The vendors look at her with mild amusement, as if this type of thing happens at least twice a week. Then a big bearded guy wearing suspenders over his butte of a belly comes over with some wilting lavender. “She can have these too.”
“Here, Wren.” I throw the fragrant purple blooms her way.
“Thanks,” I say to the guy. Then I explain to him about Wren and her bucket list and the big fields of tulips being out of season so we had to settle for this.
He looks at Wren, who’s attempting to extract the petals and leaves from her sweater. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card. “Tulips in August is not so easy. But if you and your friend don’t mind to wake up early, I can maybe get you a small field of them.”
The next morning, Wren and I set our alarm for four, and fifteen minutes later, go downstairs to the deserted street to find Wolfgang waiting with his mini truck. Every warning I’ve ever had from my parents about not getting into cars with strangers comes to me, but I realize, as improbable as it is, Wolfgang isn’t a stranger. We all three squeeze into the front seat as we trundle toward a greenhouse in Aalsmeer. Wren is practically bouncing with excitement, which seems unnatural for four fifteen in the morning, and she hasn’t even had any coffee yet, though Wolfgang has thoughtfully brought a thermos of it along with some hard-boiled eggs and bread.
We spend the drive listening to cheesy europop and Wolfgang’s tales of spending thirty years in the merchant marines before moving to the Jordaan neighborhood in Amsterdam. “I’m German by birth, but I’ll be an Amsterdammer by death,” he says with a big toothy grin.
By five o’clock, we pull up to Bioflor, which hardly looks like the pictures of Keukenhof Gardens, with its carpets of color, but instead looks like some kind of industrial farm. I look at Wren and shrug. Wolfgang pulls in and stops alongside a football-field-sized greenhouse with a row of solar panels on top. A rosy-faced guy named Jos greets us. And then he unlocks the door, and Wren and I gasp.
There are rows and rows of flowers in every color. Acres of them. We walk down the tiny paths in between the beds, the air thick with humidity and manure until Wolfgang points out a section of tulips in fuchsia, sunburst, and one explosive citrusy combo that looks like a blood orange. I walk away, leaving Wren to her flowers.
She just stands there for a while. Then I hear her call out: “This is incredible. Can you see this?” Wolfgang looks at me but I don’t answer because I don’t think it’s us she’s talking to.
Wren runs around this greenhouse, and another one full of fragrant freesia, and I snap a bunch of pictures. And then Wolfgang has to get back. We belt Abba songs all the way, Wolfgang saying Abba is Esperanto for happiness, and the United Nations should play their songs at general assemblies.
It’s only when we get to a warehouse outside Amsterdam that I notice that the back of Wolfgang’s truck is still empty. “Didn’t you buy flowers for your stall?”
He shakes his head. “Oh, I don’t buy flowers directly from the farms. I buy at auction via wholesalers who deliver here.” He points to where people are loading up their trucks with flowers.
“So you just went all the way out there for us?” I ask.
He gives me a little shrug, like, of course, why else? And at this point, I really have no right to be surprised by people’s capacity for kindness and generosity, but still, I am. I’m floored every time.
“Can we take you out to dinner tonight?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Not tonight. I’m going to see a play in Vondelpark.” He looks at us. “You should come. It’s in English.”
“Why would a play in Holland be in English?” Wren asks.
“That’s the difference between the Germans and the Dutch,” Wolfgang replies. “The Germans translate Shakespeare. The Dutch leave him in English.”
“Shakespeare?” I ask, feeling every hair on my body rise. “Which play?”
And before Wolfgang finishes telling me the title, I just start laughing. Because it’s simply not possible. It’s less possible than finding that one needle in a needle factory. Less possible than finding a lone star in the universe. It’s less possible than finding that one person in all the billions who you might love.
Because tonight, playing in Vondelpark, is As You Like It. And I know with a certainty I cannot explain but that I would stake my life on, that he will be in it.
Thirty-eight
And so, after a year, I find him as I first found him: In a park, in the sultry dusk, speaking the words of William Shakespeare.
Except tonight, after this year, everything is different. This is no Guerrilla Will. This is a real production, with a stage, with seats, with lights, with a crowd. A large crowd. Such that by the time we get there, we are shunted off to a low wall on the edge of the small amphitheater.
And this year, he is no longer in a supporting role. This year, he is a star. He is Orlando, as I knew he would be. He is the first actor to take the stage, and from that moment on, he owns it. He is riveting. Not just to me. To everyone. A hush falls over the crowd as soon as he delivers the first soliloquy and continues for the rest of the performance. The sky darkens, and the moths and mosquitoes dance in the spotlights, and Amsterdam’s Vondelpark is transformed into the Forest of Arden, a magical place where that which was lost can be found.
As I watch him, it’s as though it is only us two. Just Willem and me. Everything else disappears: The sound of bicycle bells and tram chimes disappears. The mosquitoes buzzing around the fountain in the pond disappear. The group of rowdy guys sitting next to us disappears. The other actors disappear. The last year disappears. All my doubts disappear. The feeling of being on the right path fills every part of me. I have found him. Here. As Orlando. Everything has led me to this.
