Just One Day(19)

“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.