Slow Down Cowboy

There was a man from New Brunswick who said this always happened. 

“I stayed here last year,” he huffed. “It happened three times, always in the middle of the night.”

Reggie stood on the guesthouse stoop with an off-season tourist on either side of her and four across. Only she and the man from New Brunswick were North American. Everyone else was German or French. 

This made the man from New Brunswick even more insufferable. Only he possessed clean, accentless English. Only he could also converse in French with a pretty girl in a silk sleep bonnet. Only he had stayed at this guesthouse in Reykjavík enough times to know the fire alarm went off intermittently—and always in the middle of the night. 

Reggie wasn’t in a silk sleep bonnet. When the alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. she dressed like a striptease in reverse. Long johns, novelty pajama bottoms over those long johns, a sweatshirt over a T-shirt that read SLOW DOWN COWBOY, a bathrobe over all of that, two pairs of socks, and house slippers.

When she tumbled out in the entire ensemble, it wasn’t even that cold. It was late April and the sun was already rising. If she were back home in Knoxville, she’d guess it was seven o’clock. She was simultaneously furious and relieved that Brauð & Co wasn’t open yet. They had her favorite cinnamon buns, but she’d gotten too cavalier with her Icelandic the day before and said something so garbled the barista had answered with an aghast “WHAT!?”

“OK,” Reggie asked the man from New Brunswick, plugging her ears with her fingers. “How long does it last? This alarm?” It was blisteringly loud. It was as loud on the stoop as it had been in her Spartan bedroom and the grim linoleum hallway leading to the front desk. 

“Oh, HOURS.” He was positively beaming. He turned to the girl in the silk bonnet. “Beaucoup trop longtemps!”

He’d flown too close to the sun with his expertise. All six off-season tourists abandoned him on the stoop and scuttled into downtown Reykjavík at the word “hours.” 

Before leaving one of the Germans gave him a thumbs-up. “Since you know how it works, you stay, ja?”

Reggie trudged down the street and took a right turn at the enormous church looming over the city. The hem of her bathrobe dragged over Skólavörðustígur’s rainbow-colored asphalt as she searched for something with an open sign. She passed a cluster of darkened shops selling lobster soup before finding a self-service laundromat with seven humming machines and one person inside. 

As soon as she walked in she regretted it. She could tell by the shock of strawberry-blond hair, the handmade lopapeysa, and the sturdy hiking boots that the only man there was a local, and she knew locals possessed a low-grade, understandable annoyance with tourists. 

He was asleep in such a dramatic way he looked almost dead. His hands were shaped like upside-down claws, and his head lolled to one side. His pose recalled both Christ and Mary in Michelangelo’s Pietà.

She made a turn to leave, but one of her house slippers scuffed against the tile loud enough to wake him. He opened one eye, then both, and laughed out loud. It was a full-bodied, HoHo laugh. 

Ah yes, her outfit. 

“There was a fire alarm at my guesthouse,” she said in the stupidest tone of voice she’d ever heard. “That’s why I look like this.”

“You are wearing the closet!” His face had a happy, open quality, as if he’d been playing peek-a-boo with a nephew and gotten stuck on the boo. “What are these pajamas!?”

She looked down. Her pink pajama pants had horseshoes stamped all over them, interspersed with the word COWGIRL spelled out in curly rope. 

“This wasn’t my sartorial choice.” She swore. Sartorial was probably too advanced an English vocabulary word. “I got them at a bachelorette—at a hen party.”

“Ah.” 

He pointed at the eight machines set into the wall. Four of them were rattling while the other three churned. An eighth had a sign with an unhappy face on it that read DONT WORKS. “I will be done soon, then you can have one.”

She sat on her hands on a long bench made of green formica. “I’m just here to pass the time, I don’t actually have any laundry.”

He HoHo laughed again. “You have nothing but laundry. It is all on top of you.” He pointed at her socks. “You can wash one of your socks. And this crazy robe.” 

Her robe was cheetah print. It dawned on Reggie that she was wearing the remnants of three different bachelorette parties. But she’d had enough scrutiny of her 4:00 a.m. attire.

“OK but why are YOU washing seven loads of laundry in the middle of the night?”

He crossed his arms and stretched his legs out over the tile. “I am a tour guide,” he said as if it explained everything. 

She blinked at him. 

He sighed. “I do a tour of the peninsula—it is all day. Seven in the morning to eight at night. When it ends, I am too tired to do anything but read a book. I cannot do laundry. So I do it before.”

“OK but SEVEN loads?”

“Yes.” He grinned. “You see, every day I wear six things at once and then a crazy robe. That is why there is so much.”

She turned her feet in. Her slippers had floppy bunny ears and one of the bunny’s eyes on the left foot was missing. “HaHa,” she said flatly.

“No, it’s a joke. The weather here is hard to tell until the day, so I have to prepare for everything. Also, I only wash things once every few weeks.”

The thought of trudging around in peninsular mud with strangers all day made Reggie nauseous. “Do you like it?” It sounded like she was asking if he liked eating bugs.

