Just One Day (6 page)

“Maybe you’re right,” I tell Willem now. “Maybe nobody quits while they’re really
ahead. My parents always say that, but the truth is, they only stopped with me because
they couldn’t have any more. Not because I was enough.”

“I’m sure
you
were enough.”

“Were
you
?” I ask.

“Maybe more than enough,” he says cryptically. It almost sounds like he’s bragging,
except it doesn’t look like he’s bragging.

He starts doing the thing with the coin again. As we sit silently, I watch the coin,
feeling something like suspense build in my stomach, wondering if he’ll let it fall.
But he doesn’t. He just keeps spinning it. When he finishes, he flips it in the air
and tosses it to me, just like he did last night.

“Can I ask you something?” I say after a minute.

“Yes.”

“Was it part of the show?”

He cocks his head.

“I mean, do you throw a coin to a girl at every performance, or was I special?”

Last night after I got back to the hotel, I spent a long time examining the coin he’d
tossed me. It was a Czech koruna, worth about a nickel. But still, I’d put it in a
separate corner of my wallet, away from all the other foreign coins. I pull it out
now. It glints in the bright afternoon sun.

Willem looks at it too. I’m not sure if his answer is true or just maddeningly ambiguous,
or maybe both. Because that’s exactly what he says: “Maybe both.”

Seven

W
hen we leave the restaurant, Willem asks me the time. I twist the watch around my
wrist. It feels heavier than ever, the skin underneath itchy and pale from being stuck
under the piece of chunky metal for the past three weeks. I haven’t taken it off once.

It was a present, from my parents, though it was Mom who’d given it to me on graduation
night, after the party at the Italian restaurant with Melanie’s family, where they
told us about the tour.

“What’s this?” I’d asked. We were sitting at the kitchen table, decompressing from
the day. “You already gave me a graduation present.”

She’d smiled. “I got you another.”

I’d opened the box, seen the watch, fingered the heavy gold links. Read the engraving.

“It’s too much.” And it was. In every way.

“Time stops for no one,” Mom had said, smiling a little sadly. “You deserve a good
watch to keep up.” Then she’d snapped the watch on my wrist, shown me how she had
an extra safety clasp installed, pointed out that it was waterproof too. “It’ll never
fall off. So you can take it to Europe with you.”

“Oh, no. It’s way too valuable.”

“It’s fine. It’s insured. Besides, I threw away your Swatch.”

“You did?” I’d worn my zebra-striped Swatch all through high school.

“You’re a grown-up now. You need a grown-up watch.”

I look at my watch now. It’s almost four. Back on the tour, I’d be breathing a sigh
of relief, because the busy part of the day would be winding down. Usually we had
a rest around five, and most nights, by eight o’clock, I could be back in my hotel
room watching some movie.

“We should probably start seeing some of the sights,” Willem says. “Do you know what
you want to do?”

I shrug. “We could start with the Seine. Isn’t that it?” I point to a concrete embankment,
underneath which is a river of sorts.

Willem laughs. “No, that’s a canal.”

We walk down the cobblestoned pathway, and Willem pulls out a thick Rough Guide to
Europe. He opens to a small map of Paris, points out, more or less, where we are,
an area called Villette.

“The Seine is here,” he says, tracing a line down the map.

“Oh.” I look out at the boat, which is stuck now between two big metal gates; the
area is filling up with water. Willem explains that this is a lock, basically an elevator
that lifts and drops the boats down differing depths of the canals.

“How do you know so much about everything?”

He laughs. “I’m Dutch.”

“So that means you’re a genius?”

“Only about canals. They say ‘God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland.’” And
then he goes on to tell me about how so much of the country was reclaimed from the
sea, about riding your bike along the low embankments that keep the water out of Holland.
How it’s an act of faith to ride your bike around, with the dikes above you, knowing
somehow, even though you’re below sea level, you’re not under water. When he talks
about it, he seems so young that I can almost see him as a towheaded little kid, eyes
wide, staring out at the endless waterways and wondering where they all led to.

“Maybe we can go on one of those boats?” I ask, pointing to the barge we just watched
go through the lock.

Willem’s eyes light up, and for a second, I see that boy again. “I don’t know.” He
looks inside the guidebook. “It doesn’t really cover this neighborhood.”

“Can we ask?”

Willem asks someone in French and is given a very complicated answer full of hand
gestures. He turns to me, clearly excited. “You’re right. He says that they have boat
rides leaving from the basin.”

We go along the cobblestoned walkway until it lets out in a large lake, where people
are paddling in canoes. Off to one side, next to a cement pier, a couple of boats
are moored. But when we get over there, we find out that they’re private boats. The
tourist boats have left for the day.

