The big clock in the station’s main hall says 11:15. I’ll leave the cane in my bag until I get to the stairs to track 13B. There’s a strange noise behind me, and as I’m about to turn around to see what it is, a man in an electric wheelchair zooms by.
I’m panting a little.
Calm down, calm down, calm down.
Quickly check the stores.
There’s the stairway. Count carefully, two sets of fifteen steps.
It’s 11:25.
I’m positive I looked everywhere. I didn’t miss her, she just isn’t here. Didn’t get off the train, didn’t get on. This can’t be happening!
The train that leaves Amsterdam at 2:38 p.m. is slowly pulling into the station. It comes to a stop. The doors open, and people come out. I have a good view from where I’m standing.
It’s 2:37. The time is up. I feel all the energy drain out of my body.
And then I see her.
She walks past me, close enough to touch, and hurries to the train. I follow her without thinking, and the second I step aboard I hear the conductor’s whistle and the doors whoosh closed behind me. She heads for the first-class compartment and holds the connecting door for me.
I lean on my cane.
“You should sit down,” she says.
I obey, and see that she takes a seat in the middle of the car.
It was one minute later than the end time I was given, but I don’t think Ted will have a problem with that. I found her, and inside my head I’m cheering. She’s sitting there talking on her phone, laughing.
But not for long.
Pretty soon, I’ll be the one who’s laughing.
We’re the only passengers in the compartment. Ted must have arranged it that way.
I’m not happy about that minute.
But I’ve got her!
What Day Is It?
I’ve lost track of time, and there’s a gap in my memory. The last thing I remember is the woman on the train, the way she looked. After that, there was a lot of commotion, somebody dragged me away, I was in a cell, people kept asking me questions, someone told me I had to be examined.
I’ve got a room and a bed, but all the doors and windows are locked. The food is good. Everybody here is crazy, but the man who comes to talk with me three times a week is far and away the craziest. He tells me I tried to molest an old lady on the train, though I keep explaining that she was young. When I describe her, he contradicts me. The lady he talks about isn’t blond with a middle part, doesn’t wear a short brown leather jacket, no tight black skirt, no black stockings and high-heeled boots. When I say we must be talking about two different people, he says no, we’re absolutely talking about the same person. So he’s a total nutbag.
Each time he comes, he’s got new idiotic comments. He thinks Mother has been dead for a year, and I haven’t seen my psychiatric caseworker, Anja, since Mother died. He says I’ve been skipping my appointments, and he keeps insisting that, given my condition, isolation is my worst enemy, because if I’m alone I don’t have anyone to correct my behavior and my thoughts.
According to him, when Mother was still alive I used to take medication that kept the weird thoughts at bay. It’s apparently pretty much a miracle I didn’t go off the rails until now. If I go back on my meds, I can learn to think straight again. I’ll have to go to trial, but a good lawyer should be able to convince the judge I wasn’t accountable for my actions when I attacked the lady on the train. The shrink will recommend confinement in a psych ward. The doctor emphasizes that everyone wants what’s best for me.
I’m allergic to people who want what’s best for me.
When I very carefully describe what I did to Mother and Anja, the doctor doesn’t react.
He ought to go take a look in the basement.
They force me to take the pills. When I refuse, I get a shot. The meds make me dull, I sleep away half the day.
Ted doesn’t come to see me. Now that I can’t do anything for him, he’s abandoned me. With friends like him, who needs enemies?
What Month Is It?
They’re fed up with my continued insistence that Mother and Anja are in the basement. The doctor thinks it would help me to see Anja. She’s coming this afternoon.
I bet she won’t look too good.
They’ve decided that the meds they’ve put me on are too strong, so now they’re reducing the dosage. But they make darned sure I swallow the pills. I have to put each one on my tongue, and after I swallow it the supervisor looks down my throat, probably all the way down my esophagus. I don’t feel as foggy now, and I don’t drag my feet when I walk.
And Anja’s coming to see me.
Party time!
I sit beside the shrink and across from the caseworker nobody seems to realize is lying in my cellar. I have to admit she looks pretty healthy, and she doesn’t seem to have had any work done. I probably ought to keep my mouth shut, otherwise before you know it they’ll up my meds again. But I can’t stop myself from telling her that even though she thinks she’s sitting here, she’s actually dead.
She leans a little closer.
I pull back. She stinks like a corpse.
She tells me everything will be okay, and she’ll always be here for me.
Those words rock me, and I have to hold onto the table to keep from falling over.
How could I ever have thought Ted would leave me in the lurch? How could I have doubted his intentions? When I see him again, I’ll beg his forgiveness on bended knee, if that’s what it takes. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize he won’t be mad. If he was truly angry, he wouldn’t have sent Anja to me. The only explanation for her presence is that she’s joined up with Ted. And I’m the only one who knows.
See, this is what friendship is all about.
Now I know for sure Ted’s coming back.
With Anja.
I wonder, what will my next mission be?
Part IV
They Live by Night
Seven Bridges
by Max van Olden
Grachtengordel
Lisa was running ten minutes late. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, since there were usually two of them on Saturdays — but now, in early March, there were so few bookings she had to prepare the tables on her own.
In the crew cabin, she changed from her wool sweater to a tight white blouse and put on an apron. She checked the schedule. A Delight cruise, twenty-two passengers. She could handle that — sometimes, even in the winter, they had as many as forty on board. She piled eight crates onto her service cart — six beverages, two glasses — and above those balanced the plastic bin labeled Tableware. She glanced out the window and saw people already lined up at the Pier F ticket office, waiting for the passenger door to open. Sighing, she pushed her cart out into the main cabin.
Starting at the back of Princess Beatrix, she set each table, as always, with place mats that indicated their route with a dotted line on a map of the city’s canals, bottles of water, bowls of beer nuts. She looked up and spotted their guide approaching. Arno was a dope, but he was always willing to lend a hand. That was more than you could say for some of the others.
“Need some help?” he said as he stepped on board, and, without waiting for an answer, pitched in and started setting tables. The sound system was already on, and they worked to the syrupy tones of Laura Pausini.
They finished at a minute to four. Foreheads glistening with perspiration, they took up their positions on the dock, Lisa on one side of the door and Arno on the other. They smiled brightly at the passengers as they boarded. The four o’clock and six o’clock cruises mostly appealed to retirees and families, quiet customers who never made any trouble.