Just One Day (17 page)

“Normal people don’t do that,” I say.

“Who said anything about normal? And maybe you weren’t random. Maybe you were something
to him too.”

“But he didn’t even know
me
. I was someone else that day. I was Lulu. That’s who he liked. And besides, let’s
pretend something did happen, he didn’t ditch me. I only know his first name. He doesn’t
even know my name. He lives a continent away. He’s irretrievably lost. How do you
find someone like that?”

Dee looks at me as if the answer is obvious. “You look.”

Twenty-three

NAME:
Willem

NATIONALITY:
Dutch

AGE:
20 as of last August

GREW UP IN AMSTERDAM.

PARENTS:
Yael and Bram. Mom isn’t Dutch Mom is a naturopathic doctor

1.9 meters, which is about 6’3”; 75 kilos, which is about 165 pounds.

Acted with the theater troupe Guerrilla Will last summer

T
his is the complete list of hard biographical facts that I have on Willem. It takes
up barely a third of a page in one of my abandoned lab notebooks. When I finish, the
list is like a taunt, reality’s bitchslap.
You think you fell in love with someone, and
this
is what you know about him? Eight things?
And how would I find him with these eight things? Forget looking for a needle in
a haystack. That’s easy. At least it would stand out. I’m looking for one specific
needle in a needle factory.

Eight things. It’s humiliating. I stare at the page and am about to tear it out and
crumple it up.

But instead, I turn the page and start writing a different list. Random things. Like
the amused look on his face when I admitted I’d thought he was a kidnapper. And the
way he looked at the café when he found out I was an only child and asked if I was
alone. The goofy happiness as he bounded around the barge with Captain Jack. How good
it felt to know that I was responsible for him looking that way. The way Paris sounded
under the canal. The way it looked from the back of the bike. The way his hand felt
in the crook of my hip. The fierceness in his eyes when he jumped up to help those
girls in the park. The reassurance of his hand, grasping mine as we ran through the
streets of Paris. The raw expression on his face at the dinner table when I’d asked
him why he’d brought me there. And later, at the squat, how he looked at me and I
felt so big and strong and capable and brave.

I let the memories flood me as I fill one page. Then another. And then I’m not even
writing about him anymore. I’m writing about me. About all the things I felt that
day, including panic and jealousy, but more about feeling like the world was full
of nothing but possibility.

I fill three pages. None of what I’m writing will help me find him. But in writing,
I feel good—no, not just good, but full. Right, somehow. It’s a feeling I haven’t
experienced in a long, long time, and it’s this more than anything that convinces
me to look for him.

_ _ _

The most concrete thing on the list is Guerrilla Will, so I start there. They have
a bare-basics website, which gets me pretty excited—until I see how out of date it
is. It’s advertising plays from two summers ago. But still, there’s a contact tab
with an email address. I spend hours composing ten different emails and then finally
just delete them in favor of a simple one:

Hello:

I am trying to find a Dutch guy named Willem, age 20, who performed in last summer’s
run of Twelfth Night. I saw it and met him, in Stratford-upon-Avon, and went to Paris
with him last August. If anyone knows where he is, please tell him that Lulu, also
known as Allyson Healey, would like him to get in touch with her. This is very important.

I list all my contact info and then I pause there for a moment, imagining the ones
and zeros or whatever it is that emails are made of, traveling across oceans and mountains,
landing somewhere in someone’s inbox. Who knows? Maybe even his.

And then I press Send.

Thirty seconds later, my inbox chimes. Could it be? Could it be that fast? That easy?
Someone knows where he is. Or maybe he’s been looking for me all this time.

My hand shakes as I go to my inbox. Only all that’s there is the message I just sent,
bounced. I check the address. I send it again. It bounces again.

“Strike one,” I tell Dee before class the next day. I explain about the bounced email.

“I don’t do sports metaphors, but I’m pretty sure baseball games are generally nine
innings.”

“Meaning?”

“Dig in for the long haul.”

