Vienna (28 page)

A lot like med school.

An hour later streetlights reached to the sky, glowing off the aluminum outliers of Reykjavík. A shimmering city on the edge of the world. Venus chasing the cobalt postscript of sunset.

You always said you wanted adventure.

“Wake up, Vienna. We're almost home.”

The girl stretched in her seat. “The city is very pretty.”

“It is.”

A quiet hum, and then “Kubla Khan.”

Justine found herself delighted to follow the simple link in Vienna's thoughts.

Back at the Radisson, Vienna went straight to the shower. She emerged thirty minutes later, mummified within one of the hotel's oversized towels. She held two cylinders of metal.

“The small one is definitely gold,” Justine said. She ran a damp cloth over Vienna's arm, pulling away dried blood Vienna had missed, revealing a long but shallow cut. “Eight ounces maybe.” She poked Vienna gently. “Enough to buy a ticket home.”

“I never thought about that.”

Justine laughed. “Liar.” She wiped a film of antiseptic gel over the cut. “Foosh.”

Vienna smiled. “I'm as clumsy as your father.”

“I think he has you beat.” A last check to make certain the cut was clean. “No scratching, okay?”

“Okay.”

Justine picked up the larger of the metal cylinders. “Any idea what this is?”

“Silver?”

“Not enough luster.”

“Tin?”

“As good a guess as any,” Justine answered.

“What does it mean?”

“I don't know.”

“The density of tin is 7.287 grams per cubic centimeter. The volume of a cylinder is pi radius squared by height.” Vienna's pale eyes lost their grip on the room. “If this cylinder is .5 centimeters in radius and just under ten centimeters in height, then it contains fifty-seven grams of tin.”

“I'm no good with the metric system. Does it feel like fifty-seven grams?”

Vienna's face clouded. “I'm not sure about weight, but I think the radius and height are pretty close.”

“The hotel kitchen will have a scale. What about the gold one?”

“How did you know I would miss my period? I feel stretched apart and I don't like it.”

Justine brushed her hand through Vienna's hair, working out tangles. “It's not serious, unless you think I got you pregnant.”

The confusion on Vienna's face ended in the same exhalation of self-conscious laughter Justine had heard back in the Brussels apartment. “I don't think so,” she said.

“I have a question.” Justine said.

“Okay.”

“How did you get from metal cylinders to telling me you missed your period?”

“You knew there would be a hidden compartment in the manikin. You knew where to find me when I left that man's house. You knew I would miss my period.”

“All guesses.”

“Then tell me how you guessed.”

“You've been under constant stress since your friend Cecile invited you to Holler. Anxiety plays havoc with hormones. Not enough estrogen is produced and before you know it: hypothalamic amenorrhea. Ovulation is missed.”

“It would be a lot less stressful if you…” Vienna let the sentence fade away.

“If I treated you like a sick girl?”

“I didn't mean it that way.”

“I'm not going to cut you any slack. You don't need it and I make a rickety crutch.” The final truth of her days at Stanford.

“But when two people love each other, they help each other.”

“When two people love each other, they depend on each other to hold the howling wolves at bay.”

Vienna looked away. “Why do I never understand you?”

“I think you do.” Justine read the exhaustion in Vienna's eyes. “For now, back to the cylinders.”

“They're the same radius. The density of gold is 19.32 grams per cubic centimeter. The cylinder is less than one centimeter long. Nine grams of gold.”

“Tin and gold. Does it mean anything to you?”

“I have the
Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of Chemistry and Physics,
Sixteenth Edition.”

“Not exactly light reading.”

“There was a copy in the Cart House. I hide there when I'm scared.”

“Does it have anything for us?”

Vienna's lips moved. A minute later she shook her head. “Both elements have been known since antiquity. Tin is the ancient alchemical symbol for Jupiter. When you bend it, it is said to cry as the crystal structure breaks. Under thirteen degrees centigrade it forms an allotrope of gray dust. It bonds with gold under certain conditions.”

