Just One Day jod-1

by Gayle Forman

  I pull out my map and turn it around. This whole city seems to turn in circles, and the names of the streets read like all the letters in the alphabet got into a car accident: Oudezijds Voorburgwal. Nieuwebrugsteeg. Completely lost, I pedal up next to a tall guy in a leather jacket who’s strapping a blond toddler into a bike seat. When I see his face, I do another double take because he’s another, albeit older, Willem clone.

  I ask him for directions, and he has me follow him to Dam Square and from there points me around the dizzying traffic circle to the Warmoesstraat. I pedal up a street full of sex shops, brazen with their lurid window displays. At the end of the block is one of the city’s cheaper youth hostels.

  The lobby is boisterous with activity: people are playing pool and Ping-Pong, and there’s a card game going, and everyone seems to have a beer in hand, even though it’s barely lunchtime. I ask for a dormitory room, and wordlessly, the dark-eyed girl at the desk takes my passport info and money. Upstairs in my room, in spite of the NO DRUG USE IN THE DORMS sign, the air is thick with hash smoke, and a bleary-eyed guy is smoking something through a tube on a piece of tinfoil, which I’m pretty sure is neither hash nor legal. I lock my backpack in the locker and head back downstairs and out onto the street to a crowded Internet café.

  I pay for a half hour and check out the budget airline sites. It’s Thursday now. I fly home out of London on Monday. There’s a flight to Lisbon for forty-six euros. One to Milan, and one to somewhere in Croatia! I Google Croatia and look at pictures of rocky beaches and old lighthouses. There are even cheap hotels in the lighthouses. I could stay in a lighthouse. I could do anything!

  I know almost nothing about Croatia, so I decide to go there. I pull out my debit card to pay for the ticket, but I notice a new email has popped up in the other window I have open. I toggle over. It’s from Wren. The subject line reads WHERE ARE YOU?

  I quickly write back that I’m in Amsterdam. When I said good-bye to Wren and the Oz gang in Paris last week, she was planning on catching a train to Madrid, and Kelly and the crew were heading to Nice, and they were talking about maybe meeting up in Barcelona, so I’m a little surprised when, thirty seconds later, I get an email back from her that reads NO WAY. ME TOO!!!! The message has her cell number.

  I’m grinning as I call her. “I knew you were here,” she says. “I could feel it! Where are you?”

  “At an Internet café on the Warmoesstraat. Where are you? I thought you were going to Spain!”

  “I changed my plans. Winston, how far is Warmoesstraat?” she calls. “Winston’s the cute guy who works here,” she whispers to me. I hear a male voice in the background. Then Wren squeals. “We’re, like, five minutes from each other. Meet me at Dam Square, in front of the white tower thing that looks like a penis.”

  I close the browser window, and ten minutes later, I’m hugging Wren like she’s a long-lost relative.

  “Boy, that Saint Anthony works fast,” she says.

  “I’ll say!”

  “So what happened?”

  I give her the quick rundown about finding Ana Lucia, almost finding Willem, and deciding not to find him. “So now I’m going to Croatia.”

  She looks disappointed. “You are. When?”

  “I was going to fly out tomorrow morning. I was just booking my ticket when you called.”

  “Oh, stay a few more days. We can explore together. We can rent bikes. Or rent one bike and have the other ride sidesaddle like the Dutch girls do.”

  “I already have a bike,” I say. “It’s pink.”

  “Does it have a rack on the back where I can sit?”

  Her grin is too infectious to resist. “It does.”

  “Oh. You have to stay. I’m at a hostel up near the Jordaan. My room is the size of a bathtub, but it’s sweet and the bed’s a double. Come share with me.”

  I look up. It is threatening rain again, and it’s freezing for August, and the web said Croatia was mid-eighties and sunny. But Wren is here, and what are the chances of that? She believes in saints. I believe in accidents. I think we basically believe in the same thing.

  We get my stuff out of my room at the hostel, where that one guy is now passed out, and move it to her hostel. It’s much cozier than mine, especially since tall-dark-and- grinning Winston is there checking in on us. Upstairs, her bed is covered with guidebooks, not just from Europe but from all over the world.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Winston loaned them to me. They’re for my bucket list.”

