Good at Being Alive(21)

That’s another problem with women like her: they’re so lovely—even when weeping, even when angry, even when claiming you were erect when you certainly were not—that you find yourself waxing poetic about their every feature. Kieran used to compare every ocean to his wife’s eyes. He’d say her hair was the color of churned butter. I ridiculed him for it—we all did—and he didn’t care until the day he realized she’d made a fool of him.

I will never claim Rebecca has lovely eyes, the loveliest eyes I’ve ever seen, even if it’s true.

“Get something, do a little toast, and we’re out of here,” says Lars. “We’ve still got a long drive out to the coast.”

Rebecca moves toward the swim-up bar, tucked into the side of a cave, and nods at the menu. “Champagne?”

I frown. Iceland is notoriously expensive. “I have no idea how much twenty-seven hundred krona is.”

She groans. “A real honeymoon with you would be the absolute worst.”

For one regrettable moment I let myself imagine a real honeymoon with her. It involves that glimpse I got of her breasts, her vibrator, some donut holes, an elevator blow job. Perhaps a glass bottle. Definitely a camera.

Fuck. This is nothing I should be thinking of here or anywhere else.

“It’s about twenty-four dollars,” she says. “Eighteen pounds.”

I go still. It’s one thing to be able to convert dollars to pounds. It’s another thing entirely to enter a country you’ve never been to and convert its currency twice, in seconds. “How do you know that?”

She blows out an exhausted breath. “One Icelandic krona is about point seven cents. One U.S. dollar is about point seventy-seven pounds sterling.” She says this as if it’s in no way astonishing that she knows it all offhand and could do the calculation so quickly.

“That just tripled the number of things I thought you knew.”

She stiffens before she steps up to the bar. “Believe me, you’ve witnessed all of them.”

I’m beginning to wonder if that’s true.



* * *



? ? ?

Soon we are back in the van. The gloomy day and the post-lagoon relaxation all make it impossible to stay awake. The next time I come to, our driver is laying on the horn and shouting something in Icelandic, which is probably “goddamned tourists” as he pulls into a parking lot. “This is Skógafoss,” he announces.

We climb from the van and Jon attaches mics and battery packs beneath our coats. It’s a sunny morning but the breeze is blowing hard and immediately Rebecca is shivering and jumping up and down to get warm. The fact that I’m worrying about her irritates me. She isn’t really my wife. I shouldn’t be gnawed by anxiety wondering if her coat is warm enough. The problem is that fragile thing in her face. The problem is her soft eyes, those cheekbones, the full lips, which all make you want to protect her instead of steering clear. I resent that she’s made me notice any of it, feel anything at all. “Just get back in the van until they’re ready to go,” I bark at her.

“You’re not the boss of me, Dumbledore,” she replies.

Paula gives everyone their instructions while Lars turns to us. “Okay,” he says, “this is going to feel weird at first, but I just want you to talk. Don’t worry about what it is. We’ll gather a ton of stuff and pick the best of it. We just want the viewer to see you as a normal couple.”

“So she should complain that I’m not romantic enough,” I suggest, “and I should secretly wish she’d work out more?”

Rebecca throws out her arms. “Yes, viewing audience. I chose this man.”

Paula and a few crew members snicker. It’s already begun: they adore my wife but find me off-putting. Nothing about this situation is likely to improve.

Lars makes us hold hands and we begin walking down the path toward the waterfall with the cameras ahead of us. The microphone, clipped to my jacket, is unsettling. It’s as if all my words have abandoned me.

“Guys,” Lars calls, prodding us.

“Talk,” I whisper. I do realize this is unfair, the way I’m making her carry the burden of each conversation, but saying too much seems to come quite naturally to her.

“My period is late,” Rebecca says. “I thought you said you’d gotten a vasectomy.”

I choke on a laugh. “Rebecca.”

“This probably isn’t the time to tell you, but it might be your dad’s. You weren’t able to meet my needs, and he offered.”

“My father died over a decade ago. I believe you’d have been around twelve.”

“Did you know they can extract sperm from a corpse? They shock the penis. I mean, I imagine your dad is super dead and it wouldn’t work, but if you do it inside a few hours of passing, it’s possible.”

It seems too specific to be fabricated, but one never knows with Rebecca. “You appear to know about pretty much everything aside from full-time employment.”

“Ten points for Slytherin,” she says, “but our female audience is going to hate you for that one.”

“None of this is even usable. Remember a minute ago when you claimed to be fucking my father?”

Her gaze flickers to mine with a quiet gleam in her eyes that goes straight to my groin. “My,” she says, “what a potty mouth you have.”