Upon landing in Reykjavik, their first stop was a tackle shop. Mara already had their self-drive tour carefully mapped out, with scarce time to spare for side excursions. But Wesley insisted. So, she wandered through the store looking at the purpose-built gear, the minutely bound feathered hooks nestled in neat rows of boxes like an exotic, stillborn hatchery. The store was churchly silent but for the faint creaking of the floorboards as Mara shuffled through the aisles, careful not to disturb the weird gadgets and utensils. They were a language unto themselves, spoken by adherents of a cult to which she was not a member. She kept a curious but respectful distance, observing but not speaking.
The woman who ran the shop asked Wes where he’d be fishing, nodding authoritatively as she pulled a case from below the display of nesting boxes and offered up a neon pink feather. Mara already knew she was wasting her breath.
“Hmm, are you sure,” he said as he humored her selection with that patronizing jokiness in his voice that made Mara grind her teeth. She had to walk away. They wasted another half hour in the shop poring over cases, rifling through gear, testing the patience of the shopkeeper.
Wes didn’t buy anything.
Mara and Wes were avid hikers back home in Upstate New York, spending most of their weekends together in local parks. Mara traveled light, with just a waxed canvas backpack for their two-week trip. Wesley arrived at her doorstep with three cases filled mostly with fishing gear. But this was not a fishing trip. They had agreed they would be sightseeing and hiking around Iceland. Mara planned it for months, soaking up all she could learn about Icelandic history and culture, even reading the sagas and trying to learn some Icelandic, only to find that most of the Icelanders they met spoke better English than she did. Too embarrassed to attempt speaking her mangled phrases at them, she still liked trying to sound out the elvish names on road signs and maps when no one was around.
A fellow nerd and outdoor enthusiast, she was sure he’d be equally excited. But Wes didn’t seem to be enjoying himself. She had considered that spending this much time together might be a suicide mission. They lived apart and usually only saw each other on weekends, so planning a long trip was risky. But, a vacation might be just the thing they both needed. Besides, after years of tire-kicking, road-testing their relationship seemed inevitable. Shit or get off the pot, as her mother would say. She wasn’t sure which one she was doing just now, but at least it was movement.
Since they arrived, though, he’d barely responded to her in complete sentences, except when he droned on about fly-fishing. And, at stop after stop, he forsook the painted canyons, boiled rock, black sand beaches, and glaciers to instead gaze longingly at any and every body of water he encountered. Trying to stifle her growing buyer’s remorse, she told herself he’d lighten up after catching a few fish.
Of course, when Wesley’s long-awaited fishing day finally arrived, so did the deluge. At times, the North Atlantic wind was biting, giving way to illusory lulls of azure that retreated before iron squalls of bone-soaking rain. His first few casts turned up nothing. This was not unusual, she was told, though the wind and rain were little help. If there were trout in this river, even they had better sense than Wes today. And he had, naturally, declined the services of a local guide: those were for noobs and tourists. Her uncle, a lifelong fisherman, traveled the world to fly-fish, and he always hired a guide. But this was Wes’s thing, so Mara didn’t question him.
Instead, she suggested they return to the jeep to check the maps provided by the booking service.
“I don’t need those,” Wes snapped. “I know how to read a river.”
“I know you do. But what could it hurt?”
He grunted something she didn’t care to decipher.
It was going to be a long day. He should have hired the guide, but now they’d be stranded here trying to navigate a strange river in bad weather while his temper spiraled. There were other sections of the river they had permission to, so she studied the maps anyway. Upriver the chart showed several promising pools—if they could find them in the tempest. She persuaded him to follow her in search of those.
Still nothing.
“I didn’t expect a storm. My raincoat is the wrong color. It’s scaring the fish away.”
“Let’s swap coats, then,” Mara offered.
He frowned, beginning to look peeved. “You don’t have to be out here.”
“I know, but I want to be,” she lied cheerfully. Actually, she’d prefer to be anywhere else, but she sensed it was somehow her duty. Back when Wes was planning this day, he had asked if she’d accompany him with her camera in case there were any epic catches in need of documentation. To bow out now would be admitting a loss of confidence.
“Well, it’s cold and wet,” he feigned concern.
“I won’t melt!” she joked, but he obviously wanted to be left alone. “I’ll wait in the jeep and read for a while and let you do your thing.” She smiled encouragement as he stalked off wearing her coat. From the quiet shelter of the jeep, she watched him stomp up and down the sodden riverbank whipping his rod angrily at the obstinate waters. When he slipped and fell, her hand flew to the door handle. Ready to open it and check on him, he pounded his fists into the ground, and his head snapped around toward the jeep. She quickly looked away, pretending not to notice. From the corner of her eye, she saw him march off, leaving his rod in the grass. She turned back to her book. Having witnessed enough of his tantrums, they no longer elicited her pity.
