Chapter Forty-Six Reykjavík
They landed at Keflavík at six in the morning, local time.
A woman named Kristín, wearing a pale sweater and khakis, held up a sign with a name that was not theirs. The sign read Cristal Connors.
The SUV was waiting outside of the jet to take them to their secure location.
The road went through black volcanic stone and gray moss.
After thirty minutes of driving, Kristín said, “No one knows you are here. If somebody recognizes you, they will not care. People are not impressed by your kind here.”
“Thank you,” Noah said and he looked at Piper and they both laughed.
“Who’s this bitch talking about, ‘your kind’,” Carmen quipped from the back seat grabbing a cookie from the snack basket stationed in the SUV.
***
The cottage was about two miles past a village no-one in the car paid attention to. It was small with black wood siding. As they pulled up Carmen mentioned that it felt like the cottage from the Nancy Meyers film, The Holiday.
Vivienne took the biggest bedroom. Carmen took the other after a long screaming match over who deserved it more. Piper and Noah were shown to a loft at the top of a narrow set of stairs.
Kristín said, “Back tomorrow at ten.” She left.
Vivienne went to sleep, so did Carmen. Piper and Noah stood in the kitchen.
“Okay,” Noah said, staring into Piper’s eyes.
“Okay. We are in fucking Iceland,” Piper replied.
“I don’t know what we do now.” Noah paced.
“Neither do I.”
“I’m going to take a shower. Let’s try and detach from the outside world for a minute.”
Noah went upstairs. Piper stood at the window looking at the landscape, taking in the beauty.
***
Piper’s new found freedom got the better of him and he grabbed a piece of paper and wrote, Gone to the village. Back in an hour. He put it on the kitchen island where they’d all see it. He took the keys to one of the rental cars, and he left.
The village was smaller than he had expected. One street, a grocery store, a café, a bar, a gas station with one pump.
He parked. Nobody was on the street. He could see a shop at the end of the little street.
It was a gift shop, bookstore, gallery and a coffee stop, all at once. The bell over the door rang when he walked in. A woman at the counter looked up without interest and looked back down.
Piper walked the aisles. Books. Sweaters. Scarves. Candles. He wasn’t looking for anything. He was just wanting to be in a place where nobody knew anything about him.
Then he spotted them.
A shelf of figures, ugly, grumpy and smiling.
The woman at the counter, without looking up, said, “They are trolls, you know, for luck.”
Piper stood in front of the shelf. He was taken by these little ugly fucking troll figurines. They didn’t look like the trolls in the US. He picked one up. Palm-sized with a grumpy face and fat belly. One eye was slightly smaller than the other.
It was the ugliest one on the shelf. He took it to the counter.
The woman rang it up without looking at him.
“Twenty-three hundred krónur.”
He paid with cash he found on the counter before he left. She wrapped the troll in brown paper and handed him the small package without comment. Piper put it in his coat pocket and walked out.
He rested it on the passenger seat as he drove back. For the first time in forever, Jayson was not clouding Piper’s mind. He was thinking about Noah’s upcoming game.
Piper wanted Noah to win the way a guy who had stopped being able to win himself wanted the other guy to win. He hoped the troll could be of service.
He pulled up to the house and put the troll in his pocket.
Noah was at the kitchen island. “You left. Vivienne is going to kill you, but they’re both still on their three martini nap.”
“I went to the village.”
“Get anything?”
“Maybe,” Piper said with a smirk.