"She's how old?" Richard asked.
"Think of your grandmother," Jack told him.
"Jackie!" Els shouted, blowing kisses. "My little boy has come back again!" she once more announced to the Sint Jacobsstraat.
Jack blew kisses to her; he waved and waved. That was when he lost it--when Els started waving back to him.
It is impossible that Jack could have "remembered" his mother lifting him above the ship's rail as they sailed from the dock in Rotterdam; impossible that he actually recalled waving to Els, twenty-eight years before, or that (when Jack was four) he truly saw his father fall to the ground with both hands holding his broken heart.
"Don't cry, Jackie--don't cry!" Els called to him from her second-floor window, but Jack had dropped to his knees on the Sint Jacobsstraat. He was still waving good-bye, and Els kept waving back to him.
Richard and Wild Bill were struggling to get Jack to his feet, but Wild Bill was drunk. Richard, in addition to his jet lag, had been knocking back the red wine, too.
"You're her little boy?" Richard was asking, but Jack was waving good-bye to his dad and couldn't answer; Jack's heart was in his throat.
"You actually know this lady?" Wild Bill asked, losing his balance and sitting down in the street. Richard was holding Jack under one arm, but he let go. Jack just lay in the street beside Wild Bill; Jack was still waving.
"Jackie, Jackie--your mother loved you!" Els was calling. "As best she could!"
It was Wild Bill's pretty anchorwoman who finally helped Jack to his feet; she'd laid off the red wine, Jack had noticed. "For God's sake, stop waving to that old hooker!" Anneke said. "Stop encouraging her!"
"She was my nanny!" Jack blubbered.
"She was his what?" Wild Bill asked Richard.
"His babysitter," Richard explained.
"Marvelous!" Wild Bill exclaimed.
"Oh, shut up, Bill! Can't you see he's crying?" Anneke asked The Mad Dutchman.
"Jack, why are you crying?" Wild Bill asked.
"She looked after me while my mother was working," Jack told them.
"Working where? Working here?" Richard asked.
"My mom worked in a window, in one of those doorways--back there," Jack said, pointing in the general direction of the red-light district. "My mother was a prostitute," he told them.
"I thought his mom was a tattoo artist!" Wild Bill said to Richard.
"She was a tattoo artist, too," Jack said. "She wasn't a prostitute for very long, but she was one."
Jack began to wave good-bye to Els again, but Anneke wrapped her arms around him; she pinned his arms to his sides. "For God's sake, stop!" the anchorwoman said.
"Come back and see me before I die, Jackie!" Els was calling.
Wild Bill was still sitting in the street. He had begun to wave good-bye to Els, too, but Anneke kicked him. "What a great idea, Bill!" she said. "You give a tour of the red-light district to a guy whose mom was a whore!"
"Well, I didn't know!" Wild Bill shouted. Richard helped him to his feet; Anneke removed a candy-bar wrapper from Vanvleck's long, gray ponytail.
They were walking away from Els in her window, toward the red-light district; that was the most direct way back to the Grand. Richard, who was walking beside Jack, put his arm around him. "Are you all right, Jack?" Richard asked.
"I'll be fine," Jack told him.
But Richard was sober enough to be worried about Jack, and they were fast becoming friends. "When you get back to L.A., I know someone you could see," Richard said.
"Do you mean a psychiatrist?" Jack asked.