Until I Find You

usually not a customer. There were no minors among the prostitutes in those days, and the police were on the friendliest possible terms with the women in the red-light district; the police knew almost everything that went on there.

One morning, which felt almost like spring, Jack and Alice went to the Warmoesstraat police station with Els and Saskia. A nice policeman named Nico Oudejans interviewed Alice. Saskia had requested Nico; both when she’d been burned and when she’d been beaten up, he had been the first street cop to arrive at the scene on the Bloedstraat. Jack may have been disappointed that Nico was wearing plainclothes, not a uniform, but Nico was the red-light district’s favorite officer—not just a familiar cop on the beat but the policeman the prostitutes most trusted. He was in his late twenties or early thirties.

To the boyfriend question, Alice said no—she didn’t have one—but Nico was suspicious of her answer. “Then who’s the guy you’re singing for, Alice?”

“He’s a former boyfriend,” Alice said; she put her hand on the back of Jack’s neck. “He’s Jack’s father.”

“We would consider him a boyfriend,” the policeman politely told her.

Possibly it was Els who said: “It’s just for an afternoon and part of one night, Nico.”

“I’m not going to admit any customers,” Alice might have told the nice cop. “I’m just going to sit in the window or stand in the doorway, and sing.”

“If you turn everyone down, you’re going to make some men angry at you, Alice,” Nico said.

It must have been Saskia who said: “One of us will always be nearby. When she’s using my room, I’ll be watching out for her; when she’s using Els’s room, Els will be hanging around.”

“And where will you be, Jack?” Nico asked.

“He’s going to be with me or Els!” Saskia replied.

Nico Oudejans shook his head. “I don’t like the sound of it, Alice—this isn’t your job.”

“I used to sing in a choir,” Alice told him. “I know how to sing.”

“It’s no place to sing a hymn or say a prayer,” the policeman said.

“Maybe you could come by from time to time,” Saskia suggested to him. “Just in case she draws a crowd.”

“She’ll draw one, all right,” Nico said.

“So what?” Els asked. “A new girl always draws a crowd.”

“When a new girl takes a customer inside and closes the curtains, the crowd usually goes away,” Nico Oudejans said.

“I’m not going to admit any customers,” Alice might have repeated.

“Sometimes it’s easier than saying no,” Saskia said. “Virgins, for example—they can be nice.”

“They’re quick, too,” Els told Alice.

“Not around Jack.”

“Just not too young a virgin, Alice,” Nico Oudejans said.

“I really appreciate it,” Alice told him. “If you ever want a tattoo—” She stopped; maybe she thought that if she offered him a free tattoo, the policeman would construe this as a bribe. He was a nice guy, Nico Oudejans. His eyes were a robin’s-egg blue, and high on one cheekbone he had a small scar shaped like the letter L.

Out on the Warmoesstraat, Alice thanked Els and Saskia for helping her get permission from the police to be a prostitute for an afternoon and part of one night. “I figured it would be easier to talk Nico into it than to talk you out of it,” Saskia said.

“Saskia always does what’s easier,” Els explained. The three women laughed. They were walking the way Dutch girls sometimes do, side by side with their arms linked together. Alice was in the middle; Els was holding Jack’s hand.

The Warmoesstraat ran the length of one edge of the red-light district. Jack and Alice were on their way back to the Krasnapolsky. Els and Saskia were going to help Alice pick out what to wear—she wanted to wear her own clothes, she said. Alice didn’t own a skirt as short as the ones Saskia wore in her window or doorway on the Bloedstraat, or a blouse with a neckline as revealing as the ones Els wore when she was giving advice on the Stoofsteeg.

It must have been about eleven in the morning when they came to the corner of the Sint Annenstraat. Only one prostitute was working, way at the end of the street, but even at that distance, she recognized them. The prostitute waved and they waved back. Because they were looking down the Sint Annenstraat, into the district, they didn’t see Jacob Bril coming toward them on the Warmoesstraat. They were still walking four abreast; there was no way Bril could get around them. He said something sharply in Dutch—a curse, or some form of condemnation. Saskia snapped back at him. Even though Els and Saskia were not dressed for their doorways, Bril surely recognized them; after all, he’d made quite a comprehensive study of the prostitutes in the neighborhood.

The three women had to unlink their arms for Jacob Bril to pass by them; it might have been the first time Bril had been forced to stop walking in the red-light district. Of course Bril knew Alice—she was standing between the two prostitutes. As for the boy, Bril always appeared to look right through him; it was as if he never saw Jack.

“In the Lord’s eyes, you are the company you keep!” Jacob Bril told Alice.

“I like the company I keep just fine,” Alice replied.

“What would you know about the Lord’s eyes?” Els asked Bril.

“Nobody knows what God sees,” Saskia said.

“He sees even the smallest sin!” Bril shouted. “He remembers every act of fornication!”

“Most men do,” Els told him.

Saskia shrugged. “I find I forget it, most of the time,” she said.

They watched Jacob Bril scurry down the Sint Annenstraat, as purposefully as a rat. The lone prostitute at the far end of the street was no longer in her doorway; she must have seen Bril coming.

“Jacob Bril is a good reason for me to be off the street before midnight,” Alice said. “I can’t imagine what he’d say if he saw me sitting in a window or heard me singing in a doorway.” She laughed in that brittle way, the kind of laughter Jack recognized as a precursor to her tears.

It was Els or Saskia who said: “There are better reasons than Bril to be off the street before midnight.”

They came out of the Warmoesstraat in the Dam Square and walked into the Krasnapolsky. “What’s fornication?” Jack asked.

“Giving advice,” Alice answered.

“Good advice, mostly,” Saskia said.

“Necessary advice, anyway,” Els added.

“What’s sin?” Jack asked.

“Just about everything,” Alice answered.

“There’s good sin and bad sin,” Els told Jack.

“There is?” Saskia said; she looked as confused as Jack was.

“I mean good advice and bad advice,” Els explained. It seemed to Jack that sin was more complicated than fornication.

Entering the hotel room, Alice said: “The thing about sin, Jack, is that some people think it’s very important and other people don’t even believe it exists.”

“What do you think about it?” the boy asked. Alice appeared to trip, although Jack saw nothing that she could have tripped on; she just started to fall, but Els caught her.

“Damn heels,” Alice said, but she wasn’t wearing heels.

“Now listen, Jack,” Saskia spoke up. “We’ve got a job to do—making sure your mom wears the right clothes is important. We can’t be distracted by a conversation about something as difficult as sin.”

“We’ll have that conversation later,” Els assured the boy.

“Have it once the singing starts—have it without me,” Alice said, but Els just steered her to the closet.

Saskia was already looking through Alice’s dresser drawers. She held up a bra that would have been much too big for her but not nearly big enough for Els. Saskia said something in Dutch, which made Els laugh. “You’re going to be disappointed in my clothes,” Alice told the prostitutes.

The way Jack remembered it, his mom tried on every article of clothing in her closet. Alice was always very