The storm broke in the afternoon, and a herd of Icelandic horses in the field beside the sullen river came to investigate the jeep. Wes was nowhere in sight. She slipped through the electric fence to let them gently snuffle her hands. The herd matriarch sniffed her carefully from toe to head. With curious nickers, the others crowded one another to get a closer look—to have their faces rubbed, their withers scratched, their shaggy flaxen manes ruffled—as they circled around Mara, pressing their velvet muzzles to her cheek in gentle welcome. When she was a girl, she dreamed of being them—feral creatures beholden only to nature, passing her days in a field like this. But she was grown, and human matters beckoned. Evening approached, and Wes returned.
No fish were caught. Not even a bite.
They found their hotel for the night, and she checked in. Taking the room keys, Mara headed back to the parking lot to get their bags from the car.
“I’m going to the bar,” Wes announced and prepared to slink away empty-handed.
Mara’s undies were wet, and she was not enduring them one second longer than she had to. “So… I’ll just lug your bags up to the room so you can go get shitfaced, then?”
“I didn’t say I was going to get shitfaced. I said I need a drink!”
Poor baby. Mara shoved past and out the door. Then again, maybe it was for the best. She was mortified to be seen with him toting his leopard-print rolling suitcase anyway. She’d forgotten about that goddamn thing until she opened the back of the jeep, and there it sat, taunting her. She was dumbfounded when he turned up at her house with it, though she knew better than to argue about it. But, seriously. Was he going for rockstar edgy or hipster campy? Was this some kind of identity crisis? Even though she’d seen him take ordinary clothes out of it, her mental x-ray vision imagined it crammed with nut-huggers and pirate blouses, a la Prince. Sadly, he was no Prince. She wouldn’t be caught dead carrying that thing as a woman, so what on Earth was he doing with it? She grabbed her backpack, slammed the door, and left his bags in the jeep. He can carry his own shit.
In a dry change of clothes and a slightly better humor, Mara found Wes in the nearly deserted hotel bar. He sat two stools down from a well-oiled Englishman in his late fifties, she guessed, speaking too loudly and leaning heavily on the bar. Wes was mesmerized as the Englishman talked at length about work in Iceland’s hydroponic farming industry.
“I mean, think of the possibilities,” he slurred. “We are just beginning to harness the country’s geothermal resources.”
Wes’s limited experience with hydroponics was confined to the weed he grew in his closet last summer.
“And, it’s free energy,” the Englishman’s voice went mushy even as his eyes gleamed.
She already saw the cliff this conversation was headed for, but she masochistically stepped on the gas. “Well, there’s no such thing as free energy, is there?”
His response rapidly devolved into a recitation of well-worn talking points. She did ask for it. Sometimes—more frequently than ever lately—she had the odd sensation of stumbling onto a Monty Python set without a script. Distinguishing between satire and reality had become a losing proposition. A friend had recently sent Mara an article about some professor who denounced skyscrapers as monuments to patriarchy, raving about phallic structures “ejaculating into the sky.” Convinced it had to be a sophisticated joke, Mara replied, “omg, this is fucking hilarious,” only to be denounced by her friend as a bad feminist. No doubt she was. She couldn’t say what that word even meant anymore. But, if feminists saw huge dongs whenever they looked at the skyline, that wasn’t so much a problem for activists, but therapists. Women were never going to shake the “hysterical” stereotype and be taken seriously so long as cranks kept ranting about the psychic threat of urban Godzilla-dicks.
But, pragmatism was passé. New faiths embolden their newest converts while the world warps grotesquely around them. An uncanny valley remains in their wake, a desolation colonized by delusion, grievance, and indulgence—littered with the cinders of books and the heads of effigies. Strewn with the tatters of white flags. She’d always seen herself as a bridge—a negotiator. Now all she saw were the bonfires of bridges and the exultant warming of hands over the flames. She ached to escape, but to where?
She didn’t catch the Englishman’s name, but in her thoughts, she called him Dennis. It was no wonder Dennis and Wes had become pals. Seated between them, Mara smiled, took a deep breath, and reminded herself she was on vacation. And she had to chuckle. What were the chances that here, on an island in the middle of an ocean, at a hotel bar in the middle of nowhere, she’d be outnumbered by grown-ass men who bought into the same dumb-ass creed? If she believed in God or karma, she might think she was being punished for something.
