Page 15 of The Expat Affair

I spend the rest of Wednesday tiptoeing around the apartment and Ingrid. I help her right her room, stuffing her duvet into a freshly washed cover and offering to fold her laundry. I wipe dark smudges of fingerprint dust from her doorknob, her wardrobe, her chest of drawers, and her walls. I suggest we order the sushi neither of us had the stomach for the night before, my treat.

For Ingrid, it’s the last straw. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?”

She sighs, stuffing her arms into her coat, and her makeup can’t disguise the shadows under her eyes. Neither one of us got much sleep last night.

“Like this is somehow your fault, because it’s not. My hiding spots weren’t all that original. The thief didn’t have to look that hard.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No, . I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for not putting my money in the bank like a normal person, so please. Stop thinking this is on you.”

It is on me, though, and we both know it. The thief came here for me, for the necklace he thought I had stashed somewhere in the house. Ingrid’s cash was simply a consolation prize, and in the end, it wasn’t all that much. Less than a thousand euros—or so she said. Because now I’m wondering if she didn’t lowball that number because she didn’t want to admit to the detective where she got it, or that she wasn’t planning to include it on her tax forms. There’s a lot of black cash floating around in the antiques business, apparently.

Ingrid heads out, leaving me to spend the evening alone with my regrets . . . and my worries. I worry about the reporters downstairs, clogging the sidewalk in front of my door. I worry about whoever broke in here, and when, not if, they’re coming back. I worry about taking my chances out in the streets, if there’s a man in a ball cap waiting for his chance to drag me into a dark alleyway. I’m like my mother that way, my head rowdy with worry.

I decide to distract myself with work, with developing the pitch that’s been beating around my brain since walking in on Xander’s dead body—When Disaster Strikes Abroad. With my experience, an easy sell, at least.

I’m fetching my notebook from my bag when I find it, the envelope Ingrid plucked from the steps yesterday on our way upstairs. After the break-in, I’d forgotten all about it. I tug it from my bag and study the front. My name is slashed across the page in neat but unfamiliar handwriting. No address, no stamp. A hand delivery, then. I poke a finger under the seal and pry it open.

It’s a note, written on a sheet of paper that’s been hastily folded in thirds.

If I can find you this easily then so can he, and he wants that necklace. I hope for your sake that you have it. Either way, watch your back. You’re not safe.

Adrenaline shoots through me, my heart thudding so hard I can practically see it through the wool of my sweater. I flip the paper over, check the back. Blank.

The apartment spins, and I can’t stay here. At the scene of the crime, trapped in an apartment at the tippy-top of a four-story building where a narrow stairwell is the only way in or out. Alone, jumping out of my skin at every footstep and door slam coming from the floors underneath me, staring at my own front doorknob and waiting for it to turn. When Detective Boomsma said he’d put us on the watch list and send a patrol car by every hour to keep an eye on things, I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. If all the security at Xander’s building couldn’t stop a diamond thief with a pocket full of zip ties, why would a scheduled drive-by?

I can’t stay. I can’t stay. I can’t stay.

I grab my keys and my coat and take off down the stairs.

By now, it’s past ten, and the reporters are gone, wandered off to their families and homes. I skirt up a mostly empty street in the direction of the city center, trailing a pack of noisy partygoers to a crowded bar on the edge of the museum quarter. I find a seat near the door and keep a careful watch on the crowd, searching their faces, taking note of their clothes and their hair and their height, filing the details away in case I see any of them again—either in a lineup or trailing me around town. When the partygoers pay their tab and move on to the next place, so do I.

We end up in a dingy basement club in De Pijp, a neighborhood on the southeast side of the city. It’s as good a place as any to pass a few hours, and the music isn’t bad, either. The DJ, a pimply-faced kid who’s barely tall enough to see over the edges of the raised booth on the far wall, spins old-school EDM I’m guessing he picked up from his parents, classics from Armin and Ti?sto and Hardwell. I stand in the center of the crowd, sipping cheap vodka from a plastic cup and swaying to the beat like I’m not old enough to be his mom, like I’m not old enough to have mothered half the kids in this place. The club is hot and the floor is sticky, but the booze and the lack of men in ball caps is helping me not care.

