by Gayle Forman
“What identifying details do you know?” W asks.
I know the timbre of her laugh. I know the heat of her breath. I know the cast of moonlight against her skin.
“She was traveling with her friend,” I say, “who was blonde, and Lulu had black hair, cut short, in a bob, like Louise Brooks.” The boys all exchange a look. “She had a birthmark right here.” I touch my wrist. Since she first showed it to me on the train, I’d wondered what it would taste like. “She mostly kept it covered with a watch. Oh, right, she had an expensive gold watch. Or did have. I have it now.”
“That’s hers?” Broodje asks.
I nod.
W scribbles this down. “This is good,” W says. “The watch, especially. It identifies her.”
“Also, it gives you a cover,” Broodje says. “A reason to be tracking her down other than wanting to bone her a few more times to get her out of your system. You can say you want to return the watch.”
A half hour ago the poster board was empty, but now it’s half filled, all these circles, these tenuous connections, linking me to her. W turns toward it, too.
“Principle of Connectivity,” he says.
• • •
Over the next week, one by one, the circles on W’s connectivity board become Xs, as connections that I understand never actually existed are severed. It’s a Small World is for teens and their parents, so that one’s out. Go Away doesn’t have any record of anyone with a black bob and a watch on that tour. Adventure Edge refuses to divulge information about their clients and Cool Europa appears to have gone out of business. Teen Tours! doesn’t pick up the phone, though I’ve left several messages and emails.
It’s a dispiriting process, this. And complicated, too because I have to dodge time zones and callbacks and the ever-more-suspicious Ana Lucia. She’s not pleased with my more frequent absences, which I’ve attributed to the soccer league I’ve supposedly joined.
One night the phone rings past eleven. “Your girlfriend?” Ana Lucia says, her voice flat. Girlfriend is what she calls Broodje these days, because she thinks I spend more time with him than her. It’s a joke, but it gives my stomach a guilty twist every time.
I pick up the phone and cross to the other side of her room.
“Hi. I’m looking for a Willem de Ruiter?” The voice, in English, butchers the pronunciation of my name.
“Yes, hello,” I respond, trying to stay businesslike because Ana Lucia is right there.
“Hi Willem! This is Erica from Teen Tours! I’m responding to your email about trying to return a missing watch.”
“Oh, good,” I say, keeping it breezy, though Ana Lucia is now looking at me with narrowed suspicious eyes and I realize it’s because I’m speaking in English, and though I speak English with her, on the phone, with the boys, I always speak Dutch.
“We provide loss and theft insurance for all our travelers so if she’d lost something of value, there’d be a claim.”
“Oh,” I say.
“But I’ve checked all the claims for that time period, and all I’ve found is a claim for a stolen iPad from Rome and a bracelet that was recovered. But if you have a name, I can double check.”
I look at Ana Lucia, who’s decidedly not looking at me now, so I know she’s listening. “I can’t give you that now.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, maybe you can call me back with that later?”
“I can’t really do that either.”
“Oh. You sure it was a Teen Tours! tour?”
I now see how the missing-watch story is as cracked as the watch itself. Even if this was the right tour, there’s no way the tour operators would know Lulu lost the watch because she lost it after the tour. It’s a fiction. This is all a fiction. The truth is, I’m looking for a girl whose name I don’t know, who bears a passing resemblance to Louise Brooks. None of which I can say out loud. Nor do I want to. This is absurd.
Erica goes on, “You know, one of our veterans led that tour. She’d know if anything went amiss. Do you want her number?”
I turn to the bed. Ana Lucia is up, throwing off the covers.
“Her name is Patricia Foley,” Erica continues. “Would you like her number?”
Ana Lucia walks across the room and stands in front of me, totally naked, like she knows she’s offering a choice. But it’s not really a choice, when the other option doesn’t actually exist.
“That won’t be necessary,” I say to Erika.
• • •
I wake up the next morning to knocking. I squint at the sliding glass door. There’s Broodje, holding a bag, and putting a finger to his lips.
I crack open the door. Broodje pops in his head in and hands me the bag.
From the bed, Ana Lucia rubs her eyes, looking grumpy.
“Sorry to wake you,” he calls to Ana Lucia. “I need to steal him. We have a soccer match. Lapland forfeited so now we’re playing Wiesbaden.”
Lapland and Wiesbaden? Ana Lucia is ignorant about all things soccer, but this is pushing it. But her face registers no suspicion about the pairing, only sourness about Broodje’s untimely arrival.
In the bag is someone’s old soccer kit, jersey, shorts, cleats, and a thin tracksuit to wear on top. I look at Broodje. He gives me a look. “Better go change now,” he says.
“When will you be back?” she asks me when I return. The tracksuit is several centimeters too short for me. I can’t tell if she notices.
“Late,” Broodje answers. “It’s an away game. In France.” He turns to me. “In Deauville.”
Deauville? No. The search is over. But Broodje is halfway out the door and Ana Lucia already has her hands crossed over her chest. I’m already paying the price, so I may as well do the crime.