“We can take a boat along the Seine,” Willem says. “It’s much more popular, and the
boats run all day.” His eyes are downcast. I can see he’s disappointed, as if he let
me down.

“Oh, no big deal. I don’t care.”

But he’s staring wistfully out at the water, and I see that
he
cares. And I know I don’t know him, but I swear the boy is homesick. For boats and
canals and watery things. And for a second, I think of what it must be like—away from
home for two years, and here he postponed his return for another day. He did that.
For me.

There’s a row of boats and barges tied up, bobbing in the breeze that’s kicked up.
I look at Willem; a melancholy expression is deepening the lines on his face. I look
back at the boats.

“Actually, I do care,” I say. I reach into my bag for my wallet, for the hundred-dollar
bill folded inside. I hold it up in the air and call out, “I’m looking for a ride
down the canals. And I can pay.”

Willem’s head jerks toward me. “Lulu, what are you doing?”

But I’m walking away from him. “Anyone willing to give us a lift down the canals?”
I call. “I got good old-fashioned American greenbacks.”

A pock-faced guy with sharp features and a scrubby goatee pops onto the side of a
blue-canopied barge. “How many greenbacks?” he asks in a very thick French accent.

“All of them!”

He takes the C-note and stares at it up close. Then he smells it.

It must smell legit, because he says, “If my passengers agree, I will take you down
the canal to Arsenal, close to Bastille. It is where we dock for the night.” He gestures
to the back of the boat where a quartet of gray-haired people are sitting around a
small table, playing bridge or something. He calls out to one of them.

“Aye, Captain Jack,” the man answers. He must be sixty. His hair is white, and his
face is burnished red from the sun.

“We have some hitchhikers who want to come aboard with us.”

“Can they play poker?” one of the women asks.

I used to play seven-card stud for nickels with my grandfather before he died. He
said I was an excellent bluffer.

“Do not bother. She gave all her money to me,” Captain Jack says.

“How much is he charging you?” one of the men asks.

“I offered him a hundred dollars,” I say.

“To go where?”

“Down the canals.”

“This is why we call him Captain Jack,” one of the men says. “Because he’s a pirate.”

“No. It is because my name is Jacques, and I am your captain.”

“A hundred dollars, Jacques?” a woman with a long gray braid and startlingly blue
eyes asks. “That seems a little much, even for you.”

“She offered this much.” Jacques shrugs. “Also, now I will have more money to lose
to you in poker.”

“Ahh, good point,” she says.

“Are you leaving now?” I ask.

“Soon.”

“When is soon?” It’s after four. The day is speeding by.

“You cannot rush these things.” He flicks his hand in the air. “Time is like the water.
Fluid.”

Time doesn’t seem fluid to me. It seems real and animate and hard as a rock.

“What he means,” says the guy with the ponytail, “is that the trip to Arsenal takes
a while and we were just about to open a bottle of claret. Come on, Captain Jack,
let’s shove off. For a hundred bucks, you can have your wine later.”

“We’ll continue with this fine French gin,” the braided lady says.

He shrugs and then pockets my bill. I turn to Willem and grin. Then I nod at Captain
Jack. He reaches out for my hand to escort me onboard.

The four passengers introduce themselves. They are Danish, retirees, and every year,
they tell us, they rent a barge and cruise a European country for four weeks. Agnethe
has the braid and Karin has short spiked hair. Bert has a shock of white hair and
Gustav has the bald spot and the rat’s tail of a ponytail and is sporting the ever-stylish
socks-with-sandals look. Willem introduces himself, and almost automatically, I introduce
myself
as Lulu. It’s almost as if I’ve become her. Maybe I have. Never in a million years
would Allyson have done what I just did.

Captain Jack and Willem untie the line, and I’m about to say that maybe I should get
some of my money back if Willem is going to play first mate but then I see that Willem
is bounding about, having a blast. He clearly knows his way around a boat.

The barge chugs out of the broad basin, giving a wide view of a white-columned old
building and a silver-domed modern-looking one. The Danes return to their poker game.

“Don’t lose all your money,” Captain Jack calls to them. “Or you won’t have any left
to lose to me.”

I slip away to the bow of the boat and watch the scenery slip by. It’s cooler down
here in the canals, under the narrow arched footbridges. And it smells different too.
Older, mustier, like generations of history are stored in the wet walls. If these
walls could talk, I wonder what secrets they’d tell.

