Amy used my phone to make about a thousand calls. She rang her parents and told them what had happened, cried again, fought through it, explained everything, then took down a bunch of numbers and nodded as she did it. We called from a café not far from the train station. It was called Café Van Gogh. We sat outside and drank water and coffee and ate crackers and cheese. Little by little, Amy pieced the events of the night as well as she could, but the reassembled memories didn’t shed any light on the makeup bag’s disappearance. It was gone. Ultimately how it got lost didn’t particularly matter.
In the late afternoon, we splurged on a room in the Hotel Hollander. Amy said she couldn’t stand the thought of dealing with the hostel, so Constance and I chipped in and we got a charming room with a small balcony overlooking a canal. It was a major splurge, and it cut into the meager budget we had so carefully concocted during our spring semester, but it felt necessary. As soon as we entered the room, Amy took a shower that went on so long both Constance and I went in to check on her. Each time she said she was okay. We didn’t really believe her.
Her parents called a half dozen times, worried and trying to manage things from stateside. They floated the idea that she should come home. At first I thought that wasn’t truly necessary. I asked myself, Can’t something be done? Although every time I asked it, I failed to come up with a solution—but as the afternoon wore into evening and Amy emerged in a towel, her face taut in a way I had never seen it, I wasn’t so sure. Although the credit cards had already been canceled, the passport was not going to be easy to replace. It took time, by all accounts, and we only had another two, maybe three weeks left in any case. She had lost all her cash, close to $700. I watched Amy calculating the pros and cons as she talked to her folks. It was all a mess.
We joined Raef and Jack for late-night fondue, all of us squeezed around a small table, a pot of cheese in the center, hunks of bread and sausage scattered on a plate. It was a funny place called the Bull Stone, as far as we could translate, well off the beaten tourist track. Raef had known about it; Raef seemed to know everything. But the silliness of the cheese pot, the communal nature of eating around a crowded table, wound up being exactly what Amy needed.
You can never anticipate these nights. You can never expect the kind of spontaneous fun we had. You can plan and plan for a party, get every detail right, serve delicious food and excellent drinks, and the party can still fall flat. We had no business being happy and goofy, no business laughing at everything. Rounds of beer punctuated each new burst of energy, and the cheese fondue emptied slowly, the bread and cheese and sausage tasting more and more delicious as time passed, and I thought how I liked sitting here, how I loved my friends, how Jack fit me and Raef fit Constance, and how brave Amy was for rallying. A hundred times I looked over at Jack, or caught him looking at me, and I couldn’t help thinking that I had never met anyone like him. I had never felt this comfortable, this compatible with a guy, and when he asked me if I wanted to go for a nightcap, I said I had to check with Amy, make sure she was going to be all right, then yes, yes, of course, if she felt comfortable.
16
“Favorite movie?” Jack asked.
“Babe.”
“You’re kidding. The movie about the sheepdog pig?”
“I love Babe. Favorite serious movie? Is that what you want?” I asked, my knees between his knees, the barstools pulled close. “My Life as a Dog.”
“I never heard of it.”
“Scandinavian. Swedish, I think. What’s your favorite?” I asked him.
“Lawrence of Arabia or Gladiator.”
“Good choices. If you have to pick one?”
“Gladiator,” he said. “Favorite season?”
“Fall. Cliché, I know, but it is. You?”
“Spring,” he said. “It was a nice time to be on my grandfather’s farm. It felt like everything had been asleep for a long time, and then morning came and everything began to wake up.”
“The Vermont farm,” I said, starting to see him, to understand something of his life. “With your grandma and grandpa when your parents had split up.”
He nodded. I had no idea what time it was. Near midnight, I supposed, although I didn’t care. The bar we sat in seemed to have no rules about closing, no plan to kick us out. The bartender was a tall, thin man with an enormous salt-and-pepper beard, who obviously got through the night by playing a game on his computer. He hardly looked up when people came through the door. A taxi driver had recommended the bar. It was called Abraham’s.
“Are you tired, Heather Postlewaite?” Jack asked after a little bit. “Should I get you home?”
“Yes, of course. And no, not yet.”
“Tell me about your job. You’re going to work for Bank of America? New York, the whole thing?”
I nodded. That conversation didn’t seem to fit the mood, but he waited, and finally I had to speak.
“Investment banking, really,” I said carefully. “I’m going to be involved in the Pacific Rim side of the business—Japan, primarily. I speak a little Japanese. Well, that’s not true. I’m fairly fluent. That’s really what made me valuable to a couple of companies. I start September fifteenth. I’ll travel a lot, back and forth, and I’ll be expected to work long hours. It’s a great opportunity.”
“And a well-compensated position.”
“Yes, better than I deserve. Better than anyone deserves, probably. It has potential that way.”
“Is that important to you?”
“Is what important?”
“Money. Wealth. I guess the balance of work and life.”
I regarded him closely. I wished I had been clearer in my mind, because I felt an agenda sneaking into his questions, a slight judgment, and I didn’t like it. Didn’t need it. I sipped my drink and looked out at the street. A single streetlight pushed the darkness away around the edges of the buildings.
“Sorry,” he said. “A little reaction, that’s all. You seem so … alive to the world in a way that I don’t immediately connect with a corporate employee. With someone in investment banking.”
“Investment bankers live in the world,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “and they even like it and admire it.”
“Right,” he said. “Point taken.”
But I didn’t think he believed it. He held my hand. Then he turned it over and kissed my palm. He put his eyes on mine.
“I’m sorry about what happened with Amy. Do you think she’ll go home?”
“I guess so. She’ll push through it, but from a practical standpoint, if she can’t get a replacement passport and all the paperwork in reasonable time, she plans to head home in the next day or so.”
“It’s probably a better choice. It’s a shame, but it is.”
“It’s sad, though. We planned this trip forever. It’s all we talked about for the entire spring semester, and now it’s gone, just like that. It’s strange to think about how quickly things can change.”
“You don’t seem like a big fan of change.”
“I guess I’m not. I don’t know.”
“A planner?”
“I suppose. You’re not?”
“I’m a little lazy about planning. I like things to surprise me.”
“I’m the Smythson planner type of girl.”
“That’s what I’m discovering. And I have an old journal held together by a rubber band. Tidy dresser drawers?”
“Organized closet. Shoes in rows. I alphabetize condiments and spices.”
“I’m more of a dress-out-of-the-laundry-basket sort of guy.”
“How do you fight wrinkles?”