Land appeared suddenly, the choppy blue sea giving way to a brown stretch of lava, then a brief glimpse of the runway, and we were down. It was cloudy but the air was clear, and in the distance I could see mountains rising from the rocky plain.

Saturday night exacts its price: the young woman with dyed red hair at the currency exchange counter looked like she hadn't slept. She could barely work up the energy necessary to humor the father whose seven year old son was changing 12 dollars. I spoke softly and said good morning. She gave me a small smile and 7600 kronur.

At the baggage claim I caught up with Ryan. A recent college graduate from Duluth, he was on his way to Scotland with a one night stopover in Reykjavík. It was his first trip on a jet; I helped him out with boarding protocol in Minneapolis. Besides retrieving his bag, his most pressing concern was finding an ATM. There didn't seem to be one anywhere. My bag showed up before his. I gave him my e-mail address and proceeded through customs. There was an ATM just outside.

Kay wasn't there. I went outside into the cool breeze, stood on an island in the parking lot, and stared at the mountains and the bus into Reykjavík, wondering how long I should give her to show up before boarding. It wasn't long before she was there, smiling and carrying a sign reading "Drummer Boy" (those who know the story know; those who don't don't need to). We hugged, stuffed my backpack in her trunk, and I collapsed in the passenger seat. It was 7 in the morning, and on the plane even Poirrot hadn't managed to put me to sleep. We talked but I felt like I was having a hard time putting words together: funny, it was like the first time we met, two years earlier late at night in a bar in Reykjavík when I was hardly the poster boy for the temperance movement. Only this time I wasn't drunk.

"I'll have you know I had a very good excuse for being late," she said. "I was making your bed. Things are a bit cramped, but we've done our best."

"Yeah, so what's the deal with your tenants anyway?"

Kay told the story, which I won't recount here but the significant facts are this: there were people who were not paying rent occupying the portion of her flat that has a shower that she was trying to have evicted only the court had lost their papers so everything was proceeding in slow motion. We would be living in three rooms in the basement. I would be sleeping next to the fridge.

We sped along the highway into Reykjavík, passing the kilometer-long aluminum factory whose workers navigate it with bicycles, then cresting a hill where the familiar and welcome sight of Hallgrímskirkja, a volcano-shaped church that looks like it might blast off into space at any moment, came into view. She parked on the curb in front of a grey concrete house, let us in, and pointed out my mattress. Exhausted and wired, I tried to read a few pages but the hum of the fridge knocked me unconscious till Kay knocked on the door at noon.

In the makeshift kitchen, consisting of a two-burner camp stove on the table, Kay made porridge.  Craig, the boyfriend about whom I had heard much but never met, made an appearance at last, making a sandwich with meat, cheese, and an inky gelatinous relish called pickle.

"He brought it on the plane in his carry-on," Kay said.

"With my irreplaceable CDs," Craig added.  "You can't get this stuff here." Craig's English.

"It smells like Vegemite," I said.

I passed on the sandwich and had porridge and Pringles, a breakfast of champions for sure.

We gathered towels, swimsuits, and cameras and headed for the pool.  The one we went to, Árbæjarlaug, I think, wasn't especially close by, but Kay and Craig liked it and I did too.  After we showered, Craig and I met Kay in the indoor section of the pool before swimming through to the outside and transferring ourselves to a hot pot.  We rested and admired the view of Reykjavík the pool allowed.  Kay and Craig enjoyed their newfound love.

A helicopter approached.  "American," Kay said.

"Do they fly up here much?"  I thought the American aircraft from the Keflavík base avoided flying over Reykjavík.

"No, they don't.  And I was wrong, it's an Icelandic rescue helicopter anyway.  But the Americans help sometimes on rescue missions, because they have larger fuel tanks, so they can maneuver longer."

After an hour or so of soaking we went back to the car and headed for Þingvellir.  The site at which Iceland's parliament, the Alþing, met for centuries, beginning in 930, it's a beautiful place even aside from its historical significance.  I came here on my last trip, but didn't get to spend nearly as much time as I would have liked.

Kay stopped the car near Þingvallavatn.  We took pictures, I of mountains and moss, Craig of my boots, by accident, with his digital camera.

