“Do you always go on this way?”
“What way?”
“With your tall tales.”
“You don’t think I have a packet of tartar sauce in my pocket as we speak?”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
He leaned back. He made a tsking sound with his tongue and shook his head.
“Chauffeur, cook, or cleaner?” I asked him.
“What?” he asked, and he put his hand on my thigh and he looked me dead in the eye and it was nearly too much.
“Chauffeur, cook, or cleaner?” I repeated, trying to ignore his hand and his eyes.
“If I could have only one?”
I nodded. I should have removed his hand. My spine felt rubbery.
“Cleaner. I like to cook, and I’m a better driver than James Bond.”
“But you look more like Wolverine.”
“Should I move my hand?”
“In which direction?”
He smiled and took it away, and for a while we watched the guys playing music.
The waitress came back almost in time to the other musicians returning to the ribbon of sax, and Raef nodded and clapped, and so we clapped, too, because it was cool seeing the musicians match up, find each other in the melody, and it was cool thinking that Johnn P was a Nigerian playing sax in a European bar and that we had come from the United States and intersected with him here. Maybe that was the pot thinking, too—who knew?—but when I sipped the cognac I let it burn the roof of my mouth and tongue and looked over and smiled at Amy and Constance, both of them lizard-eyed and nodding slowly to the music.
My phone rang. It took me a moment to realize what it was, but when I dug it out of my pocket, I saw Brian’s number on the screen. The ex-boyfriend. I hadn’t heard from him the entire summer, and I suspected he hadn’t been to bed and had a case of the phonies. Late-night boo-hoos. Nostalgia for something that wasn’t much like the thing you remembered. Or maybe he genuinely missed me. Out of habit, out of curiosity, I almost hit the green button with my thumb, then thought better of it. Jack didn’t even look over or seem to care.
I decided I didn’t speak Brian anymore. I tucked the phone back in my pocket and put it on silence.
* * *
“Meet you at the hostel,” Amy whispered in my ear when the band stopped for a break.
“You don’t even know this guy,” I said.
“None of us know these guys,” Amy said. “Don’t worry, I can call you. We’re going to meet some other people for a drink. One guy is a magician, I guess. How often do you get to meet a magician in Amsterdam? Besides, the train isn’t until the afternoon, right?”
“Two fifty.”
I glanced at my phone to confirm my statement against the train schedule I had downloaded.
“Two fifty,” I repeated.
“I’ll be back at the hostel long before that, so don’t worry. We’ll see how things go with the Flying Dutchman. We can figure out everything tomorrow. Are you going to stay here and listen to more music?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m getting tired.”
“Carpe Jack-um. He’s way into you. And he’s off-the-charts gorgeous.”
“What about Constance?”
We both looked over at Constance. She sat with Raef and Johnn P, listening to a jazz conversation, apparently. She looked alert and happy and even had her hand on the small of Raef’s back. We both looked at one another, then Amy shook her head.
“She’s going sheepherder on us,” she said. “I’ve never seen her so smitten.”
“He’s cute.”
“He’s really cute. I love his accent.”
“Okay, then we’re set,” I said, trying to summarize, and because I always summarized. It was my singular talent. “I’ll meet you back at the hostel. Call if anything changes. Don’t get sawn in half.”
I wanted to concentrate and make sure I understood everything correctly, but I was blurry and drunk and tired. I knew we had a reason to leave Amsterdam pretty quickly, but I couldn’t remember why. It had something to do with a train connection, and also something to do with meeting a cousin of Amy’s in Munich or Budapest, but I couldn’t remember which. Besides, the scenario reminded me of Three Coins in the Fountain, a corny old black-and-white movie about three girls visiting Rome. They each throw a coin in the fountain and the music swells, then a song asks, “Which coin will the fountain bless?” The Mom-a-saurus made me watch it on Netflix with her before I left. It was one of her all-time favorite movies.
Too much had happened too quickly, and I didn’t trust our drunkenness. I also didn’t trust Alfred, the Flying Dutchman with the typewriter fingers; I had decided he was long and gangly, like an overgrown asparagus plant, and I didn’t like him. But Amy did like him, or at least wanted to go with him, and I tried not to judge when it came to her hookups, so I nodded and kissed her cheek and told her to be careful. She said she would be, then she grabbed Alfred and headed out.
That left me with Jack.
“Want to go?” he asked when Amy slipped up the stairs to the street and into the night. “I know a place you should see.”
“I’m tired, Jack.”
“Of me, or just tired?”
“Not of you.”
“Then the place I have to show you … Raef helped me locate it on a map. We have to find it together.”
Everything had softened. It was going to be morning soon, and the street would come awake with coffee and baked goods, and it was Amsterdam, the first time in my life, but I could hardly keep my eyes open. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, although I knew I wanted to be with Jack.
“It’s going to be light soon,” I said, stalling.
“That makes it better.”
“I’ll tell Constance we’re leaving,” I said, and I stood.
I had made up my mind without knowing I was making up my mind. Jack called the waiter over and settled the bill with the money we had all contributed as I told Constance the plan.
