“It was only for a place to leave the suitcase,” I explain. “It was for Lulu.”
The look on her face is different from what it was last time, when she threw the vase at me, after I told her it was time for me to go. That was fury. This is fury before it’s had time to set, raw and bloody. How foolish it was to visit Céline. We could’ve found another place for that suitcase.
“Her?” Céline yells. “Her? She was just some girl. Nothing special! And look at you now! She left you like this. I am always the one you come running to, Willem. That means something.”
I hadn’t taken Céline for one of the ones who wait. “I shouldn’t have come here. I won’t do it again,” I promise. I gather the rest of my things and hobble out of her flat, down the stairs to the street.
A police car flies by, its lights flashing through the finally dark streets, its siren whining: nyeah-nyeah, nyeah-nyeah.
Paris.
Not home.
I need to get home.
Five
SEPTEMBER
Amsterdam
Marjolein’s office is in a narrow canal house off of the Brouwersgracht, the inside of it all white and modern. Bram designed it, calling it one of his “vanity projects.” But there was nothing vain about Bram; that was just his code for not getting paid.
Bram’s day job was designing temporary crisis shelters for refugees, something he believed in but that didn’t challenge his creative side. So he was always on the lookout for ways to exercise his modern sensibilities—like transforming a tired transport barge into a three-story glass, wood, and steel floating palace that was once described as “Bauhaus on the Gracht” in a design journal.
Sara, Marjolein’s assistant, sits behind a clear Lucite table, a vase of white roses on the desk. When I come in, she gives me a nervous smile and slowly rises to take my coat. I lean in to kiss her hello. “Sorry I’m late,” I apologize.
“You’re three weeks late, Willem,” she says, as she ushers me in, accepting a kiss but not eye contact.
I give my best rogue’s grin, even though it pulls at the now-itchy wound on my cheek. “But worth waiting for?”
She doesn’t answer. It was more than two years ago that Sara and I had our moment. I was spending a lot of time in this office then, and she was there, our family attorney’s assistant. When it had first happened, I’d been besotted, Sara the older woman with the doleful eyes and the blue-painted bed. But it didn’t last. It never does.
“Technically, I was only a few days late,” I tell her now. “Marjolein’s the one who delayed us by two weeks.”
“Because she went on holiday,” Sara says, strangely huffy. “Which she had purposely booked for after the closing.”
“Willem.” Marjolein towers in the doorway, naturally tall, and taller yet in the stiletto heels she always wears. She beckons me into her office where Bram’s modern sensibility is everywhere. The messy papers and folders in precarious piles are Marjolein’s contributions.
“So you threw me over for a girl,” Marjolein says, shutting the door behind her.
I wonder how it is that Marjolein can possibly know this. She stares at me, clearly amused by something. “I called back, you know?”
On the train from London to Paris, I’d tried to text Marjolein about my delay, but my phone wouldn’t get a signal and was about to die anyway, and for some reason, I didn’t want to tell Lulu about any of it. So when I’d seen one of the Belgian backpacker girls in the café, I’d borrowed her phone. I’d had to fumble in my backpack for Marjolein’s number in my address book and had wound up spilling coffee all over me and the Belgian girl.
“She sounded pretty,” Marjolein says, with a grin that is both mischievous and scolding at the same time.
“She was,” I say.
“They always are,” Marjolein says. “Well, come give us a kiss.” I step forward to be kissed but before I do, she stops me. “What happened to your face?”
One upside to our meeting being postponed is that it’s given the bruises time to fade. The sutures have dissolved, too. All that’s left now of that day is a thick raised welt that I’d hoped would go unnoticed.
When I don’t answer, Marjolein does. “Tangled with the wrong girl, eh? One with an angry boyfriend?” She gestures to the reception area. “Speaking of, Sara has a nice Italian bloke, so lay off. She moped for months after you left last time. I almost had to fire her.”
I hold up my hands and feign innocence.
Marjolein rolls her eyes. “Was that really because of a girl?” She points to my cheek.
Put that way, the story skirts a little close to the truth. “Bicycle. Beer. Dangerous combination.” I cheerfully mime falling off a bike.
“My God. Have you been gone so long you’ve forgotten how to drink and ride a bike?” she asks. “How can you even call yourself Dutch anymore? We got you back just in time.”
“So it appears.”
“Come. Let me get you a coffee. And I have some excellent chocolate hiding around here somewhere. And then we’ll sign the papers.”
She calls to Sara, who brings in two demitasses of coffee. Marjolein rifles around in her drawers until she pulls out a box of hard, chewy chocolates. I take one and let it melt on my tongue.
She starts explaining what I’m signing, though it doesn’t matter because my signature is only required due to some bureaucratic formality. Yael never took Dutch citizenship, and Bram, who used to say, “God is in the details,” when it came to the meticulousness of his designs, apparently held the opposite view when it came to his personal affairs.
All of which means my presence is necessary to finalize the sale and set up the various trusts. Marjolein prattles on as I sign and sign and sign again. Apparently Yael’s not being Dutch, and no longer residing here or in Israel either, but floating around like some stateless refugee, is actually a big tax boon for her. She sold the boat for seven hundred and seventeen thousand euros, Marjolein explains. A chunk goes to the government, but a much larger sum goes to us. By the end of business day tomorrow, one hundred thousand euros will be deposited into my bank account.
As I sign, Marjolein keeps looking at me.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s just I forgot how much you look like him.”