  “Bucket list?”

  “All the things I want to do before I die.”

  That curious cryptic thing Wren said when we first met in Paris comes back to me: I know hospitals. I’ve only known Wren a day and a half, but that’s enough for the thought of losing her to be inconceivable. She must see something on my face, because she gently touches my arm. “Don’t worry, I plan on living a long time.”

  “Why are you making a bucket list, then?”

  “Because if you wait until you’re really dying, it’s too late.”

  I look at her. I know hospitals. The saints. “Who?” I ask softly.

  “My sister, Francesca.” She pulls out a piece of paper. It has a bunch of titles and locations, La Belle Angèle (Paris), The Music Lesson (London), The Resurrection (Madrid). It goes on like that.

  “I don’t get it.” I hand back the paper.

  “Francesca didn’t have much of a chance to be good at a lot of things, but she was a totally dedicated artist. She’d be in the hospital, a chemo drip in one arm, a sketchpad in the other. She made hundreds of paintings and drawings, her legacy, she liked to say, because at least when she died, they’d live on—if only in the attic.”

  “You never know,” I say, thinking of those paintings and sculptures in the art squat that might one day be in the Louvre.

  “Well, that’s exactly it. She found a lot of comfort in the fact that artists like Van Gogh and Vermeer were obscure in life but famous in death. And she wanted to see their paintings in person, so the last time she was in remission, we made a pilgrimage to Toronto and New York to see a bunch of them. After that, she made a bigger list.”

  I glance at the list again. “So which painting is here? A Van Gogh?”

  “There was a Van Gogh on her list. The Starry Night, which we saw together in New York, and she has some Vermeers on here, though the one she loved best is in London. But that’s her list, which has been back-burnered since Paris.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I love Francesca, and I will see those paintings for her, one day. But I’ve spent a lot of my life in her shadow. It had to be that way. But now she’s gone—and it’s like I’m still in her shadow, you know?”

  Strangely, I sort of do. I nod.

  “There was something about seeing you in Paris. You’re just this normal girl who’s doing something kind of crazy. It inspired me. I changed my plans. And now I’ve started to wonder if meeting you isn’t the whole reason I’m on this trip. That maybe Francesca, the saints, they wanted us to meet.”

  I get a chill from that. “You really think so?”

  “I think I do. Don’t worry, I won’t tell my parents you’re the reason I’m coming home a month later. They’re a tad upset.”

  I laugh. I understand that too. “So what’s on your list?”

  “It’s far less noble than Francesca’s.” She reaches into her travel journal and pulls out a creased piece of paper. Kiss a boy on top of the Eiffel Tower. Roll in a field of tulips. Swim with dolphins. See the northern lights. Climb a volcano. Sing in a rock band. Cobble my own boots. Cook a feast for 25 friends. Make 25 friends. “It’s a work in progress. I keep adding to it, and already I’ve had some hiccups. I came here for tulip fields, but they only bloom in the springtime. So now I’ll have to figure something else out. Oh, well. I think I can catch the northern lights in this place called Bodø in Norway.”

  “Did you manage to kiss a boy on top of the Eiffel Tower?
”

  Her lips prick up into a slightly wicked pixie elf grin. “I did. I went up the morning you left. There was a group of Italians. They can be very obliging, those Italians.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I didn’t even get a name.”

  I whisper back, “Sometimes you don’t need to.”

  Thirty-seven

  We go to a late lunch at an Indonesian restaurant that serves one of those massive rijsttafel meals, and we stuff ourselves silly, and as we’re wobbling along on the bike, I get an idea. It’s not quite the flower fields at Keukenhof, but maybe it’ll do. I get us lost for about twenty minutes until I find the flower market I passed this morning. The vendors are closing up their stalls and leaving behind a good number of throwaways. Wren and I steal a bunch of them and lay them out on the crooked sidewalk above the canal bank. She rolls around in them, happy as can be. I laugh as I snap some pictures with her camera and with my phone and text them to my mom.

