John Irving - Until I Find You

“They’re quick, too,” Els told Alice.

“Not around Jack.”

“Just not too young a virgin, Alice,” Nico Oudejans said.

“I really appreciate it,” Alice told him. “If you ever want a tattoo—” She stopped; maybe she thought that if she offered him a free tattoo, the policeman would construe this as a bribe. He was a nice guy, Nico Oudejans. His eyes were a robin’s-egg blue, and high on one cheekbone he had a small scar shaped like the letter L.

Out on the Warmoesstraat, Alice thanked Els and Saskia for helping her get permission from the police to be a prostitute for an afternoon and part of one night. “I figured it would be easier to talk Nico into it than to talk you out of it,” Saskia said.

“Saskia always does what’s easier,” Els explained. The three women laughed. They were walking the way Dutch girls sometimes do, side by side with their arms linked together. Alice was in the middle; Els was holding Jack’s hand.

The Warmoesstraat ran the length of one edge of the red-light district. Jack and Alice were on their way back to the Krasnapolsky. Els and Saskia were going to help Alice pick out what to wear—she wanted to wear her own clothes, she said. Alice didn’t own a skirt as short as the ones Saskia wore in her window or doorway on the Bloedstraat, or a blouse with a neckline as revealing as the ones Els wore when she was giving advice on the Stoofsteeg.

It must have been about eleven in the morning when they came to the corner of the Sint Annenstraat. Only one prostitute was working, way at the end of the street, but even at that distance, she recognized them. The prostitute waved and they waved back. Because they were looking down the Sint Annenstraat, into the district, they didn’t see Jacob Bril coming toward them on the Warmoesstraat. They were still walking four abreast; there was no way Bril could get around them. He said something sharply in Dutch—a curse, or some form of condemnation. Saskia snapped back at him. Even though Els and Saskia were not dressed for their doorways, Bril surely recognized them; after all, he’d made quite a comprehensive study of the prostitutes in the neighborhood.

The three women had to unlink their arms for Jacob Bril to pass by them; it might have been the first time Bril had been forced to stop walking in the red-light district. Of course Bril knew Alice—she was standing between the two prostitutes. As for the boy, Bril always appeared to look right through him; it was as if he never saw Jack.

“In the Lord’s eyes, you are the company you keep!” Jacob Bril told Alice.

“I like the company I keep just fine,” Alice replied.

“What would you know about the Lord’s eyes?” Els asked Bril.

“Nobody knows what God sees,” Saskia said.

“He sees even the smallest sin!” Bril shouted. “He remembers every act of fornication!”

“Most men do,” Els told him.

Saskia shrugged. “I find I forget it, most of the time,” she said.

They watched Jacob Bril scurry down the Sint Annenstraat, as purposefully as a rat. The lone prostitute at the far end of the street was no longer in her doorway; she must have seen Bril coming.

“Jacob Bril is a good reason for me to be off the street before midnight,” Alice said. “I can’t imagine what he’d say if he saw me sitting in a window or heard me singing in a doorway.” She laughed in that brittle way, the kind of laughter Jack recognized as a precursor to her tears.

It was Els or Saskia who said: “There are better reasons than Bril to be off the street before midnight.”

They came out of the Warmoesstraat in the Dam Square and walked into the Krasnapolsky. “What’s fornication?” Jack asked.

“Giving advice,” Alice answered.

“Good advice, mostly,” Saskia said.

“Necessary advice, anyway,” Els added.

“What’s sin?” Jack asked.

“Just about everything,” Alice answered.

“There’s good sin and bad sin,” Els told Jack.

“There is ?” Saskia said; she looked as confused as Jack was.

“I mean good advice and bad advice,” Els explained. It seemed to Jack that sin was more complicated than fornication.

Entering the hotel room, Alice said: “The thing about sin, Jack, is that some people think it’s very important and other people don’t even believe it exists.”

“What do you think about it?” the boy asked. Alice appeared to trip, although Jack saw nothing that she could have tripped on; she just started to fall, but Els caught her.

“Damn heels,” Alice said, but she wasn’t wearing heels.

“Now listen, Jack,” Saskia spoke up. “We’ve got a job to do—making sure your mom wears the right clothes is important. We can’t be distracted by a conversation about something as difficult as sin.”

“We’ll have that conversation later,” Els assured the boy.

“Have it once the singing starts—have it without me,” Alice said, but Els just steered her to the closet.

Saskia was already looking through Alice’s dresser drawers. She held up a bra that would have been much too big for her but not nearly big enough for Els. Saskia said something in Dutch, which made Els laugh. “You’re going to be disappointed in my clothes,” Alice told the prostitutes.

The way Jack remembered it, his mom tried on every article of clothing in her closet. Alice was always very modest around Jack. He never saw his mother naked or half naked, and for an hour or more in the Krasnapolsky was the first time he saw so much of her in a bra and panties; even then, Alice clasped the sides of her breasts with her upper arms and elbows, and crossed her hands on her chest to cover herself. Jack actually saw more of Saskia and Els than he did of his mother, because the two women surrounded her as they dressed and undressed her—they were full of advice.

Finally a dress was chosen; it struck Jack as pretty but plain. The dress was like his mom —she was pretty but plain, at least in comparison to how the women looked and dressed in the red-light district. It was a sleeveless black dress with a high neckline; it fit her closely, but it wasn’t too tight.

Alice didn’t own a pair of genuine high heels, but the heels she chose for the occasion were medium-high—or they were high for her—and she put on her pearl necklace. It had belonged to her mother; her father gave it to her on the day she left Scotland for Nova Scotia. Alice thought they were cultured pearls, but she didn’t really know. The necklace meant a lot to her, no matter what kind of pearls they were.

“Won’t I be cold in a sleeveless dress?” Alice asked Saskia and Els. The women found a fitted black cardigan in the closet.

“That sweater is too small for me,” Alice complained. “I can’t button it up.”

“You don’t need to button it,” Els told her. “It’s just to keep your arms warm.”

“You should leave the sweater open and hug your arms around yourself,” Saskia said, showing her how to do it. “If you look like you’re a little cold, that’s sexy.”

“I don’t want to look sexy,” Alice replied.

“What’s sexy?” Jack asked.

“If you look sexy, the men think you can give them good advice,” Els explained. The two prostitutes were fussing over Alice’s hair, and there was still the matter of lipstick to resolve—and makeup.

“I don’t want lipstick, I don’t want makeup,” Alice told them, but they wouldn’t listen to her.

“Believe me, you want lipstick,” Els told her.

“Something dark,” Saskia said. “And eye shadow.”

“I hate eye shadow!” Alice cried.

“You don’t want William looking in your eyes and really seeing you, do you?” Els asked her. “I mean, supposing for a moment that he actually shows up.” That quieted Alice; she let the women make her up.