Finally, he moved on the dancers. He held the shield in front of him, ready to deflect the urine back at them if they tried to squirt at him, and the skinheads proved to be no match. He took a big snap at one of the dancers’ penises with Constance’s shoe, and the guy wobbled away and began tucking his goods back in his pants. The other guy came sideways at Jack, but Jack moved too fast for him. Jack slammed the shield against the idiot, and the guy took three giant steps sideways, tried to right himself in his drunkenness, then fell like a plank onto his side. His beer skidded off into the crowd, and Jack, jumping on him, grabbed the guy’s feet and began using him to mop up the floor. The crowd loved seeing that, and two other guys came forward and began running the dancer around the floor like a Hoover. The second dancer—the one who had escaped—made a halfhearted effort to intervene, but a bunch of people began booing him and chased him away. The skinhead wandered off, leaving his friend to be rolled around in his own mess.
Jack made a final triumphant circle, raising the shield in victory. I met his eyes and wondered if a prince could be a guy with a garbage can lid on his forearm, a shoe as a sword, his knighthood conferred by besting dragons squirting their noxious fluids.
10
Just your father being your father. You know how he is, darling. Have fun.
I am having fun. But Daddy’s being a buzzkill.
He doesn’t mean to be. Just Dad being Dad. He can’t help it.
If anything, I’m TOO on top of everything. You know that.
He knows it, too. Just have fun. By the way, I cleaned out that back closet and gave away some old dresses.
Which old dresses? Do we have to do this now?
Just the blue one with the sleeves. You haven’t worn it in years. I want my closets back!
Oh, Mom, good grief. How is Mr. Periwinkle?
He’s outside a lot. Okay, have to run. Kiss the girls.
… and make them cry?
Miss you.
Miss you, too.
Raef traveled for jazz. That’s what he told us, and that’s why we followed him at three o’clock in the morning to a place called Smarty’s on a tiny little street off a tiny little street beside a canal somewhere in the downtown part of Amsterdam. He promised us it would be worth it, and after shots and a half dozen gin and tonics, after an Amsterdam joint the size of an ear of corn, we were in no shape to refuse. He led us down a set of cement stairs to a basement bar. I wondered how they could have basement bars in Amsterdam because the whole place hovered at sea level, but I was in no condition to discuss civil engineering. I hung on to Jack and Constance hung on to Raef and Amy hung on to Alfred, a Dutch guy whose fingers reminded me of typewriter keys.
Victor, Amy’s Count Chocula, had never shown at the party. Somehow or another, Count Chocula and Alfred knew each other, but I couldn’t draw a mental line to connect them.
A waitress with bulging biceps and a look that said she might spit into your drink or take you home, either option open, pointed us to a table by the WC. We had to turn sideways to make it through the small tables, and the music wrapped around us and didn’t let go. A black guy played a deep sax, twisting the sound and making it yowl and bend and sip, and as soon as we plopped down, Raef leaned across the table and told us what we were hearing.
“That’s Johnn P,” he said, his voice bright and Aussie and fun to listen to, “and he’s from Nigeria, but he lives here now. I don’t think the other guys are well known, just session guys sitting in.”
That was all I heard. Even that was difficult to hear. The waitress came by, and we ordered drinks—cognacs with waters on the side—and she nodded and headed off like a woman wading through a meadow of chairs. I felt hazy and a bit disoriented, but also happy. I wasn’t Hemingway, and this wasn’t Spain after World War I, but it was as close as I had come in my short life.
“I’d rate our kiss on the platform about a seven. How about you?” Jack asked, leaning close.
“That high? I was thinking more a six, maybe a five point five.”
“You’re a righty kisser. I knew you would be.”
“How did you know it?”
“Most people are. If you meet a lefty kisser, chances are they have a small fin on the back of their neck. It’s very hard to see, but it will be there.”
“A fin?”
He nodded.
“A little-known fact,” he said.
“Trouble is, I’ve never been ranked below a nine. My kisses can ruin a man for all other women. I’m just reporting what people say.”
“That’s why I held back, too,” he said. “I could have brought it up to a ten, but I didn’t want you to faint on the spot.”
“What’s the fin for?”
“What fin?”
“The fin you just talked about. The one on the back of the person’s neck.”
“People of Atlantis. They all kiss lefty.”
“And that’s how you can detect them?”
“Also, they will not eat tuna fish. Or any fish, for that matter. It’s a question of cannibalism.”
“I see. Can a normal person be a lefty kisser?”
“Not in my experience, no.”
“Is it dangerous to kiss a citizen of Atlantis?”
“Desperately. You should always bring a tiny packet of tartar sauce on a first date just in case. Obviously, tartar sauce is Kryptonite to anyone from Atlantis.”
“Do you always go on this way?”
“What way?”
“With your tall tales.”
“You don’t think I have a packet of tartar sauce in my pocket as we speak?”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
He leaned back. He made a tsking sound with his tongue and shook his head.
“Chauffeur, cook, or cleaner?” I asked him.
“What?” he asked, and he put his hand on my thigh and he looked me dead in the eye and it was nearly too much.
“Chauffeur, cook, or cleaner?” I repeated, trying to ignore his hand and his eyes.
“If I could have only one?”
I nodded. I should have removed his hand. My spine felt rubbery.
“Cleaner. I like to cook, and I’m a better driver than James Bond.”
“But you look more like Wolverine.”
“Should I move my hand?”
“In which direction?”
He smiled and took it away, and for a while we watched the guys playing music.
The waitress came back almost in time to the other musicians returning to the ribbon of sax, and Raef nodded and clapped, and so we clapped, too, because it was cool seeing the musicians match up, find each other in the melody, and it was cool thinking that Johnn P was a Nigerian playing sax in a European bar and that we had come from the United States and intersected with him here. Maybe that was the pot thinking, too—who knew?—but when I sipped the cognac I let it burn the roof of my mouth and tongue and looked over and smiled at Amy and Constance, both of them lizard-eyed and nodding slowly to the music.
My phone rang. It took me a moment to realize what it was, but when I dug it out of my pocket, I saw Brian’s number on the screen. The ex-boyfriend. I hadn’t heard from him the entire summer, and I suspected he hadn’t been to bed and had a case of the phonies. Late-night boo-hoos. Nostalgia for something that wasn’t much like the thing you remembered. Or maybe he genuinely missed me. Out of habit, out of curiosity, I almost hit the green button with my thumb, then thought better of it. Jack didn’t even look over or seem to care.
I decided I didn’t speak Brian anymore. I tucked the phone back in my pocket and put it on silence.
*
“Meet you at the hostel,” Amy whispered in my ear when the band stopped for a break.
“You don’t even know this guy,” I said.
“None of us know these guys,” Amy said. “Don’t worry, I can call you. We’re going to meet some other people for a drink. One guy is a magician, I guess. How often do you get to meet a magician in Amsterdam? Besides, the train isn’t until the afternoon, right?”
“Two fifty.”
I glanced at my phone to confirm my statement against the train schedule I had downloaded.