By the time Kate shows up, they’ve made significant progress, digging a moat and constructing two towers.
“Sorry it took so long,” Kate says, breathless. “I got lost. This city of yours, it runs in circles.”
I start to explain about the concentric canals, the Ceintuurbaan being a belt that goes around the waist of the city. She waves me off. “Don’t bother. I’m hopeless.” She sits down next to me. “Any word from Frau Directeur?”
“Total silence.”
“That sounds ominous.”
I shrug. “Maybe. Nothing I can do. Anyway, I have a new plan.”
“Oh,” Kate says, widening her already big green eyes. “You do?”
“I do. In fact, that’s what my proposition is about.”
“The thick plottens.”
“What?”
She shakes her head. “Never mind.” She crosses her legs, leans in toward me. “I’m ready. Proposition me.”
I take her hand. “I want you.” I pause. “To be my director.”
“Isn’t that a little like shaking hands after making love?” she asks.
“What happened last night,” I begin, “it happened because of you. And I want to work with you. I want to come study with Ruckus. Be an apprentice.”
Kate’s eyes slit into smiles. “How do you know about our apprenticeships?” she drawls.
“I may have looked at your website one or a hundred times. And I know you mostly work with Americans, but I grew up speaking English, I act in English. Most of the time, I dream in English. I want to do Shakespeare. In English. I want to do it. With you.”
The grin has disappeared from Kate’s face. “It wouldn’t be like last night—Orlando on a main stage. Our apprentices do everything. They build sets. They work tech. They study. They act in the ensemble. I’m not saying you wouldn’t play principal roles one day—I would not rule that out, not after last night. But it would take a while. And, there are visa issues to consider, not to mention the union, so you couldn’t come over expecting the spotlight. And I’ve told David he needs to meet you.”
I look at Kate and am about to say that I wouldn’t expect that, that I’d be patient, that I know how to build things. But I stop myself because it occurs to me that I don’t need to convince her of anything.
“Where do you think I was last night?” she asks. “I was waiting for David to get back from his Medea, so I could tell him about you. Then I arranged for him to get his ass on a plane so he could see you tonight before that invalid comes back. He’s on his way, and in fact, I have to leave soon to go to the airport to meet him. After all this trouble, they’d better put you on again, otherwise, you’re going to have to do it solo for him.”
She laughs. “I’m kidding. But Ruckus is a small operation so we make decisions like this communally. That’s another thing you have to be prepared for, how dysfunctionally co-dependent we all are.” She throws up her arms. “But every family is like that.”
“So, wait? You were going to ask me?”
The grin is back. “Was there any doubt? But it pleases me no end, Willem, that you asked me. It shows you’ve been paying attention, which is what a director wants in an actor.” She taps her temple. “Also, very clever of you to move to the States. Good for your career but also it’s where your Lulu is from.”
I think of Tor’s letter, only today the regret and recrimination is gone. She looked for me. I looked for her. And last night, in some strange way, we found each other.
“That’s not why I want to go,” I tell Kate.
She smiles. “I know. I’m just teasing. Though I think you’ll really take to Brooklyn. It has a lot in common with Amsterdam. The brownstones and the rowhouses, the loving tolerance of eccentricity. I think you’ll feel right at home.”
When she says that a feeling comes over me. Of pausing, of resting, of all the clocks in the world going quiet.
Home.
Fifty-two
But Daniel’s home. That is a mess.
When I get back, the boys have left, and there is crap everywhere. It looks like how Bram used to describe it in the old days, before Yael arrived and asserted her brand of order.
There are bottles and ashtrays and plates and pizza boxes and every dish seems dirty and out. The whole place smells like cigarettes. It’s certainly not a place that a baby should live. I’m momentarily paralyzed, not sure where to start.
I put on a CD of Adam Wilde, that singer-songwriter Max and I went to see a few weeks ago. And then I just go. I empty out the beer and wine bottles and put them in a box for recycling. Next, I dump the ashtrays and rinse them out. Even though there’s a dishwasher now, I fill the sink with hot, soapy water and clean all the dirty dishes, then dry them. I throw open the windows to air our the place, and sunshine and fresh air come blowing in.
By noon, I’ve collected the bottles, tossed the cigarette butts, washed and dried the dishes, dusted and vacuumed. It’s about as clean as it was on its best day with Daniel, though when he comes home with Abraão and Fabiola, I’ll have it spotless. Ready.
I make a coffee. I check my phone to see if there’s any word from Linus, but it’s sitting on my bed, dead. I plug it in to charge, setting the coffee on my shelf. The envelope is still there, with the photos of me Yael, Bram, Saba, Olga. I run my finger along the crease of the envelope, feel the weight of history inside. Wherever I’m going next, these are coming with me.
I glance at my phone. It’s still dead, but soon there will be some word from Linus and Petra. Part of me thinks that I must be fired. That has to be the price to pay for last night’s triumph, and it’s okay because it’s a price I’m willing to pay. But another part of me is losing faith that the universal law of equilibrium operates that way.
I go back into the lounge. The Adam Wilde CD has been repeating and the songs are starting to become familiar enough that I know I will be able to hear them when I’m not listening to them.
I look around the room. I fluff the cushions and lie down on the sofa. I should be in suspense, waiting for word about tonight, but I feel the opposite. It’s like that moment of pause when I step out of a train station or bus station or airport into a new city and it’s nothing but possibility.
Through the open window, the dissonant sounds of the city—of tram chimes and bicycle bells and the occasional jet roaring overhead—drift in and mingle with the music and lull me to sleep.
For the third time in one day, I’m woken up by the ringing of a phone. Like this morning when Yael called, I have that same feeling, of being somewhere else, somewhere right.
The ringing stops. But I know it must be Linus. My fate, Marina had called it. But it’s not my fate; it’s just about tonight. My fate is up to me.
I go into my room and pick up the phone. Out the window, climbing through the clouds I make out the blue-and-white underbelly of a KLM jet. I picture myself on a plane, flying out of Amsterdam, over the North Sea, over England and Ireland, past Iceland and Greenland and down Newfoundland and along the Eastern Seaboard, into New York. I feel the jerk, hear the skid of the tires touching down, the explosion of applause from the passengers. Because we are all of us, so grateful for having at last arrived.
I glance at my phone. It’s full of congratulatory texts from last night, and a voicemail from Linus. “Willem, can you please call in as soon as possible,” he says.
I take a deep breath, prepare myself for whatever he has to say. It doesn’t really matter. I went big and now I’m going home.