His Orlando is different from the way we played it in class or from the way the actor in Boston played it. His is sexy and vulnerable, the yearning for Rosalind so palpable it becomes physical, a pheromone that wafts off him and drifts through the swirl of floodlights, where it lands on my damp and welcoming skin. I feel my lust, my yearning and, yes, my love, coming off me in pulses, swimming toward the stage, where I imagine them being fed to him, like lines.
He can’t know I’m here. But as crazy as it sounds, I feel like he does. I sense he feels me somewhere in the words he speaks, the same way I felt him when I first spoke them in Professor Glenny’s class.
I remember so many of Rosalind’s lines, of Orlando’s too, that I can mouth them along with the actors. It feels like a private call-and-response chorus between me and Willem.
The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.
Fare you well: pray heaven I be deceived in you!
Then love me, Rosalind.
And wilt thou have me?
Are you not good?
I hope so.
Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her?
For ever and a day.
For ever and a day.
I hold Wren’s hand in one of my hands and Wolfgang’s with the other. We make a chain, us three. Standing there like that until the play is over. Until everyone gets their happy endings: Rosalind marries Orlando, and Celia marries Oliver, who reconciles with Orlando, and Phoebe marries Silvius, and the bad duke is redeemed, and the exiled duke is returned home.
After Rosalind gives her final soliloquy, it’s over, and people are going crazy, just nuts, clapping and whistling, and I’m turning and throwing my arms around Wren and then Wolfgang, pressing my cheek against the broadcloth of his cotton shirt, inhaling the smoky tobacco scent mingled with flower nectar and dirt. And then someone is hugging Wren and me, the rowdy guys from next to us. “That’s my best friend!” one of the guys shouts. He’s got impish blue eyes, and he’s a head shorter than the others, more Hobbit than Dutchman.
“Who?” Wren asks. She’s now being passed around in hugs by the rowdy, and it appears, drunk, Dutch guys.
“Orlando!” the Hobbit answers.
“Oh,” Wren says, her eyes so wide and pale they gleam like pearls. “Oh,” she says to me.
“You wouldn’t be Robert-Jan, by any chance?” I ask.
The Hobbit looks surprised for a second. Then he just grins. “Broodje to my friends.”
“Broodje,” Wolfgang chuckles. He turns to me. “It’s a kind of sandwich.”
“Which Broodje loves to eat,” one of his friends says, patting his belly.
Broodje/Robert-Jan pushes the hand away. “You should come to our party tonight. It’s going to be the party to end all parties. He was fantastic, was he not?”
Wren and I both nod. Broodje/Robert-Jan goes on about how great Willem was and then his friend says something to him in Dutch, something, I think, about Willem.
“What did he say?” I whisper to Wolfgang.
“He said he hasn’t seen him, Orlando, I think, so happy, since, I didn’t hear it all, something about his father.”
Wolfgang takes out a packet of tobacco from a leather pouch and begins to roll a cigarette. Without looking at me, he says in his rumbly voice, “I think the actors come out over there.” He points to the little metal gate on the far side of the stage.
He lights his cigarette. His eyes flash. He points to the gate again.
My body feels like it’s no longer solid matter. It is particle dust. It is pure electricity. It dances me across the theater, toward the side of the stage. There is a crowd of well-wishers awaiting the actors. People holding bouquets of flowers, bottles of champagne. The actress who played Celia comes out to whoops and hugs. Next comes Adam, then Rosalind, who gets a heap of bouquets. My heart starts to thunder. Could I have come this close only to miss him?
But then I hear him. He is, as always, laughing; this time at something the guy who played Jacques said. And then I see his hair, shorter than it was, his eyes, dark and light all at once, his face, a small scar on his cheek, which only makes him more strikingly handsome.
My breath catches in my throat. I’d thought I’d embellished him. But really, if anything, the opposite is true. I’d forgotten how truly beautiful he is. How intrinsically Willem.
Willem. His name forms in my throat.
“Willem!” His name rings out loud and clear.
But it’s not my voice that said it.
I touch my fingers to my throat to be sure.
“Willem!”
I hear the voice again. And then I see the blur of movement. A young woman races out from the crowd. The flowers she is carrying drop to the ground as she hurls herself into his arms. And he takes her in. He lifts her off the ground, holds her tight. His arms clutch into her auburn hair, laughing at whatever it is she’s whispering into his ear. They spin around, a tangle of happiness. Of love.
I stand there rooted, watching this very private public display. Finally, someone comes up to Willem and taps him on the shoulder, and the woman slides to the ground. She picks up the flowers—sunflowers, exactly what I would’ve chosen for him—and dusts them off. Willem slides an easy arm around her and kisses her hand. She snakes her arm around his waist. And I realize then that I wasn’t wrong about the love wafting off him during the performance. I was just wrong about who it was for.
They walk off, so close I can feel the breeze as he passes by. We are so close, but he’s looking at her, so he doesn’t see me at all. They go off, hand in hand, toward a gazebo, away from the fray. I just stand there.
I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder. It’s Wolfgang. He looks at me, tilts his head to the side. “Finished?” he asks.
I look back at Willem and the girl. Maybe this is the French girl. Or someone altogether new. They are sitting facing each other, knees touching, talking, holding hands. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. That’s how it felt when I was with him last year. Maybe if an outsider saw us then, that’s exactly how we would’ve looked. But now I’m the one who’s the outsider. I look at them again. Even from here, I can tell she is someone special to him. Someone he loves.