A guy dances up to me, a cup of amber liquid clutched in a fist. He’s tall, thin, nondescript in a plain T-shirt and jeans. His body moves with the music, but he sticks close to mine, so close his arms brush my hair. I meet his gaze, and his expression doesn’t change. Heavy lids, blissful smile, the sappy kind that comes from narcotics. I don’t think he wants anything from me but a dance, but after the break-in, I’m not taking any chances. I duck under his arm and move away, chasing a gust of cooler air to an empty space at the bar.

A bartender stands at the far end, a rail-thin woman in a tube top working the beer tap. Dozens of people vie for her attention, waving euro bills like colorful flags in the space over the bar. This is going to take forever.

A stream of Dutch comes from my right, a man with smiling eyes and Jason Momoa hair. Like the rest of the people in this place, he’s young, somewhere in his midtwenties, I’m guessing.

I point to the speaker above my head, blasting music that thrums deep inside my bones like a jet engine, and shake my head. “I didn’t catch a single word of that.”

He leans in and shouts in my ear. “I said, good luck getting a drink. I’ve been waving this twenty around for the past ten minutes.”

He slaps it to the bar and pushes up on both hands, raising himself up above the crowd. “Yo,”

he yells in her direction, along with more Dutch words I don’t understand. The woman catches his eye and rolls hers.

“You’re American,”

he says, landing back on his feet.

Americans abroad learn pretty quickly their nationality isn’t always a good thing in the eyes of the rest of the world. Americans are loud, they’re rude and demanding, they wear running shoes and baggy jeans and don’t bother to learn the customs or languages of their host country. But this guy doesn’t say it like it’s an insult, so I nod.

“Cool,”

he says. “Where from?”

“A teeny tiny town called St. Francisville, Louisiana. Blink and you’ll miss it.”

“What brings you to Amsterdam?”

I chew on a corner of my lip, lolling in the heaviness of a vodka buzz, considering how much to tell him. That home is a place with too many triggers—the house Barry and I lovingly restored and the gazebo where he dropped to one knee, the church where we said our vows in front of two hundred of our closest family and friends, only for him to break them in such a horrible, awful way six years later. That town belongs to Barry now.

I lift both hands in a full-body shrug. “It was time for me to move on. Amsterdam seemed as good a place as any to do it.”

“Nice. And how’s that working out for you?”

I wince. “Honestly? So far, it’s been a bit too adventurous for my liking.”

“Uh-oh. Anything I can do to help?”

I look down at the plastic cup in my hand, empty but for the lone lime slice stuck to the side. “I suppose a drink anytime soon is out of the question.”

“Not unless you want to go back there and pour it yourself.”

He glances down the length of the bar, to the bartender with her back turned, her shoulder blades sharp enough to slice the fabric of her top as she punches in something on the register. “There’s another place across the street, though. A bar, not a club. It’ll be a lot less crowded and loud.”

I stare up at this man, taking in all that hair, all those beaded necklaces and chains. I should thank him for the offer and drag my ass home, but the truth is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to go back to my tiny bedroom with its sad, single bed. I want to be out. I want to forget. I want to flirt with a handsome man I have no plans of ever seeing again.

And this guy has one big plus in his corner: he is the exact opposite of the men I’ve chosen in the past. Barry with his blazers and chinos, Xander with his fancy watch and designer-decorated apartment. This man in his faded jeans and tangle of beads and chains, all that fabulous hair . . . he’s absolutely nothing like them.

I stick out a hand. “.”

“Nice to meet you, . I’m Lars.”

“Take me across the street, Lars, but don’t give me any more vodka. Vodka is the last thing I need.”