Fucking hell.
“A man doesn’t just push an old woman over and steal her purse without a good reason,” Dennis was saying. “If that man is never poor, he never has to steal anything from the old lady.”
Wes nodded in vigorous agreement and chugged his beer. It was like a flashback to college. She thought becoming an adult meant she’d finally left all this crap behind. Mara knew she should mount a defense—normally, she’d love to take him on—but after a shitty day, she just wanted peace. She drew a slow breath through her nose and held it as the phrase “has to steal” looped endlessly in her brain. Mara exhaled slowly, willing herself to unclench her fists. Maybe Wes was onto something: she could use a drink.
The barman, who had an Eastern European accent she couldn’t place, raised his brows and rolled his eyes subtly at her like he’d also heard the Englishman’s spiel before. She gave him a slight nod, ordered herself a Laphroaig, and sipped it slowly, listening and not speaking. There was a time when Wes would have found all this slightly ridiculous. When he’d have seen it more like an episode of South Park they’d laugh at together instead of becoming a character in it. But his jokes had run dry, his sense of humor had withered, and the Wes she loved had gone dormant over the last year or so. He’d moved on to other outlets for his frustrations—outlets that extinguished his laughter entirely. So, she chose to indulge Wesley’s performative politics as he collected rooms full of vinyl albums and vintage guitars, custom backgammon sets, two classic motorcycles, and, of course, assorted high-end fishing tackle in hopes they might bring him, if not some joy, at least some satisfaction. In his mind, these were not so much the bourgeois goods rhetorically forbidden (but otherwise embraced) by his tribe, as they were aids to meditation in his lifelong spiritual journey… or something.
She shrugged off his mounting criticism of her own “privileged” lifestyle as ressentiment. Wes could ape all the right sounds about equality. But only so long as her flame never outshone his. Mara owned her own house, paid her own bills, cleaned her own gutters, and—though she tried to fake it convincingly—gave herself the other thing he never quite could. On the few occasions when she did expect something of him, like a sympathetic ear after she had to put her beloved rescue dog down, he proved little help. Wes told her over the phone that talking about it was too upsetting for him, though he didn’t even like the dog, and hung up.
Though their sunset hikes, impromptu dinners out, or movies on the couch added diversion to her life, she conceded that he was probably more a buddy than a partner anyway. She began to wonder what exactly he brought to the table. Maybe he wondered, too, because it seemed like it was never enough that she cared about him—that she chose to be with him. They both knew she would never need him.
Maybe it was with that realization that the nagging first began. The easy-going, almost goofy guy she loved to laugh with, spar with, have adventures with—who knew her probably better than anyone else—gradually faded from view, morphing into someone intense and habitually, almost ritually, angry. Though not at her—not directly. But didn’t she think she was paid too much when most people made minimum wage? Did she have to drive that car? Did she need such a big house for just herself? She couldn’t tell if he meant it or if he was fucking with her. After all, she wasn’t Marie Antionette; she lived in a two-bedroom ranch. Should she have slept on a park bench? Would that have made him feel better?
He would chant the verses of his creed like spells of remasculation, his rebukes like a cross held up to some bourgeoise vampire. But, instead of hissing in retreat, Mara just shrugged. She detested martyrdom, turning the other cheek, and the prospect of the meek inheriting the Earth. Everything he denounced she’d diligently built to insure herself against the dependency she so despised in other women—the kind who fawned and preened and spread for their keep, terrified that they’d hitched themselves to an entitled creep who would up and ditch them for the babysitter. Not Mara. She was nobody’s pet. She’d be damned if she’d throw away the autonomy she’d achieved for some bullshit guilt trip.
For Wesley’s part, his protests seemed more metaphysical than practical, and he never once, out of principle, forewent her central air conditioning, high thread counts, or hot tub. His judgements were like passages from scripture: ideals he felt obliged to parrot, but that were too absurd—or naive—to survive contact with the real world. She did what normal people do when subjected to sermons: she ignored them.
The Englishman’s face fell when they rose to find a table for dinner, leaving him alone at the bar. He seemed a good man with his heart in the right place, even if his ideas had strayed a little wide of the mark. The loneliness in his face stirred Mara to pity, and she nearly asked Dennis to join them, partly to salve his disappointment and partly to stave off her own. But, after a trying day, she’d already used up her small ration of tolerance and couldn’t stomach a whole night sandwiched between a drunken Marx and Engels, so she said goodnight.
