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  The rest of Aaron’s ice cream dropped onto my shoe.

  I pressed the off button on my phone, produced the last wipe from my bag, and dabbed at the blob on my shoe. It left an unsightly stain. Only then did it occur to me that I should have saved the wipe for Aaron’s face.

  CHAPTER 11

  RAY

  I’d been weighing the raisins for pains aux raisins. It was a Monday, close to noontime. I was so involved in what I was doing that she made me jump. “May I come in?”

  I knew that voice, though she’d never spoken to me before. Rosita was standing in the opening in the glass wall dividing the kitchen from the shop, with Anna in her stroller.

  I dropped the bag I was holding. Raisins rolled all over the floor.

  “Did I scare you?” She quickly bent down and started picking up the raisins. I got a glimpse of her underwear sticking out of the top of her jeans, a tiny sliver of red.

  “Leave it,” I said quickly, trying to tear my eyes away from that protruding backside and the dizzying slip of fabric. “Not that I’d leave spilled raisins on the floor, of course. We can’t have that, no way. But just leave it and I’ll pick it up later. Once you’re gone. Not that I want you to go, of course. But you’ll want to go home eventually, I should think, and that’s when I’ll clean it all up.” I couldn’t believe how many words had come out of my mouth.

  She stood up again and smiled at me broadly. “Sure, hon.”

  I looked at Anna. She must have been three or four years old. She was staring at me with big, clear eyes. There was a little snot under her nose. “Would she like a treat?”

  “Ask her.”

  I crouched down by the stroller, and it occurred to me that it was the first time I’d spoken to a child since I’d become a grown-up. “Would you like a croissant? Or maybe a nice pain aux amandes, brioche, tartelette . . .”

  She just stared at me.

  “I think she’d like a little bun,” said Rosita. “A soft roll. Do you have any?”

  “The only rolls I’ve got have a crust, they’re called petits pains, that’s the way they’re supposed to be. But tomorrow I’ll bake one especially for her. All right?”

  “In that case I’m sure she’d like a little croissant for now.”

  “A croissant? Would you like that?” I was still on my haunches in front of the stroller and talking in a squeakier voice than normal, the way I’d heard people talking to little children.

  “Croissant,” Anna repeated. She really was a smart little kid.

  I hurried to the rack of croissants I’d just taken out of the oven. One thing I was really good at was making all my croissants come out the exact same size. As if they’d come out of a croissant mold, even though I’d rolled each one by hand. Before the glass wall my boss had even said to me, “Ray, those croissants look too perfect. They’re so perfect, they don’t look as if they were made by hand here on the premises.” But once the glass went up, people could see with their own two eyes how I turned the soft, fluffy dough into perfectly sized croissants, and then my boss didn’t have to complain anymore.

  Even so, I did my best to pick out the best croissant from the tray of identical croissants for Anna, and gave it to her.

  She bit into it right away.

  “Yummy, isn’t it, sweetie?” said Rosita. “And what do you say to our neighbor?”

  “Thank you,” the child said contentedly.

  “I’ve seen you in here before,” said Rosita. “But you never look up from your work. Did you know that people come here from far and wide for your bread?”

  I felt myself get hot in the face.

  “Aren’t you proud?”

  “Yeah?”

  She burst out laughing. “You’re a funny one, but I like you.” She extended her hand. “Rosita.”

  “Uh . . . Ray.”

  “And this is Anna.”

  I wondered if I should shake her kid’s hand, too, but she was busy with her croissant. The floor was covered in crumbs as well as the raisins. But I didn’t care. Not really.

  Rosita started to laugh. I’d never met anyone who laughed as much as she did. It was infectious. I started laughing, too. At first I was just chuckling along a bit, cautiously, more to please her than because I really had to laugh; after all, there wasn’t anything that funny about it, but then it turned into real guffaws. So much so that my boss stuck his head around the corner. “Hey, pipe down in there!”

  That seemed to strike Rosita as funny, too.

  We went on laughing and laughing until Rosita had to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “I have to go, Ray. And next time I wave at you, you have to wave back at me from behind your curtain. Deal?”

  The next day I brought Anna a madeleine. It wasn’t a soft roll, because soft rolls just aren’t part of a French baker’s repertoire, and that’s that. Pierre had a horror of soft rolls. “Tasteless, soggy industrial pap. It’s a crime that people have to eat that junk. C’est abominable!”

  I rang Rosita and Anna’s doorbell. I was scared, but also excited.

  Rosita opened the door. She was wearing sweatpants and a skimpy top that showed the hollow at the base of her neck very clearly. I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. She took my chin in her hand and lifted my face up. “I’m up here.”

  “Uh, yeah.” I held out the madeleine. I’d wrapped it in a napkin, then slipped it into one of the bakery’s paper bags.

  She took it from me. “What is it?”

  “It’s for Anna. It’s a madeleine. It tastes better than a soft roll. At least, that’s what you said yesterday. That she likes soft rolls. Madeleines are soft and sweet. I thought she’d like one.”

  “How very kind of you. Why don’t you give it to her yourself?”

