Suspiciously Obedient

Page 18

Her stomach made her stop, and she realized that she had no idea what Icelandic food was. Herring? Aiming for the familiar, she looked and saw a vegetarian restaurant. That had to have something good, right? When she walked up to the counter the woman was speaking to a person before her, handing them her change, her voice fluid, Icelandic pouring out, and then she turned to Lydia and said in perfect, just barely accented English, “Hello. How may I help you?”

Lydia grinned. The girl was probably high school age, with braided blonde hair and a wide smile. “A grilled chicken salad, please.” She paused, amused and a bit dumbstruck, then asked, “How do you know I speak English?”

The girl smiled back and said, “It was a good guess.” Then she leaned in and whispered, “Actually, it was your shoes.”

“My shoes?”

“You wear Merrells. Most of the Americans who come here trying to fit in wear Merrells.”

Lydia laughed. “What do most Americans come in here and order?”

The young girl looked at her, tilted her head, smiled, and said, “The women all get the grilled chicken salad.”

And then she stopped and said, “Wait a minute, I thought you were a vegetarian restaurant?”

“We do have a vegetarian menu, but we serve chicken and fish.”

“Ah, okay.”

“As for the Icelanders, most of them, the women, get the grilled chicken salad, too.” The two of them laughed together. Lydia could feel a palpable sense of relief seeping in. She ordered an Orangina to go with her salad, and it was all ready in minutes. She sat at a simple, Formica-topped table, with cheap red plastic chairs that you could have found in any college town in the United States.

As she munched her way through the salad, her body allowed her to finally feel how tired she was and how overwhelming this really was going to be. Here she sat, eating a nourishing meal, watching people live their lives but doing it with different words, different architecture, different cultural norms. And the Lydia who had the guts to maliciously obey Mike’s final order finally felt like it was going to be okay.

Human resources hadn’t given her any sense of what to expect in the office other than handing her the address and saying good luck. So when she walked up to the modern, nondescript, aluminum and glass building that faced the bay, she walked into the unknown. Dressing that morning had been an exercise in futility. After five different clothing changes she just gave up and figured if she made a mistake, she made a mistake. People here seemed to be more casual, more practically minded in their sartorial choices. She went in wearing nice business shoes, business casual slacks, a blouse, a sweater in case it was cold, and hoped like hell she wasn’t expected to wear a suit.

The stairs led to a beige cubicle farm. She could have been in downtown Boston. She could have been in Charlotte, North Carolina. She could have been in Portland, Oregon. It was a beige cubicle farm and the European offices for Bournham Industries were no bigger than twelve desks.

“Is this Bournham Industries?” she asked the first person she saw, a pleasant-looking young woman who marched passed her with her arms filled with files.

“Ah, yes it is,” the woman said with a light accent. “Are you Lydia?” she asked.

“Yes, I am Lydia Charles. Is this—”

“You’re the new director of communications,” the woman said. She was older than Lydia by about ten years, and sleek and slim like someone who did triathlons. The weathered face attested to time spent outside, with a tall, live, thin body that had an abdomen that was almost concave, making Lydia suck in her own gut. Not that it made a difference (because it wasn’t going anywhere).

The woman shifted her folders into one arm and then reached out to shake Lydia’s hand. “I’m Elsa. It’s nice to meet you. Let me show you to your desk.”

Desk? She only had a desk? She thought she’d have an office. Elsa had long brown hair much like Lydia’s; her eyes, though, were the bright blue that she’d come to notice on more and more people here. Elsa marched with a deliberateness, an efficiency that Lydia appreciated instantly. And then she found herself at her office. Indeed. A piece of paper tacked to the outside cubicle that said Lydia Charles, Director of Communications for European Operations. There was a Dell desktop on the desk, a can full of pens, a printer, a ream of paper—and that was it.

Lydia dropped her laptop bag slowly onto the spare chair in the cubicle and said, “So…” The word lingered in the air as Lydia thought second by second through what she was about to say. If she asked, “So what do I do now?”— her impulse—she would look like she couldn’t lead. If she asked for more direction, she worried that Elsa would think she was an idiot and yet, here she stood in front of this desk that looked not at all unlike her desk at home, and what was she supposed to do?

Elsa seemed impatient and pulled on the sleeve of her red sweater, peering at Lydia and finally saying, “Let me go get Siggi. I think he can help.”

A creeping dread filled her stomach, spreading like a warm germ up into her lungs, down her arms, and down all the way into her toes. Siggi. Elsa. She heard the murmuring of two or three other people talking in a cubicle, speaking, she assumed, in Icelandic. She didn’t understand a single word. It was a quiet, creepy space. Not so much because of anything anyone was doing or not doing but because Lydia was beginning to feel that she had made a terrible, terrible mistake and one that she wanted to undo right this second.

“Hello,” said a booming voice right behind her and she jumped, caught in her thoughts. She turned to find her face filled with a sweater and then looked up, and up, and up. At five foot six she wasn’t a particularly short woman, but the face she finally craned back to look up to had to come on a guy who stood at about six foot eight. He made Miles look short—and she’d never met anyone who made Miles look short. This guy really looked like a Viking. It was a joking stereotype, but the long, flowing, wavy brown hair, the broad cheekbones, the slightly narrowed eyes, the big mouth, incredibly broad shoulders that literally blocked out the sun from where she stood, and legs, legs like tree trunks embedded in the beige forest, all added up to a human being who could play Rurik or Leif Eriksson on a History Channel miniseries.