"You're erasing the picture of my boots?" I said.

"You already know what your boots look like," Craig said.

"Not against the backdrop of lichen and moss in Iceland," I said.  "That's an image to keep for posterity."

"You do realize you're talking crap now, don't you?"
 
 

Þingvellir.

A few minutes later Kay pulled into the parking lot at Þingvellir itself, a wide plain broken with rifts from which a cliff abruptly rises.  We walked, observing the river slowly eating away at the rock as it struggled for a straighter course.  Kay found faces in the rocks.  Ahead, the path we were on continued through between two high walls of rock, opening up to a flat space where we took in the mountains, the plain, and the myriad shades of brown.

At the tiny cafeteria we ate hot dogs and chocolate and observed a young man and his girlfriend, whose hairstyle was nothing if not arresting.  There was a telephone booth outside the cafeteria, a full glass one built to Clark Kent specifications; where does Superman change in the phone boothless now?
 

Þingvellir

Rather than go back to Reykjavík the efficient way, we went via Hveragerði, passing through a region dotted with summer homes and geothermal power plants.  One small house rested in a field of boulders at the foot of a mountain.  Against the boulders were pieces of wood cut out in the shape of houses, painted brightly.

"What's that?"

"What?" Kay said.

"The houses in the rocks?"

"Maybe he just wanted to have a summer home in the rocks."

Craig came to my aid.  "No, there are little houses propped up against a bunch of rocks."

Kay shrugged.  "I don't know.  I didn't see them."

"Please spend a little more time focusing on the scenery and less on preserving our lives," I suggested.  "We need you to keep up with the conversation."  I figured it was the home of someone serious about Iceland's elf legends.

"I'll do my best."

We arrived at Hveragerði.  Significant because its geothermally heated greenhouses produce fresh fruits and vegetables for Iceland, we couldn't find the greenhouses and ended up at a place called Eden.  It's a nursery and a food court and a gift shop.  They sell hundreds of postcards and exotic plants and film for 10 dollars a roll.  We wandered about lazily, looking at the t-shirts and the children's sweaters complete with bleating sheep.
 

Eden, Hveragerði

Back in Reykjavík, Kay made dinner while Craig did the dishes.  I offered to help but Kay commanded me to sit.  Kay chopped and I read my travel guide.

Dinner was traditional Icelandic: burritos.  "Except for the tortillas and the salsa, all the ingredients are Icelandic," Kay said.  I examined the salsa bottle; it was Dutch.

"The presentation was sub-par, with the food being served directly out of a pot in the middle of the table."  Craig was speculating about what I would say about dinner when I got around to recording it in this account.

"But the flying tortillas added..." Kay started, tossing a tortilla on each of our plates.

"Flair," I suggested.

"Panache," Craig said.

"Panache.  Definitely panache," I agreed.  Dinner was good.

By the time we were done with dinner, it was 10:30.  Sigurbjorg, a friend of Kay's I met on the previous trip, had called earlier, inviting us to Spotlight, a gay club which would be opening at midnight.  It was a Sunday night, but the next day, Whitmonday, was a national holiday, so it was still a party weekend.  Craig didn't want to go, but with no small amount of wheedling from Kay, he agreed.

We changed clothes.  Heeding Kay's advice from my last trip, I eschewed colors and wore only black.  When we left at 12:15, the city was in blue half-dark.

Spotlight seemed pleasant enough, open with windows looking out on the street, with cafe tables and couches.  The music that night consisted mostly of stuff from the 70s and 80s.  The Guiness, which both Craig and I ordered, was nearly undrinkable.  I switched to Grolsch after my first pint.  There were few people there when we arrived, but they gradually began drifting in.
It was actually a pleasant evening though, with good conversation and the unnerving brightness of the night.

We left around 1:30 and went to the 24-hour 10-11 supermarket, which had been closed earlier due to Pentecost, but reopened at midnight.  I tracked down pasta, spaghetti sauce, cheese, flatbread, and skyr, sort of an Icelandic yogurt equivalent.  After paying, Craig spotted a vending machine at the front of the store.

"I think the Icelanders have beaten you Americans at your own game," Craig said.

The vending machine sold freshly grilled sandwiches.  Impossible.
 

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