  She pressed the paper bag back into my hands and walked down the hall into the living room. It was the same kind of hallway as mine. Except that mine didn’t have a stroller, and mine had carpeting. She had nothing on the floor. You just walked on the cement. When she got halfway to the living room she turned. “Come on.” There wasn’t any carpeting in the living room, either. Just the rug I’d seen the old man with the long hair and her dragging inside that time. I also recognized the leather sofa set, the wooden table, and the plastic chairs. There was a photo on the wall of Rosita when she was pregnant. She wasn’t wearing any clothes and her belly was enormous. She was covering her boobs with her hands and she’d been photographed from the side so that you couldn’t see her privates. But still, she was completely naked. The photo was wonderful and scary at the same time.

  “Look who’s here! Uncle Ray, our neighbor.”

  I tore my eyes away from Rosita’s naked body and turned to Anna, who was sitting on the couch watching TV. “I am not really your uncle,” I said. But she was completely engrossed in four brightly colored puppets that kept saying “Uh-oh.” Teletubbies, I found out later.

  “Anna? Look here?” asked Rosita.

  I pressed the paper bag into her hands. “For you.”

  She opened it and unrolled the madeleine from the napkin.

  “What do you say?” asked Rosita sternly.

  “Thank you.” The girl bit into the cake without taking her eyes off the TV.

  I watched her little teeth tear off tiny bites of the not-too-sticky, not-too-dry, just-right cake, her eyes still glued to the screen.

  “It’s perfection,” I said. “You won’t get a better pastry anywhere. Not even in France.”

  “Little kids don’t understand that sort of thing,” said Rosita. “And you can’t blame them for it.”

  I had been thinking so much about Rosita that I hadn’t noticed that the social worker with the glasses was standing in my cell, staring at me. It made me feel very uncomfortable.

  “I’ve come to get you for dinner,” he said.

  I stood up and expected him to leave my cell with me. But he just kept standing there.

  “You better hurry up,” he said, still not moving, as if he was planning to stay.
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  I did not want to leave him alone in my cell, but I also did not want to get in any trouble. So I passed him and walked out into the corridor that led to the communal space. I kept looking behind to see if he would follow, but he didn’t.

  “Come sit next to me, little Raynus.” Hank pulled back the chair beside him.

  I looked around uncertainly. Perhaps the woman called Jeannie would come to my rescue, but she didn’t. She was talking with another social worker.

  “What are you waiting for?” Hank was impatiently patting the chair’s plastic seat.

  I couldn’t think of what else to do, so I sat down.

  “So, are they not bothering you too much?”

  “I’ve been mainly staying in my cell.”

  “Your suite,” said Jeannie. She came and sat down on my other side. She smelled of lilies of the valley. I wondered if female attendants were allowed to wear perfume in here. I thought probably not.

  “You just call it whatever you want, boy.” Hank winked. The social worker with the glasses walked into the room and sat across the table. I wished he would not have been in my cell. Even after all those years in prison, I still was not used to the lack of privacy.

  Two carts were wheeled in. I could smell overcooked vegetables and burnt meat.

  “Shit, are we ever going to get some decent chow in here?” someone across the table complained.

  “As if that curry and rice you lot go for is any improvement,” said Eddie. “At least this is honest Dutch grub. Which is what you eat if you live in the Netherlands.”

  “Let’s keep it civilized,” said Jeannie. “It may not be haute cuisine, but there’s no need to argue about it.”

  “What else should we argue about?” Eddie asked loudly. “About the fact that every day when I go to the library I’m told that the Seventeen is out on loan? Again? Who’s hogging it?”

  “Eddie . . .” is all Jeannie said.

  “Yes, my darling?”

  “I realize you may get a bit stroppy once in a while. But remember that if you keep this up, there will be consequences.”

  The food was dished out and passed around.

  “There’s nothing better than a nice piece of beef.” Hank started sawing at his piece of meat. The lightning bolt in his ear quivered along. “Right, Ray?”

  I took a bite of potato. Utterly bland, tasteless. Abominable.

  Hank sent Jeannie a probing look, but she was talking to the guy seated on her other side. Then he turned to me and asked, “Are you expecting any visitors?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Maybe.”

  “Oh. Well, if you do expect a visitor, just let me know, won’t you?”

  “Why?”

  He glanced at Jeannie and began to whisper. “Because there are some things you can’t get in here. Things you do need, if you get my meaning.”

  I cut off a piece of meat and stuck it in my mouth. It didn’t taste that bad.

  “I’ll tell you exactly how to smuggle the stuff you need in here. The stuff to make you feel a little better, if you know what I’m saying. But the advice comes at a price. You understand, don’t you? Tit for tat, right?”

  The vegetables were string beans with the strings still on.

  “Hey, Ray.” Jeannie turned to me. “Is it true you used to be a baker?”

  I glanced around. I preferred that nobody know anything about me. “Yes,” I whispered.

  “So, tell me. I have a bread machine at home. I follow the recipe exactly, but the bread comes out sticky every time.”

  “Are you using yeast?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have to use a bread starter.”

  “Really?” She had pretty eyes, which were gazing at me in a way that was making me hot all over. It had been a long time since I’d had that feeling. What did she want?

