The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 28} BED OF ROSES, BED OF MOSS

According to local wisdom, the Icelandic summer only lasts six weeks. From the last weekend in June till the first one in August. It is also said that this is the time it takes to fall in love. The only problem is that during this period the ice country is lighted up like Madison Square Garden at a Knicks game, 24-7. There are no shadows, no dark corners. It’s pretty impossible to hide things, like a car or a kiss.

We decided that Gun better not come to the hotel again. We wanted to keep her parents out of it until we had set the date. The Seven Elevens are not the problem, but Balatov may be, and Good Knee definitely is. But my genius girl finds a way. She realizes that one of her girlfriends actually works at Mahabharata, the Indian furniture shop across the parking lot. All I have to do is to sneak out around midnight and take a stroll around our deserted neighborhood, saying hi to the team of seagulls responsible for keeping it clean, before ending up at the back door of the Indian store, where Gun waits in her little red Fabia, fresh from massage class or a night out with the Tarantino Fan Club. She’s got the key as well as the security code she types into the thing on the wall next to the entrance. We make our way through the office and out into the store. In back there are three king size beds on display, all made in India by twelve-year-old carpenter whiz-kids. We’ve tried them all, but the one behind the Kama Sutra room divider is the safest. It can’t be seen from the screaming bright window out front. So after all, we manage to find a semi-dark corner in the bright and shining land. And by making the Hindu handiwork squeak, I can honor the memory of my lost love. Still the bed holds up to all our freaky gymnastics. Those Indian kids really know their craft.

Our nights in the Mahabharata must count as one of the best products of globalization. The Croat celebrates his Indian summer in Iceland with French champagne, Japanese sushi, and muscle-relaxing Thai music. (Gun brings this all, the music bit from her class.) Condoms come from Manchester, England, and cigarettes from Richmond, Virginia, the hometown of our Friendly Father. No, she doesn’t smoke inside the shop. And we have to be careful not to leave any stains or bras behind.

Bit by bit Gun manages to move the rest of Munita’s stuff (head included) out of my brain and redecorates it with her own. Indian rugs and lamps. And bit by bit the summer of sex becomes the summer of something else. The secrecy adds a deeper dimension to it, and I try everything I can to make her ice melt, while her newly-learned carnal tricks easily turn my blood into running lava. I could die happy and be buried in Icelandic soil with a tombstone marked: Tommy Olafs, dishwasher (1971–2007). At the end of each session, Gun sprays the bed with some Indian aroma she found in the office. By the end of the month it smells like the best little whorehouse in Bombay.

“It’s OK, really,” she says. “Nobody buys beds during the summer.”

“Why not?”

“They’re too busy using the old one.”

Apparently Icelanders are a different people during the bright season. They stop doing things they use to do in wintertime, like watching TV, dressing up, and bathing. Until recently TV was even shut down in July. Summer is so short that people really need to focus on it. If the temperature reaches fifteen degrees Celsius (happens three times a year), all the shops and banks close two minutes later, so the employees can go outside and enjoy the heat wave. It’s called “sun-break,” Gun explains. You have to feel for these people. Those six weeks wouldn’t qualify as summer anywhere else. “The Land of the Ten Degrees” is no joke; the average temperature in July is exactly that. Icelandic summer is like a fridge that you leave open for six weeks. The light is on and all ice thaws away, but it can never get really warm. After all, it’s only a fridge.

But one Saturday night in early August, all the beds vanish from the store. Gun calls her friend. They’re getting ready for autumn, she explains. The Sweet Karma line, from the elementary factory in Bombay, is bound to arrive any day now. We break the rules of Torture, and she takes me for a ride outside the city.

It’s a beautiful night, with fancy clouds out west participating in the golden sunset across the bay, and all the winds have gone abroad for the weekend. We drive east and I get that fresh-out-of-prison feeling. Finally I get to see something other than Balatov and bus line 24, Olie’s mole, and Indian furniture. The road takes us past the former home of a famous dead writer. Apparently this is the only house in Iceland that comes with a swimming pool. It was part of his Nobel Prize, Gun explains, though he had to provide the water himself. It’s a museum now. You can see the water he swam in, hoping to eye his strokes of genius, I guess. She’s taking me to the most famous place in the land, Thing Valley, the site of the world’s first outdoor parliament. Actually, I don’t think there have been any others.

