Just One Year

when I woke up in the hospital. But even so, I’ve kept looking.

I’m still looking.

Forty

The tech rehearsal is a monster. Aside from lines, plenty of which get forgotten in the new environment, everything has to be relearned and reblocked on the amphitheater stage. All day long, I stand behind Jeroen, Max behind Marina, as they fumble through their various scenes. Once again we’re like their shadows. Except none of us has a shadow because there’s no sun today, just a steady drizzle that has put everyone in a sour mood. Jeroen hasn’t even made a joke about his malady of the day.

“It makes you wonder whose brilliant idea this was,” Max says. “Outdoor bloody Shakespeare. In Holland, where English isn’t even the language and it rains all the time.”

“You forget, the Dutch are the eternal optimists,” I tell her.

“Is that true?” she asks me. “I thought they were the eternal pragmatists.”

I don’t know. Maybe I’m the optimist. I checked my email when I got back from the Paradiso last night and again before I left this morning for rehearsal. There was an email from Yael, and a forwarded joke from Henk, and a bunch of the usual junk, but nothing from Skev or Tor. What exactly did I expect?

I’m not even sure what there is to be optimistic about. If the letter is from her, what’s to say it’s not a long-distance piss off? She’d have every right.

We break for lunch and I check my phone. Broodje’s texted to say he’s heading off on some wooden sailing boat and he’ll be incommunicado for a few days, but he’ll be back in Amsterdam next week. Daniel’s also texted to let me know he’s arrived safely in Brazil, and forwarded a photo of Fabiola’s belly. Tomorrow, I vow, I’m getting a phone that accepts pictures.

Petra forbids mobile phones in rehearsal. But when she’s talking to Jeroen, I put my ringer to vibrate and slip my phone into my pocket anyway. Optimist indeed.

Around five o’clock, the drizzle lets up and Linus resumes the rehearsal. We’re having trouble with the light cues, which we can’t see. Because the show starts at dusk and goes into the night, the lights come up halfway through, so tomorrow’s rehearsal will be from two in the afternoon to midnight, so we can make sure the second half, the in-darkness part, is properly lit.

At six, my phone vibrates. I pull it out of my pocket. Max widens her eyes at me. “Cover me,” I whisper, and scuttle off to the wings.

It’s Skev.

“Hey, thanks for getting back to me,” I whisper.

“Where are you?” he asks, his voice dropped to a whisper, too.

“Amsterdam? You?”

“Back in Brighton. Why are we whispering?”

“I’m in a rehearsal.”

“For what?”

“Shakespeare.”

“In Amsterdam. Fuck, that’s cool. I gave that shit up. I’m working at a Starbucks now.”

“Oh, shit, sorry.”

“Nah, it’s all good, man.”

“Listen, Skev, I can’t talk long but I ran into Bex.”

“Bex.” He whistles. “How is that sweet thing?”

“Same as always, hooked up with a juggler. She mentioned a letter Tor was trying to get to me. Earlier in the year.”

There’s a pause. “Victoria. Man. She is something else.”

“I know.”

“I asked if I could come back and she said no. Just that one time. Off season. Don’t shit where you eat.”

“I know. I know. About that letter . . .”

“Yeah, man, I don’t know anything about it.”

“Oh.”

“Victoria wouldn’t tell me. Said it was personal. You know how she gets.” He sighs. “So I just told her to send it you. I gave her the address on the boat. I didn’t know if you could get mail on the boat.”

“You could. We could. We did.”

“So you got the letter?”

“No, Skev. That’s why I’m calling.”

“Well, it must be at the boat, man.”

“But we don’t live there anymore. Haven’t done for a while.”

“Oh, shit. Forgot it was empty. Sorry about that.”

“No worries, man.”

“Break a leg with your Shakespeare and shit.”

“Yeah, you too—with your cappuccinos and all.”

He laughs. Then we say good-bye.

I go back to the rehearsal. Max is looking crazed. “I told them you had to puke. The Flunky is mad you didn’t ask first. I wonder if he calls Petra for permission before he makes love to his wife.”

It’s an image I do my best not to conjure. “I owe you. I’ll tell Linus it was a false alarm.”

“You gonna tell me what this is about?”

I think of Lulu, all the wild-goose chases this year that have led nowhere. Why would this be anything else?

“Probably just what you said: a false alarm,” I tell Max.

• • •

Except that probably becomes a pebble in my shoe, aggravating me for the rest of the day, making it hard to keep from thinking about the letter, where it is, what it says, who it’s from. By the time rehearsal ends, I feel this sort of urgency to know; so even though the rain has returned, and even though I’m bone tired, I decide to try Marjolein. She doesn’t answer her phone and I don’t want to wait until tomorrow. She lives close by, on the ground floor of a wide house in a posh neighborhood at the south end of the park. She’s always told me to drop by any time.

“Willem,” she says, opening the door. She has a glass of wine in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and she doesn’t seem so happy that I’ve dropped by. I’m dripping wet, and she doesn’t invite me in. “What brings you here?”

“Sorry to bother you but I’m trying to find a letter.”

“A letter?”

“That was sent to the boat, some time in the spring.”

“Why are you still getting mail at the boat?”

“I’m not. Someone just sent it there.”

She shakes her head. “If it went to the boat, it would’ve been forwarded to the office and then on to the address you provided us.”

“In Utrecht?”

She sighs. “Probably. Can you call me in the morning?”

“It’s important.”

She sighs. “Try Sara. She handles the mail.”

“Do you have Sara’s number?”

“I’d have thought you’d have Sara’s number,” she says.

“Not for a long time now.”