11
“After World War II, my grandfather made his way back home, but it took him a while. It took him about three months, maybe a little longer. Part of that was probably the devastation in Europe and the lack of dependable transportation, but he went on walkabout. That’s what Raef called it when I told him about it. My grandfather never talked about it much. He seemed guilty about it somehow, or secretive. But he kept a journal, and now I’m following it. You asked what I’m doing, and that’s it,” Jack said, his body turned toward me. “That probably doesn’t sound like much, but it is something I need to do. It’s something I promised myself I would do, and now I’m doing it.”
We had walked for a good half hour, and the streets did smell of coffee and baked goods. The sky hadn’t become light yet, but the darkness had retreated and lost its grip. The windows and the canals had begun to glow with pink, but you could not see things distinctly. Once we saw a cat sitting in the window of an apartment, just under an illuminated lamp, and it stared at us for a moment before suddenly flinching and bending its head down to lick its shoulder.
“What were you doing before you started following his journal?”
“Journalism, mostly. Changing the world for good. Isn’t that what they say? I graduated from the University of Vermont with a communications degree. I don’t even know if journalism exists anymore in the age of the Internet, but that’s what I was doing. When I got out of college, I took a reporting job in Wyoming at a small paper near the Wind River Range. I know, I know, little off the front line of journalism, but I thought I might be able to influence a community that size, whereas in a big city I would be a cub reporter with no clout. I’ve kind of come to think that small-town papers are the front line of journalism, but that’s another story. It turned out to be an excellent paper, and I wrote everything, which was great training. I had a boss named Walter Goodnow, who was one of these old-time journalists you don’t find much anymore. He gave me plenty to do, but he also let me write features, and h
e worked with me. Close editing. I wrote a lot of editorials, too, and I found out I had a tendency to be shrill when it came to topics that I believe in. Walter called me a pot-stirrer, but that wasn’t all bad. I stayed there for about three years.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Oh, I guess it was time to go. Walter said as much. After that, some things happened, not great things, and I decided to take a break. To interrupt my march to journalistic world dominance.”
“And you also hatched the plan to follow the journal?”
“I was a little at loose ends. I needed a guide. I needed someone to help me start my life over again. My grandfather had to do it after the war.”
“But you’ll go back to journalism?”
“That’s the plan. Walter called it the Clark Kent fantasy. You’re a journalist, but you’re also Superman. Once a news junkie, always a news junkie. You can’t help it.”
“I like that you’re following your grandfather’s journal.”
“I’m actually hitting the most important spots in no special order, but I don’t think that matters. And here I am going on and on and you want to eat, don’t you?”
“You’re not going on and on, but I do want coffee and bread. It has been a long night.”
“Next bakery,” he said, “we’ll stop.”
But nothing was quite open. We teetered on the edge of a fun night gradually becoming a march to hell. I still felt drunk and sloppy. My feet hurt, and I had started to worry about Amy and Constance. We had separated before on our travels, but usually after a couple of days in a city. This all seemed too fast, too reckless, and I was about to tell Jack I should grab a cab back to the hostel when finally he found an open bakery. It was merely a hole in the wall, a place to step in, order, then go, but an old woman opened the door for us when she saw us peering in, and she nodded when we ordered.
We ordered a lot. We took three baguettes in a paper bag, two croissants, one chocolate éclair, a chocolate bar, and two steaming coffees. Jack spoke to the woman in English, but she responded in Dutch. He tried German on her, and that worked fairly well, and he talked for a minute or two, asking directions, then he nodded and grabbed my elbow and led me out.
“Drink your coffee, but I have a place where we can eat,” he said, his smile contagious, his excitement obvious. “She told me how to get there. We’re close.”
The coffee tasted fresh. I realized, holding it, that I had become chilled. Maybe it was hunger, or being drunk still, or the residue of the pot we had smoked, but I felt cold down in my spine. Jack held the paper bag open and made me put my nose in it. He said to breathe it in, that it was possible we would remember this single minute as long as we lived.
“I didn’t take you for such a romantic,” I said when he lifted the bag away. “You said I had it bad with Hemingway, but you have it worse.”
“What’s the opposite of a romantic? I’ve always wondered.”
“An accountant, I guess. A person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“Whoa,” Jack said. “Did you just Plato my ass at four o’clock in the morning?”
“Not that hard to do, Jack Vermont.”
“You don’t even know my last name, do you?”
“Do you know mine?”
“Merriweather.”
“Wrong.”
“Albuquerque. Postlewaite. Smith-Higginbothom. It’s probably a hyphenate. Am I close?”
“Tell me yours first, and then I’ll tell you mine.”
“Now you’re pulling some Rumpelstiltskin trip on me.”
“Does your conversation ever go in a straight line?”
“Yes and no.”
He smiled. He had a damn good smile.
“Let’s keep our names to ourselves,” I said. “That will make it harder for you to find me after you’ve fallen hopelessly in love with me. It will turn it into a quest.”
“How do you know I’m not already hopelessly in love with you?”
“Too soon. It usually takes men a day and a half for them to pledge their lives to my service.”
“Heather Postlewaite, for sure.”
“Weren’t you taking me somewhere?”