When we get to the first lock, Willem clambers to the side of the barge to show me
how the mechanism works. The ancient-looking metal gates, rusted the same brackish
color as the water, close behind us, the water drains out from beneath us, the gates
reopen to a lower section.

This part of the canal is so narrow that the barge takes up almost the entire width.
Steep embankments lead up to the streets, and above those, poplar and elm trees (per
Captain Jack) form an arbor, a gentle respite from the hot afternoon sun.

A gust of wind shakes the trees, sending a scrim of leaves shimmying onto the deck.
“Rain is coming,” Captain Jack says, sniffing the air like a rabbit. I look up and
then over at Willem and roll my eyes. The sky is cloudless, and there hasn’t been
rain in this part of Europe for ten days.

Up above, Paris carries on, doing her thing. Mothers sip coffee, keeping eyes on their
kids as they scooter along the sidewalks. Vendors at outdoor stalls hawk fruits and
vegetables. Lovers wrap their arms around each other, never mind the heat. A clarinet
player stands atop the bridge, serenading it all.

I’ve hardly taken any pictures on this trip. Melanie teased me about it, to which
I always said I preferred to experience something rather than obsessively record it.
Though, really, the truth of it was, unlike Melanie (who wanted to remember the shoe
salesman and the mime and the cute waiter and all the other people on the tour), none
of that really mattered to me. At the start of the trip, I took shots of the sights.
The Colosseum. Belvedere Palace. Mozart Square. But I stopped. They never came out
very well, and you could get postcards of these things.

But there are no postcards of this. Of life.

I snap a picture of a bald man walking four bushy-haired dogs. Of a little girl in
the most absurdly frilly skirt, plucking petals off a flower. Of a couple, unabashedly
making out on the fake beach along the waterside. Of the Danes, ignoring all of this,
but having the time of their lives playing cards.

“Oh, let me take one of the two of you,” Agnethe says, rising, a little wobbly, from
the game. “Aren’t you golden?” She turns to the table. “Bert, was I ever that golden?”

“You still are, my love.”

“How long have you been married?” I ask.

“Thirteen years,” she says, and I’m wondering if they’re stained, but then she adds,
“Of course, we’ve been divorced for ten.”

She sees the look of confusion on my face. “Our divorce is more successful than most
marriages.”

I turn to Willem. “What kind of stain is that?” I whisper, and he laughs just as Agnethe
takes the picture.

A church bell rings in the distance. Agnethe hands back the phone, and I take a picture
of her and Bert. “You will send me that one? All of the ones?”

“Of course. As soon as I have reception.” I turn to Willem. “I’ll text them to you
too, if you give me your number.”

“My phone is so old, it doesn’t work with pictures.”

“When I get home, then, I’ll put the pictures on my computer and email them to you,”
I say, though I’ll have to figure out a place to hide the pictures from Mom; it wouldn’t
be beyond her to look through my phone—or computer. Though, I realize now, only for
another month. And then I’ll be free. Just like today I’m free.

He looks at one of the pictures for a long time. Then he looks at me. “I’ll keep you
up here.” He taps his temple. “Where you can’t get lost.”

I bite my lip to hide my smile and pretend to put the phone away, but when Captain
Jack calls to Willem to take the wheel while he visits the head, I pull it back out
and scroll through the photos, stopping at the one of the two of us that Agnethe took.
I’m in profile, my mouth open. He’s laughing. Always laughing. I run my thumb over
his face, halfway expecting it to emanate some sort of heat.

I put the phone away and watch Paris drift by, feeling relaxed, almost drunk with
a sleepy joy. After a while, Willem returns to me. We sit quietly, listening to the
lapping of the water, the babble of the Danes. Willem pulls a coin out and does that
thing, flipping it from knuckle to knuckle. I watch, hypnotized by his hand, by the
gentle rocking of the water. It’s peaceful until the Danes start bickering, loudly.
Willem translates: Apparently they’re hotly debating whether some famous French actress
has ever made a pornographic film.

“You speak
Danish
too?” I ask.

“No, it’s just close to Dutch.”

“How many languages do you speak?”

“Fluently?”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry I asked.”

“Four fluently. I get by in German and Spanish too.”

I shake my head, amazed.

“Yes, but you said you speak
Chinese
.”

“I wouldn’t say I speak it so much as murder it. I’m kind of tone deaf, and Mandarin
is all about tone.”

“Let me hear.”

I look at him. “
Ni zhen shuai
.”

“Say something else.”

“
Wo xiang wen ni
.”

“Now I hear it.” He covers his head. “Stop. I’m bleeding from my ears.”

“Shut up or you will be.” I pretend to shove him.