“What do you need?”

Suddenly, I’m thinking about the burger bar up the street, the french fry place around the corner that’s open until three.

“I need food,”

I say. “The greasy, carby kind.”

He plucks the empty cup from my fingers, tosses it to the bar, and wraps his fingers around mine, tugging me toward the stairs. “I know just the place.”

“Just the place”

is Sevil Ali Baba, a late-night Turkish grill room on the next block. A long, brightly lit space lined with booths on one side and a kitchen that runs the entire length of the other, a mix of griddles and deep fryers and giant spits stacked with slices of gleaming meat, chicken and lamb and pork. My mouth waters at the smell.

A man in an apron and an enormous knife looks up when we come inside, his face splitting into a wide grin. He says something to Lars in a language I don’t recognize, then points us to a booth at the back.

“Best shawarma in all of Amsterdam,”

Lars says, sinking onto the bench across from me. “That guy up there is my cousin.”

“So you’re biased.”

He frowns, and I clarify. “Inclined to believe your cousin when he says his shawarma is the best.”

“Oh, I believe him, because it’s not just him. It’s Yelp and Tripadvisor, too. Voted the best in the city, four years in a row.”

He calls out something to his cousin—our order, I’m guessing, because two seconds later, he appears with two bottles of Coke. “This is ,”

Lars tells him in English. “She’s a shawarma virgin.”

The cousin’s eyes go wide, and he tells me that late-night shawarmas are an institution in Holland, a well-loved stop on the way home from the bars, much like Waffle House is back home. The Dutch version of a hangover helper, the holy, booze-sopping grail: meat and salt and carbs.

“Prepare to be amazed,”

the cousin says, then heads back to the meat station.

“So you speak Dutch, English, and . . . Turkish?”

I say, ticking the languages off on my fingers, feeling almost embarrassed that I know only one.

Lars nods. “My father lives in Bursa, a city on the Asian side.”

“And your mother?”

“Dutch, born and bred. They met when she was vacationing in Turkey. The love of her life, or so she says, even though their relationship crashed and burned pretty quickly. He couldn’t stand it here in Holland, apparently. Too cold. Too wet. I barely remember him.”

“That’s so sad. You don’t see your father at all?”

Lars shakes his head. “Not really. My mom used to send me there on holiday a couple times a year, but the older I got, the more I pushed back. My friends are all here, and the cultural divide is so big. My dad doesn’t understand my life here, and I can’t fathom his. We have very little in common.”

“And what about your mom? Did she ever consider moving to Turkey?”

He laughs, a warm, rich sound that makes me smile. “That would’ve been an even worse disaster. My mother is as Dutch as they come, which means she’s fiercely independent and says whatever is going through her head, which is a lot, and it’s far too progressive to survive in a country like Turkey. Also, she’s like me. An artist, except she specializes in nudes. In Turkey, her work would get her arrested.”

There’s so much to absorb here. That Lars is the product of a relationship that was destined for doom. That the way he talks about his mother, with affection and obvious pride, makes me like him a little more. That he’s an artist, that he inherited his mother’s creativity.

Never, not in a million trillion years, would the old be sitting in a greasy diner in the middle of the night, sharing shawarmas with a random Dutch artist she met in a bar. She would have been concerned about the optics of being seen at this hour with a man who was not her husband, or what in the world the two of them would have to talk about, or the likelihood of getting mugged in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood at going on 2:00 a.m.

But 2.0 gives zero shits for optics, and she wants to stay. Mostly because 2.0 is ravenous.

The food arrives, two giant mounds of steaming sliced lamb wrapped in warm pita bread, a mountain of french fries, and little plastic bowls filled with what looks like mayonnaise and ketchup. Lars grabs a squirt bottle from the holder on the table and douses his meat, then does the same with mine.

“The moment of truth,”

he says with a grin.

