Anne sighs a laugh and breathes through a smile. “I’ve never heard you say that,” she notices.
“Heard me say what?”
“Jezus Christus.”
Griet only shrugs. “It’s just a saying.”
They hear a whistle as two of the Canadian soldiers cycle past them. “Hey there, honeypot.” One of them grins at Griet. “You look like you’re gonna bust outta your shirt.” And then he says something else that exceeds Anne’s grasp of English, something that causes the soldiers to chortle together loudly as they pedal off.
“What did he say, what did he say?” Griet is desperate to know.
“He said, ‘Hello, you beautiful ladies—please marry us and come live in our castles in Canada.’”
“Oh, he did not. Did he?”
“No.”
“Are there castles in Canada?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there are.” She expels a breath. “I have to be going.”
“Aw, don’t tell me you have to work in your father’s dumb old office again.”
“I do.”
“It’s not fair. You should come over to my flat. Nobody’s home at this time of day. We could do whatever we want.”
“Tomorrow, maybe. Today, I promised my father.”
“Promises.” Griet shrugs. “Well, if you must. But before you go”—she smiles—“I’ve got something for you.”
Anne smiles back at the tube of lipstick that Griet produces from her pocket. “Where did you get that?”
“Henk. He got a bunch of them from his brother,” Griet whispers mischievously as she unscrews the tube. Anne answers by shaping her mouth into a bow. She feels the sticky, creamy flow of the lip rouge, watching Griet shape her own mouth into an instructive oval as she applies the color to Anne’s lips. “Perfection.” Griet’s laugh is impish. “Now you’re irresistible.”
But Anne’s attention has been caught by a figure leaning against the brick balustrade at the end of the canal bridge. It’s the yellow-haired boy from the spice warehouse. A loiterer, dressed in poor, ill-fitting clothes, he gazes at them.
“Who’s that?” Griet wants to know.
“I don’t know his name. He works in my father’s warehouse.”
“Well. He looks very interested in something,” she points out, and gives Anne a nudge. “I wonder what.”
• • •
Curiosity. That’s all it is. It’s just for curiosity’s sake that Anne walks her bicycle up the Prinsengracht rather than riding it. At first she camouflages her over-the-shoulder glances. Stopping to tie her shoe and sneaking a peek. Another fleeting look as she allows an old man to pass with his cane or to yield to a pair of cyclists dinging their bells as they turn onto the Leidsegracht. Each time, she sees that he’s still behind her, hands stuffed into his trouser pockets, his shoulders hunched with a purposeful stride.
She’s both excited by this and a little frightened. The gulls are swooping above her, crying. She can smell the diesel stench of boat engines. By the time she passes the fat yellow advertising column at the corner of the Rozenstraat, she quits trying to cover her backward glances. Halfway across the bridge to the Westermarkt, she stops as a canal boat putters beneath and leans her bike against the stonework. The boy hesitates for an instant. But then he walks toward her.
“You’re following me,” she accuses him blankly.
“Could be,” he answers.
“Why?” She feels his eyes penetrating her bravado.
“Why do you think?”
“I’m sure I haven’t the slightest,” Anne insists.
“No?” A smile bends his lip. “I saw you coming out of the movie house. Do you like it when soldiers whistle at you?”
She feels a sudden heat. “It wasn’t me they were whistling at.”
“Oh. You mean it was your friend with the big boobies.”
Anne’s jaw clenches.
“Well, I like you better,” the boy tells her.
“Oh, do you? That’s such an honor.” She frowns. Though, honestly, she’s surprised at the bright sting of joy she feels.
“I like your face. I like watching you look at things.”
“Things?”
“Things.” He shrugs. “I liked the way you looked at me. But I wasn’t sure.”
“Sure of what?”
The boy gazes at her.
“Sure of what?”
Another shrug. “You’re the owner’s daughter. I’m just a broom boy. A piece of canal trash.”
Anne stares back at him. “You’re a gentile,” she says, “and I’m Jewish.” She says this and waits for his response. Waits to judge his response. But all he gives her is a lazy exhale. “That doesn’t mean something to you?” she must demand.
“Well. My pap always said Jews are bloodsuckers. But my pap hated everybody. Me? I don’t care if you’re from the moon. I just want to touch your face.”
Anne breathes in and then breathes out. The boy is so close to her. The maleness of him. She feels tension in the simple proximity of their bodies. She can smell his bitter sweat. Is it guilt that stings her? Margot is never going to stand so close to a rough-edged boy like this, with nothing but a heartbeat between them. Anne feels her attraction as if it’s a type of pain.
“That’s all you want?” she asks. “Just to touch my face?”
The boy’s expression bends as he turns his head, unsure if he is being baited. She can see the hurt in his eyes. The uncertainty.
“Well, then,” Anne prompts. “I’m standing here.”
And now the boy straightens. His posture perks up, but his eyes are still hunted. “You mean . . . now?”
The carillon of the Westertoren chimes the quarter hour. The boy glances around, but the bustling Dutch citizenry are more interested in their own business than in how close together the two of them are standing. So he takes another step forward. She watches his hand rise and notices the dirt under his fingernails, but then she looks into his face as, ever so gingerly, his fingertips brush the skin of her cheek. It’s just a whisper of a touch, but she feels it root her to the spot. For an instant the pain in his eyes has lifted. She swallows.
“Can I do it again?” he asks, but doesn’t really wait for an answer. His fingers rise, and he strokes her cheek with a sudden intimacy that causes her heart to clench. Her lips part and her body moves, and in the next instance she seizes him, smothers her mouth against his. It is not a kiss, it’s an attack. She wants to devour him at a single gulp. She snatches his hair as if she might rip it out. She wants to inhale him. She wants so much more than Peter’s wet mouth could ever have offered her in the attic of the Achterhuis. She wants the boy’s breath. She wants his blood. And when she bites his lip, she tastes it.
He yelps painfully as he breaks away from her. His eyes blinking with shock, he wipes his lips and glares at the stain of blood and lipstick on his fingers without comprehension. Anne gives him a wild gaze, her eyes flooding with tears, as she mounts her bicycle and launches her frantic escape.
Prinsengracht 263
Offices of Opekta and Pectacon
Amsterdam-Centrum
When she reaches the doors of her father’s building, she is out of breath, still wiping away the tears as she rolls her bicycle into the warehouse. The air is thick with coriander, and a powdery haze hangs in the heavy sunlight. The men ignore her, too busy to bother with hellos, which is a relief. She climbs the steep stairs slowly and then pauses outside the office door, trying to compose herself. Wipes the lipstick onto a handkerchief, trying to compose a face to wear. She was once well known among her friends for her expressions of careless insouciance. But now her heart is a deep drumbeat in her chest, and she feels a terrible thrum of rage and hunger. She breathes in, she breathes out, her eyes shut tight, trying to suppress the painful surge of desire that she tastes in her mouth like the tang of the boy’s blood.