The last time she saw Wes that drunk was with his backgammon buddy Phil. He was the most unlikely backgammon aficionado one could imagine until one factored gambling into the equation. The guy spent the evening at dinner ordering top-shelf liquor for himself and his loudmouth wife while Mara, Wes’s designated driver, drank sparkling water. The two brashly pontificated on their hobby of perusing yard sales for unwitting rubes who sold precious gold and silver jewelry for a pittance, unaware of its actual value. Happy to unburden these suckers of family heirlooms and hidden treasures, they similarly traveled the backgammon circuits doing the same with overconfident nerds. Mara nudged Wes and whispered to him not to bet any money, but he huffily assured her he knew what he was doing. Besides, Phil was a great friend, and it was all in good fun.
Meanwhile, the pricey drinks were piling up, Wes was sipping cheap beer, and she knew they’d look to split the tab 50/50 at the end of the night. Mara and Wes would get screwed. These people weren’t friends, but Wes refused to see it. Even after he lost his matches, his money, and paid for those fuckers’ expensive drinks. Mara secretly wished those drunks ran into a ditch or a tree on their way home—so long as they didn’t hurt anyone but themselves.
Mara didn’t recall Wes’s dating profile mentioning anything about fishing. There were plenty of profiles featuring men showing off their catches—an alarming number—and she did not respond to those. After all, a man advertising his ability to—what, dangle a hook in the water?—did not impress her. Besides, anyone who would lure something with bait, stick his fingers up its gills, and display said catch like a trophy was immediately suspect in her book.
Wesley’s profile stood out among a cringeworthy lot. Absent were toilet-in-the-background selfies, male duckface resembling constipation, crudely cropped-out exes, and gansteresque cigar poses. Wes read (books), liked the outdoors, and never sent her snapshots of his genitals. He shared her general dislike of children and by his late thirties had managed to defuse any number of ticking biological timebombs—a rare specimen of responsibility at their age. And, perhaps most importantly, he shared her dark, irreverent sense of humor. It endeared him to her immediately and reassured her that he wasn’t a poser like most of the guys she met—guys who flaunted poets’ souls but whose pens (and much else around them) proved curiously barren for all their anguished soppiness.
One guy she chatted with told her a story in which he unironically used the word “patootie,” as in: he slipped and fell on his. What healthy adult male, who’s not a Looney Tunes character, volunteers something like that unless he’s too far gone up his own patootie? Mara imagined that talking to him in the bedroom would be like a doctor’s office or a nursery school.
She could tolerate most things, but she couldn’t stand people who took themselves too seriously or who used their chagrin to bully others into submission. Most of all, she couldn’t abide cowards. When she was a kid, an older boy on her street used to harass her and her sister at the bus stop. Her parents didn’t whine to his parents, the bus driver, or the school. Her father put up a heavy bag in the garage and taught his daughters how to properly throw a punch. That kid learned to mind his own business.
On their first date, when Wes broke the ice with his Polish family’s favorite “Pollak” jokes, she felt for the first time in her life she understood the religious experience because she wanted to shout halleluiah! She’d been saved. In turn, she told him her best “Dumb Blonde” jokes. The jokes weren’t even funny; telling them was. He got it. Her family thought she’d settled, but he seemed like a regular guy, and that was a lifeboat in this sea of Titanics. She didn’t think to ask for more.
One of their first dates was to see a rescreening of The Big Lebowski, a film they both loved, at a local indie theater. The audience was invited to wear their best Dude costumes for a post-screening contest. Wes’s costume didn’t win, but despite the competitive nature of the thing, there was so much Dude camaraderie in the room that night no one seemed to care.
Wes took her fishing a few times their first summer together. Mara grew up in a seaside town and liked being out on the water. They even got an old canoe from a friend of his and repaired it together so they could paddle around exploring the lakes and rivers near her house. But after the first few times out, he brought his rod along, and it became clear to Mara they weren’t spending the day out on the lake together, he was spending the day fishing, and she was just there—assisting, witnessing. It became her job to maneuver the canoe into position so he could make his casts. She eventually stopped going out on the water with him.
Mara never understood the immense pride humans felt in tricking a fish—or any poor creature, really—to its demise. She both loved and dreaded the autumn when the woods surrounding her house and the trails they liked to hike rumbled with the dirge of resounding gunshot. Neighbors said that some hunters simply put deer attractant below their tree stands, sat up there with a six-pack, and blasted whatever happened along. The thrill of the chase was purely figurative to some. Wes would at least release everything he caught, and she never saw him take a selfie with one of them, thankfully, so even though she found it dull and pointless, it was relatively harmless. If that was the way he enjoyed spending his time, she didn’t begrudge him it. She just didn’t want to give hours of her own life over to watching him do it.