I pick up my sandwich and take a bite, grinning when it tastes as good as it smells. I don’t know if this is the best shawarma in Amsterdam, I just know that this one is damn good.

“Delicious,”

I say, and Lars and his cousin give a little cheer. I put the sandwich down, exchanging it for a couple of fries I dip in the bowl of mayonnaise. “So what kind of artist are you?”

Lars hikes up on a hip, pulling his cellphone from a pocket. He scrolls through the pictures, colorful drawings of people dressed in bright colors. Finally, he stops on one and flips his phone around. Three kids in orange shirts and green pants, their heads tilted together, arms slung around each other and a pink and blue LOVE sign. The background is a sea of yellow and purple flowers.

I lean in closer and zoom in on their faces, smooth swipes of dusty blue with no depth to depict the features, but the hair is like his, long and dark. I don’t miss that Lars has drawn the most beautiful family, even though he grew up without one.

“This is fantastic,”

I say, handing him back his phone. “You’re very talented.”

“You really think so?”

“I do. I really think so.”

He grins, a childlike smile that matches his impish eyes, so brown they’re almost black. He slides the phone back into his pocket. “What do you do?”

I feel myself deflate a little at his question. “Oh, nothing nearly as interesting. I’m a travel writer. Destination itineraries, insider guides, adventures and getaways. “Twenty-Four Hours in Prague”

or “Walking the Camino del Norte.”

Things like that.”

“Have you?”

“Walked the Camino del Norte?”

I shake my head. “No, but by the time I finished that article, I felt like I had. I’m pretty sure I had phantom blisters.”

“You don’t have to actually travel to the places you write about?”

Automatically, my brain flits to the detective, his warning words ringing through my head like a scream. Let me know if you plan to leave town. I think of the article I was working on in my tiny, beige room before what happened with Xander grounded me. “Top Tips for Tipping Around the World.”

Now the words assault me with their stupidity.

“Normally I do, at least, I’m supposed to. But the magazine gave me less than a week to write that Camino article when it takes five to walk the trail. They also gave me zero travel budget and basically asked me to write it for free, so any inaccuracies are their own damn fault.”

These are common issues I run up against. Most companies need the story yesterday, and they’d rather pay in comped hotel rooms than actual cash. The ones that do pay, pay for shit. I have to fight for every euro, and even then, it’s barely enough to get by. I don’t know how writers do it. For me, this is not a long-term career.

Lars plucks a couple of napkins from the holder and wipes sauce from his hands. “Every artist’s struggle. You’ve got to demand your own worth. Don’t be giving away your art for free.”

“Easy for you to say. How much do your pieces go for?”

“The one I just showed you? That one’s a gift, but normally somewhere around €2000.”

My eyes bulge at the number. “If I get offered a quarter of that, the magazine acts like they own me. The problem is there are so many of us out there, all fighting for the same collaborations and campaigns, which means we’re all desperate enough to work for peanuts. The magazines have us by the balls and they know it.”

“No offense, but it doesn’t sound like you like your job very much.”

I nibble on a fry, taking the time to think. “I guess I just thought it would be different, you know? That travel writing would be an easy way of going to all these exotic, faraway places, to really spend time there and experience how it feels to live in that place, even if only for a week or two. I thought it meant fun and adventure and me figuring my shit out. My sister calls it my Eat, Pray, Love era—not that I have those kinds of funds or am particularly interested in promoting some quasi-spiritual soul-searching manifesto to a bunch of white women in the same sorry, sad boat as I am, but I would like to experience those things for me. To get some sense of what my future could look like, so I can let go of the past.”

It’s the first time I’ve verbalized these thoughts out loud to anyone, let alone myself, and it’s kind of a revelation. I don’t want to write that article about tipping or the ten cheapest European cities. I don’t want to submit another pitch only to get rejected, don’t want to slave over another five thousand words only for them to end up as digital dust. I want to get paid for my work, but even more so, I want to write something I care about. Something people want to actually read.

