"What are you writing?"

"A note to the twins."

"You can't write now. You're missing everything."

"But this looks like Michigan. I'm missing nothing."

"You'll never be here again. How can you not soak it in. Think about it – you will never see this again, ever!"

"I'm almost done. Let me finish."

"You're like the people that sleep on the plane. They're going over the Rockies or something and they're asleep, heads against the window."

"You slept on the plane, Hand. On the way to Dakar."

"That was at night."

He was right.

"Just shut the fuck up and let me finish."

3. There are bears and there are small dogs. Be strong like bear! If they take out your teeth, sit on the dogs. Bears always forget they can just sit on the dogs. Sit on the dogs!

4. If your house is haunted bring in your friends and start tearing the walls down. How can they haunt a house that you take apart? Aha!

We drove close to the water, the ocean to our right, through a rough-edged pine countryside, intermittent communities of that strange combination of vacation beachhouses and slump-shouldered shacks. We were ogled and squinted at by the pedestrians and motorists alike. We could not see why. At another gas station we were hated. I gave up on the postcard. I folded this one, too, and threw it into the backseat. I was out of postcards and hadn't gotten it right. We drove on, the sun melting the ice on our windshield.

"Here's a guy."

A man stood on the side of the road, leaning on a twisted cane. In peasant garb, feet wrapped in cloth. A scrunched face, a knapsack by his feet, a wooden cart.

"We'll ask him directions to Riga."

Hand stopped.

We pulled up next to him and Hand got out. I could see him motioning inquisitively at the man. The man, extending a thick bent finger, pointed the way we were going. Hand used his arm, in a straight semiphore motion, to confirm. The man nodded, bewildered. For a full twenty seconds they alternated in pointing the same way down the same road. We all knew the way. It was ludicrous. The way was always obvious when you're right there and the road's straight and cold. Hand pulled out a wad of bills and gestured them toward the man. The man waved them off. Hand pushed them closer. The man took them as if accepting something more personal – a lock of hair or a handmade card. Then the man turned around and stood, watching the road in the direction we came.

After an hour we'd gone only about a quarter of an inch on the map and we knew we wouldn't make it to the Liv in time. We turned around.

As a kind of consolation, I turned off the main road and drove down a path to the ocean. It was less frozen than Estonia's side, but the beach was a melting smattering of ice and pools. I figured we should try to walk out to the water, and maybe swim. Swimming here would be spontaneous and would never be forgotten, if we survived.

Hand stayed close to the car as I made my way toward the water. There was an old cannon on the beach, stuffed with ice cream wrappers. I crunched toward the shore again. It was ice, though it wasn't clear how far below sat the sand.

I walked out toward the water, grey and studded with ice the size of softballs. A great slide of ice sloped out from the beach over the water. I rested my stomach against the ice and leaned down to touch the water. I'd done this on Phelps Lake. The water in winter was homelier and more affectionate.

The sun was gone. I had missed its final few seconds. Time had become elastic. I'd forgotten about Hand.

I rested my palm on the water. The water, undulating slightly with the waves unformed, rose to kiss my palm.

The water was not God. The water undulating slightly with the waves unformed was not spiritual. It was jagged cold water, and it felt perfect when we put our hand into it, and it kissed our palms again and again, would never stop kissing our palms – and why wasn't that enough?

Then I fell through. The ice under my legs gave way and I fell through three feet of ice and was knee-deep in the grey frigid water. I'd fallen through ice before, maybe a dozen times, but never on a beach like this, with a volume of water limitless. I gasped. For a second I knew something. I knew a grip that felt assured and felt right. It felt right. It felt right. It felt right. Maybe this was the way. There was a reason for this, I thought. This would be the way. When it happened, it would be something like this. I wondered if -

I turned quickly to Hand, expecting him to be running toward me, panicked. But he hadn't moved. He was laughing.

He was about a hundred feet away and was really enjoying himself. I thought I was in real trouble – I thought I would keep falling – but Hand saw it all, saw the depth, and laughed.

"You fucker," I said.

"You are way too entertaining," he said.

He lumbered over and helped me out.

We walked back to the car and turned the heat on my feet. My toes were cold rocks glued together. I took the shoes off and my feet melted like plastic.

We left. Hand continued to laugh, but I told him the water was kissing my palms again and again, and he knew what I was talking about.

Hundred and twenty kph through the forests of pine and birch, speeding toward the airport. We had an hour for a drive that should take two. We were headed straight into the sun, which was low already, the road slathered in mercury.

"We can go over the North Pole," Hand said. He was driving and had just pounded the steering wheel. The idea had him going. "We're pretty close, right?"

"No, I -"

"Of course we are. We're like two hours by plane. We get back home over the north pole. That'll be even better than Cairo. That's all I want."

"And you think there'll be flights over the North Pole, leaving today from Riga?"

"I do," he said. "I have a feeling."

I said nothing.

"I'm actually pretty excited to be home," Hand said. "I'll sleep through work tomorrow, though. It'll take a week, I bet, to get back in the flow."

The airfield was burning.

"When do you get back from the wedding?"

– I don't, Hand.

"Will."

"I don't know, actually," I said. "I think I'm staying down there for a while."

– I'm going to keep going, Hand.

"How long?" he asked.

"I don't know."

He was staring at me.

"Drive," I said. "Watch the road."

– You understand me, Hand.

– Now I do.

Close to Riga, we stopped at a bus stop for directions to the airport, Hand dumping a wad of deutchmarks into the plastic shopping bag of an old woman. Off the highway we sped on the frontage road, passing through an uninterrupted string of shuttered factories and abandoned equipment. There were no signs for any airport, let alone the main airport leaving Riga, though on our map we were already upon it. To our left was a wide open field, covered in long yellow grass.

"That couldn't be it," I said.

"Dammit," Hand said.

We wound through light woods and between backyards, as the road potholed and split in widening tendrils. Finally it opened into a large parking lot before a handsome and completely dilapidated building resembling a great brown-brick midwestern train station.

There was one other vehicle in the lot, driving out as we were driving in. We waved it down.

"Excuse me!" Hand said.

The man, in the small weathered truck and wearing a painter's cap, shook his head.

"Airport?" Hand tried.

He shook his head and drove on.

This was a decommissioned Soviet airfield.

"Damn," I said. "We're missing our flight."

We drove the way we came. The airfield, as we ran along its perimeter, was now on fire. Flames five or six feet high, a swath fifty feet long. We hoped it was intentional. I thought maybe we should alert someone. But there was a truck on the field, and two men within. They had it under control. We kept going, toward the other airport on the map. We'd passed it on the way here.