“Nah, it’s all good, man.”
“Listen, Skev, I can’t talk long but I ran into Bex.”
“Bex.” He whistles. “How is that sweet thing?”
“Same as always, hooked up with a juggler. She mentioned a letter Tor was trying to get to me. Earlier in the year.”
There’s a pause. “Victoria. Man. She is something else.”
“I know.”
“I asked if I could come back and she said no. Just that one time. Off season. Don’t shit where you eat.”
“I know. I know. About that letter . . .”
“Yeah, man, I don’t know anything about it.”
>“You believe that?”
“I believe you don’t mess with Petra the day before the first tech.”
Jeroen walks by. He looks at me and feigns a cough.
“That the best you can do?” Max calls after him. She turns to me. “And he calls himself an actor.”
Linus has the cast do an entire run-through. It’s a mess. Lines are forgotten. Cues are missed. Blocking is flubbed. “The curse of Mackers,” Max whispers.
By six o’clock, Petra is in such a state that Linus lets us all go early. “Get a good night’s sleep,” he says. “Tomorrow is a long day. Call is at ten.”
“It’s too early to go to the bar,” Max says. “Let’s go eat and then go dancing or hear a band play. We can see who’s on at Paradiso or Melkweg.”
We ride over to the Leidseplein. Max is beside herself because some musician who was once in a famous band is playing solo tonight at the Paradiso and there’s still tickets left. We buy a pair. Then we wander around the square, which this time of year is ground zero for tourists. There’s a crowd of them surrounding some street performers.
“It’s probably just those bloody Peruvian musicians,” Max says. “Do you know, when I was little, I thought it was the same troupe, following me. Took me ages to work out they were clones.” She laughs and knocks her head with her knuckles. “I can be right thick sometimes.”
It’s not the Peruvians. It’s a group of jugglers. They’re not bad, juggling all kinds of typically spiked flaming things. We watch for a while, and when the hat passes, I toss in a handful of coins.
We turn to leave and Max pokes me in the side. “Now’s the real show,” she says. I turn around and see who she’s talking about: a woman has her legs wrapped around one of the jugglers’ hips, her arms tangled in his hair. “Get a room,” Max jokes.
I watch them a moment longer than I ought to. And then the girl drops down and turns around. She spots me and I spot her, and we do a double take.
“Wills?” she calls
“Bex?” I call.
“Wills?” Max repeats.
Dragging the juggler behind her, Bex comes up to me and gives me a big theatrical hug and kiss. It’s quite a change since the last time I saw her when she would barely shake my hand. She introduces me to Matthias. I introduce her to Max. “Your girlfriend?” Bex asks, sending Max into a theatrical howl of protestation.
After a bit of chit-chat, we run out of things to say, because we never really did have that much to say even when we were sleeping together. “We should go. Matthias needs lots of rest before so he can perform.” Bex gives an obvious wink in case anyone wasn’t clear about what kind of resting and what kind of performing she was referring to.
“Okay then.” We kiss, kiss, kiss good-bye.
We’re walking away when Bex calls out. “Hey, did Tor ever find you?”
I stop. “Tor was looking for me?”
“She was trying to track you down. Apparently some letter came for you at Headingley.”