Sneak Peek of December 2025
A long weekend in Iceland, revisited. An excerpt from Iceland, Story XXI.
Full story will be serialized over three days starting next Sunday morning.
GOÐAFOSS
At Goðafoss, we pulled over to see the first of the three waterfalls I’d arranged, but by 4pm we’d already missed the daylight. So, we sat in the car and listened. Somewhere out of sight, the waterfall roared in and out in waves across the parking lot. Paolo turned off the radio and rolled his window down. He started humming.
Snow blew in and melted on the dashboard. Isa leaned forward from the back seat and wiped it with her hand. While she did, she squeezed my shoulder. It was one of her secret message “just the two of us” connections Paolo wasn’t supposed to know about. For all I know, she was doing the same with Paolo. He would always joke this sort of thing was her “managing us.”
“In Iceland, it snows in the car.” Paolo said, holding his hand out and letting the snow settle on it. He couldn’t have been a man any further from poetry, but I knew him well enough to know that he probably did appreciate the waterfall. I must have let him know I was grateful for that.
If he did appreciate it, then it was the single time on the Iceland trip either of them acknowledged what I’d spent a month planning. For the last two years, I could count these travel agent victories on one hand, the moments where it was still all three of us together. Isa called these moments our “quatros.” This was long before she started using numbers about who slept with who in hotel beds.
“There are four different relationships in a threesome. Each pairing and then the last one is everyone together.”
Isabella must have heard the same travel agent victory I did, because she placed her hand over mine on the shifter, a peace offering. Paolo put his gloved hand on top and moved his hand over hers. “A hand sandwich,” he said, looking at me.
Paolo moved our hands around as a unit and muscled the stick shift from side to side, putting the car in and out of gear. Isabella was leaning in from the back seat. Their faces were now the closest they’d been the entire trip.
They hadn’t touched since a quick greeting at the airport. I wanted them to crack the seal and get it over with, not act like they were waiting for me to give permission, like it was my choice somehow.
“Our sandwich,” he said to me. That was enough. I pulled my fingers out from underneath, and Paolo laughed strangely and fussed with a heater vent.
Paolo turned back to Isa and rattled off something. I knew it was too fast for her.
Isa said, “No more Portuguese, and I don’t understand you anyway.”
“I said you’re being a sand crab, Philip, with your hand. I can drive,” Paolo announced. He made some kind of gesture with his glove like I was scuttling. Then he was out of the car before I could disagree. I would have been accused of drama if I refused, so I got out and let him. We passed each other in the headlight snow, and I remember for a fact he didn’t look at me.
With that, Goðafoss at Twilight was officially a failure, which was apparently on me. I chose the travel arrangements and named the excursions. It still upsets me I used my own frequent flyer miles to keep the peace.
For another hour, I don’t think I said a single word. I didn’t even like to turn because they said my leather jacket squeaked, and so I avoided being targeted for that. But eventually, I turned all the way around in the passenger seat to see if she was asleep.
She wasn’t. It was like she’d been waiting for me to turn to her. She angled away from the rear-view mirror and pursed her lips as if we were cheating on Paolo.
Isa called our trips with Paolo “Our Abandono.” They were saving our sex life and, by implication, our marriage. This was almost year three of saving our marriage with abandon.
She held her hand out to me. I took it with my squeaking arm. For all the breezy encouragement, I felt her typical agitation to get the first night behind her.
Beautifully expressed -- with more to anticipate.
On another subject, I'm now up-to-date on Pluribus--and think you hit the mark on that tv show and can't wait for the next episode. Carol, so brave, so confused and trying so had to save our individuality. Seems to me to be a sort of answer in a sci-fi way to authoritarianism that also tries to eliminate individuality. As I said before, dear writer, you could also be a tv reviewer if you chose.