The next morning, they drove north. Mara had loaded a book of Norse mythology on her tablet, and she liked telling stories from it to Wes as they drove. So far, he’d taken little interest in them, but she was sure this one would be different. It was about a fishing trip. In it, Thor, despite the giant Hymir’s many protests, went in search of the sea serpent Jörmungandr, rowing out with Hymir to the depths of the sea, taking the severed head of Hymir’s best ox to bait his hook. But when Thor pulled Jörmungandr from the water, Hymir panicked. Just as Thor grabbed his hammer to finish the beast, Hymir cut the line, and the creature disappeared beneath the waves.
“Why would his friend cut the line?” Wes asked. “That’s kind of a dick move.”
“Well, so was beheading his friend’s ox.”
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”
“I don’t know, maybe it was obvious Thor was going to lose that battle, and Hymir was trying to protect him… you know, before he started down a path he’d regret. Or, maybe it’s fate. It says here that, at Ragnarök, the serpent and Thor will meet again.”
“What happens then? Does Thor finally get him?”
She scanned ahead in the text. In the final battle, it said, Thor would become so preoccupied with fighting the serpent that everyone else would be left to fend for themselves. Eventually, Thor would defeat Jörmungandr, but the serpent’s venom would also kill him.
That checks out. “Umm, yes and no… They meet—”
The car suddenly slowed, and Mara looked up. Outside a nearby campground, a dark-haired girl in daisy dukes, skimpy tank with no bra, gas station sunglasses, and sandals stood beside the road with her thumb out. The girl had a mammoth hiking pack at her feet. Despite it being the height of summer, the other hikers they met wore boots, full pants, and a fleece or jacket as Mara did. And bras. They wore bras.
Wes put on the signal and slowed the jeep.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Helping out.”
How chivalrous. Wes had often told Mara he loved that she wasn’t a girly-girl who fussed over her nails and makeup. He appreciated that she was tough, could rough it anywhere, and did a thousand gritty jobs most women balked at. But she wasn’t blind; she saw the way he looked at those waifish girls, and like most guys, he was a sucker for the damsel routine. “What about the half-dozen men we just passed? Couldn’t they use a ride?”
“Oh, please. They’re all murderers and rapists,” he mocked her.
“With you here to protect me?” she parried. “Who says this girl isn’t going to rob us?” Bitch is probably a thief, grifting her way across Iceland.
“She’s just a poor traveler, relying on the kindness of strangers.” That patronizing tone again.
Yeah, it’s their kindness she’s relying on. “Tough shit. She should have saved for her trip like everyone else instead of scrounging off other people’s vacations. Keep driving.”
He drew a slow, deep breath and held it, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Be generous for once.”
For once? Was he for real?
“She just needs a ride.”
“Not in this car, she doesn’t.”
“What’s the big deal?” his voice crescendoed.
“Because this is our vacation, not hers.” And it’s not some polar porno.
“Don’t I get a say?” he whined.
“Yeah, and mine cancels yours out. That’s democracy.”
But he stopped. He was mounting a coup. In her sideview, Mara watched the girl pick up her huge, unbalanced backpack and begin lumbering toward the jeep.
“Don’t.” She spoke calmly, but she boiled inside.
“Or what?” he scoffed at Mara as he unhooked his seatbelt. Like a spoiled brat who’s grabbed the toy he wants from the store shelf knowing his parents won’t dare provoke a floor-writhing fit—or smack the little bastard.
Or what? It was a good question. One that demanded an answer. Or you can get out and walk, she was tempted to say, because I paid for this jeep. When you pay your fair share for once, then you can have a say. But those were taboo words, forbidden words: The words that shall never be spoken, neither in anger nor in jest. She banished them from her thoughts.
Intensely conscious of his fragile pride and of not being the emasculating harpy, Mara earnestly tried to treat theirs as an equal partnership, erring on the side of letting him have his way more than was warranted. Which was maybe why he acted the child more often than not. Or else it was akin to teen rebellion, and he was asserting his nonexistent authority. Either way, Mara had no interest in mothering anyone, and his juvenile behavior was unattractive, to put it mildly. He was allegedly a grown man.
She understood if he couldn’t pay for the trip. But he had a lot of nerve dictating all of its terms. She knew she’d regret allowing his name on the car rental agreement—and she knew she couldn’t refuse. He’d commandeered the jeep the moment she paid for it. He also decided which sights they skipped. How long they hiked. When they stopped. Where they dined. And because she walked a thin line between her dignity and his pride, she humored him.
So, she amused herself instead.
