Yes. Oh yes. So fast. She wouldn’t have even hesitated.
She turned to look at Ellis, who was half-smiling in her sleep, her hair splayed out over her pillow like a halo. When Ginny looked down, the white cat was looking back at her. It was an incredibly sweet-faced cat. The orange cat at the end had more of a dismissive, world-dominating stare. This bed was full of devils and angels.
Ginny wasn’t sure which one she was.
The Law of Pants
Ginny opened her eyes to find herself face-to-face with Ellis, sharing the same pillow. There were five cats on the bed now, curled and stretched and lounging about, very happy with these new human heaters they had been provided. Ginny extracted herself very carefully, pulling her legs up slowly, inch by inch, trying her best not to disturb any of the six other living creatures that shared the bed with her. Ellis didn’t notice a thing. The orange cat, however, was extremely put out and landed on the floor with a thud. It padded indignantly out of the room.
The tabletop was a little less exciting in the morning light—a scuffed yellow half-a-door leaning against the wall. Now she could see how roughly it had been sawn in half, how thin and streaky the paint job was. Maybe this wasn’t the right one. Maybe there was a masterpiece back there.
Well, this was the one they had. She made a mental note to contact Paul as soon as possible . . . although, maybe it was best not to. Maybe there was video footage of what happened. Maybe he would see it and recognize Ginny.
Time to stop thinking about it. She gathered up her clothes, picking up each item delicately, as if Ellis could be woken by the sound of a sweater. Today, she would wear lots of layers, even those long underwear things her mom bought her for the trip and insisted she take. There were two more cats waiting out in the hall when Ginny stepped out, cozied up against the radiator. There was a large gold clock in the wall. It was 6:10 in the morning. The early start was probably good. Who even knew where they were going today.
Ginny tiptoed to the bathroom and opened the door, only to find Oliver in there, dressed only in his boxers and a T-shirt, brushing his teeth. That was officially the first time she had ever stumbled onto a guy in the wild wearing only boxer shorts, and now the image was going to be burned in her brain. The boxers in question were maroon with a thin gray stripe. His legs were long, not overly hairy, but the hair on them was dark. It was hard to know where to look. She couldn’t take her eyes off the boxers. Mostly, she had a view of the back, but he turned halfway when he looked over. She commanded herself not to look at the front flap, which, of course, was exactly what she honed in on.
He spit and put his mouth under the tap to get some water. All while just wearing underwear. All while she just stared at the crucial spot of the Action Pants.
“I’ll be just a moment,” he said, pulling the door shut.
“Oh. Sorry,” she said to the closed door. “It wasn’t locked.”
“It’s fine,” came the muffled reply.
Why was she apologizing? He was the one who didn’t lock the door.
Just as she was recovering, the door opened again and he walked past, still just in the T-shirt and boxers, shoeless, calm as could be.
“All yours,” he said.
How was this okay? It wasn’t like she or Ellis were going to stroll around the Cat Palace in their underwear. Why did Oliver feel like this was an acceptable morning outfit? Why didn’t he put pants on to walk down the hall? Why could guys, who arguably had a lot more going on in that department, walk around in underwear like it was nothing?
Also, he had steamed up the bathroom from his shower. Not only had she been treated to two viewings of the Oliver Underwear, but now she was soaking in his shower steam. Also, she wasn’t showering alone. The orange cat, still disgruntled about being disturbed, decided to join her in the bathroom and watch. The hostel owner had left towels, but no soap, so mostly, it was a hot rinse. Then she dressed quickly and got out of there.
While the snowfall had been constant during the night, it hadn’t accumulated much. In New Jersey, an all-night snowstorm could result in a foot or two of sticky snow that wouldn’t move for days, but this was only an inch or two and could be lightly kicked out of the way. Oliver was brushing the car off with his gloved hands, cigarette sticking out of his mouth. He looked at her over the car roof and gave her a little nod of acknowledgment.
Now that Ginny had seen him in his underwear, things were simply not the same. Maybe he had done it on purpose, to make himself seem more human and vulnerable. “Why are you awake so early?” she asked.
Ginny had no idea why she asked this. She didn’t care. She just had to say something. Something conversational. Something to get the underwear image out of her head.
“Do you think I slept well sharing a room with him?” he asked, stubbing the cigarette out into a pile of snow on the car roof. “I’d like to keep my eyebrows, thank you.”
“You act like he’s the one causing problems,” she said.
“Yes, well, I’ve learned a lot, sitting in that car with the three of you.” He finished up his brushing efforts, dusted the snow off his hands, and started heading back to the kitchen door.
“What does that mean?” she said.
He stared her down at her. In the direct sunlight, his eyes were an absolute clear amber color. In normal light, they were very dark brown, almost black.
“Hey!” Keith called from the window. “Stop touching my car.”
“I was clearing off the snow,” Oliver said.
“I don’t care.”
Oliver shook his head and went back into the kitchen. Inside, the hotel owner was busy trying to assemble some breakfast. He had set four places around his little kitchen table with cheerful orange plates and little red eggs cups.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t ready for guests. I have four eggs, some yogurt, some bread. . . .”