I go to give her a kiss good-bye. “Wish me luck,” I say, forgetting for a second that there is no game, no soccer game at least, and that she’s the last person who should be wishing me luck.
Anyway, she doesn’t. “I hope you lose,” she says.
Thirteen
* * *
Deauville
* * *
It’s off season in Deauville, and the seaside resort is buttoned up tight, a cold wind whipping in off the Channel. From a distance, I can see the marina, rows of sailboats in drydock, on their stands, their masts unstepped. As we get closer, the whole marina appears shut down, hibernating for the winter. Which seems about the right idea.
On the drive down in Lien’s car, which had smelled of lavender when we left and now smells of wet, dirty laundry somehow, the boys had been ebullient. W had located a barge called Viola late last night and had then decided we should take a road trip to France. “Wouldn’t it be easier to call?” I’d asked after the plan had been explained to me. But no. They seemed to think we should just go. Of course, they were properly dressed for it, and I was in nothing but a thin tracksuit. And they had nothing to lose, except a day’s worth of studies. Me, I had even less, but it felt like more somehow.
We drive around the labyrinthine marina, finally reaching the main office only to find it closed. Of course. It’s now four o’clock on a dark November day; anyone in their right mind is holed up somewhere warm.
“Well, we’ll just have to find it ourselves,” W says.
I look around. As far as I can see in every directions are masts. “I don’t see how.”
“Are marinas organized by type of vessel?” W asks.
I sigh. “Sometimes.”
“So there might be a section for barges?” he prompts.
I sigh again. “Possibly.”
“And you said this Jacques lives on his boat year-round so it wouldn’t be drydocked?”
“Probably not.” We had to pull our houseboat out of the water every four years for service overhauls. Drydocking for a vessel that size is a massive undertaking. “Probably anchored.”
&nb
sp; “To what?” Henk asks.
“Probably to a pier.”
“There. We walk around until we find the barges,” W says, as if it’s all that easy.
But it’s not easy at all. It’s raining hard now, wet below us and above us. And it seems deserted around here, no sound except the steady pounding of rain, the waves against the sides of the hulls, and the clang of the halyards.
A cat streaks out across one of the piers, and behind it, a barking dog, and behind the dog, a man in a yellow slicker, one dot of color in all the gloom. I watch them go and wonder if I’m like that dog, chasing a cat because it’s what a dog does.
The boys take shelter under an awning. I’m shivering now, ready to pack it in. I turn around to suggest a warm bistro, a nice meal, and some drinks before the long drive home. But the boys are all pointing behind me. I turn back around.
The Viola’s blue steel shutters are closed, making her look lonely out here strapped alongside the cement slips and the massive wooden posts. She looks cold, too, like she also wishes she were back in the hot Paris summer.
I step on the pier, and for a second, I can almost feel the rays of sunlight on my skin, can hear Lulu introducing me to double happiness. It was right there we’d sat, by the railing. Right there we’d disagreed about what double happiness meant. Luck, she’d said. Love, I’d countered.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Striding toward us is the man in the yellow slicker, the runaway mutt now leashed and shivering.
“Many a thief has underestimated Napoleon and has paid for it in a pound of flesh, haven’t they?” the man says to his dog. He pulls at the leash and Napoleon barks pitifully.
“I’m not a thief,” I say in French.
The man wrinkles his nose. “Worse! You are a foreigner. I knew you were too tall. German?”
“Dutch.”
“No matter. Get out of there before I call the gendarme or let Napoleon loose on you.”
I hold up on my hands. “I’m not here to steal anything. I’m looking for Jacques.”
I’m not sure if it’s the dropping of Jacques’s name or the fact that Napoleon has started licking his balls, but the man backs down. “You know Jacques?”
“A little.”
“If you know Jacques even a little, you know where to find him when he’s not on the Viola.”
“Maybe less than a little. I met him last summer.”
“You meet lots of people. You don’t board a man’s vessel without an invitation. That is the ultimate violation of his kingdom.”
“I know. I just want to find him, and this is the only place I can think of.”
He squints. “Does he owe you money?”
“No.”
“You’re sure? This isn’t about the races? He always backs the wrong horses.”
“Nothing to do with that.”
“Did he sleep with your wife?”
“No! Last summer he took four passengers through Paris.”
“The Danes? Bastards! He lost almost his whole charter fee right back to them. He’s a terrible poker player. Did he lose money to you?”
“No! He got money off us. A hundred dollars. Me and this American girl.”
“Terrible, those Americans. They never speak French.”
“She spoke Chinese.”
“What good does that do you?”
I sigh. “Look, this girl . . .” I start to explain. But he waves me away.
“If you want Jacques, go to Bar de la Marine. When he’s not on the water, he’s in the drink.”
• • •
I find Jacques at the long wooden bar, slung over a near-empty glass. As soon as we walk in, he waves at me, though whether it’s because he recognizes me or because this is just his standard greeting, I’m not sure. He is carrying on an in-depth conversation about new slip fees with the bartender. I buy the boys a round of beers, settle them into a corner table, and sit down next to Jacques.
