Willing

by Scott Spencer

  I cleared my throat, looked at her wide, mild face. What would be nicest for me is if we just talked—for a while. I couldn’t believe I had added those last three words. Was I trying to assure her that eventually there would be more than talk? Had I just taken people-pleasing to the next dimension? After a lifetime of sucking up to a series of fathers, was I now going to use those skills on a woman whose job description began and ended with making me comfortable? I wanted to ask her how old she was, but I held off. Why offer her an invitation to lie? Women in this business always say they’re younger than they really are, unless, of course, they were underage, in which case they may tack on a year or two.

  Okay, no problem, she said. She narrowed her eyes, a slightly jokey imitation of a woman grappling with her own passion. I like to talk. She crossed her long legs, gestured expansively. What do you want to talk about? From the outside came the sound of a bus changing gears—a pneumatic wheeze followed by a roar. I glanced at my watch. It was nine in the morning. People were on their way to work. I felt a tug of longing for the simple things of life; like many men without regular employment, I sometimes believed that a strict schedule and a set routine might be the answer to life’s difficulties. Behind Sigrid’s chair, against the white wall, was a six-shelf bookcase, made of lightly stained wood, and filled with books, most of them in English. I squinted, tried to read the spines. L. Frank Baum, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jonathan Franzen. What a great country! I see you like to read. She glanced over her shoulder. Oh those, well, not so much now. I have some trouble with my eyes, and when I read it’s not so good. Trouble with her eyes? Wasn’t that a symptom of syphilis? I wondered if I ought to tell her that I was a writer—but how stupid would that be. Still, books, that would be an opening.

  Do you have a favorite? I asked. Book? A favorite book? No. She shook her head, and I wondered how I could have asked such a ridiculous question. I rubbed my shoulder, as if to soothe a bruise. What time was it in New York? Four in the morning? Five? Deirdre was padding on her way to the bathroom for a sleepy predawn pee. For such a youngster, she had the urination habits of a woman three times her age.

  There’s something inherently awkward in this, isn’t there? I stated this as casually as possible. I had learned from journalism that a certain degree of candor loosened tongues. It never ceased to amaze me. Even people in public life were lonely, longed to be listened to, heard. If you were able to create a mood of safety and frankness, there was no telling what you might hear.

  Yes, awkward, Sigrid said, but how do you mean? I shrugged. What was she asking me? Were we having a language problem? I don’t know, I said, and moved my hands back and forth as if trading one heavy stone for another. This, you know, this. It’s all the same, she said. Life is nothing. We live, we die, we do, we don’t do. Someone might be dreaming us. A big hairy giant sleeping in a cave, this could be his dream. I suppose so, I said. I fought back an urge to cheer her up. I guess life is a mystery, I said. She agreed, but then added A murder mystery. Wow, I said, you really have that Nordic pessimism thing, don’t you?

  You don’t like me? She asked this with a remarkable lack of emotion. Well, no, it’s not that. You’re very beautiful. Thank you. For a moment I was afraid. Of me? I touched my chest, indicating harmlessness. Yes, if the Americans don’t like you, then they send the bombs over and everything—she threw her hands up in the air, made a surprisingly convincing explosion sound. And then they go up and down the streets in their Humvees with machine guns. She made the sound of rounds firing. I had never met a woman who could make those sounds. Don’t worry, I said, I come in peace. Your president is an insanity on the world. I myself was no friend of the president, but I did not want to join in with Sigrid on these matters. I felt as an American I would have to absorb the world’s displeasure with my country. It was part of the deal; you got plenty to eat and plenty of fuel, and in return you had to suck up a certain disdain worldwide. Also, I didn’t want strangers to think that the sort of man who staked himself out against the current president was also the sort of man who went on sex tours. I felt the opposition ought to occupy a higher moral ground, and my telling some Icelandic hooker that I was a liberal wasn’t really fair to other liberals, 99 percent of whom were working hard on their monogamous relationships. Let’s not talk about politics, Sigrid. Do you mind?

  What zodiac sign are you? she asked. Well, Sigrid, I said, I’m a Leo, but I’m thinking of having it changed. She didn’t react, not so much as a smile. What sort of hooker wouldn’t even laugh at your jokes? Was this where her anti-Americanism had led her? Had it completely wrecked her sense of humor? Or was laughter something she kept in reserve, in the spirit of not kissing you with her mouth open, or not letting you touch her left breast, the breast presumably reserved for her true love.

