The Last Little Blue Envelope

by Maureen Johnson

  “Do you know anything else about him?” Ellis asked. “A last name. A job. Anything?”

  “The letter just gave his first name and address.”

  “Right,” Ellis said. “So, we just start asking people if they know Charlie. We can do that.”

  There weren’t many people around, and knocking on the doors to either side of number 60 produced no result. They spread the search farther down on either side, Keith and Ellis going to the left, and Ginny and Oliver going to the right. No one knew Charlie.

  They stopped briefly to get some sandwiches.

  “I don’t think this is working,” Keith said, examining a mysterious salad on his.

  “Maybe Charlie is an English version of his name or something,” Ginny replied. “What’s important is the window. My aunt’s paintings . . . they’re kind of weird. Maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe we need to ask about the painting itself.”

  So they tried it again, this time asking about the window. This brought a result from the woman who worked at the flower shop.

  “Oh, you mean the jungle window?” she said.

  Ginny looked to Oliver, to see if he had any idea if a “jungle window” was the kind of thing they were supposed to be looking for.

  “That could be it,” he said, nodding. “The man with the jungle window, do you know where he went?”

  “I didn’t know his name, but I think he works at De Bevlekte Pagina. It is a bookshop. He is a . . . he is a very strange . . .”

  “That’s him,” Ginny said. The label “very strange” fit most of Aunt Peg’s friends.

  De Bevlekte Pagina was a tiny place, just a few streets over. It was some kind of medieval nook, uneven in every respect, from the strange lean of the walls, the odd shape of the room, the slope of the floor, the step in the corner that lead to a tiny door halfway up the wall. Ginny had never seen such a small store, or imagined you could get so much into it. It had one employee—a girl in a crushed red velvet jacket and a bob dyed to match. Her shirt was low-cut enough to reveal a glimpse of a large cartoon heart tattooed over her actual heart.

  “Hi,” Ginny said, approaching her. “We’re looking for someone named Charlie.” “Are you readers?” the girl asked, barely lifting her head.

  “Readers?”

  The girl offered no other information.

  “Does he work here?” Ellis asked.

  “Work here?” The girl was contemptuous now. “He is not an employee.”

  “Can you please get him if he’s here?” Oliver said briskly. The girl didn’t look happy about offering any other information, but she did seem to like the sight of Oliver. She smiled flirtatiously before leaving the counter and went to the back of the store and pushed aside a velvet curtain that blocked off a passage.

  “Charlie, er zijn wat mensen hier voor jou.”

  A voice came from the depths.

  “Wie zijn het?”

  “Geen flauw idee.” The girl turned to give them all another appraising look. “Ze zijn Engels.”

  “Engelse?”

  “Ze zien er uit als studenten.”

  She dropped the curtain, came back to the counter, and continued reading her book.

  “Is he . . . coming?” Ginny asked.

  “When he is finished,” she said, not looking up. “Did you bring books for him to sign or do you want to buy them?”

  “Books? No.”

  The girl sighed and shook her head. They were a terrible disappointment to her. Even her interest in Oliver fizzled out, just like that.

  Nothing happened for several minutes. They wandered around the shop as much as they could, but it was barely bigger than their rooms at the hostel. The books were a mix of Dutch, English, French, and German, mostly used. Oliver got bored and went outside to smoke. Keith and Ellis had a low conversation in the corner. Ginny sat in the single spot of sun in an open windowsill. The window was original, with uneven, warped panes of glass. Finally, the curtain was pushed back. A guy appeared from the darkness. He was shorter than Ginny, maybe in his mid-twenties, and absolutely emaciated. What he lacked in height and body mass he made up for in hair—straggly beard, untamed locks sticking up in all directions. He wore a heavy red plaid lumberjack shirt, completely unbuttoned and exposing even more chest hair. Three or four silver necklaces glinted just under this layer. He wore black leather pants that were cracked and worn from use, and no shoes. His fingernails and toenails were colored ink black—it looked more like pen than nail polish. He was like something you found on a nature preserve, if they made nature preserves where you could look at artistic frenzy in the wild.