“Two of what he’s having,” I tell the bartender, and he pours us each a glass of teeth-achingly sweet brandy on the rocks.
“Good to see you again,” Jacques tells me.
“So you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you.” He squints, placing me. “Paris.” He belches and then pounds his chest with his fist. “Don’t look so surprised. It was only a few weeks ago.”
“It was three months ago.”
“Weeks, months. Time is so fluid.”
“Yes, I remember you saying that.”
“You want to charter the Viola? She’s dry for the season but we get wet again in May.”
“I don’t need a charter.”
“So what can I do for you?” He downs the rest of his drink and crunches hard on the ice. Then he starts in on the fresh one.
I don’t really have an answer for him. What can he do for me?
“I was with that American girl and I’m trying to get in touch with her. She didn’t by any chance get in touch with you?”
“The American girl. Oh yes, she did.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She said to tell that tall bastard I’m done with him ’cause I’ve found myself a new man.” He points to himself. Then he laughs.
“So she didn’t get in touch with you?”
“No. Sorry, boy. She leave you high and dry?”
“Something like that.”
“You could ask those bastard Danes. One of them keeps texting me. Let me see if I can find it.” He pulls out a smartphone and starts fumbling with it. “My sister got me this, said it would help with navigation, bookings . . . but I can’t figure it out.” He hands it to me. “You try.”
I check his text queue and find a note from Agnethe. I open the text and there are several more before it, including pictures from last summer when they were cruising on the Viola. Most are of Jacques, in front of fields of yellow safflower, or cows, or sunsets, but there’s one shot I recognize: a clarinet player on a bridge over Canal Saint Martin. I’m about to hand the phone back when I see it: in the corner, a sliver of Lulu. It’s not her face, it’s the back of her—shoulders, neck, hair—but it’s her. A reminder that she’s not some fiction of my own making.
I’ve often wondered how many photos I’ve been accidentally captured in. There was another photo that day, not accidental at all. An intentional shot of Lulu and me that she’d asked Agnethe to take with her phone. Lulu had offered to send it to me. And I’d said no.
“Can I forward this to myself?” I ask Jacques.
“As you wish,” he says, with a wave of the hand.
I forward the shot to Broodje’s phone because it was true that mine won’t accept photo texts, though that wasn’t the reason I didn’t want the shot of Lulu and me when she offered it. It was automatic, that denial, a reflex almost. I had almost no pictures from the last year of my traveling. Though I’m sure I am in many people’s photos, I’m in none of my own.
In my rucksack, the one that got stolen on that train to Warsaw, had been an old digital camera. And on that camera were photographs of me and Yael and Bram from my eighteenth birthday. They were some of the last photos I had of the three of us together, and I hadn’t even discovered them until I was on the road, bored one night and going through all the shots on my memory stick. And there we were.
I should’ve had those pictures emailed somewhere. Or printed. Done something permanent. I planned to, I did. But I put it off and then my rucksack got nicked and it was too late.
The devastation caught me off guard. There’s a difference between losing something you knew you had and losing something you discovered you had. One is a disappointment. The other is truly a loss.
I didn’t realize that before. I realize it now.
Fourteen
* * *
Utrecht
* * *
On the ride back to Utrecht, I call Agnethe the Dane to see if Lulu sent her any photographs, if there had been any correspondence. But she hardly remembers who I am. It’s depressing. This day, so seared in my memory, is just another day to everyone else. And in any case, it was just one day, and it’s over now.
It’s over now with Ana Lucia, too. I can feel it, even if she can’t. When I come back, defeated, telling her soccer season is over, she is sympathetic, or maybe victorious. She’s full of kisses and cariños.
I accept them. But I know now it’s just a matter of time. In three weeks, she leaves for Switzerland. By the time she gets back, four weeks later, I will be gone. I make a mental note to get on that passport renewal.
It’s as if Ana Lucia senses all this. Because she starts pushing harder for me to join her in Switzerland. Every day, a new appeal. “Look how nice the weather is,” she says one morning as she gets ready for class. She opens her computer and reads me the weather report from Gstaad. “Sunny skies every day. Not even so cold.”
I don’t answer. Just force a smile.
“And here,” she says, clicking over to a travel site she likes and tilting the laptop toward me to show me pictures of snowy alps and painted nutcrackers. “Here it shows you all the things you can do besides skiing. You don’t have to sit at the lodge. We’re close to Lausanne or Bern. Geneva’s not even so far. We can go shopping there. It’s famous for watches. I know! I’ll buy you a watch.”
My whole body stiffens. “I already have a watch.”
“You do? I never see you wear it.”
It’s back at Bloemstraat, in my rucksack. Still ticking. I can almost hear it from here. And suddenly, three weeks feels too long.
“We should talk.” The words trip out before I know what to follow them with. Breaking up is not something I’ve done in a while. So much easier to kiss good-bye and catch a train.
“Not now,” she says, rising to apply lipstick in the mirror. “I’m already late.”