  I noticed something in the corner of the adjoining room, the gleaming reddish back of a cello, propped up in a corner with its strings to the wall. It looked startlingly and ethereally beautiful standing there. I wanted to touch it, this emissary from a better world, this instrument of articulation that allowed us to hear the sad keening sound of the unpolluted universe. Sigrid could see I was looking at it. It’s not mine; it’s my brother’s. He plays in the Icelandic Symphony, but not so much anymore. He is spending most of his time working for the musicians’ union.

  I nodded. So tell me, I’m very curious about my tour leader. Mr. Castle? Yes, what do you make of him? She looked a little uncertain, and I rephrased the question. Is he a pretty nice guy? Oh shit, how lame, if only I could take that back. Interview questions are like tennis serves; you bop a couple into the net, and you lose the point. But Sigrid answered. She had to; it was part of the job. Mr. Castle is the boss but he doesn’t act the boss, I like that. Well, that’s good, I said. I’m glad to hear he’s treating you right. She seemed not to understand or maybe wasn’t listening. She picked a small piece of flesh off her lower lip and then placed it on her tongue.

  Would you like to have a coffee? She rose from her chair, loomed over me. No, no, I’m fine. Water? Okay, that would be great. I had to rock back and forth a couple of times in order to get up, and then I followed Sigrid into her kitchen. It was small, modular, spotless. We were on the third floor of her building. The window over the sink looked out onto a parking area, enough for about 100 cars, most of them gone. An old man in a blue jumpsuit was cleaning the cement, hosing it down with water so hot that half of him was obscured by a cloud of steam. Here heat and hot water are all free, Sigrid explained to me. (Maybe she had once been a tour guide. Her English was certainly up to the task. But a day of dragging idiot tourists around, and what do you have to show for it? A sore throat, a splitting headache, and a hundred bucks?) In winter, Sigrid said, we use hot water instead of shovels to clean the snow away. She opened the refrigerator. There were a couple of withered apples, a bowl of something covered by a crumpled dome of aluminum foil, a can of Fanta, and a bottle of water. So I see the bottled water craze has come to Iceland, I said. I would have thought the water here would be very drinkable. She pulled the bottle out, opened a cabinet, and took out a glass. It had a red stripe around the middle. Our home water is clean but…She made a childish face of displeasure, pursing her lips, and wrinkling her nose. In my duress, I found the gesture unbearably poignant and alluring. What? I asked. It tastes bad? Yes, maybe like someone has put an egg in it.

  There were four red chairs around the blue enamel kitchen table. Sigrid seemed to understand that, for now, at least, I felt more secure talking to her in the kitchen; she gestured for me to sit, and then she opened the can of Fanta and sat across from me. She took a small sip, and shivered with pleasure. Skål, I said, lifting my water bottle to her in what I assumed was a universal Scandinavian salute. You’re a nice guy, she said. Perhaps you would like to wash off. My instinct was to quickly say No, but, in fact, I felt disheveled and stale from the flight, and the thought of a shower was wildly appealing to me. Maybe later, I said, at which she shrugged. The wa
ter tasted transparent and cold, as if it had just come off a glacier. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. My face felt coarse. It made me think of the other men, back at the Royal Reykjavik, naked by now, banging away like conquering heroes, trying to plant some deep romantic kiss on some woman’s mouth while she thrashed her head back and forth, trying not to offend or irritate, but nevertheless hoping to keep a modicum of personal privacy and dignity for herself. Hoping.

  The light here is so strange and beautiful, I said. In Iceland. I gestured, waving vaguely in the air over my head. The sun, I guess, it comes from a different angle. She took another drink of orange soda. I noted that she had a bit of a sweet tooth. What did that mean? Younger than she looks? Recovering alcoholic? Junkie? This time the sip was not so restrained, and a moment later she burped, rather loudly and without the slightest self-consciousness. I was trying not to think of this human being in purely sexual terms, but that belch seemed to suggest she would be an uninhibited lover, a maker of deep animal noises. This was a lot more difficult than I had imagined. Being exhausted didn’t make it any easier, that was for sure. Lust was like a fever, more likely to overtake you when your defenses were down, when reason, self-control, and all the other departments of superego were closed for siesta.