Lars picks up his sandwich, shaking off a drizzle of sauce. “So write about that. Well, maybe not the quasi-spiritual manifesto stuff, but the part about leaving behind the past to find your future was good. I’d read a story about that.”

He says it so sincerely, as if it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to just . . . put myself out there like that, especially when I’m nowhere near done working it out in my own head. I left St. Francisville . . . not on a whim, not exactly, but the move wasn’t all that well thought out, either. More like, screw it, I’m out. A last-ditch Hail Mary to remove myself from a place I could no longer stay. Get up and go. See where life takes you. That was the plan.

My Year of Adventure, hijacked by tragedy and terror. I think about Xander, the break-in, the tracker. I think about the hope I felt that night on Xander’s terrace, the excited tingle that anything was possible, and I want that feeling back. I just . . . I want it back.

The door bursts open, blowing in a swarm of college kids on an icy wind. They’re loud and obviously drunk, but the sight of them is like a warning shot of adrenaline direct to the vein. One of them, a man in a beanie and a shearling coat is a good deal older than the rest, and something about him prickles the hairs on the back of my neck. I’ve seen this guy somewhere. In the club, maybe? Instantly, I’m sober.

“What’s wrong?”

Lars says. “Did you lose something?”

I slide my bag onto my lap and rummage through it, one eye on the man as he taps his card to the register. “That guy up there, the one in the beanie. I’m pretty sure he’s following me.”

My fingers don’t make contact with anything foreign, no smooth, round objects along the bottom of my bag. I unzip the inside pocket and shove my hand inside. Nothing in the outside pocket, either.

Lars leans into the table, lowering his voice, casting glances at the guy in the beanie. “Why would he be following you?”

I make a sound in my throat, not a laugh, exactly, but also not an answer.

The man looks over. Our eyes meet, and his are surprisingly sharp, surprisingly alert. His gaze slides quickly away, but it’s too late. I’ve already seen it. This man is not drunk like the rest of his group. He’s not here by accident. And I’ve definitely seen him before, but at the time, he wasn’t wearing a beanie. He was wearing a ball cap. It’s the man from the number twelve tram, the one who smiled at me through the window.

I scoot to the end of the booth. “Thanks for the shawarma, Lars, but I gotta go.”

“Then let’s go.”

Lars pulls a wrinkled twenty from his wallet and tosses it on the table, and I’m not opposed to him escorting me out of here. The man in the beanie is no longer pretending not to watch me. He’s planted himself between me and the front door.

Lars tugs me the other way, leading me out a back door and into a dim alley that reeks of garbage. Trash rolls by on an icy wind, empty Coke bottles tangled with cigarette butts and hamburger wrappers. I have no idea where I am, and I’m too panicked to think straight. When Lars takes a sharp left, I don’t hesitate; I follow.

The alley dumps us out on a cross street lit up with late-night snack bars and traffic, bikers headed home from the bars in thick coats and wool hats pulled down over their ears. I watch a cluster of them pedal past, trying to catch a glimpse of their faces, but they’re bundled up and flying by too fast. And there are beanies everywhere.

“Which way is the Rijks?”

I ask, the museum an important landmark around the corner from my apartment. Once I spot its twin pointy steeples, I’ll know the way home—not the safest spot, admittedly, but the only one I’ve got. Hopefully by now, Ingrid will be home, and I won’t have to stay there alone.

“Too far to walk.”

He shoves a hand in his pocket, and two quick beeps sound from a silver Vespa parked at the corner. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride.”

I think of finding my way through streets that are quickly emptying of people, all the deserted sidewalks and dark corners between here and home where beanie man could snatch me off the street and throw me into a van, and my skin goes tight with fear. He’s found me twice now. Clearly, he’s skilled at this.

“Fine, but for the record, you’re not invited inside.”

I clamber on to the back of his bike, winding my arms around Lars’s torso. “My last one-night stand didn’t end on the best note.”