Professor Glenny sweeps in and starts talking about
Cymbeline
, the play we’re about to start, and announcing last call for tickets for
As You Like It
before giving a brief warning to start thinking about oral presentations at the end
of the year. “You can either work alone or with your partners, do a regular presentation
or something more theatrical.”

“We’ll do theatrical,” Dee whispers.

“It’s the Glenny way.”

And then we look at each other as if both getting the same idea. After class, we go
up to the lectern where the usual coterie of groupies are simpering.

“Well, Rosalind, here to buy your
As You Like It
tickets?”

I blush. “I already bought mine. I’m actually trying to get ahold of someone I lost
touch with, and I don’t have very many leads, but the one I do have is through this
Shakespeare troupe that I saw in Stratford-upon-Avon last year, and they have a website,
but the email bounced, but I saw them do a play less than a year ago . . . ”

“In Stratford-upon-Avon?”

“Yeah. But not at a theater. It was sort of an underground thing. It was called Guerrilla
Will. They performed at the canal basin. They were really good. I actually ditched
the RSC’s
Hamlet
to watch them do
Twelfth Night
.”

Professor Glenny likes this. “I see. And you’ve lost a Sebastian, have you?” I gasp
and I blush but then I realize he’s just referring to the play. “I have an old mate
in the tourist bureau there. Guerrilla Will, you say?”

I nod.

“I’ll see what I can dig up.”

The following week, right before spring break, Professor Glenny hands me an address.
“This is what my friend found. It’s from police records. Apparently your Guerrilla
Will friends have a habit of performing without permits, and this is from an old arrest.
Not sure how current it is.” I look at the address. It’s for a city in England called
Leeds.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re welcome. Let me know how it ends.”

That night, I print out the copy of the email I sent to Guerrilla Will but then I
change my mind and write a handwritten letter to Willem.

Dear Willem:

I’ve been trying to forget about you and our day in Paris for nine months now, but
as you can see, it’s not going all that well. I guess more than anything, I want to
know, did you just leave? If you did, it’s okay. I mean it’s not, but if I can know
the truth, I can get over it. And if you didn’t leave, I don’t know what to say. Except
I’m sorry that I did.

I don’t know what your response will be at getting this letter, like a ghost from
your past. But no matter what happened, I hope you’re okay.

I sign Lulu and Allyson and leave all my various contact details. I put it inside
an envelope and write Forward to Willem, in care of Guerrilla Will. The night before
I leave for spring break, I mail it.

_ _ _

I spend a boring break at home. Melanie’s vacation doesn’t coincide with mine, and
I both miss her and feel relieved not to have to see her. I hole up in my room and
prop my old science books all around me and spend the time doing Facebook searches
and Twitter searches and every imaginable social networking search, but it turns out,
only having a first name is kind of a problem. Especially because Willem is a pretty
common Dutch name. Still, I go through hundreds of pages, staring at pictures of all
different Willems, but none of them are him.

I post a Facebook page as Lulu with pictures of Louise Brooks and of me. I change
the status every day, to something only he’d understand.
Do you believe in accidents of the universe? Is Nutella chocolate? Is falling in love
the same as being in love? I
get friend requests from New Age freaks. I get requests from perverts. I get requests
from a Nutella fan club in Minnesota (who knew?). But nothing from him.

I try searching for his parents. I do combination searches: Willem, Bram, Yael and
then just Bram, Yael. But without a last name, I get nothing. I search every Dutch
naturopathic site I can find for a Yael but come up with nothing. I Google the name
Yael, and it’s a Hebrew name. Is his Mom Jewish? Israeli? Why didn’t I think to ask
him any of these questions when I had the chance? But I know why. Because when I was
with him, I felt like I already knew him.

Twenty-four

S
pring break ends, and in Shakespeare class we start reading
Cymbeline
. Dee and I are halfway through, at the really juicy part where Posthumus, Imogen’s
husband, sees Iachimo with the secret bracelet that he gave Imogen and decides this
is proof that she cheated on him, though of course, the bracelet was stolen by Iachimo,
precisely so he could win his bet with Posthumus that he could get Imogen to cheat.

