But what about the church? Jack would wonder, as he was falling asleep. Why weren't they asking someone about the particular organ his father might be playing in Helsinki? Where were the destroyed young women who'd had the bad luck to meet William here? And what about Sibelius?
Jack wondered if his mom was growing tired of looking for his dad--or, worse, if she was suddenly afraid of finding him. Maybe it had occurred to her how awful it would be to finally confront William, only to have him walk away with a shrug. Surely William must have known they were looking for him. Church music and tattooing were both small worlds. What if William decided to confront them? What would they have to say for themselves? Did they actually want him to stop running and live with them? Live with them where?
Helsinki is a hard place to be afflicted with self-doubts. Alice appeared to be unsure of herself. She would not get up at night to go to the bathroom without waking Jack and forcing him to walk down the hall with her; she wouldn't let him leave the hotel room by himself, either. (Some nights Jack peed in the sink.) And those evenings when she roamed the American Bar, soliciting clients, Jack often watched her from the crow's-nest perspective of the iron-grate elevator, which was frozen in seemingly permanent disrepair on the floor above the bar.
Whenever a prospective client decided to get a tattoo, Alice would look up at the out-of-service elevator and nod her head to Jack, who was suspended in it like a boy in a birdcage.
Jack would watch Alice lead the client to the stairs. Then he exited the elevator and ran up the stairs to the fourth floor ahead of them. He was usually waiting by the door to their room when his mother brought the tattoo customer down the hall.
"Why--fancy seeing you, Jack!" his mom would always say. "Is it a tattoo you've come for?"
"No, thank you," Jack would always reply. "I'm too young to be tattooed. I'm just an observer."
It may have been a silly ritual, but it was their routine and they stuck to it. The client recognized that they were a team.
By their third week in Helsinki, Jack had forgotten all about Sibelius. Two young women (brave-looking girls) approached Alice in the American Bar. They asked her about a tattoo--one they wanted to share. In the elevator, one floor above them, Jack couldn't really hear what they were saying.
"You can't share a tattoo," he thought his mother said.
"Sure we can," the tall one replied.
Maybe the short one said, "We shared you-know-what together. Sharing a tattoo can't be that bad."
From the broken elevator, Jack saw his mom shake her head--not her usual signal. He'd seen her say no to young men who were too drunk to be tattooed, or to two or more men; she wouldn't take more than one man at a time to their room. These two women, Tall and Short, were different; they made Alice seem awkward. Jack thought that his mother might already know them.
Alice abruptly turned and walked away. But the brave girls followed her; they kept talking to her, too. Jack got out of the elevator when he saw his mom start up the stairs. Tall and Short came up the stairs behind her.
"We're not too young, are we?" the tall one was asking.
Alice shook her head again; she just kept walking up the stairs with the two young women following her.
"You must be Jack," the short one said, looking up the stairs at the boy. It seemed to Jack that she even knew where to look for him. "We're both music students," the short one told him. "I'm studying church music, both choral and the organ."
Alice stopped on the staircase as if she were out of breath. The two girls caught up to her on the half-landing between the first and second floors. Jack stood waiting for his mom on the second-floor landing, looking down at the three of them.
"Hello, Jack," the tall girl said to the boy. "I play the cello."
She wasn't as tall as Ingrid Moe--nor as breathtakingly beautiful--but she had the same long hands. Her curly blond hair was cut as short as a boy's, and over a cotton turtleneck she wore a grungy ski sweater with a small herd of faded reindeer on it.
The other girl, the short one, was plump with a pretty face and long, dark hair that fell to her breasts. She wore a short black skirt with black tights, knee-high black boots, and a black V-neck sweater that was too big for her. The sweater was very soft-looking and had no reindeer on it.
"Music students," Alice repeated.
"At Sibelius Academy, Jack," the tall young woman said. "Did you ever hear of it?" The boy didn't answer her; he kept looking at his mother.
"Sibelius . . ." Alice said--in a way that implied the name hurt her throat.
The short, plump girl with the pretty face looked up the stairs and smiled at Jack. "You're definitely Jack," she said.
The tall one came up the stairs two at a time. She knelt at Jack's feet and framed his face in her long hands, which were slightly sticky. "Look at you, Jack," she said; her breath smelled like chewing gum, a fruit flavor. "You're a dead ringer for your dad."
Jack's mother came up the stairs with the short girl beside her. "Take your hands off him," Alice told the tall girl, who stood up and backed away from the boy.
"Sorry, Jack," the tall girl said.
"What do you want?" Alice asked the music students.
"We told you--a tattoo," the short girl answered.