“Suit yourself. But she’s a tiny thing. I bet I have at least six inches on her and probably thirty—maybe forty—pounds.” Now Mara grinned back at him.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
But Wes knew she’d do it. With glee. He was there when that other girl pushed in front of them in line at the concert. She had also foolishly asked Mara “or what?” The smirk vanished from his face; he shook his head and pulled away from the shoulder, leaving the half-dressed girl to make other arrangements.
Wes was a baker at an organic bread company. She liked that about him when they met. Her great-grandfather had been a baker. And Mara had fond memories of long childhood vacations at her great-grandparent’s home in Phoenix. She’d help him bake bread and cakes for the family, tend his fruit trees, work in his garden, or build campsites on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in the White Mountains, where he had friends among the tribe. There was nothing frivolous about that man; he read faithfully, taught himself languages, and even into old age had a work ethic and a curiosity about the world as unshakeable as his German accent. He bore himself with dignity despite a long and painful life and never laid his hardships at the feet of others. Though he passed many years ago, his well-worn leather-bound books were still lovingly kept on their own special shelves in Mara’s library.
Perhaps in her foolish way, she hoped Wesley was a man outside of time—somehow impervious to its endless revolutions. That his archaic vocation grounded him in some wisdom or instilled in him some ethic from a less delicate, more decent age. It was clear now to Mara that those graces, like those ages, had passed and gone, clear-cut like an old-growth forest down to its roots, the upright felled alongside the warped, and burned for neither light nor warmth. From the ash, a weedy coppice grew—stunted, twisted, and bristling with thorns.
“Could we stop soon? I’m hungry, and I have to pee.”
It was well after noon by the time they reached the northern coast, and Mara spotted a sandwich shop. With three more sights and a moderate hike ahead, it would be many hours before they reached their night’s accommodations.
Mara got out, but Wes didn’t follow. She smiled and tried to coax him from his brooding. “Come on, you wanna get some lunch?”
“Nah, I’m good. I have leftovers.”
She did not. They’d been walking all morning, and she was half-starved. The prick couldn’t even sit with her for lunch. Maybe treat her to a sandwich. Wasn’t that the least he could do? Outside at the picnic tables were normal couples chatting and smiling together over soups, sandwiches, and cups of coffee. Mara blinked back tears as she paid for a bottle of water and a snack to eat in the car, where she found him scarfing leftover pizza that sat on the backseat for—she couldn’t say how many days.
Jeez, live a little. You’re on vacation! And you’re plenty generous to freeloading sluts—on my dime, no less—but you won’t even offer me a fucking cup of coffee? Asshole. Always someone else’s hero.
“Gimme the keys,” she said, not waiting for a response.
Their self-drive tour was almost over, and Mara had not yet driven a mile of it herself. Now suddenly, the countryside sharpened and broadened before her. It was as if she had slipped through some fairy door or time-space portal into a prior, truer version of the world, both ancient and otherworldly, primeval and alien. Black deserts, summer ice, hot rivers, and lava fields carpeted in moss, the land flooded with harmonious paradox. Beneath her, she felt its strange contours through the soles of her feet upon the jeep’s pedals, guiding her hands through every tug of the wheel over its rough, unfinished roads, in the pull of its waters as she forded rivers unaided by bridges. An undomesticated, unspoiled place, it seemed perfect in its vacancy, its harmony. The splendid silence filled hours.
Too many hours. In her distraction, she’d put him far from her mind, though he sat only inches away. An inexplicable wave of guilt lashed at her.
“Let’s listen to some music,” Mara offered, reaching for the tuner on the car stereo.
“I don’t feel like music.”
“Why don’t we find a local station?” They often drove in silence because they rarely agreed on music, but local radio seemed neutral ground.
He sighed. “I have a headache.”
He didn’t. He was just sulking again. He put on the sunglasses she hated—the ones that made him look like a narco-terrorist from the ’80s. He had to know they looked ridiculous. That it was nearly impossible to talk to him when he was wearing them.
“Did you hear the one about the blonde who bought an AM radio? She got the surprise of her life when she found out it also played at night.”
He sighed again, louder. In fairness, it was not her best.
“But what if it’s, like, just a 24/7 loop of Björk? Aren’t you curious?”