“It’s fine,” Ginny said.
“It is not fine. I should have been prepared. Now, what will you have?”
Keith and Ellis came trooping down the stairs.
“Fried egg on toast for me,” Keith said. “Bacon, if you have it.”
“I am sorry. No bacon.”
“Fried egg on toast for me too,” Ellis said.
“Same,” Oliver said.
“Can I have mine scrambled?” Ginny asked the hotel owner.
“Scrambled?”
“Scrambled . . . kind of . . . shaken? Or . . .”
“Of course,” he said. “I understand.”
She watched as he shook the egg in the shell, then cracked it and fried it.
They had an audience as they ate. The hotel owner stood over them, and the cats formed a circle around. One of them jumped onto the table and stared Oliver in the face.
“So,” Keith said, “where to today?”
“Amsterdam,” Oliver said, staring back at the cat. “Back to a place you went before—your aunt’s friend Charlie’s?”
Ginny looked up from her examination of her strange fried egg. This was a major disaster, much worse than a locked restaurant. This was the end of the whole trip.
“Wait,” Keith said. “Isn’t Amsterdam where . . .”
Ginny answered by putting her head in her hands.
“This would have been one of those times it would have been good to give her her own letters,” Keith added.
“What’s happening?” Ellis asked. “I don’t understand.”
Oliver looked around, also confused.
“Amsterdam is very nice,” the hotel owner said. “My cousin makes wigs there.”
They let this comment pass.
“Amsterdam didn’t work out,” Ginny said. “The directions were to find Charlie’s house, but he’d moved. He’s gone. I have no idea where he is.”
Oliver just shrugged and continued eating his eggs.
“So we find him,” he said simply. “Sixty Westerstraat. That’s the address in the letter. We go there and we ask around. Someone has to kn
ow him, or know where he went.”
“Where he went might not be Amsterdam. He could be anywhere.”
“He might be. But this time you have lots of advantages you didn’t have last time. We have phones. I have a computer. We have maps. And there are four of us. It might be easy. We might find it straightaway.”
Keith looked to Ginny and shook his head.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Ellis and Ginny carried the tabletop together, bearing it gently over the snow, sliding a little as they went. Ginny and Oliver were installed into the backseat first, and the tabletop was carefully loaded in on top of them. (Well, it was smacked into Oliver a few times, but then it was put in with care.)
“If you push the seat back, you’ll move the whole tabletop,” Oliver added loudly. “It won’t just be me you’re making suffer.”
The careful positioning didn’t change much. There was perhaps one extra inch at the top, so that Ginny could now see the tops of Ellis’s and Keith’s ears. It was, in essence, a wall. It actually helped that she couldn’t see them very well. The tabletop offered some protection from that particular reality.
They set off. More European motorway, full of small cars and flat-fronted trucks and motorcycles. Ginny got to know the names of the major Belgian and Dutch gas stations—a fact she was sure she would come in handy in the future. Like Oliver, she put in her headphones. The many layers she had put on this morning were paying off, both in terms of warmth and padding. She was in a cocoon.
She and Oliver were accidentally sitting a few inches closer today. Their arms would bump occasionally. The one advantage was that he radiated some body heat, so it was marginally warmer sitting closer to him than it was sitting closer to the window. There was a faint smell of smoke coming off his coat, which wasn’t unpleasant. She decided to think of him as a kind of low-quality fireplace.
About two hours in, she heard Keith shout something about the need for petrol, and they pulled in to a service area, which, to Ginny’s surprise, featured a large McDonald’s.
“I picked this one to make you feel at home,” Keith said, as he pulled out the tabletop, releasing Oliver and Ginny from their seat.
It was decided that they would take a half an hour for some food and to stretch. The snow was heavier here, but it had gotten warmer, and it was all starting to melt into slush.
Oliver opted not to join them, staying outside in the wet parking lot, smoking and talking on his phone. They watched him through the window as they sat with their food.
“The constant smoking,” Keith said. “Puff the Magic Wanker is going to kill himself at this rate, which certainly gives me a new respect for the tobacco industry. Who do you think he’s calling? His mum?”
“Maybe he has a girlfriend,” Ellis said. “Or a boyfriend.”
“No.” Keith took a long sip of his soda. “No. There is no way.”
“You never know,” Ellis said. “We were talking last night about how he isn’t bad looking.”
“Were you now?” Keith shoved a few fries in his mouth and regarded Oliver again.
Ginny and Ellis were throwing away the trash and just stepping outside when Keith started the car, gunned the engine (as much as this was possible), then pulled out abruptly. He headed right for Oliver. Oliver looked surprised, but he didn’t budge, even as the white car came right for him.
“What’s he . . . ?” Ellis said. “Oh god.”
It looked for a moment like this battle of wills was going to accidentally end in death, but at the last second, Keith turned the wheel hard, fishtailing around, sending a wave of dirty, icy slush all over Oliver.
Keith got out and surveyed his work with satisfaction. Oliver was trying to maintain his dignity, brushing himself off calmly. The force of the splash must have washed the Zippo out of his hands. He reached into an icy puddle with his bare hand and retrieved it. He flicked it a few times, but it didn’t produce any flame.