  The vendors look at her with mild amusement, as if this type of thing happens at least twice a week. Then a big bearded guy wearing suspenders over his butte of a belly comes over with some wilting lavender. “She can have these too.”

  “Here, Wren.” I throw the fragrant purple blooms her way.

  “Thanks,” I say to the guy. Then I explain to him about Wren and her bucket list and the big fields of tulips being out of season so we had to settle for this.

  He looks at Wren, who’s attempting to extract the petals and leaves from her sweater. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card. “Tulips in August is not so easy. But if you and your friend don’t mind to wake up early, I can maybe get you a small field of them.”

  _ _ _

  The next morning, Wren and I set our alarm for four, and fifteen minutes later, go downstairs to the deserted street to find Wolfgang waiting with his mini truck. Every warning I’ve ever had from my parents about not getting into cars with strangers comes to me, but I realize, as improbable as it is, Wolfgang isn’t a stranger. We all three squeeze into the front seat as we trundle toward a greenhouse in Aalsmeer. Wren is practically bouncing with excitement, which seems unnatural for four fifteen in the morning, and she hasn’t even had any coffee yet, though Wolfgang has thoughtfully brought a thermos of it along with some hard-boiled eggs and bread.

  We spend the drive listening to cheesy europop and Wolfgang’s tales of spending thirty years in the merchant marines before moving to the Jordaan neighborhood in Amsterdam. “I’m German by birth, but I’ll be an Amsterdammer by death,” he says with a big toothy grin.

  By five o’clock, we pull up to Bioflor, which hardly looks like the pictures of Keukenhof Gardens, with its carpets of color, but instead looks like some kind of industrial farm. I look at Wren and shrug. Wolfgang pulls in and stops alongside a football-field-sized greenhouse with a row of solar panels on top. A rosy-faced guy named Jos greets us. And then he unlocks the door, and Wren and I gasp.

  There are rows and rows of flowers in every color. Acres of them. We walk down the tiny paths in between the beds, the air thick with humidity and manure until Wolfgang points out a section of tulips in fuchsia, sunburst, and one explosive citrusy combo that looks like a blood orange. I walk away, leaving Wren to her flowers.

  She just stands there for a while. Then I hear her call out: “This is incredible. Can you see this?” Wolfgang looks at me but I don’t answer because I don’t think it’s us she’s talking to.

  Wren runs around this greenhouse, and another one full of fragrant freesia, and I snap a bunch of pictures. And then Wolfgang has to get back. We belt Abba songs all the way, Wolfgang saying Abba is Esperanto for happiness, and the United Nations should play their songs at general assemblies.

  It’s only when we get to a warehouse outside Amsterdam that I notice that the back of Wolfgang’s truck is still empty. “Didn’t you buy flowers for your stall?”

  He shakes his head. “Oh, I don’t buy flowers directly from the farms. I buy at auction via wholesalers who deliver here.” He points to where people are loading up their trucks with flowers.

  “So you just went all the way out there for us?” I ask.

  He gives me a little shrug, like, of course, why else? And at this point, I really have no right to be surprised by people’s capacity for kindness and generosity, but still, I am. I’m floored every time.

  “Can we take you out to dinner tonight?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Not tonight. I’m going to see a play in Vondelpark.” He looks at us. “You should come. It’s in English.”

  “Why would a play in Holland be in English?” Wren asks.

  “That’s the difference between the Germans and the Dutch,” Wolfgang replies. “The Germans translate Shakespeare. The Dutch leave him in English.”

  “Shakespeare?” I ask, feeling every hair on my body rise. “Which play?”

  And before Wolfgang finishes telling me the title, I just start laughing. Because it’s simply not possible. It’s less possible than finding that one needle in a needle factory. Less possible than finding a lone star in the universe. It’s less possible than finding that one person in all the billions who you might love.

  Because tonight, playing in Vondelpark, is As You Like It. And I know with a certainty I cannot explain but that I would stake my life on, that he will be in it.

  Thirty-eight

  And so, after a year, I find him as I first found him: In a park, in the sultry dusk, speaking the words of William Shakespeare.