The man shrugged. “It’s OK. The people are nice, but—” he laughed. This laugh was more measured. “They all think they are asking their question for the first time.”

“Ah yes—sir, will we see the Northern Lights?” Reggie offered.

“Sir, do you believe in fairies? That is my favorite. As if I am a toddler.” He seemed to remember himself. “Ah, but everyone is very nice. Have you taken a tour?”

Reggie pushed past the memory of her shame at Brauð & Co. to answer in partial Icelandic. “Nei, takk. I would rather eat glass.”

The man withdrew immediately. He closed his eyes and crossed his ankles as well as his arms until two of the dryers and one of the washers dinged at once. He pushed up his sweater sleeves and folded everything on a tall center table while humming something by Ásgeir. His hair was long and in a loose bun at the nape of his neck. 

Reggie cleared her throat. “Sorry—lame joke.”

“It’s OK.”

Her palms started to sweat. Surely the alarm had been disarmed by now, and the man from New Brunswick had retreated back to his room and written an indignant entry in his travel diary. She stood to leave.

“Well…” She fiddled with the belt of her robe. “I’m going to go. It was nice meeting you. What was your name?”

Without looking up he said, “Thor.”

She couldn’t help herself. “That’s complete bullshit!”

He put down the long sleeve T-shirt he was folding, looked up at her, and HoHo laughed. “You are right, it is bullshit. My name is Gunnar.”

Gunnar walked to the large window looking out over the rainbow-painted street and pointed at three men standing on a corner nearby. They were holding takeaway coffees and rubbing their bleary eyes mid-conversation. 

He pointed at one of the men. “Do you see him? He is Thor.” He pointed at another. “He is also Thor. Many tour guides are Thor.” He shrugged. “The tourists like it. It is easy for them to say; they think of the movies. Then they go home and tell their cousins they had a tour guide in Iceland named Thor.”

He rapped on the glass and waved at them. They waved back and hooted, “THOR!” One of the Thors nodded at her and yelled, „Hvað í helvíti?!“

“What did he say?” she asked Gunnar with a nervous cough. She’d just noticed they had their palms flat on the windowsill and their elbows and pinkies were touching. 

He turned to her and whispered, “He wants to know—what is your name? And also why did you pack all these things from hen parties for a trip to Iceland?”

That was not what he’d said. From her classes she knew heita was the verb for “to be called,” and she hadn’t heard a single possible conjugation of heita. Her face flushed. It was possible Gunnar was flirting.

“Well my name is Reggie—Regina. And I’m here—” she flopped back on the formica bench and lay her arms next to her in limp surrender. “I’m writing a book, so I haven’t really been out much. I knew I’d be hunkered down to write. So I brought things that were cozy.”

“Ah!” Gunnar sat next to her. “A writer! Why here? Is your book about Vikings?” His Icelandic V made it sound almost like wikings.

“No.”

“Oh wait—is it a crime book?”

The rest of the machines dinged. Gunnar unloaded the wet things and moved them to a dryer. He had an inexhaustible array of long-sleeved T-shirts in muted colors. 

“No.”

He pressed the start button on the dryers. “So what is it about?”

She closed her eyes. It sounded so stupid when she told anyone. “It’s about a father and son who live in Akureyri.”

Gunnar sat next to her again. “Ah, I see. Like a Cat Stevens song.” He nodded sagely, but she could tell he was winding up another joke. “It will sell millions!”

It was Reggie’s turn to withdraw. She rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her palms with a blank look on her face. Her last book had been rejected by every imprint her agent submitted to. The book before that hadn’t done as well as expected. She’d received an email from her agent asking ever-so-nicely if she’d consider returning to rom-coms. It was dawning on her that she’d never be able to quit her day job. She would always be a lowercase w writer rather than an uppercase one. 

Gunnar winced and tapped her knee. “Sorry, bad joke.” 

She forgave him immediately. 

“Your horseshoe pajamas—they remind me of something.” He told her he’d grown up on a horse farm outside of Hella. “Icelandic horses—” He sounded indignant. “Everyone calls them ponies. They are not ponies. They are just like regular horses, they only have a different build.” Every morning as a child, he’d woken up right around this time, eaten sheep sausage and peas, and gotten to work. It was good work, he told her, but he’d always had a dream of studying Nordic literature. 

“But I wanted to go away to school—I think Stockholm or Oslo would be best. And that would disappoint my father.” Instead he’d become a tour guide so he could stay close by for a little longer and save money. “It has taken far longer than I thought. So you see.” He raised his eyebrows. “I am your book.”

One of the Thors banged on the laundromat window. He yelled, “THOR!” and breathed onto the glass, then drew a heart shape in the condensation.

“This is my least favorite Thor,” Gunnar grumbled.

Reggie’s eyes had misted up at hearing Gunnar’s story about the horses. It felt so much closer to what she wanted to write. But people wanted books about a woman who gives up her city job and moves to a place where everyone bakes pies. She wanted to write about real people and places, out in the world, not fictional renderings of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. 

