AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How do you know so much about everything?”
He laughs. “I’m Dutch.”
“So that means you’re a genius?”
“Only about canals. They say ‘God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland.’” And then he goes on to tell me about how so much of the country was reclaimed from the sea, about riding your bike along the low embankments that keep the water out of Holland. How it’s an act of faith to ride your bike around, with the dikes above you, knowing somehow, even though you’re below sea level, you’re not under water. When he talks about it, he seems so young that I can almost see him as a towheaded little kid, eyes wide, staring out at the endless waterways and wondering where they all led to.
“Maybe we can go on one of those boats?” I ask, pointing to the barge we just watched go through the lock.
Willem’s eyes light up, and for a second, I see that boy again. “I don’t know.” He looks inside the guidebook. “It doesn’t really cover this neighborhood.”
“Can we ask?”
Willem asks someone in French and is given a very complicated answer full of hand gestures. He turns to me, clearly excited. “You’re right. He says that they have boat rides leaving from the basin.”
We go along the cobblestoned walkway until it lets out in a large lake, where people are paddling in canoes. Off to one side, next to a cement pier, a couple of boats are moored. But when we get over there, we find out that they’re private boats. The tourist boats have left for the day.
“We can take a boat along the Seine,” Willem says. “It’s much more popular, and the boats run all day.” His eyes are downcast. I can see he’s disappointed, as if he let me down.
“Oh, no big deal. I don’t care.”
But he’s staring wistfully out at the water, and I see that he cares. And I know I don’t know him, but I swear the boy is homesick. For boats and canals and watery things. And for a second, I think of what it must be like—away from home for two years, and here he postponed his return for another day. He did that. For me.
There’s a row of boats and barges tied up, bobbing in the breeze that’s kicked up. I look at Willem; a melancholy expression is deepening the lines on his face. I look back at the boats.
“Actually, I do care,” I say. I reach into my bag for my wallet, for the hundred-dollar bill folded inside. I hold it up in the air and call out, “I’m looking for a ride down the canals. And I can pay.”
Willem’s head jerks toward me. “Lulu, what are you doing?”
But I’m walking away from him. “Anyone willing to give us a lift down the canals?” I call. “I got good old-fashioned American greenbacks.”
A pock-faced guy with sharp features and a scrubby goatee pops onto the side of a blue-canopied barge. “How many greenbacks?” he asks in a very thick French accent.
“All of them!”
He takes the C-note and stares at it up close. Then he smells it.
It must smell legit, because he says, “If my passengers agree, I will take you down the canal to Arsenal, close to Bastille. It is where we dock for the night.” He gestures to the back of the boat where a quartet of gray-haired people are sitting around a small table, playing bridge or something. He calls out to one of them.
“Aye, Captain Jack,” the man answers. He must be sixty. His hair is white, and his face is burnished red from the sun.
“We have some hitchhikers who want to come aboard with us.”
“Can they play poker?” one of the women asks.
I used to play seven-card stud for nickels with my grandfather before he died. He said I was an excellent bluffer.
“Do not bother. She gave all her money to me,” Captain Jack says.
“How much is he charging you?” one of the men asks.
“I offered him a hundred dollars,” I say.
“To go where?”
“Down the canals.”
“This is why we call him Captain Jack,” one of the men says. “Because he’s a pirate.”
