“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.”
Okay. Not now. Later. Good. It will give me time to find the right words. There are always right words.
• • •
After she leaves, I get dressed, make a coffee, and sit down at her computer to check my email before I leave. The travel page she was on is still open, and I’m about to close the window when I see one of the banner ads. MEXICO!!! it screams. Outside, it’s cold and gray, but the pictures promise only warmth and sunshine.