“You’re coming to our party, aren’t you?” Broodje asks.
“Our party?” I ask.
Broodje manages to look a tiny bit sheepish. “It’s hard to un-throw a party at short notice.”
“Especially since he has now invited the cast, and about half the audience,” Henk says.
“That’s not true!” Broodje says. “Not half. Just a couple of Canadians.”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Lien laughs and takes my hand. “I’m going to say goodnight. One of us should be coherent tomorrow. It’s moving day.” She kisses W. Then me. “Well done, Willem.”
“I’m going to follow her out of the park,” Kate says. “This city confounds me.”
“You’re not coming?” I ask.
“I have some things I need to do first. I’ll come later. Prop the door open for me.”
“Always,” I say. I go to kiss her on the cheek and she whispers into my ear, “I knew you could do it.”
“Not without you,” I say.
“Don’t be silly. You just needed a pep talk.”
But I don’t mean the pep talk. I know Kate believes that I have to commit, to not rely on the accidents, to take the wheel. But had we not met in Mexico, would I be here now? Was it accidents? Or will?
For the hundredth time tonight, I’m back with Lulu, on Jacques’s barge, the improbably named Viola. She’d just told me the story of double happiness and we were arguing over the meaning. She’d thought it meant the luck of the boy getting the job and the girl. But I’d disagreed. It was the couplet fitting together, the two halves finding each other. It was love.
But maybe we were both wrong, and both right. It’s not either or, not luck or love. Not fate or will.
Maybe for double happiness, you need both.
Forty-nine
Inside the flat, it is complete mayhem. More than fifty people, from the cast, from Utrecht, even old school friends from my Amsterdam days. I have no idea how Broodje dug everyone up so fast.
Max pounces on me as soon as she comes in the door, followed by Vincent. “Holy. Shit,” Max says.
“You might’ve mentioned you could act!” Vincent adds.
I smile. “I like to preserve a bit of mystery.”
“Yeah, well, everyone in the cast is bloody delighted,” says Max. “Except Petra. She’s pissy as ever.”
“Only because her understudy just completely cockblocked her star. And now she has to decide whether to put up a lame, and I mean that both literally and figuratively, star, or let you carry us home,” Vincent says.
“Decisions, decisions,” Max adds. “Don’t look now but Marina is giving you the f**k-me eyes again.”
We all look. Marina is staring right at me and smiling.
“And don’t even deny it, unless it’s me she wants to shag,” Max says.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Max. I go over to her to where Marina’s standing by the table Broodje has turned into the bar. She has a jug of something in her hand. “What do you have there?” I ask.
“Not entirely sure. One of your mates gave it to me, promised me no hangover. I’m taking him at his word.”
“That’s your first mistake right there.”