His curiosity had waned of late, as it tended to with the devout: they enjoyed the sanctuary of certainty and retreated there when confronted by an unscripted world. When it came to music, he shot down Mara’s choices, and chose the concerts they’d attend, as well. Or, rather, she always agreed to join him at one of his selections, and he usually refused hers. Most times, he chose a jam band or jazz guitarist. To Mara, it was the musical equivalent of watching a man fondle himself—boring, self-satisfied, and vaguely contemptuous. Wes would tell her she just “didn’t get it” because she was “not a musician.” He’d begun playing guitar recently, and he mostly got baked and strummed along to his favorite albums. Mara studied classical violin all through school and was first chair in the all-county orchestra every year. She was never going pro or anything, but she could play. Lately, however, she’d taken to downplaying her accomplishments, however small, so she never brought it up. Funny, though, that he never asked. Wes was an authority on lots of things she knew nothing about, but these days he wasn’t satisfied until he also owned the things they shared. She loved music too, but it was just easier to let him have something… anything. She hoped it would appease him, though probably it didn’t. Nothing did anymore.
They drove in silence.
They’d been together for three years now. Mara’s job offered four weeks of paid vacation, and his job allowed two weeks, but she could never persuade Wesley to go anywhere. Whenever she pressed him to come up with ideas, he always brushed it aside. She suspected that he couldn’t afford a trip and, after waiting three years, she should have just gone alone. But, feeling awkward about leaving him behind, she offered to pay his way. Women often expected such provision from men, but even the suggestion of reversing those roles was like reversing the rotation of the Earth. Mostly, she found it amusing that his creed didn’t applaud the redistribution of her unwarranted wealth. Perhaps, she thought, because it was freely offered, and the acceptance of aid impinged on a man’s pride—unlike the seizing of plunder.
Mara pulled into a lookout point with a view across a desolate expanse of lava field toward a distant volcano. Behind it, the northern sun sank low but never quite seemed to set. He was still brooding, his fists balled up in his lap. She sensed a tantrum coming on. She’d become sharply attuned to them over this last year. Most were violent but self-contained. Only once did he threaten her, one night at her kitchen table over burritos. She didn’t even remember what the argument was about or why it upset him. Just that he’d snapped, snatched up his dinner plate, and brandished it before her face like a club. Oddly, she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t even flinch. As he leaned across the table shouting, some inner voice possessed her as she coolly looked up into his eyes and said, I fucking dare you. Then smiled. Something deep within her must have wanted him to do it, so it could do something back. He probably sensed this because he set the plate gently on the table, said sorry, silently finished his beer, and never tried it again. Since then, he kept his anger mostly in check, and she tried not to goad him. But she knew there was a line—and so did he. What nudged him toward it today? That she wanted a turn at the driving? On their holiday? In the jeep she rented, on the trip she paid for? Was that asking too much? Well, too fucking bad.
He pounded a fist on the dash and paused for effect. “I can’t do this!”
“Do what? Enjoy a vacation in an amazing country? Yeah, I feel your pain.” She made no effort to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
“Sit here like this!” he shouted. “I’m like a jackrabbit; I want to run across this field and just keep going.”
So, sitting in the passenger seat makes you a little bitch? Scamper off, then. Who’s stopping you?
Of course, she didn’t say this out loud. Forget valor: discretion was the better part of relationships. She couldn’t speak most of the thoughts in her head to the man beside her. One day she would say it all. One day soon. But they had two more days of this trip. Mara was her own hostage. So, she sat silently, patiently. Brooding. Biding.
When he didn’t make a break for it, she put it in drive.
Mara was impressed with Wes’s sharp wit and unique mind from the beginning. She loved dueling with him over the subjects on which they differed, and there were many. They hardly came at issues from opposing sides. Still, they had divergent enough views that allowed them to debate, at times fiercely, over everything from foreign policy to the relative merits of disco—weighty and frivolous things over which they had no ultimate control but were nevertheless fun to wrap their minds around.
Sadly, none of her friends had the balls or brains to hold their own in a thoughtful conversation. They’d get spooked the second a discussion approached anything touchy and change the subject to “Should I get bangs?” or “You won’t believe what my little Jayden said the other day!” Then Mara would want to break a glass and carve “fuck you” in her forehead with the shards. Instead, she’d silently sip her wine and smile. Pretending to resonate with their vapid interests, concealing her mind behind esoteric replies was insufferable, mostly because Mara couldn’t decide whether indulging them was an act of selfless empathy or a grotesque, two-faced lie. All she knew for sure was that she hated herself when she was with them—hated the disguise she had to wear to pass among them. Worse, part of her suspected she detested them for making her wear it. She politely listened to all of their crap, so why wouldn’t they listen to hers? Wasn’t that the deal friends made?
