Pets by Bragi Ólafsson Read Free Book Online Page A

flight attendant’s offer of coffee, finished off his red wine and one of the Cointreau bottles, and nodded off almost before he had swallowed it. The flight attendant suggested that I tip his seat back, so that he would be more comfortable. While I was adjusting Armann’s seat, the woman by the window asked me, with a slightly mocking expression on her face, if I was going to cover him up with a rug too. I smiled back and said I thought he was wrapped up well enough already. She looked as though she was going to try to fall asleep too, and when she had shut her eyes, with her head resting against the window of the plane, I imagined that she was tired after spending last night with her lover and was floating into sleep on those memories. Now, when it was nearly three o’clock and one hour into this three hour flight.
    On the other hand, it was impossible to say what was going on in Armann’s mind. At first I thought of him having fallen asleep like a little child, but after further reflection I decided it was inappropriate; one would never see this kind of expression on a child’s face, even if its parents had poked it for fun or pulled its skin this way and that. Sleep would never disfigure a face so badly, except perhaps on a person who always slept alone and didn’t have to think day and night of looking good for a wife or lover. I smiled at this poor theory of mine—I began to wonder if I had been infected by my fellow passenger’s lively imagination—but I only needed to look over to the other side of the aisle to realize that there might be some truth in it. A middle-aged couple, who had asked me earlier to help them get their luggage down from the overhead bin, were asleep, and there was such a childlike, peaceful expression on the man’s face that it was impossible to imagine he had ever frowned, or looked depraved or lustful, even when he was enjoying intercourse with his wife.
    â€œMay I take the tray?” the flight attendant asked.
    I was going to pass her the woman’s tray first. She seemed to be asleep, but then I saw she hadn’t touched the dessert, so I offered to lift Armann’s tray instead—he had clearly enjoyed all the food. But in order to get the tray off the table I had to be rather organized; he had put his glasses down in his unused coffee cup and his right hand—with three fingers gripping the tray, as if to prevent it from being thrown away—lay in his lap, heavy with sleep. I managed to loosen his fingers and move his hand without waking him. I couldn’t think where to put his glasses while I helped the flight attendant, so I pushed them into the pocket of my shirt and got rid of our used food trays.
    Once the food trays have been removed, one feels that a very important stage has been reached. Besides having been fed and feeling comfortably full, the second stage of the journey has begun, or is about to at least, and then there’s not so long to wait until one can fill one’s lungs with, on the one hand, desperately wanted cigarette smoke and, on the other hand, cold fresh air, at least if one is on the way, as we were, to Iceland from abroad.
    The flight attendant thanked me for helping her with the trays and offered me more coffee. I accepted and added what was left of the first liqueur bottle to it.
    Vigdis came to mind. When I called her from the hotel the day before yesterday she said she would call me from Akureyri after I got home, though she wasn’t quite sure when. She was going to be at a meeting which could last all evening. She had asked me to buy her a jumper and some pants from a certain shop on Oxford Street; I didn’t find them, despite looking for an hour yesterday on my last trip to the shops. She had also told me to buy some special make of clothes for Halldor, my son, but I hadn’t had time to find them either. I bought a computer game instead, and I was already beginning to worry that it