But midway through, we realize that our Czech-made car is pretty low on gas. We decide to stop and go for a little picnic instead. We take a short walk in the lunar park and sit down on a bed of stiff gray moss. Unfortunately there are no trees and no Indian room dividers to shelter a hot game of lovemaking from the small but steady traffic, plus the temperature is more fitting for a game of ice hockey. We settle for a kiss and a sip of Kaldi beer, admiring our small red car parked on the roadside, framed by a deep blue mountain under a lone pink cloud. Above it, the sky is almost white. Some long-beaked bird flies-walks-and-flies around us, at a distance he considers safe (well within gun-reach, though), screaming his lungs out. Apparently we’re in his backyard. The conversation turns a bit serious, as it should, I guess, when most of the fucking has been done.

“So, you think you can live in Iceland?” she asks me.

“Well, I guess I have to.”

Silence, punctuated with bird screams.

“So, that’s the only reason?”

“No. I don’t know.”

She looks at me. Her Gatorade eyes are two blue-green hot springs in the rocky field that surrounds us, just like the ones I saw in the photos of the in-flight magazine on my way up here. She’s still looking at me. Does she really want to waste her life on Toxic waste?

“You want me to?” I finally continue.

“I don’t know. I’m just asking.”

She brings out a cigarette. It falls from her shaky hands. She picks it up and places it between her stern lips. Lights it.

“I mean, I guess I have to. For the time being,” I say.

“For the time being?”

Her words come with a lot of smoke. Actually, the smell is kind of nice, out here in the crisp cold air.

“Yeah, I mean…”

“You like it?”

“Iceland? Yeah, sure. I mean, how can you not like this?” I ask, gesturing at the scenery fit for any lunar love story.

“But you wouldn’t want to live here?”

“You mean, for good?”

She nods. My apartment on Wooster and Spring appears in a flash, my flat screen full of Hajduk games, the barbecue restaurant down the street, and my beautiful black Heckler & Koch that I keep under the loose tile in the corner of my bathroom. I wring my right hand with the left, while murmuring:

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about that.”

She takes to her feet, leaving the half empty beer bottle lying in the moss, and heads for the car.

“Hey!” I say.

I catch her climbing the roadside, with two beers in my hand. The bird takes to his wings and hurries across a small pond on the other side of the road. He seems to have rented the whole fucking area.

“Hey, Gun. What’s the matter?”

Her eyes are wet when she turns around. We’re standing in the roadside, beside the car.

“You haven’t thought about that?” she asks.

“No, I mean, you have to think of my situation. I only take one day at a time.”

“What about MY SITUATION?” she says in a rather harsh way and then takes a quick draw from her half-burned cigarette, with shaking lips.

I have nothing to say. I didn’t know this girl could cry. The bird is back, screaming at us. At me.

“I’m sorry, Gun… Gunnhildur.”

“What do you think this is?”

“You and me? It’s been the hottest summer of my life.”

My shoulders shake from the cold.

“Really?”

“Yes. The best summer I’ve…”

“What’s the matter then? You’re still not sure?”

“I mean, Gun. You’re a nice girl and I’m a…”

“You’re a great guy.”

I am?

“You’re a fucking great guy. And now you’re telling me that…”

She can’t finish. Only her cigarette. That she throws away before walking over to the driver’s side of the car.

“So you want to…?” I try to say.

“YES!” she screams, opens the car, gets inside, and slams the door.

I’m left standing alone between the car and Iceland, holding two half empty beer bottles. She seems to be serious about us.

Am I?

A brand new looking SUV approaches from the east. It slows down as it passes by. I’m faced with a Talian looking couple in their fifties. Some gray haired lovers with a heavy tan, wearing dark blue windbreakers over yellow polo shirts. Dead happy bastards. They’re smiling so hard that you have to suspect that the site of the world’s first outdoor parliament must be hosting an outdoors senior group sex festival this weekend. The woman in the passenger’s seat even has her arm around her partner who, come to think of it, looks a bit like a retired hitman.