“Yeah, I know. It was awful. We didn’t last long. She too weird for me. Surely could screw though. Strong pelvis, you know, man, strong.”
“Yeah,” I said, “me too. I think this is the place.” We were at an open-front bookstore. There were books and periodicals in racks and on tables out front and rows of them inside. Many of the books were in English. A sign on the wall said THREE HOT SEX SHOWS EVERY HOUR, and an arrow pointed toward the back of the store. In back was another sign that said the same thing with an arrow pointing downstairs. “What kind of books they sell here?” Hawk said. There were all kinds, books by Faulkner and Thomas Mann, books in English and books in French, books in Dutch. There was Shakespeare and Gore Vidal and a collection of bondage magazines with nude women on the cover so encumbered in chains, ropes, gags and leather restraints that it was hard to see them. You could buy Hustler, Time, Paris Match, Punch, and Gay Love. It was one of the things about Amsterdam that I never got over. At home you found a place that sold bondage porn sequestered in the Combat Zone and specializing. Here the bookstore with the THREE HOT SEX SHOWS EVERY HOUR was between a jewelry store and a bake shop. And it also sold the work of Saul Bellow and Jorge Luis Borges. Hawk said, “You figure Kathie lives here, we could look on a shelf under K.”
“Maybe upstairs,” I said. “This is the address.”
“Yeah,” Hawk said. “There’s a door.” It was just to the right of the bookstore, half obscured by the awning. “Think she in there?”
“I know how we find out.” Hawk grinned. “Yeah. We watch. You want to take the first shift while I make sure she not down there among the hot sex films?”
“I didn’t figure you for a looker, Hawk. I figured you for a doer.”
“Maybe pick up a trick or two. Man’s never too old to learn a little. Nobody’s perfect.”
“Yeah.”
“We gonna go round the clock on this, babe?”
“No. Just daytime.”
“That’s good. Twelve on, twelve off ain’t no fish fry.”
“This time out it’ll be harder. If she’s in there she knows us both, and she’s going to be very edgy.”
“Also,” Hawk said, “we camp out here long enough a Dutch cop going to come along and ask us what we doing.”
“If they’re any good.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll circulate,” I said. “I’ll stay up there by the dress shop for a half hour, then I’ll stroll down to the place that sells broodjes and you stroll up to the dress shop. And we’ll rotate that way every half hour or so.”
“Yeah, okay,” Hawk said, “let’s make the circulation irregular. Each time we switch we’ll decide how long before we switch again. Break up the rhythm.”
“Yes. We’ll do that. Unless there’s a back way she’ll have to pass one of us if she leaves.”
“Why don’t you anchor here for a while, babe, and I’ll go around and see if I find any back way. I’ll check in the store and I’ll go around the block and see what I can find.” I nodded. “If she comes out and I go after her I’ll meet you back at the hotel.” Hawk said, “Yowzah” and went into the bookstore. He went to the back and down the stairs. Five minutes later he was back up the stairs and out of the bookstore, his face glistening with humor. “Get any pointers?” I said. “Oh yeah, soon’s I make a move on a pony, I gonna know just what to do.”
“These Europeans are so sophisticated.”
18
Hawk found no back entrance. We walked up and down a short stretch of the Kalverstraat all the rest of the day, staying close to the wall under Kathie’s windows, if they were Kathie’s windows, so she wouldn’t spot us, if she were looking out, if she were up there. The dress shop was featuring that season a fatigue green number that looked like a shelter half, long and formless, belted at the waist. It didn’t even look good on the window dummy. The broodje shop was featuring roast beef on a soft roll, topped with a fried egg. Broodje seemed to mean sandwich. There were about thirty-five different kinds of broodjes listed behind the counter, but the roast beef with the fried egg was the hot seller. The street was crowded all afternoon. There seemed to be a lot of tourists, Japanese and Germans with cameras, in groups. There was a fair number of Dutch sailors. More people seemed to smoke in Holland than they did at home. And there were far fewer big men. Sandals and clogs seemed more prevalent, especially for men, and occasionally a Dutch cop would stroll by in his gray-blue uniform with white trim. Nobody bothered me and nobody bothered Hawk. At eight o’clock I said to Hawk, “It is time to go eat before I break into tears.”
“I can dig that,” Hawk said. “There’s a place just off to the side here called The Little Nun. I ate there last time I was here.”
“What you doing here before, man?”
“Pleasure trip. Came with a lady.”
“Suze?”
“Yeah. ” The Little Nun was everything I remembered. Polished stone floor, whitewashed walls, low-beamed ceiling, some stained glass in the windows, flowers and very fine food. For dessert they brought out a great crock of red currants, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries that had been marinated in cassis. Everyone spoke English. In fact everyone in Holland spoke English as far as I could tell, and spoke it with very little accent. We went to bed in the Marriott feeling good about supper but bad about tomorrow. I had the feeling that a lot of aimless walking was in store for us tomorrow. It was. We walked up and down the Kalverstraat all day. I looked in every store window along the way until I knew the price of all the merchandise. I ate five broodjes during the day, three out of hunger and two out of boredom. The high point of the day was two trips to the public urinal near the Dutch Tourist Bureau on Rokin. At night we had an Indonesian rijsttafel at the Bali Restaurant on Leidsestraat. There were about twenty-five different courses of meat, vegetables and rice. We drank Amstel beer with the meal. Hawk too. Champagne didn’t go with a rijsttafel. Hawk drank some Amstel and said to me, “Spenser, how long we gonna walk up and down past the hot sex shows?”
