Just One Night

Willem thanks Wren.

Wren curtsies.

W listens to all the introductions and still doesn’t understand.

Neither does Max. “This is too bloody confusing. Can someone draw a chart?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” W says.

“I was kidding,” Max says. “What I really need is a drink.”

• • •

Wolfgang has arranged for a table at a café run by a friend of his in a neighborhood off the shrinking red light district. It is on the Kloveniersburgwal, not far from the bookstore where Willem found the copy of Twelfth Night, and where the bookseller inside told him about the auditions for As You Like It that were happening at the theater around the way.

It takes about an hour for them to get there, because they all walk together, instead of splitting up into taxis and trams and onto bikes. No one wants to be separated. Something about the night feels magical, as if a bit of Shakespeare’s fairy dust has settled over them.

Wolfgang is waiting at the table, along with Winston, a pitcher of beer between them.

Everyone sits down. Allyson snaps a picture and texts it to Dee. Wish you were here.

She is about to put her phone away but then she texts the photo to her mother. I am having the best day of my life, she writes. She hesitates before hitting send. She is not entirely sure how welcome this message will be, from a bar, no less. But she thinks (hopes) her mother will be happy that she is so happy. And with that in mind, she presses send.

Wolfgang has ordered a bunch of food, pizza and pasta and salads. It starts to arrive, along with lots more booze.

Willem has hardly eaten all day and is famished. But Allyson is sitting next to him, and with everyone jammed at the table, she is right up close. And then she slips off her sandals under the table and sort of nuzzles her foot against his.

He loses his appetite, for food anyway.

The conversation is disjointed. Everyone wants to tell their part of the tale, and they tell it out of order and, as the booze flows, with increased drunkenness.

Allyson and Willem sit back and listen to this story.

“I didn’t even know her, but I knew I was supposed to go with her to the hospitals,” Wren is saying.

“I knew something was up as soon as Willem came back,” Lien says.

“Hey, I did, too,” Broodje says.

“No you didn’t,” Henk says.

“I did. I just didn’t believe it was a girl.”

“I knew something was up because he didn’t want to shag Marina,” Max says. She looks at Allyson. “Sorry, but have you seen Marina? Rosalind?” She shakes her head. “Maybe I’m biased because I’d like to shag her.”

The table laughs.

“You have nothing to worry about,” Kate tells Allyson. “He was a miserable mess in Mexico after he didn’t find you.”

“He was even worse after the food poisoning,” Broodje says.

“You got food poisoning?” Kate asks. Willem nods. “The mystery meat? I knew it!”

“I got really sick right after you dropped me off,” Willem says.

“You should’ve called me,” Kate says.

“I ended up calling my ma, in India, and that’s why I went over, so it was a good thing, the food poisoning.” Sickness leading to healing. The truth and its opposite again.

“At least it paid off in the end, because at the time, that Mexico trip seemed like a disaster,” Broodje says. “At that New Year’s party, you were a mess, Willy.”

“I wasn’t a mess.”

“You were. You had girls coming at you and you didn’t want any of them. And then you lost your shoes.” Broodje looks at the gathering. “There were these giant piles of shoes.”

The hair on the back of Allyson’s neck goes up. “Wait, what?”

“We went to this party on the beach, in Mexico. New Year’s Eve.”

“With the piles of shoes?”

“Yeah,” Broodje says.

“And the Spanish reggae band. Tabula rasa?” Allyson asks.

It’s noisy in the bar but it goes quiet for a second as Allyson and Willem look at each other and once again understand something that they somehow, somewhere already knew.

“You were there,” she says.

“You were there,” he says.

“You were both at the same party,” W says. He shakes his head. “I cannot even begin to calculate those odds.”

She’d been thinking of him. But it had felt like ridiculous wishful thinking. Delusional wishful thinking.

He’d been thinking of her, too. In the water, he knew she was close, but not that close.

“I cannot believe you were at that party!” Henk says. “I cannot believe you went all the way there and you didn’t find each other.”

Kate and Wolfgang have only just met. But for some reason, they catch each other’s eyes.

“Maybe they weren’t ready to find each other,” Wolfgang begins.

“And so they didn’t,” Kate finishes.

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” W says.

Except that even W—mathematical, logical, analytical W—somewhere understands that it does.

• • •

The night goes on. Pitchers of beer. Bottles of wine. The novelty of the Allyson-Willem hunt takes a backseat to more prosaic matters. Soccer. The weather. There is a debate about what Wren and Winston should do tomorrow. Allyson tries not to think about leaving tomorrow.

It’s not that hard, because Willem’s hand has snuck under the table where for the last hour, it has been playing lightly on the birthmark on her wrist. (Allyson never knew her wrist had so many nerve endings. Allyson’s wrist has turned to jelly. Allyson can’t really think of much except for Willem’s hand, her wrist, except perhaps for the other places she’d like his hand to go. Meanwhile, both her feet are now completely wrapped around his right ankle. She has no idea what that is doing to him.)

Wolfgang gets up to leave first. He has to work tomorrow, not so early, because it is Sunday, but early enough. He kisses Allyson good-bye. “I have a sense I will see you again.”

“Me, too.” Allyson has a feeling she’s coming back to Amsterdam. She’ll have to get a job on campus, pull double shifts at Café Finlay during school breaks to afford the ticket. The thought of coming back makes her happy, but she can’t really think about the year of not being here. So she doesn’t. She just concentrates on her wrist, the little circles Willem is drawing, which are reverberating through her body in ever-growing waves, like when a pebble is tossed into a pond.

Kate and David, who have been doing their share of under-the-table canoodling, use Wolfgang’s departure to make their own excuses. There are hasty kisses good-bye.

Before she leaves, Kate says to Willem: “I’ll be in touch on Monday. We’ll have to start working on your visa paperwork right away, but we can get it expedited and probably have you out for October.”

“Definitely,” David says.

Willem has known since yesterday, since before he even asked Kate if he could join up with Ruckus, that this was the right thing, that it would happen, but now with David’s enthusiastic support, it has become very real.

“What visa paperwork?” W asks after Kate and David leave. Dutch nationals don’t need visas for tourist trips to the States.