“We should probably start seeing some of the sights,” Willem says. “Do you know what you want to do?”
I shrug. “We could start with the Seine. Isn’t that it?” I point to a concrete embankment, underneath which is a river of sorts.
Willem laughs. “No, that’s a canal.”
We walk down the cobblestoned pathway, and Willem pulls out a thick Rough Guide to Europe. He opens to a small map of Paris, points out, more or less, where we are, an area called Villette.
“The Seine is here,” he says, tracing a line down the map.
“Oh.” I look out at the boat, which is stuck now between two big metal gates; the area is filling up with water. Willem explains that this is a lock, basically an elevator that lifts and drops the boats down differing depths of the canals.
“How do you know so much about everything?”
He laughs. “I’m Dutch.”
“So that means you’re a genius?”
“Only about canals. They say ‘God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland.’” And then he goes on to tell me about how so much of the country was reclaimed from the sea, about riding your bike along the low embankments that keep the water out of Holland. How it’s an act of faith to ride your bike around, with the dikes above you, knowing somehow, even though you’re below sea level, you’re not under water. When he talks about it, he seems so young that I can almost see him as a towheaded little kid, eyes wide, staring out at the endless waterways and wondering where they all led to.
“Maybe we can go on one of those boats?” I ask, pointing to the barge we just watched go through the lock.
Willem’s eyes light up, and for a second, I see that boy again. “I don’t know.” He looks inside the guidebook. “It doesn’t really cover this neighborhood.”
“Can we ask?”
Willem asks someone in French and is given a very complicated answer full of hand gestures. He turns to me, clearly excited. “You’re right. He says that they have boat rides leaving from the basin.”
We go along the cobblestoned walkway until it lets out in a large lake, where people are paddling in canoes. Off to one side, next to a cement pier, a couple of boats are moored. But when we get over there, we find out that they’re private boats. The tourist boats have left for the day.
“We can take a boat along the Seine,” Willem says. “It’s much more popular, and the boats run all day.” His eyes are downcast. I can see he’s disappointed, as if he let me down.
“Oh, no big deal. I don’t care.”
But he’s staring wistfully out at the water, and I see that he cares. And I know I don’t know him, but I swear the boy is homesick. For boats and canals and watery things. And for a second, I think of what it must be like—away from home for two years, and here he postponed his return for another day. He did that. For me.
There’s a row of boats and barges tied up, bobbing in the breeze that’s kicked up. I look at Willem; a melancholy expression is deepening the lines on his face. I look back at the boats.
“Actually, I do care,” I say. I reach into my bag for my wallet, for the hundred-dollar bill folded inside. I hold it up in the air and call out, “I’m looking for a ride down the canals. And I can pay.”
Willem’s head jerks toward me. “Lulu, what are you doing?”
But I’m walking away from him. “Anyone willing to give us a lift down the canals?” I call. “I got good old-fashioned American greenbacks.”
A pock-faced guy with sharp features and a scrubby goatee pops onto the side of a blue-canopied barge. “How many greenbacks?” he asks in a very thick French accent.
“All of them!”
He takes the C-note and stares at it up close. Then he smells it.
It must smell legit, because he says, “If my passengers agree, I will take you down the canal to Arsenal, close to Bastille. It is where we dock for the night.” He gestures to the back of the boat where a quartet of gray-haired people are sitting around a small table, playing bridge or something. He calls out to one of them.
“Aye, Captain Jack,” the man answers. He must be sixty. His hair is white, and his face is burnished red from the sun.
“We have some hitchhikers who want to come aboard with us.”
“Can they play poker?” one of the women asks.
I used to play seven-card stud for nickels with my grandfather before he died. He said I was an excellent bluffer.
“Do not bother. She gave all her money to me,” Captain Jack says.
“How much is he charging you?” one of the men asks.
“I offered him a hundred dollars,” I say.
“To go where?”
“Down the canals.”
“This is why we call him Captain Jack,” one of the men says. “Because he’s a pirate.”
“No. It is because my name is Jacques, and I am your captain.”
“A hundred dollars, Jacques?” a woman with a long gray braid and startlingly blue eyes asks. “That seems a little much, even for you.”
“She offered this much.” Jacques shrugs. “Also, now I will have more money to lose to you in poker.”
“Ahh, good point,” she says.
“Are you leaving now?” I ask.
“Soon.”
“When is soon?” It’s after four. The day is speeding by.
“You cannot rush these things.” He flicks his hand in the air. “Time is like the water. Fluid.”
Time doesn’t seem fluid to me. It seems real and animate and hard as a rock.
“What he means,” says the guy with the ponytail, “is that the trip to Arsenal takes a while and we were just about to open a bottle of claret. Come on, Captain Jack, let’s shove off. For a hundred bucks, you can have your wine later.”
