THE HADAL ZONE

Arwen Rasmont waits hours at Keflavík International for his flight; they call it as he leaves the men’s room. He walks past the mirrored wall and is assaulted, as usual, by his dead father’s handsome image: high-arched nose, yellow hair.

- ANNIE PROULX

A difference in the contact glance—the father’s a hard squinting challenge, the son’s sidelong and measuring.

A week earlier the luxury-real-estate-rental mogul Rodrig Cushion had sent Arwen to Reykjavík to examine and make a judgment on a rare nineteenth-century whaling captain’s house perched above a fjord with a view of dripping icebergs. Now, as he stands in the boarding line, he checks the snapshots on his phone. The most recent shows the interior entryway of that house; an umbrella jar holds several walking sticks and two ancient Inuit harpoons with whale-bone barbs; on the wall above them hangs a gleaming nineteenth-century harpoon gun. It is, Arwen thinks, whaling history in a nutshell. Such details, he knows, are priceless to Cushion. He looks at the steel gleam of the harpoons, cruel instruments. The owner is a taciturn old woman who didn’t like the sound of Cushion’s deal and pushed the door open, inviting Arwen out but not before he took that quick shot of the harpoons.

When Acme-Air’s loudspeakers rattle out the information that boarding for his flight is under way, it is 3:20 a.m. and the Icelandic sun is coming up. He calls Carolla, who takes eight rings to answer.

“So, where are you? Do you know what time it is? Are you in Boston? Will you be home soon?”

“No, I’m still in Reykjavík. We’re just boarding. Sorry, babe, I forgot the time difference. I thought I was headed home, but I have to go to New York first. Via Chicago.”

“What, Iceland to Chicago to New York?”

“Cushion’s plan. He popped it on me out of the blue. He’s in Chicago this week. Look, I’ll call from there or New York. I don’t know what he wants.”

“Well—don’t call at midnight. And as long as he pays for the travel he can do that, right? You get to go to marvellous places—golden sands of Araby and all that.”