“You’re making it difficult. Jack and Heather or Heather and Jack? Which way sounds more natural?”
“Heather and Jack.”
“You’re just making up anything now.”
“Jack and Heather sounds like a candle store.”
“What’s wrong with a candle store? Jack and Heather is the euphonious order, and you know it.”
“Euphonious? Is euphonious Latin for ‘I’m trying to catch up to my smarter friend so I will throw in the biggest word I can think of’?”
We had been walking slowly. Before Jack could answer, a different smell took over. It didn’t originate with the canals or the croissants, but something familiar and friendly, something I knew I recognized but couldn’t quite place. Jack smiled as I struggled to make sense of it.
“Come on,” he said, and I did.
12
The street sign hung from the side of the building read Nieuwe Kalfjeslaan 25, 1182 AA Amstelveen. The smell came from somewhere behind a dungeon door, a wide half circle of heavy black wood with equally heavy hardware. It didn’t make much sense to me, but Jack began smiling, and he pulled at the hardware, causing it to make a loud bang. The door opened on creaky hinges, exactly out of a Frankenstein movie. Jack put his finger to his lips and smiled.
I wanted to tell him he had already been loud, that we probably had awakened anyone inside, but he slipped through the crack in the door before I could speak. I looked around, trying to understand what we were getting into, then did a mental shrug and followed him. Besides, he had the paper bag of food.
I smiled when I realized where we were.
It was a riding academy. De Amsterdamse Manege. And it was beautiful. It was old and meticulously cared for; the walls were white stucco, and pine shavings covered the cobblestones that lined the ground. A dozen coats of arms hung on the walls. The horses rested in ancient stalls around the perimeter of a large courtyard. Their heads hung over their stall doors, and they looked drowsy and peaceful, like coat hooks beside a fireplace. Jack grabbed my hand and led me to the first stall.
“The horse’s name is Apple,” he said, reading the Dutch.
“Hello, Apple,” I said.
I petted his forelock and his cheek. He was a beautiful horse, not the knock-kneed nag you might find in a riding academy in some American towns, and slowly I slipped my arms around him. He smelled like everything good.
“My grandfather came here after the war,” Jack whispered, his eyes a little wet, his hand petting Apple. “He wrote about this place, but I wasn’t sure it still existed. He said the horses gave him hope after everything he had seen in the war. He always took special note of animals and children. He gave this place three stars. That’s his highest rating.”
“How did you know it was here?”
“I didn’t, honestly. It was in his journal. I’ve read the entries a hundred times, but I’d always wondered if the horses still existed. The stable, I mean. I knew the general area of town, and Raef told me he remembered something about a riding academy being out this way. We looked it up when we got here, and that coffee lady gave me the last bit of directions.”
“I rode a little when I was a girl.”
“I’m glad you like horses,” he said.
“I love animals,” I said and let go of Apple and walked to the second stall. “I always have. What’s this one’s name?”
“Cygnet, I think. A baby swan.”
I took out my cell phone to take a picture, but Jack stopped me.
“Would you mind,” he asked, “if we didn’t take a picture?”
I lowered the phone.
“Why not?”
He moved his hand slowly on Cygnet’s nose. His voice was serious but sweet.
“I don’t want to cheapen the experience,�
�� he said. “Or turn it into a little snapshot. I want to be here with the horses, that’s all. And with you. I hate taking photos of everything. It means what’s going on now is only this thing we perform so we can take pictures and look at them later. Stick them on Facebook. It dilutes whatever we’re doing. That’s kind of what I think, anyway.”
“Do you take photos of anything?”
He shrugged. He shook his head.
“I want to remember being here with you,” he said. “And I want to remember Cygnet and the smell of the coffee and manure, and the horse smell. I want to think of my grandfather being here, his pleasure and relief at seeing the horses. I don’t know. I guess it’s a little goofy.”
“I don’t think it’s goofy, Jack.”
I looked at him. This was a different side of him, and I liked it.
After petting the horses, we climbed up on a stack of hay in the center of the courtyard. A light rain began to fall, and the hay was piled under a pole barn. We climbed to the top of the bales and found a place to sit. The hay smelled magnificent, like open fields, and, mixed with the scent of the rain and the gentle movements of the horses, it couldn’t have been more lovely. We ate the baguettes and the éclair and everything else. I couldn’t believe how perfect the food tasted, how it felt to be with Jack in the horse academy. He seemed to read my mind.
“Pretty good first date,” he said.
“Kind of up there on the list. Are you calling this a date?”
“What are you calling it?”
“Amy would say it’s a hookup.”
“I think it’s a date, sort of.”
“Okay.”
“How long are you staying in Europe?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Another two or three weeks. I have to be back to work in the fall. I’m starting a new job.”
“Where?”
“At Bank of America.”
He looked at me.
“We can fix that,” he said.
“It doesn’t need to be fixed.”
“Are you sure? I don’t see you as a corporate suit.”
“Judge much?”
“Things are what they are.”
Our wires crossed a little. I wasn’t sure why, or what it meant, but for an instant I felt a flicker of both of us reappraising things. I remembered what he had said about his editor calling him a pot-stirrer.
The Map That Leads to You Page 5