“Hardly earth-shaking.”

Vienna's voice went more quiet than normal. “I betrayed you.”

The melodrama would've been comical coming from anyone else. “What happened?”

“I called Lord Davy. I told him you left and I told him why and he said to take apart the manikin.”

Shit.
“Was he surprised to hear from you?”

“I don't know.” She looked down. “He said not to tell you about the call.”

“Why did you?”

“I think this is one of those things lovers share?”

“It is. Give me a second to think.” Justine rubbed her hand over her tattooed lizard. “Lord Davy holds rank even within the powerful company he keeps.”

“Maybe.”

“No doubt about it. He bent the rules enough to get an orphaned girl into a forest mansion that very few people ever see.” She paused. “I want you to text him tomorrow and ask him where the place of righteous murder is.”

“The phrase from the code.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Lina Zahler. Never forget her.”

“I don't understand.”

“My guess is the place of righteous murder is where Sisi was killed by Zahler's friend. I bet Davy knows it by that name. Your note will test if he is hiding things from us.”

“It's inappropriate to deceive a member of the peerage.”

“It's something we have to do. I assume you know where Sisi was killed?”

“Yes.”

“Will you save me the trouble of looking it up?”

“Don't you trust me to do this?”

“I do, but I expect Davy to e-mail me the answer. His way of telling me not to drag you into doing my dirty work. Whatever happens, he will protect you.”
Not so much me.

“How do you know?”

“The floor in your apartment. No patterns, no seams. No geometry to poison your mind. He has been watching over you, Vienna.”

Vienna shrugged, as if to say she didn't think much of his efforts. “Empress Sisi was stabbed on the promenade of the passenger piers of Lake Geneva. September 10, 1898. She didn't die until she was on the boat. Her corset was so tight it staunched the flow of blood.”

“Europe certainly has its share of exciting history.”

Vienna's lips pinched. “I'll ask the American Indians about that should I ever visit your country.”

She was too tired for this.
“Touché. Vienna, it's late, and you had a long day. Bed time.”

The girl's expression immediately changed. “You're not mad? I did okay?”

“You did great.”

Vienna tugged at her bathrobe. “Why didn't you yell at me when you picked me up? Everyone else would have.”

“It seemed like too much effort.”

“I really hate you, sometimes.”

“I know.”

“It doesn't bother you?”

“Hate is not exclusive of love. When you get bored, then it will be time to worry.”

Vienna shook her head. “You're spinny.”

“Whatever that means, I agree.”

“It means strange. Why did you leave medical school?”

Where had that come from?
“I fooled myself into believing some very stupid things.” After all this time, the simple truth.

Vienna nodded. “Just like hiking across the lava. I didn't think it would be so hard.”

Absolution, so easily given. “I know.”

Vienna silently tried out her next thought. With a sigh she went ahead. “What stupid things did you do?”

The extended version would take all night. Justine settled for the short form. “I fell off my high horse.”

Vienna's hand covered her mouth to hide an abridged giggle. “You know that's the wrong answer.”

“I suppose so.”

“But not for you.” A shy smile and a trip to the bathroom to replace her bathrobe with the blue nightshirt. Then to bed without another word, the day's emotional fireworks apparently forgotten. She was asleep within minutes of lying down, her knees in her arms.

Left alone with her thoughts, Justine's mood soured. She went to the hotel's kitchen and asked to use a food scale. One metal cylinder weighed fifty-seven grams, and the other weighed nine. Tin and gold.

 

22

Justine's photo shoot was on an exposed tongue of rock above a cavernous waterfall.

Gullfoss (Golden Falls) owes its ferocity to fractures in ancient lava flows. The mighty Hvita tumbles over a series of …

Vienna watched the river charge over a wide fall, make a ninety-degree turn, and plummet into an implausibly straight fault line. The deep-throated roar resonated inside her lungs with every breath. Hypnotic patterns braided the laminar current above the cataract. The point of no return where turbulence flattened to deadly force. Spray fogged Vienna's glasses. She flexed her muscles as if to step forward. Looking for secrets under the quicksilver surface.

