something out. Could I have some time, maybe, to think on it?”

  “Oh, yeah. Okay.”

  “Thank you again for the shirt.”

  “No problem.” I got a little flustered then, like I had done something wrong or wasted his time. I knew I’d said too much, and I couldn’t take it back. So I just got up and headed for the door before my mouth could get the best of me again.

  As I was leaving, Óskar ripped the maze he’d been drawing out of the legal pad and handed it over to me. Along the bottom, he’d written the word hinsegin. I just looked it up. Icelandic for “queer.”

  No clue if he’s mocking me. Or maybe just giving me another obscure term to throw around. Or, I guess he could be telling me something about himself.

  No clue.

  He called my room a f
ew hours later. “Check youhrr email.” Click, dial tone.

  From: oskar@skogarhotel.is

  Miles,

  I think that Vivian would say that the best way to honor her life is to cherish yours. Do you think she would tease you for sleeping the day away in your hotel room when you are in the most beautiful country on earth? If she were here with you, wouldn’t her boots have already traipsed across black sand, over mossy lava fields, and behind waterfalls? I trust that you would have followed dutifully along, ensuring that all her favorite moments were captured on film or carefully jotted down. Once, perhaps, you might have believed that your life was best lived in the shadow of hers. I hope that it is not too forward of me to say that that is no longer the case. Your purpose, like that of any young man traveling alone in a foreign place, is to find yourself.

  For starters, I would say that you should see more of Iceland. Have I not mentioned that this is the most beautiful place on earth? Get plenty of rest tonight and be in the lobby tomorrow at 8:45. I have booked you a tour, if you’re so inclined. It is a long tour. You will be gone most of the day, but there are plenty of sights to be seen. I would like to tell you more, but I think you might enjoy a surprise. The cost is around $70, and you are welcome to decline if it does not interest you.

  I was thinking about Vivian’s love for documenting, your need to help her, and of wise American expressions. It’s clear you already know that the photos you have been taking are important, and I agree that you should share them, even if it frightens you. I’ve taken the liberty of creating an Instagram account for you, so that you can document your own journey. A fresh start, and nothing too intensive. I am not a counselor, but I would recommend that you use this as a catalyst, a way of moving from helping Vivian tell her stories to living your own. The account name is miles.in.her.shoes, and the password is your initials plus your room number at the hotel.