Ash and Embers

The payphone in the corner of the taxidermy shop still worked. I checked twice, because who expects a working payphone in the year 2025? But the dial tone hummed at me, patient as anything, and I held the receiver against my ear and tried to think of a single person on this earth I wanted to call.

Three hours ago my phone had buzzed with a text from Dean. Can't make dinner tonight. The entire message contained no apology, no explanation, no reference to the anniversary dinner I had stubbornly left on the calendar after he went back to his wife, if you could even call two years of meeting in hotel bars an anniversary. I'd sat in the airport hotel restaurant in a dress I'd spent real money on, half hoping he'd show, and I'd laughed until it turned into something else.

My name is Mallory. I'm forty-one years old, I fight fires for a living, and I had spent the better part of two years sleeping with a married man because he told me his wife didn't understand him. Forty-one, and I fell for the oldest line in the book. His wife found out six weeks ago. He chose her. Of course he chose her. She got the house and the pension and the man, and I got a text message cancelling dinner.

So there I stood, in a dim little shop full of stuffed Arctic foxes and one enormous lynx frozen mid-pounce, smelling formaldehyde and dust, holding a crumpled hotel flier I'd pulled out of my jacket pocket. There was a phone number on the bottom of it, some concierge line, and a working payphone, and a cancelled flight to Akureyri, and nowhere I needed to be until morning.

I dialed the number.

It rang twice, and then a man's voice said, "This is Hassan."

"Hi." My voice came out strange, too loud in the empty shop. "I found this number on a flier. I think I dialed wrong. Sorry."

There was a pause, and then he laughed, a warm low sound. "No, that's my number now. The front desk forwards the concierge line to whoever is still awake, and tonight that's me. I'm just a guy waiting for the same delayed flight as everyone else. Are you all right? You sound like you're about to break something."

"I might be," I said. "I was going to scream at someone and you answered."

"Then you're in luck. I'm excellent at being screamed at. I do it professionally, city planning, everybody screams at me."

I looked at the lynx. Its glass eyes looked back. "Where are you?"

"Gate two. I see the taxidermy shop from here. Is that where you are? I can come to you, if you're going to scream. It's better in person."

I should have hung up. Instead I said, "Sure. Come on over."

He showed up ninety seconds later, and I want to describe him the way I saw him. Tall, mid-forties maybe, dark curly hair going gray at the temples, a leather jacket that had seen actual weather. He was carrying two paper cups of coffee from the vending machine, which he handed me with an air of casual indifference.

"Hassan," he said. "Forty-four years old, stranded since noon, happy to help."

"Mallory. Forty-one, stranded since about four o'clock, apparently dialing strangers."

"Apparently screaming at strangers," he said, and grinned. "So. What did I do wrong?"

And that's how I ended up telling a total stranger the whole ugly story, standing next to a stuffed Arctic fox while we drank terrible vending machine coffee. I told him about Dean, about the two years, about the anniversary dinner I'd booked three months ahead because I knew he'd never take me anywhere in public. I told him about the text. He listened the whole time, didn't interrupt once, just nodded along and occasionally made a face that said everything needed saying.

"That's garbage," he said finally. "He's garbage. You did nothing wrong that matters."

"Everyone says that."

"Everyone says it because it's true." He set his cup down on the counter, next to the payphone. "Listen. Can I say something forward?"

"Go ahead."

"You're angry. That's fair. But angry people make terrible decisions, and I've made a few myself, so I know." He rubbed his jaw. "If you want to feel something tonight other than rage, I'm offering myself up as a bad decision. No strings, no expectations, and if I've read this wrong, you can tell me to get lost and I'll buy you dinner anyway and we'll pretend this never happened."

I stared at him. The man had just offered himself up like a menu item and somehow made it sound decent.

"You don't know me," I said.

"No. But I know lonely when I see it, because I've been wearing it for two years since my girlfriend left." He shrugged. "Also, the flight to Akureyri is cancelled until morning, and there is exactly one hotel in walking distance, and it has a bar."

Well. What do you say to that. I said, "Buy me a drink first, at least."

He did. The hotel bar had six people in it and a TV playing Icelandic news with no sound. We talked for an hour, about nothing, about his work redesigning a bus terminal, about my station and the guys I worked with, and somewhere in that hour the anger drained out of me and something else moved in. He was funny in a dry way. He asked real questions and waited for real answers.

At some point he said, "The taxidermy shop is still open for the delayed passengers. The woman who runs it said she'd stay. They have playing cards for sale."

"Playing cards. At a taxidermy shop."

"Reykjavik domestic terminal, Mallory. They prepare for everything." He stood and held out his hand, and I took it, and his palm was warm and dry against mine.

We walked back through the concourse. The shop lights were still on, that amber glow over all those glass cases, the foxes and the ptarmigan and the lynx all frozen in their poses. The woman at the register nodded at us like two more stranded souls were nothing new. Hassan bought a pack of cards from a wire rack, fifty cents, and we carried them to the little seating area between the fox case and the lynx.