The Nykur, Iceland's mythic water-horse, is often depicted with reversed ears and hooves. It is said to lure girls underwater and hold them until death.…

Vienna settled for standing statue-still, like one of Justine's wooden manikins.
Girl Not Riding a Nykur,
she named herself.

Justine was posed at the end of the stone jetty, a bare ten feet from the torrent. If someone wanted to kill her, this was the place. A push and she would vanish forever. Like Sherlock Holmes over Reichenbach Falls:
“deep down in that dreadful caldron of swirling water and seething foam.”

Mist surrounded Justine, cutting through the thin fabric she wore. The backs of her hands were pearly blue-white and she hugged herself between shots. Yet every time the camera clicked, she was smiling.

Why didn't she ask to have the pictures taken some place warmer? Vienna wanted to shout at the photographer, but she was held silent by the appearance of Haldor. He stood as close to Justine as the rope boundary allowed. Vienna was surprised he didn't go into the tent to help her change.

Disgusted with the day, Vienna retreated from the center of attention. Closer to the onlookers, but as far as possible from Haldor. Fingers pointed her way, whispers rippling through the crowd. Vienna wondered if Justine could interpret what it meant—decided she could—which shifted her depression to a whole new gear.

It's the way I am.

Carried forward by familiar self-assessment, Vienna stepped to the crowd. Little to prove and less to lose, because after she had been so stupid about running away she thought maybe Justine would be happier with Haldor.
If I loved Justine I would set her free and all that.
Except she didn't want to, which only proved she wasn't really in love in the first place.

This crowd was different from the one she'd seen in London. It wasn't just the strange language. People seemed less willing to talk to her, or even look at her.

Icelanders are self-reliant to the point of xenophobia. They are the kindest people you will ever meet, but also the most reticent. Remember your manners and you will be rewarded.…

“Hello,” she said quietly. A few people returned her greeting in heavily accented English. No one added anything to the conversation. “I'm sorry. I can't speak your language.”

“You're speaking mine,” a young man called out to a few quiet laughs.

Vienna took a step back. This wasn't according to the guidebook at all. “I don't understand.”

“Are you still with the American, or did the great Haldor steal her away?”

Vienna felt warmth in her face. What seemed so certain when Justine was beside her seemed so doubtful here. But this time she did exactly what she was supposed to.
Talk it through inside your head.
One fact above all others.
She came back to me.
“She's with me.” Maybe that was saying too much in public?

“If she changes her mind, I'll take you,” said a female from the back. Vienna saw smiles in the crowd.
Are they making fun of me?
She recalled that Iceland had elected the first openly lesbian prime minister in Europe. Her throat had the tight feeling of not knowing what to do. Why were they laughing? She took a step back. Someone behind her. She whirled to bump into Justine.

“You okay?” Justine asked.

“Are you finished?”

Justine laughed. “These clothes aren't exactly street wear for Iceland.” She was dressed in the sheerest of pale pink fabrics.

Why had they planned the photographs where such thin fabric would get wet? Vienna saw the crowd staring and decided the question answered itself. Except it was all wrong. Vienna saw a deeper truth without seeing the steps that led to it.
They are intimidated by her.
How could that be?

Vienna stepped forward to shield Justine. “They're asking if we're still together.”

Justine answered loud enough for the crowd to hear. “Which way is Reykjavík?”

Vienna pointed to the southeast.

“Is she right?” Justine asked of the crowd.

“Dead on,” an older man answered.

“Why is this important?” Vienna asked.

“I knew you would have your bearings.” Justine put her hand on Vienna's cheek. Vienna was shocked at how cold Justine's fingers were. Justine leaned close and whispered in Vienna's ear, “It's another one of those things lovers share.” She turned away. “I have to get back to work,” she said over her shoulder. Vienna watched her walk back toward the falls. Amazed that for once she knew what Justine's words really meant.