by Jen Malone
After meeting with Bento yesterday and realizing our linguistic dilemma, I gave serious thought to calling Elizabeth. Serious, serious thought. But then I replayed her message a few more times and I just couldn’t do it. If I need to I’ll call her tonight, but I want to give today a try on my own. Just to see. I’m nervous, but it turns out anger is a pretty good fuel.
I haven’t left the hotel since arriving yesterday, which I know is totally lame, but at least at the Kras I know how to obtain food (dinner last night: burger and fries again), make a phone call, and operate the television set. If the Big Bang Theory marathon I caught last night is any indication, I think I’ve solved the mystery of why Dutch people speak English with perfect American accents. If they would let me, I might possibly spend the next twenty-two days leading up to my flight home right here, ordering room service and watching sitcoms.
Sadly, that’s not to be. Bento touches my arm and gestures with his chin at the doors behind me. I spin in my chair.
You know those scenes in movies where the ragtag heroes suddenly band together and they stride in unison down the street in slow motion while the soundtrack blares? Picture that but with six senior citizens. Except in this case, nothing else is moving in slow motion. Just the group.
About twenty minutes later (okay, fine, maybe one minute that just feels like twenty) the ensemble arrives at the table.
“Well, hey there, little lady!” says a bulky gentleman wearing an “Everything’s bigger in Texas” T-shirt stretched over his Santa Claus belly. “Are you our fearless leader?”
I smile and take a deep breath. Here goes.
“I am. I’m Elizabeth.” Still feels so weird to say. I expand my gaze to cover the group at large. “Welcome to Amsterdam, everyone! Please, have a seat.”
Following that simple instruction takes a few minutes of maneuvering as people shuffle around and one of the men holds chairs for the ladies (so cute!). Then all six sets of eyes turn to me. Another deep breath as I stand.
“Well, as I said, welcome. I’m really excited for our trip together. This is Bento, our bus driver.”
Bento stands. “Buenos días. Seguro que ninguno de vosotros sabe español y podría traducir lo que dice mi intrépido guía, pero por si acaso, ¿sabe alguien español?”
Blank stares greet him. Bento gives a tight smile and mutters something under his breath before sitting again.
“Good golly molly, I thought I was escaping all the Mexicali when I took off from Texas,” says Santa Claus belly.
Seriously? Would you care to file a missing object report for that filter you’re lacking, sir? Good thing Bento can’t understand a word of it, even if I’m embarrassed on his behalf.
“Well,” I say in my most cheerful voice, choosing to ignore Mr. Inappropriate. “Why don’t we take a few minutes to do some introductions? I’ll begin. My name, as you know, is Elizabeth and I recently graduated, uh, college. I’m a political science major, with a minor in”—whoops, I can’t say Spanish, like the real Elizabeth would—“history. And you’ll be my first tour group, so I’m really looking forward to having an adventure with you and, uh, please go easy on me!” I finish with a giant smile and my palms up.
Six smiles greet me. So far, so good.
Santa pushes back from the table and stands. If everything is bigger in Texas, that definitely includes his voice. When he speaks, his words boom across the empty restaurant.
“Well, I’m Hank Hermann from Dallas, Texas. This here little woman’s my wife, Maisy, and we’re here on our fifth honeymoon. We take one for each decade of marriage. Ain’t that right, Maze?”
The tiny (maybe she’s not from Texas) woman next to him stands, bobs her head, and giggles into the back of her hand. She looks at her husband like he’s the quarterback of the football team. Hank pulls her up next to him and slides his arm around her. He is not at all subtle when he grabs her butt. She giggles some more.
I force my face into a neutral expression.
“Welcome, Hank and Maisy.”
Everyone else at the table parrots me as Hank sits and pulls a still-giggling Maisy onto his lap.
Next to Hank, a refined-looking man stands. He’s African-American, with a full salt-and-pepper beard and a neatly trimmed buzzed haircut. His khakis are pressed with a sharp crease and, even though it’s summer, he’s wearing a navy blazer over a button-down dress shirt. He clears his throat. “Goedemorgen. That was Dutch for ‘good morning.’ I try to learn the local ‘good day’s, ‘please’s, and ‘thank you’s when I travel.” He clears his throat again and continues in his gentle voice. “My name is Mr. Fenton, I’m from Aurora, Colorado, and this is my third organized tour. I’m really looking forward to getting to know everyone.”
