Willem rolls his eyes and gives his jeans a yeah-yeah look. He grabs some of the napkins from the tray. “I didn’t think it was so bad.” He dabs at his jeans. “Does coffee leave a stain?”
This sends me into further paroxysms of laughter. Willem offers a wry, patient smile. He is big enough to accept the joke at his expense.
“I’m. Sorry.” I gasp. “Not. Laughing. At. Your. Pants.”
Pants! In her tutorial of British English versus American English, Ms. Foley had informed us that the English call underwear pants and pants trousers, and we should be mindful of announcing anything to do with pants to avoid any embarrassing misunderstandings. She went pink as she explained it.
I am doubled over now. When I manage to sit upright, I see one of the French girls coming back down the aisle. As she edges behind Willem, she rests a hand on his arm; it lingers there for a second. Then she says something in French, before slipping into her seat.
Willem doesn’t even look at her. Instead, he turns back to me. His dark eyes dangle question marks.
“I thought you got off the train.” The admission just slips out on the champagne bubbles of my relief.
Oh, my God. Did I actually say that? The giggles shock right out of me. I’m afraid to look at him. Because if he didn’t want to leave me on the train before, I’ve remedied that now.
I feel the give of the seat as Willem sits down, and when I gather up the courage to peer over at him, I’m surprised to find that he doesn’t look shocked or disgusted. He just has that amused private smile on his face.
He begins to unpack the junk food and pulls a bent baguette out of his backpack. After he’s laid everything out over the trays, he looks right at me. “And why would I get off the train?” he asks at last, his voice light and teasing.
I could make up a lie. Because he forgot something. Or because he realized he needed to get back to Holland after all, and there wasn’t time to tell me. Something ridiculous but less incriminating. But I don’t.
“Because you changed your mind.” I await his disgust, his shock, his pity, but he still looks amused, maybe a little intrigued now too. And I feel this unexpected rush, like I just took a hit of some drug, my own personal truth serum. So I tell him the rest. “But then for a brief minute, I thought maybe this was all some sort of scam and you were going to sell me into sex slavery or something.”
I look at him, wondering if I’ve pushed too far. But he is smiling as he strokes his chin. “How would I do that?” he asks.
“I don’t know. You’d have to make me pass out or something. What’s that stuff they use? Chloroform? They put it on a handkerchief and put up against your nose, and you fall asleep.”
“I think that’s just in movies. Probably easier for me to drug your drink like your friend suspected.”
“But you got me three drinks, one of them unopened.” I hold up the can of Coke. “I don’t drink Coke, by the way.”
“My plan is foiled then.” He exaggerates a sigh. “Too bad. I could get good money for you on the black market.”
“How much do you think I’m worth?” I ask, amazed at how quickly fear has become fodder.
He looks me up and looks me down, appraising me. “Well, it would depend on various factors.”
“Like what?”
“Age. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
He nods. “Measurements?”
“Five feet four. One hundred and fifteen pounds. I don’t know metric.”
“Any unusual body parts or scars or false limbs?”
“Does that matter?”
“Fetishists. They pay extra.”
“No, no prosthetic limbs or anything.” But then I remember my birthmark, which is ugly, almost like a scar, so I usually keep it hidden under my watch. But there’s something oddly tempting about exposing it, exposing me. So I slide my watch down. “I do have this.”
He takes it in, nodding his head. Then casually asks, “And are you a virgin?”
“Would that make me more or less valuable?”
“It all depends on the market.”
“You seem to know a lot about this.”
“I grew up in Amsterdam,” he says, like this explains it.
“So what am I worth?”
“You didn’t answer all the questions.”‘
I have the strangest sensation then, like I’m holding the belt to a bathrobe and I can tie it tighter—or let it drop. “No, I’m not. A virgin.”
He nods, stares in a way that unsettles me.
“I’m sure Boris will be disappointed,” I add.
“Who’s Boris?”
“The thuggish Ukrainian who’s going to do the dirty work. You were just the bait.”
Now he laughs, tilting his long neck back. When he comes up for air, he says, “I usually work with Bulgarians.”
“You tease all you want, but there was a thing on TV about it. And it’s not like I know you.”
He pauses, looks straight at me, then says: “Twenty. One point nine meters. Seventy-five kilos, last time I checked. This,” he points to a zigzag scar on his foot. Then he looks me dead in the eye. “And no.”
It takes me a minute to realize that he’s answering the same four questions he asked me. When I do, I feel a flush start to creep up my neck.
“Also, we had breakfast together. Usually the people I have breakfast with, I know very well.”
Now the flush tidal-waves into a full-on blush. I try to think of something quippy to say back. But it’s hard to be witty when someone is looking at you like that.
“Did you really believe I would leave you on the train?” he asks.
The question is oddly jarring after all that hilarity about black-market sex slavery. I think about it. Did I really think he’d do that?
“I don’t know,” I answer. “Maybe I was just having a minor panic because doing something impulsive like this, it’s not me.”
“Are you sure about that?” he asks. “You’re here, after all.”
“I’m here,” I repeat. And I am. Here. On my way to Paris. With him. I look at him. He’s got that half smile, as if there’s something about me that’s endlessly amusing. And maybe it’s that, or the rocking of the train, or the fact that I’ll never see him again after the one day, or maybe once you open the trapdoor of honesty, there’s no going back. Or maybe it’s just because I want to. But I let the robe drop to the floor. “I thought you got off the train because I was having a hard time believing you’d be on the train in the first place. With me. Without some ulterior motive.”