I’d lived with Denise’s negativity and overall nastiness for three days now, and was sorely tempted to tell her just what I thought, but I reminded myself that we had another eighteen days together, and it wouldn’t actually kill me to turn the other cheek. Instead I indulged in a fantasy wherein she was left behind on a remote fjord.

“Have you dated much lately?” she asked, obviously sharpening her claws for another attack.

I smiled and threw in a couple of hungry wolves prowling along the edge of the fjord. “I live outside of Seattle in a small town in the mountains. There aren’t a lot of people there to begin with, so it’s kind of hard to meet guys. That’s why I decided to go on this tour, to open my horizons.”

“At least you’re not opening your legs for everything with a penis, like some people I could mention,” she said with another waspish look toward Magda. “I think we’ve been had, though. The men on the tour are useless, and as for these Icelanders . . . they may be descended from Vikings, like Audrey says, but I don’t see any of them panting over us. Mind you, if you said the words ‘green card’ to them, that would change things fast enough, but that’s not going to happen.”

“We’ve only had three days so far—” I started to object, but I was cut short when she slammed her glass down on the little table.

“You don’t get it, do you? Pia, look at yourself! You’re what, forty? Forty-five?”

“Thirty-nine. I won’t be forty for another ten months,” I said defensively, trying to keep a grip on my temper.

“Face it,” Denise said, grabbing my arm as she leaned forward across the table. “Women like us get the shaft our whole lives. You may think that there is a man out there for you, a Mr. Wonderful who will be everything you want, but there isn’t. Look around you, Pia. Look at who has all the handsome men—it’s the pretty ones, the skinny ones, the ones who don’t give a fuck about anything but getting what they want. They’ve got no morals and don’t care who knows it.”

“I don’t buy that,” I said, jerking my arm out of her grip. “I know a lot of nice women who get men. Sometimes it just takes a while; that’s all.”