The vendors look at her with mild amusement, as if this type of thing happens at least twice a week. Then a big bearded guy wearing suspenders over his butte of a belly comes over with some wilting lavender. “She can have these too.”
“Here, Wren.” I throw the fragrant purple blooms her way.
“Thanks,” I say to the guy. Then I explain to him about Wren and her bucket list and the big fields of tulips being out of season so we had to settle for this.
He looks at Wren, who’s attempting to extract the petals and leaves from her sweater. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card. “Tulips in August is not so easy. But if you and your friend don’t mind to wake up early, I can maybe get you a small field of them.”
The next morning, Wren and I set our alarm for four, and fifteen minutes later, go downstairs to the deserted street to find Wolfgang waiting with his mini truck. Every warning I’ve ever had from my parents about not getting into cars with strangers comes to me, but I realize, as improbable as it is, Wolfgang isn’t a stranger. We all three squeeze into the front seat as we trundle toward a greenhouse in Aalsmeer. Wren is practically bouncing with excitement, which seems unnatural for four fifteen in the morning, and she hasn’t even had any coffee yet, though Wolfgang has thoughtfully brought a thermos of it along with some hard-boiled eggs and bread.
We spend the drive listening to cheesy europop and Wolfgang’s tales of spending thirty years in the merchant marines before moving to the Jordaan neighborhood in Amsterdam. “I’m German by birth, but I’ll be an Amsterdammer by death,” he says with a big toothy grin.
By five o’clock, we pull up to Bioflor, which hardly looks like the pictures of Keukenhof Gardens, with its carpets of color, but instead looks like some kind of industrial farm. I look at Wren and shrug. Wolfgang pulls in and stops alongside a football-field-sized greenhouse with a row of solar panels on top. A rosy-faced guy named Jos greets us. And then he unlocks the door, and Wren and I gasp.
There are rows and rows of flowers in every color. Acres of them. We walk down the tiny paths in between the beds, the air thick with humidity and manure until Wolfgang points out a section of tulips in fuchsia, sunburst, and one explosive citrusy combo that looks like a blood orange. I walk away, leaving Wren to her flowers.
She just stands there for a while. Then I hear her call out: “This is incredible. Can you see this?” Wolfgang looks at me but I don’t answer because I don’t think it’s us she’s talking to.
Wren runs around this greenhouse, and another one full of fragrant freesia, and I snap a bunch of pictures. And then Wolfgang has to get back. We belt Abba songs all the way, Wolfgang saying Abba is Esperanto for happiness, and the United Nations should play their songs at general assemblies.
It’s only when we get to a warehouse outside Amsterdam that I notice that the back of Wolfgang’s truck is still empty. “Didn’t you buy flowers for your stall?”
He shakes his head. “Oh, I don’t buy flowers directly from the farms. I buy at auction via wholesalers who deliver here.” He points to where people are loading up their trucks with flowers.
“So you just went all the way out there for us?” I ask.
He gives me a little shrug, like, of course, why else? And at this point, I really have no right to be surprised by people’s capacity for kindness and generosity, but still, I am. I’m floored every time.
“Can we take you out to dinner tonight?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Not tonight. I’m going to see a play in Vondelpark.” He looks at us. “You should come. It’s in English.”
“Why would a play in Holland be in English?” Wren asks.
“That’s the difference between the Germans and the Dutch,” Wolfgang replies. “The Germans translate Shakespeare. The Dutch leave him in English.”
“Shakespeare?” I ask, feeling every hair on my body rise. “Which play?”
And before Wolfgang finishes telling me the title, I just start laughing. Because it’s simply not possible. It’s less possible than finding that one needle in a needle factory. Less possible than finding a lone star in the universe. It’s less possible than finding that one person in all the billions who you might love.
Because tonight, playing in Vondelpark, is As You Like It. And I know with a certainty I cannot explain but that I would stake my life on, that he will be in it.
Thirty-eight
And so, after a year, I find him as I first found him: In a park, in the sultry dusk, speaking the words of William Shakespeare.
Except tonight, after this year, everything is different. This is no Guerrilla Will. This is a real production, with a stage, with seats, with lights, with a crowd. A large crowd. Such that by the time we get there, we are shunted off to a low wall on the edge of the small amphitheater.
And this year, he is no longer in a supporting role. This year, he is a star. He is Orlando, as I knew he would be. He is the first actor to take the stage, and from that moment on, he owns it. He is riveting. Not just to me. To everyone. A hush falls over the crowd as soon as he delivers the first soliloquy and continues for the rest of the performance. The sky darkens, and the moths and mosquitoes dance in the spotlights, and Amsterdam’s Vondelpark is transformed into the Forest of Arden, a magical place where that which was lost can be found.
As I watch him, it’s as though it is only us two. Just Willem and me. Everything else disappears: The sound of bicycle bells and tram chimes disappears. The mosquitoes buzzing around the fountain in the pond disappear. The group of rowdy guys sitting next to us disappears. The other actors disappear. The last year disappears. All my doubts disappear. The feeling of being on the right path fills every part of me. I have found him. Here. As Orlando. Everything has led me to this.
His Orlando is different from the way we played it in class or from the way the actor in Boston played it. His is sexy and vulnerable, the yearning for Rosalind so palpable it becomes physical, a pheromone that wafts off him and drifts through the swirl of floodlights, where it lands on my damp and welcoming skin. I feel my lust, my yearning and, yes, my love, coming off me in pulses, swimming toward the stage, where I imagine them being fed to him, like lines.
He can’t know I’m here. But as crazy as it sounds, I feel like he does. I sense he feels me somewhere in the words he speaks, the same way I felt him when I first spoke them in Professor Glenny’s class.
I remember so many of Rosalind’s lines, of Orlando’s too, that I can mouth them along with the actors. It feels like a private call-and-response chorus between me and Willem.
The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.
Fare you well: pray heaven I be deceived in you!
Then love me, Rosalind.