Back then, Wes was her respite from the hollow obligations of her fake social life. He was brilliant, comical, and easy to talk to, even if he could be exasperating. But then, who worthwhile wasn’t? She wasn’t easy to be with either. It was part of the recipe that made their strange brew simmer the way it did. Their innocent sparring made it feel all the more real. Stripping the mask and exposing herself in front of another human, saying what she really thought, and not having to conceal it under a baroque facade of politics and pretense was exhilarating. It wasn’t a cheap erotic thrill like glistening fleshly nakedness; it was the pure, holy ecstasy of naked, soul-baring truth. That was far more forbidden. No one told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but anymore—not in public, and rarely even in private. It felt surreal. For his part, Wes seemed to get a thrill from it, too—not just the games themselves, but demonstrating his intellect, proving his aptitude, unleashing his wildest ideas.
She respected him even more because he didn’t back down or run for cover. It didn’t matter that they didn’t agree on things or that either case “won.” That was never the point. It was about a good, clean fight. No low blows and no taking a dive. They always commended one another’s arguments, made up, and went out for a beer and a bite to eat.
She loved that about their relationship. She was sure there was nothing they couldn’t work through if they could just hash it out in good faith. They could talk and even brawl about almost anything, for hours if need be, and come to some reasonable understanding—because they respected each other. It was the glue binding their separable worlds. She never even considered that bond could come undone or by what forces it might be dissolved. Experience should have told her that once uncoupled, it was nearly impossible for disparate parts to be reunited, no matter what binding agent was applied.
They came to their last day of sightseeing. Instead of the day planned on their itinerary, they substituted another day of fishing to make up for the first fiasco. Never mind that Mara didn’t give a shit about fishing, and the last thing she wanted to do with her priceless time in this unspoiled country was waste another day watching him try to catch a stupid fish. She couldn’t believe he’d want to sacrifice two whole days to it—that she agreed to it. But, in Wes’s Iceland saga, the arctic wonders they’d seen and the wonderful people they’d met would receive scarcely a footnote. In coming to an epic place, he’d vowed to meet an epic task, which even the old gods and chroniclers knew to be folly. And, ever his patron, no matter how many oxen must be forfeit, she would row out with him again until it, or he, was done.
So, he chose the perfect location and got his permit. It wasn’t raining. Half the day, they drove nonstop, bypassing the sites marked on their itinerary, until they finally turned up a seemingly abandoned gravel road. For two hours more, they drove off the highway until Mara was convinced they’d made a wrong turn. This was yet another futile venture, and they’d probably be lost far from help when they realized it. But, there was no turning back.
Through a high, narrow ravine, the road wound its way toward a basin nestled away in the black volcanic hills. No cars or people passed before their eyes for the remainder of the day. It was late afternoon, and they were perfectly alone. A creek flowed down from the surrounding hills and filled a lake at the floor of the still valley, maybe a half-mile’s walk from where the gravel ended. Unlike the naked hills, the field was carpeted with thick meadow grass, coarse and tawny along the stream banks. Without powerlines or houses, fences, or even sheep, they’d wandered into some primordial realm preserved as it was long before humans smudged their fingerprints across the Earth. Here, time seemed relative—irrelevant in a refuge as pristine as this. Mara found herself besieged by an unbearable, futile urge to seal it off and never leave. To preserve it, and herself, from the chaos that stalked just beyond.
And as they walked along the creek toward the lake, black and blue with reflections, he strode ahead, as he always did. He was in waders and took a shortcut through the icy stream. Where their paths diverged, she got bogged down in marshy ground. He walked on without a word. Without looking back. And she let him go. Extricating herself from the muck, she turned to follow the stream up the valley.
Finding a soft, dry place, she rested in the bristly grass and watched the sky, as crisp waters burbled over worn black stones. The amber evening sun was briefly warming as it rolled across the rim of the hills and slipped finally behind them, sinking but never fully setting. Submerging all in perpetual dusk. The waters ceased shining as they tumbled over their beds. With twilight, the valley’s black cauldron transmuted all that stirred within.
Dozing in the shushing grass, she lay still and waited. She rehearsed. With no witnesses, he would lie to her about the fish he didn’t catch. And she would smile and pretend to believe him, one last time.
I don’t generally write much short fiction. This piece came about because an agent I had a few years ago suggest that I write some stories and submit them to literary magazines. I protested because I dislike lit mags, but eventually relented and wrote this piece under duress. Does it show? Haha.
Discussion Questions:
Was Mara and Wes’s relationship always doomed or did something change it?
Do you prefer to travel with a companion or alone?
Has a partner’s obsession ever caused a rift in your relationship?
I like this story a lot.
Wow. This was so good. Bravo 👏 It held my attention right from the start and I had to finish.