  “I can give you the recipe. It’s easy to make yourself.” I was stuttering a bit.

  “Raynus is showing off for the ladies,” Eddie yelled across the table, loud enough for everyone to hear. Guys started laughing.

  “Eddie, this is your last warning,” said Jeannie. “One more violation and you’re spending communal time in your suite for the rest of the week.”

  “Watch out with that one.” Hank leaned forward to whisper in my ear. I wished that he wouldn’t. His teeth were brown, and I preferred to keep that sort of decay at a distance. “She’s the sneakiest one of the lot. But she gets horny as hell working in here. You can tell.”

  CHAPTER 12

  IRIS

  “Excuse me? What did you say?”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about, Mother. Who is Ray Boelens to us?” Aaron was in bed, and Slovenia’s telephone network was finally granting us a connection.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. An indignant pause, giving her the time to formulate the torrent of words that followed. “Jesus, Iris. I thought something serious had happened. I’ve tried calling you dozens of times. Don’t you know I’m on vacation? And to find it’s just some nonsense about some Ray Boelens? Did you really have to bother me for that?”

  “Who is he, then?”

  “That’s completely irrelevant.”

  “Aha! You won’t tell me. That only makes it more interesting.”

  “Iris, stop it. Don’t you have more important things to worry about? Your own son, for instance.”

  I wasn’t going to let her off that easy, even though her comment about Aaron made me seethe. “I can’t tell if it’s important or not, as long as I don’t know why you have been taking care of his aquarium for all these years.”

  “I’m telling you, loud and clear, it’s got nothing to do with you. And if you persist in sticking your nose into my affairs, you’d better just run along home. I’ll ask my neighbor to water the plants and take care of the aquarium.”

  “So—Ray Boelens is your affair, then. In what way?”

  “Save your legal tricks for the courtroom.”

  “What are you getting so mad about?”

  “Nothing,” she said firmly, and just a bit too quickly.

  “Come on. Why can’t you just tell me? Is he your brother?”

  She hung up. Or else the Slovenian operators had decided it was time to end our conversation.

  I tried calling back but got her voice mail. “We weren’t done, Mother dear. Call me back” was the message I left her, knowing she wouldn’t.

  If I had to rate her as a mother, I’d say she had been adequate. Not that good, not that bad, not very human, either. My mother had done everything by the book. The cup of tea when I got home from school, nutritious meals, sensible footwear, the right kind of after-school activities, and a nice sum to furnish my room when I left home for the first time. With a mother like that, I had no right to complain.

  When we were fifteen or so, Binnie’s older brother gave her a joint. She showed it to me in between French and Economics. We used to smoke the occasional cigarette behind the bicycle shed, but we’d never tried a joint before. According to Binnie, her brother smoked practically every day, and it made you mellow.

  I looked at the cone-shaped thing. “Where do you want to smoke it? And when?”

  “After school, in the park,” said Binnie. She made it sound as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  The stuff didn’t have much of an effect on me. We passed the joint back and forth, as we did when we shared a cigarette, sucked at it thoughtfully, and then stared up at the sky, waiting for whatever was supposed to happen. We lay on the grass, each with one of my Walkman ear buds in an ear, listening to Womack & Womack.

  “I feel very relaxed,” said Binnie. “Do you feel anything yet?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did you know smoking a joint can give you the giggles?” She started chortling experimentally.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. This stuff especially, my brother says.”

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nbsp; “That would be fun.”

  Then we started singing along with the music. “Next time I’ll be true. I’ll be true. I’ll be true.”

  I had a slight headache when I got home, and felt sleepy.

  “You’re late.” My mother looked at me with a frown. “Are you feeling okay?”

  I muttered something about homework and was going to disappear into my room, but she stopped me. “Where were you?”

  She sniffed, widening her nostrils. “Iris, have you been doing drugs?”

  I felt myself getting red and knew that there was no point trying to lie.

  She stared at me, a shocked expression on her face. I was expecting a sermon, a tirade and being grounded for at least a week. But instead she said, “You and I are going for a little drive this evening. Go freshen up. You stink.”

  That night we drove into Amsterdam. I hadn’t the faintest idea where she was taking me. A shrink, I guessed, or maybe a mental health clinic. But she drove on into the town center and parked the car along the Prince Hendrik Quay. “Get out.”

  I followed her into the warren of streets and canals of the red-light district, which at the time wasn’t the relatively safe tourist trap it is now. There were pockets where even the police feared to go.

  The sun set as we walked along the illuminated red windows. I had heard of the red-light district, but I’d never been there before. My mother was coolly strolling along as if she were shopping in the supermarket on a Saturday morning. I peeked at the girls in the windows as discreetly as possible, and had to run to keep up with my mother.

  There weren’t many people in the street. Just a man here or there slinking out of a curtained berth and vanishing into the night. Junkies begging for change. Chinese men roaming the streets in long leather coats.

  We turned into an alleyway and stopped in front of a dilapidated house. The windows were nailed shut with wooden boards and the front door’s glass pane was smashed.

  “Here we are. Go on in.”