and a set of large very white teeth that he seemed to be holding on to, with his tongue perhaps, or with sucked-in cheeks, was a pilot. As he was bound for home, and the Point was close to Jameson…
'I'll pay,' Grijpstra said. As in Amsterdam there had been no time to change money, Grijpstra only had Dutch guilders, hundreds, two hundred and fifties and thousands, having grabbed a pile of notes from the basement before leaving. He displayed his wad.
'That's money?' Ishmael asked, looking at the brightly colored notes of different sizes, which showed ornate faces of medieval Dutchmen, stylized flowers, fruit motifs, a bird even, ornamental bands, artistically drawn figures.
'Guilders,' Grijpstra said. 'One guilder is about half a dollar. There should be plenty here.'
'Europe dollars,' Ishmael said, shaking his head. 'Can't rightly use those in Maine.'
Logan Airport was mostly closed inside. The money exchange wouldn't open until 9:00 A.M. There were coffee machines. Ishmael worked one and gave Grijpstra a cup. Grijpstra showed his Diners Club card.
'Ah,' Ishmael said. 'Can't rightly use that in Maine either. Not where we are at. All empty coast, you know. The bank is a truck, coming in Tuesdays, and it does Visa, but only if you're known, cause there's no phone from the truck, and they only change Canadian dollars, not Europe dollars, I think.'
Grijpstra put back his credit card. 'I see.'
'Bank truck doesn't take pesos either,' Ishmael said. 'Nothing personal, you know.'
'Got to get to Jameson,' Grijpstra said. He explained about his friend watching nature out there from an island, Squid Island.
'That's next to Bar Island,' Ishmael said. 'I fly around there some. Bar Island has this bar that connects to the peninsula ofJameson that gets submerged at low tide.'
'Jameson goes under water?'
'No, just the bar to Bar Island.' Ishmael's teeth clicked as he laughed. 'Jameson too, when this ozone hole opens up a bit more. That hole is right above the coast of Maine, did you know that? That'll warm us up all right. What do you do for a living?'
Grijpstra explained that he was a former cop, now a private detective.
'Your friend on Squid Island, would he be a cop too?'
That was amazing, Ishmael said, two former European cops watching nature on three thousand miles of Maine coast (counting all the nooks and crannies) not too well guarded by the Coast Guard, the Marine Patrol, sheriffs' offices, justice departments, the DEA, the what-have-you.
'DEA?'
'Drug Enforcement Agency,' Ishmael said.
'You got drugs in Maine?'
Ishmaers teeth were clicking again. 'You got drugs in Dutchland?'
Grijpstra said he didn't care about drugs. He thought that over three thousand miles of not-too-well-guarded coast might attract some, though.
'So,' Ishmael said, 'you're in a hurry to start watching some nature with your former cop friend out on Squid Island. Now ifyou rented a car, you'd be there in ten hours.'
'I'd rather fly with you,' Grijpstra said. 'I could pay you later.'
'You could,' Ishmael said. He didn't like to fly in the dark, though, so they'd have to wait for daybreak, three hours away. Grijpstra slept in the lounge, waking up every now and then to listen to Ishmael snore in the seat next to him, or to accept more coffee or candy bars that Ishmael kept getting from machines.
The plane was small, red and white, and had double wings, covered with what, to Grijpstra, appeared to be sailcloth. It was tied to the tarmac with ropes. Grijpstra helped undo them. There was only a small bench inside, with a little space behind it that Grijpstra's bag fitted into. Ishmael's bag balanced on top. The dashboard wasn't too complicated.
'1949,' Ishmael said. 'A Tailorcraft. They don't build them now. You okay there?'
Grijpstra was too big maybe but he didn't say so. He watched Ishmael turn the wooden propeller and listened to the little engine ahead, sputtering before catching. Ishmael hoisted himselfup, patted the dashboard, took out a portable radio, and called the control tower. The Tailorcraft began to spin as it reached the runway.
'Hello?' Ishmael asked the plane. 'Would you mind? Oh, I see.'
It was Grijpstra's right foot, depressing the plane's right wheel brake. The plane had double everything.
'Don't touch nothing,' Ishmael said. The plane finished its full turn and tried again. Ishmael was wearing little headphones connected to his portable radio. Control must have told him to go, for the plane took off, suddenly and bravely, into an empty sky that connected, Grijpstra reflected, to the rest of the universe, which was nothing really, a void, without coordinates except the lines that man had come up with.
'Nothing,' Grijpstra shouted over the engine's puny roar.
'What?' Ishmael shouted.
'Even less than your heaven,' Grijpstra said, pointing ahead and to the sides, even to the rear, where, turning his head with some difficulty, he could see only the plane's toy tail, sticking up comically between two little white clouds suspended in an infinity of blues, in assorted shades, all transparent.
'Heaven?'
'Your restroom heaven.'
Ishmael shouted that he'd been dreaming about heaven before meeting Grijpstra. The Tailorcraft, flying horizontally now above the Massachusetts coast line, replaced its tiny roar with a quiet putt-putt. 'Maybe you're the angel,' Ish-mael said. 'There should be angels in heaven, but in my dream, there was only the restroom and a uniformed guy shining shoes, a black, white-haired guy, he was Saint Peter, his nameplate said so, he wanted to know what I'd been doing.'
'In charge of thresholds,' Grijpstra said.
'That's him.' Ishmael rolled a cigarette with one hand, out ofa can from the glove compartment. There was a soldier on the can blowing a trumpet. 'You want one?'
Grijpstra didn't.
'They still smoke in Holland?'
'Oh yes,' Grijpstra said, reassured by the Boston suburbs below, crawling up along the coast in repetitive patterns. There were sailboats too, and ferries, busily connecting clearly visible points A and 6. He'd probably be fine, sitting on the plane's sailcloth wings, waving and screaming. Social suburbanites, sunning their worked-out bodies on their balconies, would pick up a phone, or old salts, ferry captains, weathered pleasure sailors, would turn a wheel. Not to worry.
'They don't smoke here no more,' Ishmael said. 'Just me and Hairy Harry occasionally. Looks funny, puffy rosy cheeks and then that fat cigar. Where was I, Krip?'
Grijpstra thought they were flying out of Where, if there were a Where anywhere now that they were out of coordinates below-no houses, no boats.
'The dream.' Ishmael blew thick smoke at the plane's cracked windscreen. 'Saint Peter wanted to know who-what-where and I said I had been this Maine Pentecostal person. You know? Pentecost? Whitsunday? Holy Ghost coming down? You don't cut your hair much and the women wear long dresses and you go to chapel most of the time?'
'Right,' Grijpstra said happily. The shoreline had showed up again: some houses, a sizable boat.
'You got the Holy Ghost coming down Whitsunday at your end too?'
'Yes,' Grijpstra said. There was an Uncle Joe who lived in the country, Holland's religious part, where kids weren't vaccinated against polio and everybody put out the flag on the queen's birthday. Uncle Joe was a healer.
'Ever heal anybody?'
Not to Grijpstra's knowledge but Uncle Joe did speak in tongues.
'Like you,' Ishmael said, 'in the restroom. Okay. So I told Saint Peter I had been doing that, and more, praying extra hours, going to chapel before breakfast, preaching, hollering and whatnot, guiding the congregation, rolling about the floor speaking in tongues, and he said, 'Very well, sir, that'll be the second door on the right then.''
The houses below were getting further apart and there was only one ship, a huge tanker, the size of some of the bigger islands they had passed earlier, that appeared to move just a little slower, it seemed to Grijpstra, than
