Will Chancellor - A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall

— How old are you?

Owen realized he had missed a birthday.

— Twenty-two.

— Let me see your passport.

Owen handed him the edge-worn broken thing.

The officer grabbed a stamp from a holster, thumbed the dial, and asked Owen to turn around. Owen reluctantly spun, thinking he might have mistaken a stamp for a Taser, and slowly brought both hands back, just past his hips. He was envisioning how he and Isaak would respond when he felt a punch in his shoulder and heard the smack of the stamp wheel spinning.

— Have fun, Hollywood. Watch out for this guy.

— I’ll keep my eye on him.

Tómas found the bad joke inordinately funny.

Isaak knew a plank-floored bar that became a country-western dance hall after dark. Owen bought the first round as thanks and the second round as “No really, thanks.” They shared strong beer and watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics.

— About five minutes’ walk in any direction, and nobody’s ever going to see you again — if that’s what you want. Stay in the north. The north is warmer than the south.

— Why?

— Gulf Stream. You can get all your camping shit in Egilsstadir. It’s twenty miles up that road.

— How big is it?

— It’s the biggest city in the eastern half of the country, and there are only like two thousand people. Every Icelander would fit in that Olympic stadium. And once you packed them in, everybody with a seat would live in Reykjavik.

— Been there?

— It’s like you’d picture the capital of Greenland or something. It’s amazing, but feels small, which you’ll need when winter hits. I’m telling you. If you want to get lost forever, just walk. The whole country’s like an upside-down bowl. The people who aren’t in Reykjavik are in Akureyri. The rest, all twenty thousand of them, speckle the lip of the bowl with these little farms and only want to be left the fuck alone.

Isaak saw Owen smile and positioned his chair away from the fireworks and dancing on the television feed.

— What exactly did you do?

— I murdered a guy.

— Only one?

— I’m serious.

— The fuck you did. I’m 5th Ward, motherfucker!

He showed Owen his forearm tattoo of a 5 with “T-H” spelled out in twisted blunts. He explained it was a Houston thing.

— I’ve heard that line before, and you can bet your ass none of the guys who said it were J.Crew — wearing motherfuckers. You fucking up is a D in History or some shit. Get serious, man.

— I should have been up there.

Owen showed his tattoo.

— Instead this happened. And I murdered a handicapped artist at an art fair in Basel.

— Oh, you’re that Owen.

Owen couldn’t tell if Isaak was kidding.

Isaak slapped him in the arm, spilling Owen’s glass of beer on the wooden floor.

— Fucking History. I hated that shit. And look at me now: international maritime engineer.

They let History be the final word on Owen’s plight. They traded sports stories, played one last game of chess, and parted the best of friends.

Security met Burr as soon as the plane landed. He had taken hundreds of international flights and never disembarked to a security screen. The X-ray machine couldn’t have been brought here specifically for him. Two automated doors stood between him and the freedom of the baggage claim. Six men in hats, all communicating through lapel radios, earpieces, and walkie-talkies, looked directly at him. He had carried on nothing but a leather portfolio and put it in a grey plastic bin that passed from the brushed metal rods to the conveyer belt. He waited in line for his turn to walk through the metal detector. He beeped. A guard pantomimed for him to remove his belt and pass through again. He passed.

He joined the very short line of non-EU passport holders. When his turn came, the guard asked him why he was in Iceland. He panicked and explained that he was a visiting professor lecturing with John Hollander on scansion of rune poems vis-à-vis Ionic meter. The officer didn’t seem to care. He told him to get some sleep.

Burr assumed customs would be a formality, given that he had no possessions he could possibly declare. He pressed the Immigration button with brio and was stunned to see that rather than a green light, his hand had created a dreadful red X.

A guard stepped from the one-way-mirrored booth and led him to an office very clearly on the wrong side of freedom. The man waiting in the office didn’t shift in his scoop-backed upholstered chair. The escorting guard had seized Burr’s passport and now handed it to his supervisor. The tired, massive man was looking at the screen of his off-white monitor, which was nothing but bad. Before making eye contact, he spoke.

— Your itinerary and return ticket, please.

— Well, you see, I’m not sure how long I’m going to be in Iceland, exactly. There are several contingencies that have not yet…

Now the supervisor made eye contact.

— What is the purpose of your visit?

— I’m lecturing, or rather I hope to lecture, with John Hollander.

— Who?

— Professor John Hollander of Yale. I’m Professor Joseph Burr, of Mission University.

— And I’m Professor Admiral Haldor Grimsson. What’s in the folder?

— Just documents.

— May I see? And do you object to a witness?

He spoke into his intercom in Icelandic. A new guard, with the thickest neck Burr had ever seen, entered the room, gasping the blinds to a tremble and then slamming the door behind him so they jumped in panic and settled misaligned.

Burr opened the portfolio. The yellow legal pad on the verso had a numbered list of shamefully opportunistic projects:

1. The Liminalist Cookbook

2. The Science of Liminalism: We are all Gauge Bosons (look up what those actually are)

3. Liminalism and Seinfeld

The recto held his crossed-out itinerary for Athens, his fantasy itinerary for talks in Madrid, London, Dubai, Tokyo, and Kyoto, a single-sided twenty-page printout of an entry on Jean Baudrillard, several torn-out reviews of Art 35 Basel with fierce highlighting and numerous exclamations in the margins, and the Vice magazine cover story on Kurt Wagener.

— Are you an artist?

— No. I’m a professor of classics.

— Are you a troublemaker?

— I came here to hike.

— You don’t look like you’re in shape for hiking.

— I’m hiking to get in shape.

— Where’s all your equipment?

— I hoped to buy it here.

— Why?

— I figured it would be more suited to the climate.

— Where are you going to hike? The Westfjords?

— I’m really trying to arrange my lecture with the university first, then worry about the hiking.

Burr had no idea what “the university” was called, but he figured there had to be one university more prestigious than the others.

— Where are you staying?

— I haven’t made a reservation yet. This entire trip was on the spur of the moment.

The thick-neck guard now addressed him.

— We don’t see many Americans arrive without a hotel, without a plan, and without luggage.

Three decades of teaching had taught Burr that the greatest weapon in an uncertain conversation was an awkward silence. He made the silence his.

The two guards spoke in Icelandic.

— Enjoy your stay in Iceland. I hope your lecture is a success.

Burr took his passport from the desk and angled past the guard. The automated doors opened onto the yellow and green signs of car rental companies. He needed a car, but both rental companies required a credit card. He wasn’t going to chance tripping any invisible wires. At least not here.

Looking out the window of his taxi into Reykjavik, Burr was sure that the land had been lifted and they were now so close to the edge of the firmament that instead of appearing curved, the dome of the sky was one blue line.