The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

since. For weeks and months my young sick soul was tortured by the image of an eighty-year-old Jesus facedown on a stony floor. Every night I hammered a big iron-nail into his back and out through his heart, which exploded, painting my entire world red.
    They offer Sideways on the plane TV, but also vintage stuff like Seinfeld , some rusty old reruns of weirdo hairdos. Seinfeld was typically American in that show. He was a pretty funny guy, but he had no sense of style. Tacky like a Texan tux. Tasteless dressing and tasteful jokes. That’s Seinfeld for me. I would have preferred it the other way around.
    The guy sitting next to me is reading some paperback monster that looks to be one of those Mob thrillers (how many volumes can they write about those Sicilian brats?). Occasionally he murmurs a yes or a no to the older gentleman sitting in the aisle seat who keeps popping some pills. They must be uppers since he can’t seem to allow the poor fellow to read his book without peppering him with questions in a bizarre accent. It turns out the talking guy is Icelandic and the reading guy is a basketball player, born and bred in Boise, Idaho, but now on a transfer to the Schniefel Stickholmers or something like that—a small team in the Icelandic conference.
    Oh, yeah. I forget to mention that this is a nonsmoking Icelandair flight from New York to Reykjavik, Iceland. This was the surprise that awaited me at Gate 2. My exile has taken a northern turn. By the touch of my index finger, the video screen abandons Seinfeld’s hairdo for an info-map: A red airplane, the size of Britain, slowly crawls up the Atlantic, past some white thing that the talking man says is Greenland. Iceland on the other hand looks pretty green. The chatty one takes the next ten minutes to explain his theory about this mix-up: When the Norwegian Vikings discovered Iceland in some year before 1000, they found Irish monks up there, who’d already named the land Island , or The Land of Christ, for Jesus was Isu in their language. The Vikings, however, took the Savior for ice . I’m glad they did. Or else I’d be traveling to Christland.
    “OK. Cool. What about Greenland then?” the basketball player asks.
    “The first settlers wanted all of Iceland for themselves, so they named the other one Greenland, so that next wave of immigrants would go there instead. Many people say it was the first PR trick in history. It really should be the other way around. Greenland should be called Iceland and Iceland, Greenland.”
    Cool. I’m traveling under a pseudonym to a country with a pseudonym. Not too bad. I’ve heard about Iceland before. A friend of Dikan’s went there once for some arms-for-legs deal. The nights are bright and the girls are long, he said. Or was it the other way around? It’s a small island (ah, well, it’s two times bigger than Croatia) in the middle of the North Atlantic. The in-flight magazine shows lunar landscapes and sunny faces. Mossy rocks and fuzzy sweaters. They say Iceland is a young, hot country that’s still very active, shaking from eruptions and earthquakes almost daily, with boiling water and running lava breaking up through the surface. I wonder what brings Rev. David Friendly to this remote place? That’s me, that is. I have to start thinking like a priest.
    Bless my soul.
    Once more I try to find the right position for my aching legs. The stewardesses all have nice bodies and speak English with super confidence. Bright girls, long nights. Yeah, that’s how it was. The Icelandic look seems to be a cross between Julia Stiles and Virginia Madsen. Broad faces, barren cheeks. Cold eyes, cool lips. One of them hands me a tray of food and gives me an innocent, oh-what-a-sweet-puppy smile. Must be the dog collar I’m wearing. I’m not a man anymore. I’m a priest.
    In that way the bloody collar works. It keeps the sin away. Or keeps it all inside. My mind starts giving Munita a very long leash as I try to picture myself in bed with one of these northern nymphs. I don’t succeed. Munita has the upper hand. I miss her soft skin already.
    They make you pay for food. I find a few holy bills in Friendly’s wallet and send him my warmest thanks. Then I find out airline food tastes no better even when you’re paying for it. Maybe your taste buds stop working at five thousand feet. Suddenly the Wise Guy raises his voice as well as his glass of red wine, and, smiling, says “ skull! ” to me and the basketball player.