Just One Year

“Especially since he has now invited the cast, and about half the audience,” Henk says.

“That’s not true!” Broodje says. “Not half. Just a couple of Canadians.”

I roll my eyes and laugh. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Lien laughs and takes my hand. “I’m going to say goodnight. One of us should be coherent tomorrow. It’s moving day.” She kisses W. Then me. “Well done, Willem.”

“I’m going to follow her out of the park,” Kate says. “This city confounds me.”

“You’re not coming?” I ask.

“I have some things I need to do first. I’ll come later. Prop the door open for me.”

“Always,” I say. I go to kiss her on the cheek and she whispers into my ear, “I knew you could do it.”

“Not without you,” I say.

“Don’t be silly. You just needed a pep talk.”

But I don’t mean the pep talk. I know Kate believes that I have to commit, to not rely on the accidents, to take the wheel. But had we not met in Mexico, would I be here now? Was it accidents? Or will?

For the hundredth time tonight, I’m back with Lulu, on Jacques’s barge, the improbably named Viola. She’d just told me the story of double happiness and we were arguing over the meaning. She’d thought it meant the luck of the boy getting the job and the girl. But I’d disagreed. It was the couplet fitting together, the two halves finding each other. It was love.

But maybe we were both wrong, and both right. It’s not either or, not luck or love. Not fate or will.

Maybe for double happiness, you need both.

Forty-nine

Inside the flat, it is complete mayhem. More than fifty people, from the cast, from Utrecht, even old school friends from my Amsterdam days. I have no idea how Broodje dug everyone up so fast.

Max pounces on me as soon as she comes in the door, followed by Vincent. “Holy. Shit,” Max says.

“You might’ve mentioned you could act!” Vincent adds.

I smile. “I like to preserve a bit of mystery.”

“Yeah, well, everyone in the cast is bloody delighted,” says Max. “Except Petra. She’s pissy as ever.”

“Only because her understudy just completely cockblocked her star. And now she has to decide whether to put up a lame, and I mean that both literally and figuratively, star, or let you carry us home,” Vincent says.

“Decisions, decisions,” Max adds. “Don’t look now but Marina is giving you the fuck-me eyes again.”

We all look. Marina is staring right at me and smiling.

“And don’t even deny it, unless it’s me she wants to shag,” Max says.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell Max. I go over to her to where Marina’s standing by the table Broodje has turned into the bar. She has a jug of something in her hand. “What do you have there?” I ask.

“Not entirely sure. One of your mates gave it to me, promised me no hangover. I’m taking him at his word.”

“That’s your first mistake right there.”

She runs a finger along the top of the rim. “I have a feeling I’m long past making my first mistake.” She takes a gulp of her drink. “Aren’t you drinking?”

“I already feel drunk.”

“Here. Catch up with yourself.”

She hands me her glass and I take a sip. I taste the sour tequila that Broodje now favors, mixed with some other orange-flavored booze. “Yeah. No hangover from this. Definitely not.”

She laughs, touches my arm. “I’m not going to tell you how fantastic you were tonight. You’re probably sick of hearing it.”

“Do you ever get sick of hearing it?”

She grins. “No.” She looks away. “I know what I said earlier today, about after the show, but all the rules seem to be getting broken today. . . .” She trails off. “So really, can three weeks make much of a difference?”

Marina is sexy and gorgeous and smart. And she’s also wrong. Three weeks can make all the difference. I know that because one day can make all the difference.

“Yes,” I tell Marina. “They can.”

“Oh,” she says, sounding surprised, a little hurt. Then: “Are you with someone else?”

Tonight on that stage, it felt like I was. But that was a ghost. Shakespeare’s full of them. “No,” I tell her.

“Oh, I just saw you, with that woman. After the show. I wasn’t sure.”

Kate. The need to see her feels urgent. Because what I want is so clear to me now.

I excuse myself from Marina and poke through the flat, but there’s no sign of Kate. I go downstairs to see if the door is still propped open. It is. I bump into Mrs. Van der Meer again, out walking her dog. “Sorry about all the noise,” I tell her.

“It’s okay,” she says. She looks upstairs. “We used to have some wild parties here.”

“You lived here back when it was a squat?” I ask, trying to reconcile the middle-aged vrouw with the young anarchists I’ve seen in pictures.

“Oh, yes. I knew your father.”

“What was he like then?” I don’t know why I’m asking that. Bram was never the hard one to crack.

But Mrs. Van der Meer’s answer surprises me. “He was a bit of a melancholy young man,” she says. And then her eyes flicker up to the flat, like she’s seeing him there. “Until that mother of yours showed up.”

Her dog yanks on the leash and she sets off, leaving me to ponder how much I know, and don’t know, about my parents.

Fifty

The phone is ringing. And I’m sleeping.

I fumble for it. It’s next to my pillow.

“Hello,” I mumble.

“Willem!” Yael says in a breathless gulp. “Did I wake you?”

“Ma?” I ask. I wait to feel the usual panic but none comes. Instead, there’s something else, a residue of something good. I rub my eyes and it’s still there, floating like a mist: a dream I was having.

“I talked to Mukesh. And he worked his magic. He can get you out Monday but we have to book now. We’ll do an open-ended ticket this time. Come for a year. Then decide what to do.”

My head is hazy with lack of sleep. The party went until four. I fell asleep around five. The sun was already up. Slowly, yesterday’s conversation with my mother comes back to me. The offer she made. How much I wanted it. Or thought I did. Some things you don’t know you want until they’re gone. Other things you think want, but don’t understand you already have them.

“Ma,” I say. “I’m not coming back to India.”

“You’re not?” There’s curiosity in her voice, and disappointment, too.

“I don’t belong there.”

“You belong where I belong.”

It’s a relief, after all this time, to hear her say so. But I don’t think it’s true. I’m grateful that she has made a new home for herself in India, but it’s not where I’m meant to be.

Go big and go home.

“I’m going to act, Ma,” I say. And I feel it. The idea, the plan, fully formed since last night, maybe since much longer. The urgency to see Kate, who never did show up at the party, courses through me. This is one