  This was definitely the right guy.

  “Hi,” Ginny said. “I’m Ginny. Peg’s niece?”

  He leaned forward. Ginny couldn’t tell if he couldn’t understand her English, or if he was sniffing her. “I’m Peg’s niece,” she tried again. “Margaret Bannister? The painter?”

  This hit a note of recognition. His eyebrows went up and he leaned back against a bookcase and folded his arms across his chest. He exposed the underside of his arm in the process, and Ginny could see words written there, a whole screed of some kind.

  “Do you speak English?” she said slowly.

  “Of course I speak English.”

  Ginny had discovered this during her first time in the Netherlands—all Dutch people seemed to speak flawless English. He nodded and turned to the girl at the counter.

  “Margaret is een Amerikaanse schilderes. Ze is erg goed. Maar ik kan niet geloven dat deze meid haar nichtje is.”

  Ginny had no idea what he was saying, but assumed it probably wasn’t too complimentary.

  “My aunt wrote me a letter. She said I was supposed to come see you. I was here over the summer, but I went to your old address. You have something my aunt gave to you. Something she asked me to come get. A window . . .”

  Charlie picked up a pen and began cleaning under his nails with the writing tip.

  “The window is on the boat,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “The boat?”

  “I have a boat,” he said. “It is on a canal.”

  That thought kept him occupied for a moment or two.

  “A good place for it,” Keith said quietly.

  “The boat is gone,” Charlie went on. He almost sounded happy about this, like the boat had finally sought freedom and was now living a happier life somewhere else. “I hire the boat out. Someone has hired the boat today. The boat will be back tomorrow. You can have the window then. Or . . . is it the next day?”

  This last question was to the girl behind the counter, who looked up and shrugged.

  “We’re not here that long,” Ginny said nervously. “I don’t want to bother you, but we really need it today.”

  “Well, today it is gone. Come back later. Say hello to Margaret for me.”

  Charlie seemed to be done talking and, with a wave of his hand, headed back to the curtain.

  “She’s dead,” Ginny said.

  This wasn’t something she’d had to say out loud in a while, and she didn’t like breaking the news to anyone. Charlie’s demeanor changed completely. Even the girl put her book down and looked up in confusion.

  “Margaret? Is dead? But, how? She is so young. Did she have an accident?”

  “She didn’t tell you she was sick?” Ginny asked.

  “Sick? Sick with what?”

  “She had cancer,” Ginny said.

  It was like she had sucked all the air out of the room with a straw. Charlie sat down on the floor, in the tiny space between the bookcases.

  “The window,” he said.

  That was all he could manage for a moment.

  “I met her in New York,” he said finally. “She came here to learn more about Dutch painting, about the use of light. About still life. She stayed with me, and I showed her my boat. She loved it. She was painting a picture of it. It’s a very distinctive boat. It is pink. Very bright pink. She said she wanted to make something f
or the boat—a view you could look through, both ways. She mounted the glass in the window of my flat and painted it while standing on a box, on the pavement.”

  Ginny could picture it perfectly. Aunt Peg, so tiny, so graceful—her long brown hair tied back in a knot, probably standing on her toes. She moved like a ballerina, even though she never took a dance class in her life and couldn’t keep time to music.

  “I’m a poet,” Charlie said. “Maybe you know my work?”

  “No,” Ginny said quietly. “Sorry.”

  “The name of this shop—it means, ‘the stain on the page.’ We both loved that idea. Painting, writing. Both just stains on the page.”

  Charlie took a long breath and stared at the shelf of books in front of them, drew a long, jagged line on his bare foot, then put his head down on his knees. The girl behind the counter reached down and touched his head. While Ginny understood that other people were entitled to mourn her aunt as much as she was, it still irritated her that Charlie was allowed this little display. He didn’t even know she was dead, hadn’t been involved in any way. But then, Aunt Peg had hidden her illness from a lot of people, including her family. Only Richard was there for the worst of it.