“We’ll continue with this fine French gin,” the braided lady says.
He shrugs and then pockets my bill. I turn to Willem and grin. Then I nod at Captain Jack. He reaches out for my hand to escort me onboard.
The four passengers introduce themselves. They are Danish, retirees, and every year, they tell us, they rent a barge and cruise a European country for four weeks. Agnethe has the braid and Karin has short spiked hair. Bert has a shock of white hair and Gustav has the bald spot and the rat’s tail of a ponytail and is sporting the ever-stylish socks-with-sandals look. Willem introduces himself, and almost automatically, I introduce myself as Lulu. It’s almost as if I’ve become her. Maybe I have. Never in a million years would Allyson have done what I just did.
Captain Jack and Willem untie the line, and I’m about to say that maybe I should get some of my money back if Willem is going to play first mate but then I see that Willem is bounding about, having a blast. He clearly knows his way around a boat.
The barge chugs out of the broad basin, giving a wide view of a white-columned old building and a silver-domed modern-looking one. The Danes return to their poker game.
“Don’t lose all your money,” Captain Jack calls to them. “Or you won’t have any left to lose to me.”
I slip away to the bow of the boat and watch the scenery slip by. It’s cooler down here in the canals, under the narrow arched footbridges. And it smells different too. Older, mustier, like generations of history are stored in the wet walls. If these walls could talk, I wonder what secrets they’d tell.
When we get to the first lock, Willem clambers to the side of the barge to show me how the mechanism works. The ancient-looking metal gates, rusted the same brackish color as the water, close behind us, the water drains out from beneath us, the gates reopen to a lower section.
This part of the canal is so narrow that the barge takes up almost the entire width. Steep embankments lead up to the streets, and above those, poplar and elm trees (per Captain Jack) form an arbor, a gentle respite from the hot afternoon sun.
A gust of wind shakes the trees, sending a scrim of leaves shimmying onto the deck. “Rain is coming,” Captain Jack says, sniffing the air like a rabbit. I look up and then over at Willem and roll my eyes. The sky is cloudless, and there hasn’t been rain in this part of Europe for ten days.
Up above, Paris carries on, doing her thing. Mothers sip coffee, keeping eyes on their kids as they scooter along the sidewalks. Vendors at outdoor stalls hawk fruits and vegetables. Lovers wrap their arms around each other, never mind the heat. A clarinet player stands atop the bridge, serenading it all.
I’ve hardly taken any pictures on this trip. Melanie teased me about it, to which I always said I preferred to experience something rather than obsessively record it. Though, really, the truth of it was, unlike Melanie (who wanted to remember the shoe salesman and the mime and the cute waiter and all the other people on the tour), none of that really mattered to me. At the start of the trip, I took shots of the sights. The Colosseum. Belvedere Palace. Mozart Square. But I stopped. They never came out very well, and you could get postcards of these things.
But there are no postcards of this. Of life.
I snap a picture of a bald man walking four bushy-haired dogs. Of a little girl in the most absurdly frilly skirt, plucking petals off a flower. Of a couple, unabashedly making out on the fake beach along the waterside. Of the Danes, ignoring all of this, but having the time of their lives playing cards.
“Oh, let me take one of the two of you,” Agnethe says, rising, a little wobbly, from the game. “Aren’t you golden?” She turns to the table. “Bert, was I ever that golden?”
“You still are, my love.”
“How long have you been married?” I ask.
“Thirteen years,” she says, and I’m wondering if they’re stained, but then she adds, “Of course, we’ve been divorced for ten.”
She sees the look of confusion on my face. “Our divorce is more successful than most marriages.”
I turn to Willem. “What kind of stain is that?” I whisper, and he laughs just as Agnethe takes the picture.
A church bell rings in the distance. Agnethe hands back the phone, and I take a picture of her and Bert. “You will send me that one? All of the ones?”
“Of course. As soon as I have reception.” I turn to Willem. “I’ll text them to you too, if you give me your number.”
“My phone is so old, it doesn’t work with pictures.”
“When I get home, then, I’ll put the pictures on my computer and email them to you,” I say, though I’ll have to figure out a place to hide the pictures from Mom; it wouldn’t be beyond her to look through my phone—or computer. Though, I realize now, only for another month. And then I’ll be free. Just like today I’m free.
He looks at one of the pictures for a long time. Then he looks at me. “I’ll keep you up here.” He taps his temple. “Where you can’t get lost.”
I bite my lip to hide my smile and pretend to put the phone away, but when Captain Jack calls to Willem to take the wheel while he visits the head, I pull it back out and scroll through the photos, stopping at the one of the two of us that Agnethe took. I’m in profile, my mouth open. He’s laughing. Always laughing. I run my thumb over his face, halfway expecting it to emanate some sort of heat.