Rules of the Game (57 page)

During the day, I watched him work in the studio. That night, Alicia snuck into my bed.

The next morning, at 6, her grandfather burst in the room. He took a look at us cringing under the sheets, then said to her, “I knew you were black-topping Neil.”

He let out a loud, playful laugh, then turned to me. “Come outside, I want to show you something.”

I followed him through the house and out the door. We stood in the grass and he pointed to the dawn sky. “Right there,” he said. “What do you see?”

“Clouds.”

“Look closer, man. What do you see in the clouds?”

They looked like smoke puffs, but he seemed so excited I didn't want to let him down. “God?” I asked.

“Yeah, God,” he said, pointing at a thick wisp of cloud extending high into the sky. “You can never tell what He has in store for you. He moves in mysterious ways.”

“Yes,” I told him. “He definitely does.”

I've made a horrible mistake.

I got drunk and may have married someone the other night.

And now I'm worried I'll never see her again. Or maybe I'm worried that I will see her. I'm not sure which would be worse.

I don't know her age, where she lives, or her last name.

Well, I suppose I know her last name now.

I'm not the type to blame other people for my mistakes, but if I had to point a finger, it would be at Ragnar Kjartansson. All you need to know about him are two things: One, he's the singer in Iceland's only country band. Two, he's the first male ever to graduate from Husmadraskolinn, a school for housewives.

He is my tour guide here in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, and I don't mind saying that he's not a very good one.

The night in question began at Tveir Fiskar, which either means Two Fish or Three Raincoats, depending on what time of day you ask Ragnar. It's one of the only places where they serve whale steak and whale sushi in Iceland. They also serve rancid shark, which is best eaten in bite-size pieces and washed down by a shot of Black Death. The former tastes like belly-button lint, the latter like Windex.

“We must drink,” Ragnar slurred, handing me my third shot of Black Death, “to being pathetic.”

He had been on a bender for months, ever since his girlfriend, Disa, left
him and took the TV. Without the TV to distract him, he explained, all he did was think about her.

“I should have married her,” he went on, bobbing his head into mine. “You only get one chance at perfect love.”

After dinner, as Ragnar struggled to pull a red wool sweater over his head, he suggested, “Let's go drinking.”

“Isn't that what we've been doing all night?”

“That wasn't drinking. I'll show you drinking, the Iceland way.”

Evidently, drinking the Iceland way meant vomiting under a table, urinating on a bus, getting in a fight with a teenager, and passing out in a crosswalk. Because that's exactly what Ragnar did over the course of the next three hours.

“Get up.” I nudged him. It was October in the frozen north and he was wearing just a sweater. “You're going to die out here.”

“Go on without me,” he mumbled. “The bars of Reykjavík need you.”

Even in his drunken stupor, he was trying to make me laugh. I hoisted him to his feet and brought him to the safety of the sidewalk. And that's when I saw the girl I would marry that night.

She was accompanied by some twenty tourists, all of whom were attending Iceland Airwaves, a music festival I was in town to write about. I recognized a photographer in the group and stopped to talk.

He introduced me to his friends. The only word I remembered was “Veronika.”

She reminded me of the new wave singers I used to fantasize about in the eighties. She was petite, with spiky black hair, heavy blue eye shadow, laughing eyes, and full lips parted slightly to expose a perfect row of white. As soon as I saw her, I was smitten.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked, gesturing to Ragnar.

“Yes, he's heartbroken.”

“I wish my heartbreaks were like that.”

“Yeah, he does look pretty happy for a guy who's lost his perfect love.”

“I've never had perfect love,” she said. “I wouldn't even know how to recognize it.”

“You don't have to recognize it. You just know.”

One of the things I've learned from traveling with rock bands—besides how to play FIFA World Cup soccer on a moving bus, survive without showering for seven days, and sleep inches away from five people who also haven't showered for seven days—is that groups move at the speed of their slowest member.
And, considering that most of Veronika's friends were drunk, they weren't going anywhere soon. So I suggested slipping away, finding something interesting to do, then rejoining them in a little while.

“What about Loverboy?” she asked, gesturing to Ragnar.

“He can be our third wheel. Every date needs one.”

She looked at her friends, then smiled her consent. We backed away wordlessly, with Ragnar wobbling behind us.

“It's hard to be loved,”
he began singing.
“Baby, I'm unappreciative.”

“No wonder she broke up with him.” Veronika laughed. I liked her. In order to be alone with her, however, I'd have to dismiss my hapless tour guide. I knew he'd understand—or, more likely, forget. So I flagged a taxi and stuffed him inside.

As I closed the door, he grabbed the bottom of my jacket. “Don't say no to love,” he slurred. “Or you will be pathetic like me.”

“I feel bad for him,” Veronika said as he sped away.

“Don't feel bad for him. Being pathetic is an art form to him. He comes from a very accomplished family, so he distinguishes himself by being hopeless at everything: the worst drunk, the worst country singer, the worst boyfriend, the worse housewife.”

“I suppose there's a sort of dignity there,” she said.

Downtown Reykjavík on a weekend night is a combat zone, with bottles smashing against walls, cars careening onto sidewalks, and hordes of drunk teenagers zigzagging the streets. There's no malevolence in the air, like after a rugby game in England, just an absence of control.

