“Wow.”
Mistaking his surprise with interest, she continues: “It’s really about ordering my thoughts at the beginning of the investigative process. Getting my hands into the material. That’s all. The fact is, all scientists—and investigators, too—know that most spontaneous insights happen only when you’re steeped in the data. I like to think that intuitive sparks are a function of creativity and analysis rubbing against each other.”
She smiles at him and in that moment a crystallizing chill runs through her body. In its wake comes adrenaline and clarity. What she sees is a young man smiling back at her with a look of absolute pity. He places her second Bloody Mary on a square napkin in front of her as one might provide mush to a moron at an asylum. In watching his gesture it dawns on Sigrid that she might never—not metaphorically but for real—ever have sex again.
The thought makes her both terrified and strangely relieved.
“If there’s anything else you need,” he says, “just ask.” Sigrid smiles at him gently, knowing that he is, at that moment, her primary caregiver.
Sigrid passes through Reykjavik without incident or interest, boards the second plane, and tries to sleep part of the way to Canada. They are chasing the sun by flying west during the daytime, and so, like at home, night never comes.
Her friend Eli always has solutions to problems that aren’t her own. In this case, when Sigrid sent her a brief email from the farm telling her about the unexpected trip to the U.S., Eli recommended a drug for jet lag called Ambien, which is called Stilnoct in Norway. She swore by it and insisted that Sigrid buy some at the pharmacy before leaving for America. Her husband, a doctor, could send the prescription to the local pharmacy.
Eli often traveled to Los Angeles because she works in the film industry doing something called “development,” which Sigrid has never understood and does not take much interest in either. Eli’s time in L.A. has clearly contributed to her view that drugs can help with any naturally occurring problem.
In the morning, while packing, Sigrid looked up the drug on the internet. It is American, so she checked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which states, “AMBIEN may cause serious side effects: After taking AMBIEN,” it began, before changing the typeface to bold, “you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night.” To ensure it was not misunderstood, the FDA provided a bullet-pointed list of things you might do during the night that you wouldn’t remember, including these:
driving a car (“sleep-driving”)
making and eating food
talking on the phone
having sex
sleep-walking
This was not a theoretical list made to be illustrative. Rather, it was a list of things that had “reportedly happened.”
Sigrid decided not to buy Ambien at the pharmacy and instead take her chances with jet lag.
She arrives in Montreal having slept almost three hours. She passes through customs and collects her rolling luggage. She is stopped by a small border control beagle with floppy ears and brown eyes. It sniffs her bags and crotch for drugs, bombs, and cheese.
It is early evening, local time, and well past midnight back in Norway. She transfers to yet another gate for her third airplane; this one to Watertown, New York, USA. On that plane she does little more than hold on to the arms of her tiny chair and hope that the propeller plane—possibly borrowed from an Indiana Jones film—doesn’t crash.
When she arrives she is pale, constipated, and tired. The summer evening is colder than she’d expected. The taxi that collects her is a monstrous American sedan not sold in Norway. She sits small and low in the back seat as the driver silently delivers her to a Holiday Inn close to the airport. It is properly dark when she checks in. The carpeted hallway smells of mothballs and lemon. She opens her hotel room door by inserting a white plastic card. A light turns green; the future is open.
Sigrid removes her shoes and parks the suitcase by the dresser knowing she will not unpack. She washes her hands and face in the bathroom after being shocked by the unflattering glow of the fluorescent bulbs.
In a small black refrigerator she finds tiny bottles of Johnny Walker Red. The price may be high by local standards, but it is far lower than what she’d pay at a bar in Oslo. And this is closer. She takes two.
Barefoot, Sigrid pads down the hall to a blue room with an icemaker and vending machines filled with chocolate and chips. She places the bucket on a plastic grate and presses the button above it. Ice is hurled into her bucket as though by something trapped and angry. She freights a small mountain of ice back to her room.
Strutting toward her in the narrow hallway is a dark-skinned girl too young for a bra and wearing jeans that are too tight for her age.
“Hello,” Sigrid says.
The girl eyes her quizzically and strides by as if Sigrid has made a lewd remark.
Back in her room, she tries to connect to the internet on her tablet. It costs $12.95 for four hours. She decides to pay, only to learn she can’t because the software does not allow her to enter a non-American address.
Sigrid opens her suitcase for a nightgown and realizes she didn’t bring one. What is inside, however, is a book with a faded cloth cover that is so worn, the golden lettering has flaked off. There is a handwritten letter from her father folded and placed inside the cover with the title page.
“Sigrid: This book was published in 1835 in French. In 1838 it was published by Adlard and Saunders in New York in English. Mine’s a later reprint, of course. It is called Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. He was