“Another jumped conclusion,” Dee says, looking at me pointedly.

“Well, he did have good reason to suspect,” I say. “Iachimo totally knew things about
her, what her bedroom looked like, that she had a mole on her boob.”

“Because he spied on her when she was sleeping,” Dee says. “There was an explanation.”

“I know. I know. Just like you say there might be a good explanation for Willem disappearing.
But you know, sometimes you do have accept the evidence at face value. In one day,
I saw Willem flirt with, get undressed by, and get a telephone number from a minimum
of three girls, not counting me. That says ‘player’ to me. And I got played.”

“For a player, boy talked a lot about falling in love.”

“Falling in love, not being in love,” I say. “And with Céline.” Though when he spoke
of his parents, of being stained, I recall the look on his face, one of unmasked yearning.
And then I feel the heat on my wrist, as if his saliva were still wet there.

“Céline,” Dee says, snapping his fingers. “The hottie French girl.”

“She wasn’t
that
hot.”

Dee rolls his eyes. “Why didn’t we think of this? What’s the name of the club she
worked at? Where you left your bag?”

“I have no idea.”

“Okay. Where was it?”

“Near the train station.”

“Which train station?”

I shrug. I’ve sort of blocked it all out.

Dee grabs my laptop. “Now you’re just being ornery.” He taps away. “If you came from
London, you arrived at Gare du Nord.” He pronounces it Gary du Nord.

“Aren’t you clever?”

He pulls up Google Maps and then types something in. A cluster of red flags appear.
“There.”

“What?”

“Those are the nightclubs near Gare du Nord. You call them. Presumably Céline works
in one of them. Find her, find him.”

“Yeah, maybe in the same bed.”

“Allyson, you just said you had to have your eyes wide open.”

“I do. I just don’t ever want to see Céline again.”

“How bad do you want to find him?” Dee asks.

“I don’t know. I guess, more than anything, I want to find out what happened.”

“All the more reason to call this Céline person.”

“So I’m supposed to call all these clubs and ask for her? You forget, I don’t speak
French.”

“How hard can it be?” He stops and arranges his face into a puckered expression. “
Bon lacroix monsoir oui, tres, chic chic croissant French Ho-bag
.” He smirks. “See? Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”

“Is that French too?”

“No, that’s Latin. And you can ask for the other guy too, the African.”

The Giant. Him I wouldn’t mind talking to, but of course, I don’t even know his name.

“You do it. You’re better at all that than me.”

“What you on about? I studied Spanish.”

“I just mean you’re better at voices, pretending.”

“I’ve seen you do Rosalind. And you spent a day playing Lulu, and you’re currently
masquerading as a pre-med student to your parents.”

I look down, pick at my nail. “That just makes me a liar.”

“No it doesn’t. You’re just trying on different identities, like everyone in those
Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they’re already in us. That’s why
we pretend them in the first place.”

_ _ _

Kali is taking first-year French, so I ask her, as casually as possible, how one might
ask for Céline or a Senegalese bartender whose brother lives in Rochester. At first
she looks at me, shocked. It’s probably the first time I’ve asked her something more
involved than “Are these socks yours?” since school started.

“Well, that would
depend
on lots of
factors
,” she says. “Who
are
these people? What is your
relationship
to them? French is a language of
nuance
.”

“Um, can’t they just be people I’m wanting to get on the phone?”

Kali narrows her eyes at me, turns back to her work. “Try an
online
translation program.”

I take a deep breath, sigh out a gust. “Fine. They are, respectively, a total bitchy
beauty and a really nice guy I met once. They both work at some Parisian night club,
and I feel like they might hold the key to my . . . my happiness. Does that help you
with your nuance?”