“How do you say that ‘good morning’ again?” one of the women asks.
“Goedemorgen.”
The whole table repeats it.
Mr. Fenton stays standing to pull out the chair for the woman seated next to him. If I were a hundred years older, I’d totally be crushing on him.
The woman he helps up is on the frail side and I finally know what the expression “bird-boned” means. She looks like a flyswatter could topple her over. But her voice is strong and her smile is friendly.
“Hello, everyone. My name is Emma Jordan and I’m from Connecticut, just outside of Hartford. I’m traveling with my closest friend in the world, Mary O’Brien, and this trip has been a dream of ours since we were little girls listening to the serial Escape on my daddy’s radio.”
“Oh, I loved me that show,” Hank booms. A few others nod.
Mary stands too now and holds Emma’s hand. She and Emma are like Jack Sprat and his wife, because everywhere that Emma is skin and bones, Mary is soft layers of fat. I’ll bet a hug from her would be like being wrapped in towels straight out of the dryer. Her eyes are as warm as melted chocolate and her grin has everyone around the table smiling back at her.
“I’m going to warn you all right now that Emma and I can sometimes bicker, but pay us no mind. We thought it would help us get cast on The Amazing Race, but apparently they’d already filled the ‘old people team’ spot by the time we showed up and we were worried if we waited for next season, one of us might not be around. So here we are.”
I stifle a laugh, but it turns out I don’t need to because everyone else laughs out loud.
“Anyhoo, if it gets annoying, you just tell me to ‘shut up, Mary.’ I promise I won’t mind. Half the time I walk around saying it to myself anyway.”
Emma reaches over and bops Mary on the head, which makes everyone laugh again. With the exception of Texas Hank, I have the sweetest group of grans and grampses possible. Jackpot! Maybe this won’t be so bad.
The last woman at the table pushes back and her chair scrapes along the floor. I cringe at the sound. She’s got mousy brown hair and a double chin, even though she’s pretty thin. Her shoulders hunch in and when she speaks, we all have to lean in a bit to hear her. “Hello, everyone. My name is Dolores Shemkovich. I’m from Dayton, Ohio.”
Her voice hits every syllable like she’s giving a formal speech to the queen. Wow, though. From Ohio. What are the odds?
“I’m from Ohio too,” I tell her. “And our tour company is based in Dayton. What a coincidence.”
She looks over at me and gives a tiny shrug. “Oh, no, dear. No coincidence. You see, the company is owned by my daughter.”
Her daughter?!
NINE
I’m in a foreign land. With no itinerary of the tour I am supposed to be leading, much less the actual information I am supposed to be imparting to the six individuals entrusted to my care. The driver of my tour bus speaks only Spanish. I do not speak Spanish. I do have an English-to-Spanish translation app on my smartphone; however, my smartphone is apparently crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean considering the hotel still has no messages for me regarding my luggage. The mother of the person who holds my sister’s career in her hands is on my tour and about to bear witnes
s to the mega-disaster that awaits me.
I really hope Elizabeth has a fallback career in mind.
Fortunately, about two seconds after Mrs. Shemkovich drops her bombshell, the waitress arrives to take our breakfast orders, so I don’t have to wrap my brain around a response.
It turns out pancakes are kind of a “thing” in the Netherlands, at least according to our server. She hands me a menu with topping combinations I guarantee IHOP has never even heard of. Um, shawarma pancakes? Pepperoni pancakes? Rabbit-and-deer-topped pancakes?! Swear to God. They’re on my menu.
“Could I please have butter and maple syrup pancakes?” I ask the waitress. She looks disappointed.
Conversations swirl around for a bit as everyone plays the “Oh, my best friend’s cousin’s hairdresser lives in Texas, I wonder if you know him” game. It isn’t until the waitress is placing pancakes in front of us that attention turns back to me.
