Just One Day (Just One Day #1)

Thirty-seven

We go to a late lunch at an Indonesian restaurant that serves one of those massive rijsttafel meals, and we stuff ourselves silly, and as we’re wobbling along on the bike, I get an idea. It’s not quite the flower fields at Keukenhof, but maybe it’ll do. I get us lost for about twenty minutes until I find the flower market I passed this morning. The vendors are closing up their stalls and leaving behind a good number of throwaways. Wren and I steal a bunch of them and lay them out on the crooked sidewalk above the canal bank. She rolls around in them, happy as can be. I laugh as I snap some pictures with her camera and with my phone and text them to my mom.

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.