Kali closes her textbook and turns to me. “Yes. And no.” She grabs a piece of paper
and taps it against her chin. “Do you happen to
know
the brother from
Rochester’
s name?”

I shake my head. “He told it to me once, really fast. Why?”

She shrugs. “Just seems if you
had
it, you could
track
him down in Rochester and
then
find his brother.”

“Oh, my God, I didn’t even think of that. Maybe I can remember it and try that too.
Thank you.”

“
Amazing
things happen when you
ask
for help.” She gives me a pointed look.

“Do you want to know the whole story?”

Her raised eyebrow says
Do pigs like mud?

So I tell her, Kali, the unlikeliest of confidantes, a brief version of the saga.

“Oh. My. God. So
that
explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Why you have been such a
loner
, always saying
no
to us. We thought you
hated
us.”

“What? No! I don’t hate you. I just felt like a reject and felt so bad you guys got
stuck with me.”

Kali rolls her eyes. “I broke up with my
boyfriend
right before I
got
here, and Jenn split with her
girlfriend
. Why do you think I have so many pictures of
Buster
?
Everyone
was feeling sad and homesick. That’s why we
partied
so much.”

I shake my head. I didn’t know. I didn’t think to know. And then I laugh. “I’ve had
the same best friend since I was seven. She’s the only girlfriend I’ve ever really
hung out with, so it’s like I missed the integral years of learning how to be friends
with people.”

“You missed
nothing
. Unless you missed
kindergarten
too.”

I stare at her helplessly. Of course I went to kindergarten.

“If you went to
kindergarten
, you learned how to make
friends
. It’s like the
first
thing they teach you.” She stares at me. “To
make
a friend . . .” she begins.

“You have to
be
a friend,” I finish, remembering the saying I was taught in Mrs. Finn’s class. Or
maybe it was from
Barney
.

She smiles as she picks up the pen. “I think it’ll be
simpler
if you just ask for this
Céline
chick and the
bartender
from Senegal, leave out the
brother,
because how many Senegalese
bartenders
are there? Then if you get the
bartender
, you can ask if he has a
brother
in Rochester.”

“Roché Estair,” I correct. “That’s what he called it.”

“I can
see
why. It sounds much
classier
that way. Here.” She hands me a piece of paper.
Je voudrais parler à Céline ou au barman qui vient du Senegal, s’il vous plait
. She has written both the French and the phonetic translations. “That’s how you ask
for them in
French
. If you want
help
making the calls, let me
know
.
Friends
do that.”

Je voudrais parler à Céline ou au barman qui vient du Senegal, s’il vous plait
. One week later, I’ve uttered this phrase so many times—first to practice, then in
a series of increasingly depressing phone calls—that I swear I’m saying it in my sleep.
I make twenty-three phone calls.
Je voudrais parler à Céline ou au barman qui vient du Senegal, s’il vous plait
. . . . That’s what I say. And then one of three things happens: One, I get hung up
on. Two, I get some form of
non
—and then hung up on. Those I cross off the list, a definitive no. But three is when
the people launch into turbo-French, to which I am helpless to respond.
Céline
?
Barman
?
Senegal?
I repeat into the receiver, the words sinking like defective life rafts. I have no
idea what these people are saying. Maybe they’re saying Céline and the Giant are at
lunch but will be back soon. Or maybe they’re saying that Céline is here but she’s
downstairs having sex with a tall Dutchman.

I take Kali up on her offer of help, and sometimes she can suss out that there is
no Céline, no Senegalese bartender, but more often than not, she’s as baffled as I
am. Meanwhile, she and Dee start Googling every potential Senegalese name in Rochester.
We make a few embarrassing calls but come up empty.

After the twenty-fourth miserable phone call, I run out of nightclubs anywhere in
the vicinity of Gare du Nord. Then I remember the name of the band on the T-shirt
Céline had in the club, the one she gave to Willem—and me. I Google Sous ou Sur and
look up all their tour dates. But if they played at Céline’s nightclub, it was a long
time ago, because now they’re apparently broken up.