  Except tonight, after this year, everything is different. This is no Guerrilla Will. This is a real production, with a stage, with seats, with lights, with a crowd. A large crowd. Such that by the time we get there, we are shunted off to a low wall on the edge of the small amphitheater.

  And this year, he is no longer in a supporting role. This year, he is a star. He is Orlando, as I knew he would be. He is the first actor to take the stage, and from that moment on, he owns it. He is riveting. Not just to me. To everyone. A hush falls over the crowd as soon as he delivers the first soliloquy and continues for the rest of the performance. The sky darkens, and the moths and mosquitoes dance in the spotlights, and Amsterdam’s Vondelpark is transformed into the Forest of Arden, a magical place where that which was lost can be found.

  As I watch him, it’s as though it is only us two. Just Willem and me. Everything else disappears: The sound of bicycle bells and tram chimes disappears. The mosquitoes buzzing around the fountain in the pond disappear. The group of rowdy guys sitting next to us disappears. The other actors disappear. The last year disappears. All my doubts disappear. The feeling of being on the right path fills every part of me. I have found him. Here. As Orlando. Everything has led me to this.

  His Orlando is different from the way we played it in class or from the way the actor in Boston played it. His is sexy and vulnerable, the yearning for Rosalind so palpable it becomes physical, a pheromone that wafts off him and drifts through the swirl of floodlights, where it lands on my damp and welcoming skin. I feel my lust, my yearning and, yes, my love, coming off me in pulses, swimming toward the stage, where I imagine them being fed to him, like lines.

  He can’t know I’m here. But as crazy as it sounds, I feel like he does. I sense he feels me somewhere in the words he speaks, the same way I felt him when I first spoke them in Professor Glenny’s class.

  I remember so many of Rosalind’s lines, of Orlando’s too, that I can mouth them along with the actors. It feels like a private call-and-response chorus between me and Willem.

  The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.

  Fare you well: pray heaven I be deceived in you!

  Then love me, Rosalind.

  And wilt thou have me?

  Are you not good?

  I hope so.

  Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her?

  For ever and a day.

  For ever and a day.

  I hold Wren’s hand in one of my hand
s and Wolfgang’s with the other. We make a chain, us three. Standing there like that until the play is over. Until everyone gets their happy endings: Rosalind marries Orlando, and Celia marries Oliver, who reconciles with Orlando, and Phoebe marries Silvius, and the bad duke is redeemed, and the exiled duke is returned home.

  After Rosalind gives her final soliloquy, it’s over, and people are going crazy, just nuts, clapping and whistling, and I’m turning and throwing my arms around Wren and then Wolfgang, pressing my cheek against the broadcloth of his cotton shirt, inhaling the smoky tobacco scent mingled with flower nectar and dirt. And then someone is hugging Wren and me, the rowdy guys from next to us. “That’s my best friend!” one of the guys shouts. He’s got impish blue eyes, and he’s a head shorter than the others, more Hobbit than Dutchman.

  “Who?” Wren asks. She’s now being passed around in hugs by the rowdy, and it appears, drunk, Dutch guys.

  “Orlando!” the Hobbit answers.

  “Oh,” Wren says, her eyes so wide and pale they gleam like pearls. “Oh,” she says to me.

  “You wouldn’t be Robert-Jan, by any chance?” I ask.

  The Hobbit looks surprised for a second. Then he just grins. “Broodje to my friends.”

  “Broodje,” Wolfgang chuckles. He turns to me. “It’s a kind of sandwich.”

  “Which Broodje loves to eat,” one of his friends says, patting his belly.

  Broodje/Robert-Jan pushes the hand away. “You should come to our party tonight. It’s going to be the party to end all parties. He was fantastic, was he not?”

  Wren and I both nod. Broodje/Robert-Jan goes on about how great Willem was and then his friend says something to him in Dutch, something, I think, about Willem.

  “What did he say?” I whisper to Wolfgang.

  “He said he hasn’t seen him, Orlando, I think, so happy, since, I didn’t hear it all, something about his father.”

  Wolfgang takes out a packet of tobacco from a leather pouch and begins to roll a cigarette. Without looking at me, he says in his rumbly voice, “I think the actors come out over there.” He points to the little metal gate on the far side of the stage.