“Doesn’t work?” Keith said. “Oh, that is a pity.”
Oliver carefully removed his coat and shook it hard to get out the worst of the slush and dirty water, then rolled it tight.
“Can I put this in the boot?”
“Boot’s full,” Keith replied.
“It’s going to get her wet as well.”
Keith rolled his eyes and reached for the coat, shoving it hard into a corner of the trunk, mashing it down as hard as he could.
“There you go,” he said.
Once in the car, Oliver wrapped his arms around himself and faced the window, resolute and silent. He didn’t even put in his headphones. He was trying not to show it, but anger crackled off of him. If Ginny had touched him at that moment, she was pretty sure she would have gotten a shock. Though there was a part of her—a very, very small part of her—that wanted to offer him a sweater or a pat on the shoulder.
How did he do this? How did he manage to make her feel bad for him? There was something terribly raw about Oliver. In the winter sun, his face was utterly pale except for the dark shadow all around his chin. He looked like one of those guys who had to shave a lot, maybe twice a day, or the beast would come out. Even though he was tall and looked more than capable of defending himself, he sat defiantly, doing nothing. He seemed altogether too used to abuse.
But, she reminded herself . . . he was getting abuse for good reason. He was silent because there was no way he could possibly defend himself. He was the person doing wrong here.
She decided not to look at him anymore, not even a glance. She wasn’t going to look at anyone. She had the tabletop to protect her from the front, and her headphones to block out the rest. She could just sleep. The last one sounded like the best option, so she closed her eyes and scrunched herself against the car door. Tiny streams of cold air stabbed her through the gaps in the window, and the door itself was like ice, but she tried not to care. She shut her eyes hard and commanded herself to rest, to turn it all off.
The last thing she saw as she closed her eyes was the underwear.
The Stain on the Page
When she opened her eyes next, Ginny found that her face was pressed up against the window, hard. Just outside the window was the gentle, constant tinkling of bicycle bells.
“We’re in Amsterdam,” she said groggily, her lips rubbing against the cold glass.
“Have a nice kip?” Keith called from the front.
Something was weighing her down. Ginny turned to find the sleeping form of Oliver slumped against her, using her as a pillow. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant to have him there. He was warm, and not overly heavy. She had probably slept so well because of the body heat he was giving off. Still, he had to go. Ginny straightened herself up, and Oliver fell senselessly in the other direction, toward his door. This woke him up, and he reflexively rubbed his face and looked around.
“Are we there?” he asked.
“We’re almost there,” Keith said. “Not that we have any idea where we are supposed to go. Where are we going, precisely?”
“We should leave the car outside the city and ride the tram in,” Oliver replied. “There should be a car park coming up in a few minutes.”
“Not actually an answer,” Keith said. “Give us the next bit. Recite, freak.”
Oliver was still waking up. He yawned hard, pressed his hand to his temple, and began.
“‘From Paris, it’s time . . .’ Hang on.”
He blinked a few times and stared at the car ceiling, moving his lips silently.
“He’s forgotten it, hasn’t he?” Keith said.
“Shut it. ‘From Paris, it’s time to return to Amsterdam, the city of canals, bicycles, and delicious, delicious cheese. The Dutch are famous for their open windows. No curtains. No blinds. Their houses are on display. Walk along the canal streets, Gin. You’ll be right at eye level with every variety of human life. You can see into a thousand different worlds.
“ ‘But here’s the thing: You aren’
t supposed to look. This is an understood Dutch custom. Everything will be laid bare for you, but you can’t ever turn your head and gawk. This is both elegant and incredibly perverse. The idea, I think . . .’ ”
He paused again.
“This is really much better than just bringing the letter,” Keith said.
“ ‘. . . is that whatever you are doing in your house, however you choose to live, is fine. You have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide. But at the same time, you have to respect your neighbors enough not to stare.
“ ‘I don’t know. I’m making this up. I don’t even know if the Dutch know why this is the way of things. There’s probably some complicated historical precedent involving the curtain makers’ union or something. Also, I looked. I peeked in every window where anything even remotely interesting was going on. You can’t put something in front of me and expect me not to look.
“ ‘So, for the next layer of the painting, I decided to make a Dutch window, except you ARE supposed to look through it. Charlie has it. I am sure you have already seen it. You just need to go back and collect it. I realize that it’s difficult to carry around a tabletop, Gin. And now I’m asking you to carry around a tabletop and a window. That’s why I didn’t have you get these things the first time around. Once you’ve done that, take the ferry back to England. Head back home, to Richard’s.’
“There. That’s the whole section. We go back to where you started last time.”
“So we’re done after this?” Ginny asked.
“Not exactly,” Oliver said.
“More riddles,” Keith said, pulling off the motorway toward the parking lot. “Wonderful.”
A half hour later, they knocked on the door of 60 Westerstraat. The person who answered this time was not the same person Ginny met over the summer. This person also didn’t know a Charlie.
“So, we just start asking, I guess?” Ginny said, looking up and down the street. Westerstraat was one of the non-canal streets, full of fairly modern buildings.
The Last Little Blue Envelope Page 11
