Hell-o.

This on?

Think I’m hearin me. Me.

This reverbin either in the buildin or in my head. Whatever. Ha.

Nobody listnin anyways right?

I finished it even before I went through passport control, really I finished it at JFK. It was in my hand while the man asked me questions, but I had already read the end, in line. When I shut the book, for a minute I was satisfied, or self-satisfied, you might say, because it was a long flight, and I had accomplished that, at least.

When I was a boy we lived out in Mosfellsbaer, in the valley between Mount Esja and the hill we called Langahlið. It was only my mother and me in a small cement house; my father had moved in with his other family. Next to the house there was a small pool, called a kettle pond, of a type common in Iceland: round and deep, left over after a chunk of glacier melted. It had no inlet or outlet except the sky.