“Tonight you will play the part as Jeroen plays it, as an understudy must play it,” she commands. It is the same direction she’d given him yesterday, when he was called up to step in for Jeroen after the lead actor broke his ankle. It was the direction that had almost derailed him, until Kate had persuaded him to take the risk. “Go big or go home” was how Kate put it. But Willem had come to understand it as “Go big and go home.” That’s how it had felt. Last night he had thought the going home was to acting, to a new home in New York City, to an apprenticeship with Ruckus Theater Company, which Kate runs with her fiancé. But today it feels as though home has come to him.
“Are we clear?” Petra asks after she has smoked her way through two cigarettes worth of criticisms. “You will do as your director tells you.”
He would do as his director told him, but Kate was his director now. “I will perform the role as I did last night,” he tells Petra.
Petra’s face goes purple. It doesn’t bother Willem one bit. What can she do? Fire him?
She stomps her feet. She seems like a little girl denied her dessert. He tries to keep a straight face, tries not to laugh, tries not to notice that Linus appears to be holding in a chuckle of his own.
• • •
Dee is laughing, too.
At the story his girl has just finished telling him. It’s almost too crazy to believe, which is how you know it’s true.
“Too bad Shakespeare’s dead,” Dee tells Allyson. “Because that’s a story he’d wanna steal.”
“I know, right?” Allyson says.
Dee’s mama drops a cup of coffee onto the desk. He can smell bacon frying in the kitchen. “That our girl?” she asks.
Dee isn’t sure when Allyson went from being his girl to their girl, but he opens the screen so his mama can say hello, too.
“Hey, baby,” she says. “How you doin’? “Want some waffles?”
“Hi, Mrs. D—”
Dee’s warning face travels four thousand miles in a split second.
“I mean, Sandra,” Allyson corrects. “I’d love some. Not sure you can Skype food.”
“Some day, I wouldn’t put it past them,” she says.
Dee angles the computer away. “Mama, I haven’t talked to my girl in a week. You can have her when she comes home.” Dee turns back to the screen. “Am I still picking you up at the airport?”
“You can. I think my mom was going to drive down, too. She said you could come back with us.”
“When’s this party starting,?” Dee asks.
“I’m meant to be flying home tomorrow afternoon. I’m actually meant to be in Croatia right now.”
“You got a lotta ‘meant to’ going on,” he says.
“I know.” Allyson laughs. “Truth is I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”
She might not have a clue but Dee knows the signs and symptoms of a girl in love. She’s practically glowing, and without the benefit of the cucumber-and-yogurt facial he has planned as part of his welcome-home pampering spa day. He’s got a whole list of activities, but mostly he just wants to sit in the same room and talk. He misses her. Dee didn’t know you could miss a friend as much as he’s missed Allyson this summer, but then again, he’s never had a friend like her.
“You never did have a clue. At least now you’re owning your ignorance,” Dee teases.
“You know me so well!” Allyson jokes, but she touches her hand to the camera so it appears on the screen and Dee knows she’s not joking, not really. He reciprocates by putting his hand on her screen. They let the gesture say the unspoken things: Thank you for getting me here. Thank you for understanding me.
“I miss you,” Allyson says.
It’s just what Dee needs to hear. “I miss you, too, baby.”
Mama swoops back behind him, forcing herself back into the screen. She blows Allyson kisses. “He does. My boy is pining.”
“I miss him, too.”
Sandra sticks her head right in front of the camera. “How’s that map working out?”
She had bought Allyson a laminated map of Paris as a bon voyage present. The gesture had embarrassed Dee at first, along with the bon voyage party his mama had insisted on throwing for Allyson, even though she’d never met her. “Feels more like what you’re really doin’ is throwing me a hooray-you-finally-done-made-a-friend party,” Dee had said. His mama had raised one formidable eyebrow and retorted, “And why can’t I do both?” (Dee lost the argument. The party had been delightful.)
“Mama, she ain’t in Paris anymore. She’s in Amster—” Dee starts to say.
But Allyson cuts him off. “The map was perfect,” she says. She explains how the map had given her the idea to check the Paris hospitals, which had led her to Wren and to Dr. Robinet and to the house on Bloemstraat and now here. “So you see, I wouldn’t have found my way here without it.”
• • •
Broodje is shattered. He was up most of the night drinking, celebrating Willem’s debut as Orlando. He woke up after three hours of sleep with a Queen’s-Day-level hangover, only to remember he and Henk had promised W they’d help him move.
They’d spent the day lugging boxes up four flights of steep stairs. (W would have to be moving into the top-floor flat. Broodje had remarked that if they weren’t hungover, the flat would’ve been garden level. W spent fifteen long minutes poking holes in the logic of such a statement.)
Now Broodje is back at his flat. Not his, exactly. His for the next two weeks until he moves back to Utrecht with Henk. He doesn’t really want to go to Willy’s show again tonight, but he will because it’s Willy. At least he has a few hours free to rest. All he wants to do is take off his dusty, sweaty clothes and climb into bed.
He is already pulling off his shirt when he walks in the door.
And then he screams.
“Oh, shit, sorry,” he says, putting the shirt back on. “I didn’t know Willy had company.”
It’s a bit of a déjà vu this, walking in on one of Willy’s girls. It used to be like this all the time. But not for a while. Not for a really long while.
“Sorry,” the girl says. “I didn’t know anyone was coming.”