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I bite my lip to hide my smile and pretend to put the phone away, but when Captain Jack calls to Willem to take the wheel while he visits the head, I pull it back out and scroll through the photos, stopping at the one of the two of us that Agnethe took. I’m in profile, my mouth open. He’s laughing. Always laughing. I run my thumb over his face, halfway expecting it to emanate some sort of heat.
I put the phone away and watch Paris drift by, feeling relaxed, almost drunk with a sleepy joy. After a while, Willem returns to me. We sit quietly, listening to the lapping of the water, the babble of the Danes. Willem pulls a coin out and does that thing, flipping it from knuckle to knuckle. I watch, hypnotized by his hand, by the gentle rocking of the water. It’s peaceful until the Danes start bickering, loudly. Willem translates: Apparently they’re hotly debating whether some famous French actress has ever made a p**n ographic film.
“You speak Danish too?” I ask.
“No, it’s just close to Dutch.”
“How many languages do you speak?”
“Fluently?”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry I asked.”
“Four fluently. I get by in German and Spanish too.”
I shake my head, amazed.
“Yes, but you said you speak Chinese.”
“I wouldn’t say I speak it so much as murder it. I’m kind of tone deaf, and Mandarin is all about tone.”
“Let me hear.”
I look at him. “Ni zhen shuai.”
“Say something else.”
“Wo xiang wen ni.”
“Now I hear it.” He covers his head. “Stop. I’m bleeding from my ears.”
“Shut up or you will be.” I pretend to shove him.
“What did you say?” he asks.
I give him a look. No way I’m telling.
“You just made it up.”
I shrug. “You’ll never know.”
“What does it mean?”
I grin. “You’ll have to look it up.”
“Can you write it too?” He pulls out his little black book and opens to a blank page near the back. He rifles back into his bag. “Do you have a pen?”
I have one of those fancy roller balls I swiped from my dad, this one emblazoned BREATHE EASY WITH PULMOCLEAR. I write the character for sun, moon, stars. Willem nods admiringly.
“And look, I love this one. It’s double happiness.”
“See how the characters are symmetrical?”
“Double happiness,” Willem repeats, tracing the lines with his index finger.
“It’s a popular phrase. You’ll see it on restaurants and things. I think it has to do with luck. In China, it’s apparently big at weddings. Probably because of the story of its origin.”
“Which is?”