  Do you have any other brothers or sisters? I asked her. Yes, two more, both older. A brother, an engineer. He works at the geothermal plant. She rubbed her fingers against her collarbone. And a sister, a doctor, but she doesn’t live here exactly now. She is with Médecins sans Frontières. Doctors Without Borders? Yes. Wow, that’s wonderful, that’s really fantastic. Sigrid shrugged. There’s plenty of sick people right here in Reykjavik. But, I insisted, Doctors Without Borders, those people are really great, they take incredible risks and they do so much good. I was about to add that I donate a hundred dollars to them every year, but it was enough that I had already said wonderful, fantastic, and incredible in the space of three seconds, I didn’t have to go to any further lengths to convince this woman that I was a goofball.

  Well, as you can see, Sigrid was saying, I am not the one in my family who has made a big success. How about you? Brothers and sisters? No, none, I’m an only child. But I do have four fathers. Sigrid nodded in-curiously. She might not have quite understood what I had just said. A seagull landed on the sill outside the kitchen window, peered in for a moment, tilting its head left and then right, and took off again. Yep, I said, four of them. Sigrid leaned forward, placed her hands on the table, and folded them, like a country person settling down for a good long talk. Are you married? I hesitated a moment before answering. After all, I could be anyone I wanted to be. It wasn’t quite the elasticity of identity of being in an Internet chat room, where your gender, age, and appearance could be matters of pure fantasy—and, yes, I had indulged myself in that sort of tomfoolery during early visits to cyberspace—but being here in Sigrid’s kitchen—if that was really her name, and if this was even her apartment—offered me an opportunity to, if not reinvent myself, then, at least, to make a few judicious revisions. Why not married? Or I could be a widower. Why not a brief marriage to an actress who was stabbed to death by an obsessed fan? Why not a couple of great kids? Yes: Brendan and Collette. Brendan skateboards and is dyslexic; Collette is only eight but is building a harpsichord. Yet I lacked the energy for invention, at least right now. Maybe I could be that person with the next woman, in the next country. For now, all I could do was shake my head No, and when she asked And no children? I shook my head again, but this time with my eyes lowered, as if I were ashamed.

  Nobody wants to have children now, Sigrid said, in her husky melancholy voice. I think the world ends with us. She pinged her fingernail against her soda can. Some of the sea birds, they break their own eggs because nature informs them that next year there will be less food. The scientists have studied this. The mother birds abort the unborn ones because of the scarcity is coming. She shook her head, impatient with her own English. You understand? she asked. Yes, yes, I think I read something about that—which was untrue; I had never read about that, not a paragraph, not a word, not a letter—and then I added A year ago. Sigrid stood up, so suddenly that I tensed. For a moment I thought she was coming after me, was going to take me by the throat and throttle me for pretending I had read something about birds destroying their own eggs. But she was merely making another visit to the refrigerator. Time for my vitamins, she announced. I didn’t turn in my seat to watch, but listened to the refrigerator door open, the sound of plastic moving over the metal bars of refrigerator shelving, the squeak and rasp of a cap unscrewed from a bottle…What certainty did I have that at any moment two or three Viking thugs weren’t going to come charging in and beat the living hell out of me?

  Fear! Everything in the Fleming presentation had been reassuring, designed to conceal the one dark red unspeakable fact that all of us were engaged in a criminal enterprise, all of us were violating if not the laws of Iceland—who the hell knew what was permitted by law on this hunk of loamy lava?—then some other set of laws, the ones that governed how people are meant to treat each other. Sigrid reached over me and picked up the water bottle, swigged from it to wash down her vitamins, and then, when she put the bottle back onto the table, she remained behind my chair, and a moment later she lay her hands gently on my shoulders, rubbed them a couple of times, and then began to massage my shoulder, neck, and back. Pleasure trickled through me, slowly. You’re nervous, by which I took her to mean tense. I rotated my shoulders, moved my head back and forth to stretch out the muscles in my neck. I guess so, a little. The gull was back in the window; this time its visit was even more fleeting. Sigrid’s grip on me was strong, commanding, impersonal. But why did it even have to be personal? What did I want? You turn on the radio; it plays music; you like the music. What difference does it make that the disc jockey in some radio station has no idea who you are or even if you are listening? And of course whoever made the music doesn’t know you, you have never crossed his mind, except perhaps as a possible customer, and that’s not you, that’s just the money, but who cares? The important thing is you hear it; its having nothing to do with you is beside the point. All right, up you go. She cupped her hands under my arms and pulled up on me. A nice warm shower is what you need.