  Finally, Charlie roused himself.

  “The boat, I hire it to tourists and for parties. Someone has hired it for this week, but they return it tomorrow. Come in the morning. I will take you to it.”

  Once they were outside, Oliver was the first to speak.

  “I booked a place to stay here,” he said. “Two rooms. Perhaps we should go there.”

  For the first time, Keith made no comment about one of Oliver’s plans.

  The Koekoeksklok

  The hostel Oliver had found was by far the nicest Ginny had encountered on any of her travels. It occupied an entire canal house, narrow and tall, with one massive window at the front and back of each floor. The windows had red shutters, large as doors. At the very top, near the roof, there was a clock, and all down the front, tiny paintings of blue birds. It was called the Koekoeksklok. Ginny didn’t need a Dutch-to-English dictionary to figure out that meant “cuckoo clock.”

  The theme continued on the inside, which featured a large common room paneled in dark wood, with cuckoo clocks all over the walls.

  “I hope these don’t work,” Ellis said, looking around.

  The Koekoeksklok was staffed by students—no murderers with dozens of cats. The hostel had one central wooden stairway that wound up and through the skinny building, with just a few deafeningly creaky steps from floor to floor. Oliver and Keith were shown to a room on the third floor, and Ellis and Ginny got the room above them, at the top, facing front. The ceiling of their room was peaked, and high as the roof, maybe sixteen feet. The decorations were basic, but very clean, and the beds were loaded down with a multicolor pile of blankets.

  They had a massive window—the cuckoo hole—which faced the canal. Ginny looked out at the skyline. All the roofs were different heights, and almost every canal house had a little ornate peak at the top. Many of the houses had a hook sticking out of the front. Ginny had learned all about these hooks last time. Because the houses were so narrow, you couldn’t get furniture up the stairs. Things had to be hoisted up by rope and brought in through the windows. Windows were really key here.

  Below, there was a steady stream of boats drifting along the canal, and on the sidewalks and roads, hundreds of people on bikes. Amsterdam was one constant, steady flow of energy—not manic, just as fast as a bike wheel or the chug of a canal boat. Ginny really loved this city, maybe more than Paris or London. It wasn’t overwhelming. It was practical and beautiful and lively.

  “There’s not much we can do tonight,” Keith said, dropping down on Ellis’s bed. “What now?”

  Inertia was starting to take over. Ellis was sprawled on the floor. Keith was looking at her, not in any particular way—he wasn’t drooling or anything—but his gaze fell on her and stayed there. It made Ginny uncomfortable.

  “I guess we should eat,” Ellis said to the ceiling. “We should go out.”

  Ginny got up to use the bathroom and get herself ready to go. She was only in there for a minute or two, but when she came back, Ellis was sitting up, her back against the side of the bed. Keith had repositioned himself so that he was at her shoulder, just at her ear. Again, they weren’t doing anything, but Ginny was pretty sure this was only because she was here.

  “I can’t move,” Keith replied. “I think I have to sleep.”

  “Me too,” Ellis said.

  It was entirely possible they were just tired. Ginny was kind of tired. But there was something incredibly awkward about being around the two of them right now. Escape. It was the only way.

  “I have to go call Richard,” she said. “I’ll be outside. I might take a walk.”

  Keith yawned and lifted a hand in farewell.

  Over the summer, Ginny had to spend a lot of time by herself—time alone with no internet, no television, no music, nothing to numb her from the experience of being on her own. This wasn’t by choice. The first letter spelled out the rules. She couldn’t bring a computer, a phone, even a journal . . . nothing that could distract her from the experience of being in Europe on her own. At first, it had been unpleasant and weird, but over time, she had adjusted. It was okay just to be by herself, with herself.

  Now, of course, she had lots of company to think about.