Veronika and I found refuge in a small line outside the door of an after-hours club. She was from the Czech Republic and had been living in New York City for the last year. That was all I managed to learn before a guy with an unbuttoned overcoat, spiky brown hair, and a smooth face ruddy from the cold staggered in line behind us. He had a backpack slung on one shoulder and a big alcoherent smile on his face.

“Okay, okay,” he blurted, barreling into our conversation. “From where do you reside?”

“The States,” I replied curtly.

“It is beautiful for spacious skies,” he said earnestly, as if he had just spoken magic words that would win him the approval of any American. “And may I ask as to whether you are male friend and female friend?”

“We actually just got engaged tonight,” I said, hoping that would extinguish any hope he had of hitting on Veronika.

“That is blessed news.” He smiled sloppily. Most people in Reykjavík were nearly fluent in conversational English, but he spoke as if he'd learned the language from technical manuals, greeting cards, and parliamentary papers. “For what measure of time do you date?”

“Seven years,” Veronika told him, playing along. “Can you believe it took him this long to step up? He's scared of commitment.” Definitely a keeper.

“That's because she's always nagging me about the trash and the cigar smoking and my checkered past.”

“I can help,” the guy said. “I can help. My surname is Thor. And I will marry you in holy wedlock.”

“That would be great,” I told him. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a connection with Veronika.

“Okay, okay, I need ring for ceremony,” Thor said. He swung his backpack under his shoulder and began digging through it. “You are sure?”

“It's my dream come true,” Veronika said, sighing.

“Okay,” Thor prattled on. “This will be okay.” He scooped a bottle of vodka out of his backpack, unscrewed the cap, and worked furiously to remove the metal ring around the neck. It snapped apart.

“Wait, wait.” Undeterred, he produced a cell phone from the bag and slid off a metal loop that appeared to be an empty key ring.

He seemed so intent, so determined, so excited. We enjoyed watching the show. It was as if he'd been sent by a higher power to keep us entertained and prevent the awkwardness that usually occurs when two people who like each other hang out for the first time.

He said something in Icelandic to two guys in line behind him and they moved into position on either side of him. Then he cleared his throat and began:

“Dearly beloved, we gather today under God and witnesses to join pleasing couple in bonds of holy matrimony, okay, okay. Pleasing couple, I forecast your happiness for infinity. Your love is like sun shining in morning. It makes light of world.”

At first, I thought he was simply playing the clown to amuse us. But as he went on, he seemed to be struggling, with all the soberness and poetry he could muster, to make the moment meaningful.

After five more minutes of grandiloquent speech, he furtively pressed the
key ring into my hands, then addressed me: “Do you take this woman to be your wife in holy wedlock? Do you guarantee to love, honor, and protect her until death parts you apart? Do you guarantee to love her and only her in wellness and in health, okay, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do you take this man to be your husband in marriage? Do you guarantee to do all the things I just speeched to him, okay, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” he intoned loudly. “You may kiss on the bride.”

As Veronika and I made out, I welled up with gratitude to Thor, who was already busy pulling something else out of his backpack.

“I insist on pleasure of gifting you with first wedding gift, okay, okay,” he said. He then handed us each a small crescent of chocolate wrapped in blue-and-silver foil and made another rambling, romantic speech full of okays.

We thanked him for the passion he had put into the ceremony. And he beamed, proud of himself, then reached again into his backpack and pulled out a pen and a notepad.

“Please give to me your mail address, okay, okay,” he said.

We both complied, figuring that he wanted pen pals.

“Make sure you spell full names with correctness.”

He folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket, then nodded happily and announced: “I will send certificate of marriage in mail, okay, okay.”

I blanched for a moment, then realized he probably just meant a greeting card. He'd definitely gotten carried away with the whole charade. “What do you mean?” I asked, just to make sure.

“I am priest, of course,” he said, as if it had been obvious the whole time. “I have certification with church. It is okay. We accept all religions.”

Veronika and I both looked at each other, the same thought running through our minds: What have we just done?

Yet, oddly, neither of us told him not to prepare the certificates. He was so proud of himself, like a child who's taken his first shit on a grown-up toilet, that we didn't want to disappoint him. If he really was a priest, which he kept insisting, then it was too late anyway.

Once inside the club, we bought our priest a beer in exchange for his services,
then snuck away to make out in the upstairs lounge. It was the most romantic first date of my life—and hopefully not the last first date.

There was little point in hanging out at the club, since we had no interest in talking to anyone else, so we left to find more adventure.

When we turned the corner, we saw Veronika's friends still standing on the sidewalk, exactly where we'd left them. We talked to them for a few minutes, but the conversation was awkward. They'd been standing there, doing nothing, while we'd been through so much. Our lives had, quite possibly, completely changed. So, once more, we slipped away.

She placed her hand softly in mine and we walked to the Hotel Borg like a couple on honeymoon. Upstairs, we collapsed onto the bed. It seemed obvious where this all was leading.

So obvious that, for the first time all night, Veronika began to get nervous.

“I've had the best time,” she said between kisses.

My heart raced. I felt the same way. She continued: “This night is just too perfect. It can't be real.”

We kissed again. Then: “I have to go.”

And then: “This is too much.”

Finally: “I knew you were going to try to do this.”

It was clear what was going on. The specter of sex had cast gender roles on us. I was a man, moving toward pleasure, and she was a woman, moving away from pain. The same fear men have of approaching women, most women have of going past the point of sexual no return with men.