  It seemed frankly churlish to refuse. Wasn’t her life difficult and complicated enough without having to put up with my irregularities? What was I supposed to tell her? That I had come on this trip as an observer? That I was not the sort of man who would have sex with someone he didn’t love and who didn’t love him? Come on! I could adopt the persona of the shrinking violet, a sort of ambivalent touch-me-not who signed up for worldwide debauchery but could not exactly bring myself to act on the opportunities being offered me. Who would that guy be? Anyhow, I was already standing, already allowing myself to be led like a blind man out of the kitchen, into the little T-junction at the center of her apartment—kitchen behind, living area ahead, bedroom left, bath right. Yeah, that’s a good idea, I said. And then I had a temporary solution to my dilemma. You’re not going to get in there with me, are you? My God, that sounded much, much more lame than I was prepared for. And this is what I was saying without a persona; this was really me. I had no idea I was that lame. It was like catching an unexpected glimpse of yourself in a mirror and seeing, really seeing, for the first time what’s happened to your ass. Just for you alone, Sigrid said, with a little laugh in her voice. I woke at first light and bathed and drove to the hotel. It struck me like poetry. What an extraordinarily beautiful thing to say: I woke at first light and bathed and drove to the hotel. Wouldn’t it be wild if I somehow fell in love with her, and she with me, and I spent my life in Iceland? And why not? English was widely, if stiffly, spoken; the weather wasn’t as brutal as the country’s name implied; my occupation was certainly portable, and, in an environment without many celebrities or trendsetters, I might be able to produce pieces that actually had some value.

  Sigrid’s bathroom was sm
all, warm, and damp, and had a faint sulphuric smell, not altogether unpleasant—the odor was not so much rotten as rugged. Mica, quartz, fossils, cold hard mud. Feeling prim almost to the edge of panic, I looked for a way to lock the door, but there was none. What kind of country had bathroom doors that did not lock? There was no tub, just a stall shower, flimsy, with a shower curtain decorated with daisies. A little tangle of hair blackened with gooey shampoo was caught in the drain at the bottom of the stall. The showerhead was rusty from the mineral-rich water that flowed through it. The hot-water faucet had a red dot on it, the cold a blue. I turned them both halfway and quickly peeled out of my clothes. There was a rough, sky blue cotton towel resting on a Sesame Street footstool; I assumed the towel was for me and the stool must have belonged to whomever the missing car seat was for. Yet she had said she had no children, her friends had no children. Back home, childless couples bought toys, games, treating themselves as if they were their own children. But car seats? I didn’t know; I would never know. That was the thing with a hooker—everything but the body was a lie, and then the body turned out to be the biggest lie of all.

  The stinging hot shower was hard and sulfurous. Memories of Norman Blake came streaming out the showerhead. If I could choose one thing in my life to have not happened to me, if I had veto power over only one thing it would probably be my mother’s third marriage and the introduction of that disappointed bully, that vengeful and resentful, hard, hairy, and indomitable man, who, on top of all the pettiness and capacity for sudden cruelties, had a hellish kind of breath, like a pile of manure set on fire. Even now, years later, I could not eat a boiled egg or egg salad without enduring a grim reminder of my mother’s third husband, with a cock like a sock in its sleeping state, a cock like a Nazi salute when it was getting ready to rumble—this terrible, unwanted knowledge was mine thanks to Blake’s ceaseless self-display, his lunatic lack of personal modesty. In the shower, I reached for a block of dark brown soap. I could hear music coming from another apartment, an American black voice singing Good morning little schoolgirl. Who was that singer? Muddy Waters? Buddy Guy? Suddenly the music cut off. Whoever had been listening to it must have realized he’d had it on too loud. The soap barely made any suds…suds…very strange word, something childish, even primitive about it. The bar of soap leaped like a toad out of my hand and hit the floor. As I bent for it, I imagined momentarily being assaulted from behind, my head crashing into the noisy metal wall, and when I was upright again I thought of Sigrid in the next room. What must it be like for her to have a complete stranger showering in her apartment—if this was her apartment—and to know that, if I so chose, I could enter her body? What ineluctable sequence of abuses and addictions had led her to this moment? My heart filled with pure, blind pity. Was she out there wringing her hands, pacing, hoping that I would somehow have a heart attack and die? Or was she letting her mind go blank, just hitting some internal DELETE button over and over until nothing was left?