  Ellis was . . . extraordinarily pretty, and spontaneous, and sweet. She matched the sharpness in Keith’s personality. She didn’t need to be coaxed into climbing over the fence and through the window—she wouldn’t need to be boosted up and shoved over. Ellis would make the climb herself. And she was English. She fit in. She had London style and that understated London swagger. Sure, Ginny had lost the braids, but the fake red in her hair was already fading, and that newfound courage of hers was just a thin outer coating. She was the American—a little louder, a little out of step. Given the choice, she would have dated Ellis. It only made sense.

  She sat down on a bench along the canal and pulled out her phone to call Richard. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hi . . . sorry. Is this a bad time?” she asked.

  “No, you caught me at a good moment. I’m hiding in my office. How are you? Where are you?”

  “Amsterdam,” she said.

  “Amsterdam? When did you get there?”

  “A few hours ago. We’re in a really nice hostel. It’s sort of like a cuckoo clock.”

  “I see. What are you doing there?”

  “We need to get a window,” Ginny said. “I guess part of the piece is a glass panel. It’s on a boat, and someone rented it out. So when it comes back, we’ll get it.”

  “And where do you go then?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “We sort of have to figure that out.”

  She heard his other line ringing, and the sound of him shuffling things around on his desk.

  “Let me think what I’m supposed to ask . . . have you engaged in any exceedingly foolish behavior while under the influence of alcohol?”

  She hadn’t been drunk when she stole the tabletop, so she had a pass on that one. “Nope,” she said.

  “Are you wandering the streets alone in a haze of legal marijuana?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any intention of entering the prostitution business, which is also legal in Amsterdam?”

  “Probably not today.”

  “Good, good. Is there anything I didn’t cover? I’m new to this.”

  “You were pretty thorough,” she said.

  “You know I trust you, Gin,” Richard said, almost sounding embarrassed. “I know you can do as you like. You’re eighteen. I certainly did plenty of things. . . .”

  The door to the Koekoeksklok opened, and Oliver stepped out. He brushed off his still-damp coat and looked around. As soon as he spotted Ginny, he headed straight for her.

  “No,” Ginny said quickly. “I’m good. And thank
s. For everything.”

  “Well, you know I’m here.”

  Oliver lingered a few feet off until she had wrapped up her call. He may not have been respectful of personal property, but he was all about giving people their personal space.

  “Where are the others?” he asked.

  “They’re tired. I think they’re napping.”

  They probably weren’t napping. Well, maybe they were. Probably not. She was not going to think about what they were doing.

  “I was going to go look for the boat,” he said. “Care to join me?”

  They stared at each other for a moment, sizing up the situation. They were here, there was a job to be done. More importantly, it would give her something to do while Keith and Ellis did whatever they were going to do . . . which was nap, of course.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “I’ve got some directions,” he said, pulling out both his phone and a tourist map. “The canals surround the—”

  “I know the city pretty well,” she said, cutting him off. “I mean, the tourist parts.”

  “I thought it all went wrong.”

  “It did,” she said. “But I didn’t leave. I ended up in this really horrible hostel. So I ran away from that and ended up meeting this family called the Knapps, from America. They took me in for the week. They were nice, but they were super tourists. It was like they were competing for the Most-Touristy-Tourists-of-the-Year award. They wanted to see it, have their picture taken in front of it, get the T-shirt, and move on. They used to have these printed schedules for each day. . . .”

  Ginny started walking, and Oliver fell into step behind her.

  “So why didn’t you just leave if they were so annoying?” he asked.

  “They weren’t mean people,” Ginny said. “They just wanted to check everything off their checklists. Lots of people probably travel like that.”

  “Lots of people live like that. . . .”

  That was the kind of thing Aunt Peg would have said. Was he doing that on purpose? She glanced over at him suspiciously.

  “It still doesn’t explain why you didn’t just leave.”

  “I was just sick of being by myself,” she said. “I don’t know. I just did.”