What’s it to you, you ugly old plague? That’s what she would like to reply, but instead she says, “Yes, Mr. Lueders. I am indeed going out. Just for a ride.”
Lueders nods mournfully, his expression slumping into a frown. Since the advent of Mrs. Zuckert, this particular hireling has been happy to become her personal dog. Chasing after this stick and that one, with a tip of the cap. Sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Paying far too much heed to Anne’s comings and goings. “Be careful, now,” he adds as she mounts her bike and shoves off with a hard press on the pedal. “The town’s still not what it used to be. Lots of rascals on the prowl.”
The Skinny Bridge
Brugnummer 242
Amsterdam-Centrum
Her bicycle may look like a battered old piece of salvage, but even with its clacking gears and patched tires, Anne bustles over the cobblestones and whizzes past greasy old lorries to a narrow whitewood drawbridge off the Kerkstraat. This is the Magere Brug, cinching a narrow stripe of the muddy Amstel, but nobody ever calls it anything except the Skinny Bridge. Still half mounted on the bike, she’s propped herself against the railing and has just lit a cigarette when she spots Raaf ambling toward her.
“You’re late,” she tells him.
“Late?”
“We agreed on half past.”
“No we didn’t. We didn’t agree on anything. You just like to give orders.”
“That’s true,” she admits. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not late. You must get a bicycle,” she decides.
“Oh, yeah?” Raaf lets his eyebrows lift. “And how do I get one of those, huh? Are the Canadians giving away bikes along with chocolate bars?”
Anne chirps back, “I’ll get you one.”
And now Raaf’s face contracts. She is getting used to this. His genial, thoughtful expression, crimping when she’s embarrassed him about something. His clothes. His ridiculous haircut. The snort at the end of his laugh. She never intends to embarrass him, of course—it simply seems to happen.
“Females don’t buy stuff for men.”
“No? Is that how it works?” She’s teasing him, slightly maybe, but also interested to know if this is true.
“At least not bicycles. Men earn their own money.”
“Well, I wasn’t talking about buying anything anyway,” Anne explains. “I can pretend mine’s been stolen, so my father’ll get me another one.”
“I don’t need my own,” Raaf says. “We can share yours.”
“Oh, and how do we do that?”
“Here, give it over,” he tells her, and she allows him to take her bicycle in his hands. “Now climb on in front of me,” he says, offering his hand.
She feels herself grin.
Climbing on in front of him with only the smallest perch on the tip of the seat, feeling his arms stretched around her, his hands clamped onto the bike’s handles, feeling the force of motion as he pedals harder, driving up the speed, it’s all just so scary and delicious. The wild, unpredictable jolt of the bumpy cobbles, her arms stretched behind her, gripping his waist as her only anchor, on the edge of tumbling off. The thrill of it streaks through her like lightning.
“Stop! Stop!” she cries with eager laughter as they bump down the street.
At first he pretends to be deaf, still pedaling hard. “What? Can’t hear you!”
“No. Stop up there at the corner,” she commands. “There’s something I want to do!” This time the boy obeys, skidding to a squeaking halt, at which point Anne twists about and seizes him for a kiss as if she is set on vacuuming the breath from his lungs. And oh, what a terror of desire she feels bubbling up in her. What a swallowing hunger she feels, the starving girl sharing her bicycle with too much boy. She glares into his face, her eyes vibrating. Drilling into his gaze with all the sharpness that is in her.
• • •
They sit in a grassy spot adjacent to the canal, filled with pale Amsterdammers eager to soak up a bit of sunlight. Cyclists glide past. Anne rests her head against his shoulder, smelling his sweat that’s tinged with the aroma of boiled hops. She breathes him in and watches a squirrel scramble crazily across the grass. “Have you been with many girls?” she wonders. “Like this?”
“You got a lot of questions,” he points out, but he still answers. “Many girls? I don’t guess many.”
“You know I’m still a virgin,” she says.
A small shrug. “Yeah, I figured.”
Anne stiffens. “You figured, did you? How exactly did you figure? Am I wearing it stamped on my forehead?”
This makes him grin at the ground. “Nah. It’s just the way you act.”
Anne lifts her head and blinks. “I act like a virgin?”
“Don’t get offended,” he tells her.
“I’m not offended. I’m just very curious. Just what . . . just how do I act like a virgin?”
“Well, like this,” Raaf says, his grin crooked. “You get all fidgety.”
“I get all fidgety,” Anne repeats with a frown.
And now Raaf frowns, too. “I know I’m not saying it right. I just figured it out, is all. Don’t get so ruffled. It don’t bother me.”
“No?” Anne says tensely. But she must admit to a small flare of relief in her heart.
“No, Anne,” he tells her.
And at the sound of her name on his lips, she seizes him with a kiss. Diving deeply as he combs his fingers through the thickness of her hair and clutches the back of her neck, she gripping him tightly until a scold from a passing policeman on his bicycle separates them. “Hey, boy! Let’s see some daylight between you two!”
Their lips part. “See now, you got me in trouble with the law.” Raaf half grins.
She leans her forehead against his chin and breathes in the intimacy. “Of course. Blame the virgin.”
Raaf picks up a stick, breaking it in two before tossing the pieces aside. Anne lolls her head against his shoulder and absently measures the size of her hand against his just for the sake of touch. That’s when she notices that his finger is bent. The third finger on his left hand. Well, not bent, really, not like a bent nail, but definitely crooked. Why has it taken her so long to notice? “What happened to your finger?” she asks, and he snatches his hand away. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t I ask?”
Raaf flexes his hand in and out of a fist, as if he’s trying to muscle out a cramp. At first he says nothing, but then he tells her, “It was my pap.”
Anne blinks. “Your father bent your finger?”
Raaf shrugs. Picks up another twig from the grass to snap. “He was always kind of a canker, my pap,” he says. “Always looking for a fight with somebody. But after Mam died, he got even worse. He did this,” the boy says, flexing his hand again, “’cause I waved to a neighbor he didn’t like.”
Anne goes silent. She has learned about violence and plenty of it. She is not shocked by it, as she once was as a child, but it still saddens her.
“Pretty loopy, right?” Raaf grins painfully. “He’s gone now. Dead. Got drunk and fell down the stairs last winter. Snapped his neck,” says Raaf, snapping the twig absently.
“I’m sorry,” Anne says, and means it. She’s sorry because she can recognize the pain in the boy’s face. The boy gives a glance at nothing and a shrug. “Did he beat you often?”