By this point, more than three weeks have passed since I mailed my letter, so I’m
losing hope on that front too. The chances of finding him, never all that great, dim.
But the strangest thing is, that feeling of rightness, it doesn’t. If anything, it
grows brighter.

_ _ _

“How’s your search for Sebastian going?” Professor Glenny calls after class one day
as we’re lining up to get our
Cymbeline
papers back. The groupies all look at me with envy. Ever since I told him about Guerrilla
Will, he has a newfound respect for me. And, of course, he’s always loved Dee.

“Sort of dried up,” I tell him. “No more leads.”

He grins. “Always more leads. What is it the detectives in film always say? ‘Gotta
think outside the box.’” He says the last part in a terrible New York accent. He hands
me my paper. “Nice work.”

I look at the paper, at the big red A minus on it, and feel a huge rush of pride.
As Dee and I walk to our next classes, I keep peeking at it, to make sure it doesn’t
shape-shift into a C, though I know it won’t. I still can’t stop looking. And grinning.
Dee catches me and laughs.

“For some of us, these A grades are novel,” I say.

“Oh, cry me a river. See you at four?”

“I’ll be counting the moments.”

When Dee comes in at four, he’s bouncing off the walls. “Never mind thinking outside
the box—we got to look inside the box.” He holds up two DVDs from the media center.
The title on one reads
Pandora’s Box,
and there’s a picture of a beautiful woman with sad, dark eyes and a sleek helmet
of black hair. I immediately know who she is.

“How are these going to help us?”

“I don’t know. But when you open up Pandora’s Box, you never know what’s gonna fly
out. We can watch them tonight. After I get off work.”

I nod. “I’ll make popcorn.”

“I’ll take some leftover cakes from the dining hall.”

“We know how to party on a Friday night.”

Later, as I’m getting ready for Dee, I see Kali in the lounge. She looks at the popcorn.
“Having a
snack attack
?”

“Dee and I are watching some movies.” I’ve never invited Kali anywhere. And she almost
always goes out on weekend nights. But I think of the help she’s offered, and what
she said about being a friend, and so I invite her to join us. “It’s sort of a movie/fact-finding
mission. We could use your help. You were so smart with your idea of trying to find
the brother in Rochester.”

Her eyes widen. “I’d
love
to help. I’m so
over
keg parties. Jenn, wanna watch a
movie
with
Allyson
and
Dee
?”

“Before you say yes, be warned, they’re silent movies.”

“Cool,” Jenn says. “I’ve never seen one before.”

Neither have I, and turns out to be a little like watching Shakespeare. You have to
adjust to it, to get into a rhythm. There are no words, but it’s not like a foreign
film, either, where all the dialogue is subtitled. Only major pieces of dialogue are
shown with words. The rest you sort of have to figure out from the actors’ expressions,
from the context, from the swell of the orchestral music. You have to work a little
bit.

We watch all of
Pandora’s Box
, which is about a beautiful party girl named Lulu, who goes from man to man. First
she marries her lover, then shoots him on the eve of her wedding. She’s tried for
murder but escapes jail, going into exile with her murdered husband’s son. She winds
up sold into prostitution. It ends with her getting killed on Christmas Eve, by Jack
the Ripper, no less. We all watch it like you’d watch a slow-motion train wreck.

After we finish, Dee pulls out the next one,
Diary of a Lost Girl
. “This one’s a comedy,” he jokes.

It’s not quite as bad. Lulu, though she’s not called that in this one, doesn’t die
in the end. But she does get seduced, have a baby out of wedlock, get the baby taken
away from her, wind up cast out and dumped in a horrible reform school. She too dabbles
in prostitution.

It’s almost two in the morning when we flick on the lights. We all look at each other,
bleary-eyed.

“So?” Jenn asks.

“I like her
outfits
,” Kali says.

“The outfits were indeed extraordinary, but not exactly enlightening.” Dee turns to
me. “Any clues?”