“So what’s on tap for you today, fearless leader?” Hank says in his freakishly loud voice, which guarantees everyone is now listening.
“Well, funny you should ask,” I say. I swallow my panic. “I was thinking we could take a vote to see what everyone would most like to do. I figured it might be a nice way to show right from the start that, as your tour guide, I care deeply about your input into our trip too. What do you think about that?”
“But it says here we’re supposed to go on a dinner cruise through the canals at six o’clock tonight,” says Mary.
Says here? Where’s here? I look down the table at the sheet of paper in her hand. I must get hold of that paper. In the meantime, I arrange my face into a carefree expression.
“Oh, of course we’re doing the canal dinner cruise. I’m sure we’ve already paid for it and reserved the boat and everything. I mean, we have. I know we have. Now, what does your sheet have us doing this morning? Let’s vote on that activity.”
“It’s a free day until six o’clock,” Mary replies, sounding puzzled.
Oh. It’s a free day. I busy myself with my pancakes and try not to acknowledge that my grand gesture of democracy just makes me look kind of idiotic. I steal a glance at Dolores to see if she’s reaching for a phone to call her daughter yet. Fortunately, she’s too busy sawing into plain, dry pancakes. Wow, that’s even more boring than mine.
“Elizabeth?”
I rub the butter pat around with the back of my fork to melt it.
“Elizabeth?”
I drizzle maple syrup in a pattern across the top of my stack.
“Elizabeth!”
Hmm? Oh, whoops! Mr. Fenton is talking to me.
“Sorry. I was distracted. Actually, I don’t usually go by Elizabeth. Um, I prefer Lizzie. If everyone would please call me Lizzie, it would be great.”
Okay, where the heck did that just come from? Elizabeth would one hundred percent throw herself off a bridge if anyone dared to call her Lizzie. But maybe a little distance from my sister is just what I need in this situation, and my brain somehow knew it.
“Oh, okay, Lizzie,” says Mr. Fenton. It’s a little weird that he didn’t give his first name when everyone else did, but he’s definitely the most formal one here so it kind of suits him. “I was just going to say that it is quite nice of you to volunteer your free time to spend with us today. Did you have any suggestions for us to vote on?”
I gave up a free day. Drat.
I hold up a stack of brochures and begin to leaf through them. “There’s the Van Gogh Museum, the royal palace, the Anne Frank House . . .”
“I want to see the tulips,” Emma chimes in.
“Unfortunately, you’ve chosen the wrong season for that. The tulip fields close to visitors in May. They won’t be blooming now,” Mr. Fenton answers.
Emma looks disappointed. “What about windmills?”
“I suspect we’ll see plenty of those tomorrow on our drive through the countryside,” Mary says.
We’re going to the countryside tomorrow? Good to know. I have got to get my hands on that printout Mary has.
“This place has a sex museum, ya know. That’s my vote.” Who else but Hank?
Surprisingly, Emma raises her head and says, “Well, now, that sounds fun.”
Wait, what? There is no way in Helsinki I am accompanying six senior citizens to a museum about S-E-X as their guide. I would rather drown in one of the canals before having to discuss positions and various aides with Grandma. Well, not my grandma, but I’ll bet they’re all someone’s grandma or grandpa.
“Or we could go to the Anne Frank House? Lots of history there.” I smile to make my suggestion sound sweeter. I’m trying. Under the table, Bento slips a piece of paper into my hand. I glance at it, but it’s just a name and a long string of numbers. I must have a confused expression on my face because he mimes a telephone. Oh. It’s a European phone number. Okay, I have no idea who I’m calling, but excusing myself to make a call to a mystery person is way preferable to staying here and getting roped into a sex museum tour.
“I need to run to my room for just a moment. Here, I’ll pass around the brochures and we can talk more when I get back.”
I race to my room and dial the number.
“Met Corinne.”
“Um, hello?”
“Hallo?”
“Uh, hi. This is going to sound weird, but . . . do you know a man named Bento?”
“Bus driver? From Spain?”
The voice on the other end of the line sounds not much older than me and not all that surprised to be answering questions about a random Spaniard.