She rubbed her forearm over her nose. “Do you think my book idea is stupid? Do you think it’s dumb to try and write about an Icelandic fisherman and his father?”

Gunnar crossed his arms and closed his eyes again, but she could tell he wasn’t withdrawing. When he opened them, he said he would enjoy being a tour guide more if he could ask the questions sometimes. Every day he had ten new people in his van, and all of them had stories. But they didn’t want to talk to him, they wanted to hear him talk about trolls who live in the mountains, and how recently a volcano erupted. 

“But I think almost any job is possible if you ask good questions.”

The worst Thor rubbed his cheek against the window, wiggled his tongue, and said something in Icelandic. Gunnar rolled his eyes and ran his hand under his chin. 

“What did he say?”

“He said—it is difficult to translate. He says I am giving you under the foot.”

Reggie laughed. “What?”

“Flirting.”

The last of the dryers dinged. Gunnar folded underwear with a very red face. Some of his strawberry blond hair had fallen out of its bun and hung in front of his eyes. 

Reggie had been writing in Iceland for three weeks. She’d stayed at guesthouses in Akureyri, Akranes, Selfoss, and Reykjavík. She’d taken long walks, collected black pebbles next to the beach, and taken selfies in front of three different lighthouses. The closest she’d come to a real conversation before today was a barista yelling at her at Brauð & Co. And now Gunnar was about to leave.

“Gunnar,” she said with a grin. “I think maybe you were right. I think I should do the laundry too.” 

He looked up and raised his eyebrows. “ALL the laundry?!”

“Of course not ALL the laundry. Just the outer layer. What should I start with?” She raised her arms. “The robe?”

He took a turn around her with a mock serious look on his face, pressing his hands together and resting them on his chin. He returned to the folding table and said, “Definitely the extra socks.”

She really didn’t want to do the extra socks. “Oh God. OK—but, you have to remember, the inner socks were from a hen party.” 

Gunnar pressed his palms on the tall table and stood on tiptoe to get a better look. When she removed her outer socks he gave eight shuddering HoHos and slapped his knees. 

Her socks were festooned with dancing penises that had stick arms and legs.

“Hmm. Maybe I should wash these instead, and wear the other ones out.”

“Yes, Regina. I think that is best.”

Her ears grew pink at hearing him say her name. She removed her cheetah print robe next, revealing a college sweatshirt. Gunnar ran his finger over his chest to mimic the print. “What is this Loyola?”

“It’s a Catholic university in Chicago.”

“Ah.” He crossed himself and got the order completely wrong. “What is left?”

“Just the sweatshirt.” 

By now there were five Thors outside the window. When she removed her sweatshirt, all five of them cheered.

Gunnar grinned and winked. 

“But this was your idea! And now you want me to slow down?”

“What?”

“Your shirt. Horses. I am a cowboy, no?”

She’d forgotten her T-shirt read SLOW DOWN COWBOY. “Oh right. HaHa.”

Three more Thors joined the group outside the laundromat. They joked with each other and drank coffee. All of them wore lanyards and knit hats with different logos on them. 

“Pickups start soon,” said Gunnar.

Reggie twisted the hem of her T-shirt in her hands. “Right.”

He scratched his head. “You know—the thing about this season is that sometimes there are spots available. Like tomorrow. Tomorrow there is still a spot.” He shrugged. “I think the weather is not going to be fair, so there will be less to say to them. You can ask me questions. Maybe they will want to hear about the horses and my father instead of mountain trolls.”

He piled six baskets of laundry outside the laundromat door and waved away whistles and catcalls from three of the Thors. He pulled up his car and loaded the baskets, then shook hands with Reggie. “Think about it, yes?”

He dug into his pocket and gave her a card. It had a rendering of a man in a Viking hat and long beard who looked nothing like Gunnar. 

“If I go—maybe you can go by Gunnar? It’s not too hard to pronounce. I can keep the tourists in line if they fuck it up. What do you say?”

He nodded firmly. “I say deal.”

After he left and her clothes were done, Reggie bought a cinnamon bun and a coffee at Brauð & Co. This time she spoke in English, except for the word “Takk.” The barista looked relieved. 

When she returned to the guesthouse with a clean bag of laundry in one hand and takeaway coffee in the other, the man from New Brunswick was sitting on the stoop. 

“Do you hear that?” he said, pointing to his ear.

“No.”

“Exactly.” He told her he’d taken care of it.

“So why are you still here?”

The man from New Brunswick squinted up at her. “Good news is always better when it comes from the source, don’t you think?”

Instead of poking fun, Reggie set her bag of laundry down, put on the sweatshirt, and joined him on the stoop. She watched the worst Thor round up over-bundled tourists in front of his van while she finished her coffee. 

The man from New Brunswick sighed contentedly. 

“Good weather today. Better than usual for this time of year.”

An idea came to her for her book. She scrolled to the notes app on her phone and turned to the man from New Brunswick with a smile. 

“Sir, can I ask you a question?”