Glacier Punch

Okay so here's how our twelve-hour layover in the middle of Icelandic nowhere started: me complaining.

"Twelve hours," I said for about the fourth time. "Who schedules a twelve-hour layover on purpose?"

Gregory shrugged and stirred his coffee. "You booked the flights, honey."

"I booked the cheapest flights. There's a difference."

We'd been married eight years at that point. I'm thirty-four now, Greg is thirty-six, and somewhere in there we'd turned into a couple who argued about airport itineraries instead of, you know, anything interesting. He fixes arcade machines back home. I draw buildings nobody builds. We used to be fun. I had proof in old photos.

So there we were in this tiny lodge next to the glacier airstrip, one wooden bench outside, one bar inside, and a big decorative punch bowl sitting on the lobby table left over from some wedding party that had clearly been more exciting than our Tuesday. Gregory kept eyeing it like it was a pinball machine that needed fixing.

"Stop looking at the punch bowl," I said.

"I'm not looking at the punch bowl."

"You are absolutely looking at the punch bowl."

That's when we both heard the laugh. There was a woman at the end of the bar, alone, laughing at something on her phone, and it was one of those real laughs that makes you turn your head. Dark curly hair, camera bag on the stool next to her, twenty-nine maybe, and she had that energy like the airport was the most interesting place she'd ever been.

Gregory glanced at me. I glanced at Gregory. We had a whole silent marriage conversation in about two seconds.

"Go talk to her," I said.

"Why me?"

"Because I said it first and that's the rule."

So he wandered over with all the grace of a man approaching a stranger at a one-bar airport, and I swear she just waved him over like they were old friends. I followed with my coffee like a lost kid. She stuck out her hand.

"Camilla Peabody. I photograph glaciers for magazines that pay me late. You two look like you're having the world's most dramatic fight about luggage."

"It's about a layover," Gregory said. "Twelve hours of it."

Camilla winced like we'd told her a sad story. "Oh, honey. That's criminal. Sit. Both of you. I refuse to let two able-bodied adults waste a glacier sitting in plastic chairs."

And that was that, basically. She ordered something for all of us, and when the bartender shrugged about selections she just pointed at the giant punch bowl and said, "Fine, give us whatever's in the wedding juice, it's going to waste."

So we drank wedding leftovers out of coffee mugs in an Icelandic airport lodge, and I have to tell you, it was weirdly perfect. Camilla talked with her whole body. She'd been to eleven countries that year. She'd slept in a car in Norway on purpose. She asked Gregory about arcade machines and actually listened to the answer, which, credit to her, almost nobody does.

"You two," she said at one point, waving her mug between us. "How long married?"

"Eight years," Gregory said.

"Eight," I confirmed. "He still puts the seat down. It's basically a miracle."

"Eight years and you're still touching each other's arms when you talk. I can tell. I photograph people, it's my whole job. You've got the touch thing."

I hadn't even noticed we were doing it. But she was right, Gregory's hand had been resting on my knee the whole conversation like it lived there.

"Anyway," Camilla said, standing and slinging her camera bag. "There's a lookout over the ice field about ten minutes' walk. Best light of the day happens in about an hour. Come with me. Let me shoot you two."

"Shoot us?" I asked. "We're not exactly magazine material."

"You're exactly my kind of material. Married couples who still touch. Do you know how rare that is in front of a camera? Everyone either poses like mannequins or looks miserable. Come on. Say yes."

And we did. Because what else were we going to do, sit in plastic chairs for twelve hours?

The walk out to the viewpoint was cold and windy and Camilla talked the entire time about glacier light, how it turns blue at certain angles, how it eats sound. And she was right, it was gorgeous. The whole ice field went on forever, white and blue and cracked like old porcelain, and there was one wooden bench and nothing else.

Gregory had grabbed the punch bowl on the way out. I want that noted. I said nothing. He had carried it out of the lobby like a man on a mission, and now he cradled it with both mittened hands.

"Why did you bring that?" I asked as we hiked.

"Because it's hilarious," he said.

"It IS hilarious," Camilla said over her shoulder. "See, this is why you two still touch each other's arms."

At the lookout, she got serious in this fun way, crouching, circling, clicking away. "Okay, Ayla, stand there. Gregory, behind her. Now, look, I don't direct fake smiles. Just do what you'd do if I weren't here."

So Gregory turned me around by the shoulders and kissed me. Not a peck. A real kiss, the kind I hadn't gotten outdoors since our honeymoon, one hand in my hair, wind whipping around us. And I heard the camera going like mad and I didn't care even a little.

"Oh that's good," Camilla said between clicks. "That's so good. Okay, more. Don't stop on my account."

Gregory pulled back and grinned at me, cheeks red from cold, and I felt, honestly, twenty-six again, the year we met at that conference where he told me a loading dock was structurally fascinating and I believed him.

"You two are dangerous," Camilla said, lowering the camera. Then she stepped close and tugged my jacket collar straight, then my scarf, then, with total casualness, smoothed the front of my coat with both hands. "Sorry, wind. Photographer privileges. You were crooked."

"You just wanted to fix my coat," I said.

"Obviously. Look at you. If I looked like you I'd fix my coat all day." She laughed and stepped back before it could get weird, and somehow it didn't get weird, it just got warm.

Then Gregory set the punch bowl down on the bench between the three of us, and Camilla stared at it and burst out laughing.

"You brought the wedding juice outside. To the glacier. You absolute weirdo."

"There's still a third of a bowl in it," Gregory said, defensive and proud at the same time.

Camilla got that look. You know the look. The trouble look.

"Okay," she said, pulling her mittens off. "Dare game. Road trip rules. We each hold the bowl. Someone tries to make you laugh or flinch or spill. Whoever spills first gets a forfeit. Loser has to sing a song of the other two's choosing, loudly, to the glacier."

"Define loudly," I said, suspicious.

"Opera loudly," she said, grinning. "That's the whole rulebook. It's an old game. Very old. Ancient Icelandic tradition, probably."

"That is not an ancient Icelandic tradition," Gregory said.

"It is now. I'm declaring it. Who's in?"

I looked at Gregory. Gregory looked at me. And somewhere in that two-second marriage conversation, we both already knew the answer was yes.

"I'm in," Gregory said.

"Me too," I said, and reached for the bowl first. "But I want it noted that I never spill."

"We'll see about that," Camilla said.

I did not spill on my turn. I held that bowl like a bomb technician while Gregory did his impression of the airport announcement voice and Camilla told a story about sleeping in a car in Norway on purpose, which, why, Camilla, why. I held steady. Gregory went second and also held steady, mostly because I ran out of ideas and just yelled "BOO" at him and he called it a weak effort.

Then it was Camilla's turn, and that's when it all went sideways.

She held the bowl with one hand, which should have been illegal, and Gregory leaned in and said, "There's a glacier behind you and you didn't even photograph it," and she whipped around, and her elbow caught the rim.

Punch. Everywhere. All down my front.

"Oh no," she said. "Oh no no no. Ayla, I'm so sorry, that's your whole coat."

It was everywhere. It was in my scarf. It was soaking into the collar. It was cold and sticky and smelled like cheap wedding champagne and sherbet, and I just stood there laughing because what else do you do on a glacier in Iceland with punch down your shirt.

"Okay," Camilla said, mittens already off. "I'll sing the glacier an opera later. First I fix what I broke.