“Yes! That’s him! He gave me your number and suggested I call you but, um, I don’t speak Spanish, so I’m not exactly sure why. I know this is strange, but, uh, who are you?”
A sparkly laugh. “My name is Corinne. I’ve worked with Bento many times. His tour guide companies hire me when they want a local to lead a group around the city for a few hours. You know, get an insider’s take on things.”
I can do that? I can bring in local experts? This was definitely not in any part of the binder I read. I really should have flipped through more of that thing. I feel a little thrill, like I’m getting away with something; it’s like a fire drill sounding two seconds after the teacher announces a pop quiz.
“Yes! Yes! I’d like to do that, please. Would you be available this morning? Oh, please say yes!”
Corinne laughs again. “I’m at my girlfriend’s place now. Give me a bit to run home and shower and I can meet you in Dam Square in an hour and a half. Do you know where Dam Square is?”
I stifle a smile. “Pretty sure I can find it.”
“Tell me about your group. How many people, what are their interests, any physical considerations I should know about?”
I fill her in on the details and she gives me some suggestions. They all sound perfect.
“Oh, and Corinne? Is there any chance you speak Spanish?” I ask.
“Fluently.”
I just might do a happy dance in my hotel room.
Corinne was heaven-sent. She totally and completely saved the day today and I am not ashamed to say I needed major rescuing. Within two seconds she had everyone wrapped around her finger, and I’m fairly sure they would have followed her to the depths of hell (although some might term the Red Light District just that, and we certainly trotted after her there).
Well, everyone except Hank and Maisy, who excused themselves shortly after I announced our pending walking tour.
And I quote: “If we ain’t visiting the sex museum, I’m gonna take my little lady there on our own.”
I sincerely hope he did not see how seasick green I turned, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Fenton did because he had a sudden coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
Too bad for Hank, though, because Corinne started our tour by weaving us behind the hotel and into the Red Light District, where sex was amply on display. Or at least the promise of it. She subtly pointed out the women modeling their wares behind glass windows whil
e I tried to hide the fact that I was blushing.
Then she made a few more twisty turns and we were at the flower market, where shops of every type of bloom made Emma say she wasn’t sad about missing the tulip fields anymore. Corinne showed us the buildings that were sloping toward the canals and took us to a secret garden accessed by a totally ordinary door in a wall. It was once a convent, and even though a bunch of other groups had discovered the hidden door too, and clustered inside, no one in there spoke above a whisper.
Our foray through Amsterdam ended with plenty of time for a nap and was so good that when we took the canal dinner tour later that night, a bunch of what we learned was a repeat. Best of all, I am now armed with provisions that are dramatically enhancing my odds of getting through the first week of my tour with all of my limbs and my sanity intact.
The first came thanks to Corinne’s superior Spanish skills. I now know Bento is a total sweetheart who has my back one hundred and ten percent. In return, I have promised him my firstborn. He definitely doesn’t know any more than he needs to—such as my real name, for instance—but he does know this is my first tour and that I accidentally lost all of the tour information and my cell phone (which still hasn’t shown up, so fingers crossed extra hard it catches up with me tomorrow in Germany). Luckily, Bento has his own copy of the agenda with all the addresses we need and everything. It’s in Spanish, so it doesn’t exactly help me much, and Corinne had another tour she had to give, so she couldn’t stay and translate the whole thing for me. But at least I know he can get us where we need to be when we need to be there.
The second piece is Mary’s scaled-down itinerary, which is in English and is currently tucked into my back pocket.
So, yeah, I conned a sweet old lady. I’m not proud of it.
But it was a necessary evil. I convinced her to let me hold her pocketbook (her term, not mine) while she got Emma to take a picture of her in front of the penis statue. I might have then asked her for a hard candy, because I’ve visited Aunt Mira at the nursing home enough times to know that old people always, always have stashes of small candies. Once I had permission to dig through her purse, I pilfered the agenda. I felt reallllllly bad when she was searching all over for it later, but I figure she’d rather have a tour guide with more than just a vague idea of which country is next up.
