SEVEN BRIDGES

by Max van Olden

Grachtengordel

Lisa was running ten minutes late. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, since there were usually two of them on Saturdays—but now, in early March, there were so few bookings she had to prepare the tables on her own.

In the crew cabin, she changed from her wool sweater to a tight white blouse and put on an apron. She checked the schedule. A Delight cruise, twenty-two passengers. She could handle that—sometimes, even in the winter, they had as many as forty on board. She piled eight crates onto her service cart—six beverages, two glasses—and above those balanced the plastic bin labeled Tableware. She glanced out the window and saw people already lined up at the Pier F ticket office, waiting for the passenger door to open. Sighing, she pushed her cart out into the main cabin.

Starting at the back of Princess Beatrix, she set each table, as always, with place mats that indicated their route with a dotted line on a map of the city’s canals, bottles of water, bowls of beer nuts. She looked up and spotted their guide approaching. Arno was a dope, but he was always willing to lend a hand. That was more than you could say for some of the others.

“Need some help?” he said as he stepped on board, and, without waiting for an answer, pitched in and started setting tables. The sound system was already on, and they worked to the syrupy tones of Laura Pausini.

They finished at a minute to four. Foreheads glistening with perspiration, they took up their positions on the dock, Lisa on one side of the door and Arno on the other. They smiled brightly at the passengers as they boarded. The four o’clock and six o’clock cruises mostly appealed to retirees and families, quiet customers who never made any trouble.

* * *

“Goodbody, every afternoon,” Arno began his usual spiel. After two years of it, Lisa didn’t even notice the joke anymore. Wim, their captain, steered the boat—long enough to hold eighty passengers, low enough to sail beneath the city’s innumerable bridges—past the train station. Back in the kitchen, Lisa pulled soft drinks from the fridge and arranged them on her cart.

“The Central Station is built on an artificial island,” Arno said, first in English, then in Dutch and French and German. “It was designed by the same architect who designed the Rijksmuseum, which is where you can find our most important Rembrandt paintings.”

Pulling the cork from a bottle of Chianti, Lisa glanced outside. The sky was gray, and there were wisps of mist along the embankment. When Arno paused for breath, she heard raindrops patter on the boat’s glass roof.

She thought back to that morning, that lovely morning with Timo. They hadn’t gotten out of bed until ten thirty. She’d cracked open a can of Jus-Rol croissants and slid them into the oven. They’d only been together for three months, but Lisa was already spending so much time at Timo’s place she had practically moved in. Her toiletries were in his bathroom, half her clothing hung in his wardrobe, she felt so comfortable she knew their relationship was the real thing.

“On your right is NEMO, the science museum, and underneath it is the highway to Amsterdam-North.”

The passengers gaped at the vast green building that rose up from the water like the prow of an enormous oil tanker.

When she was with Timo, she lost all sense of time. After breakfast, they’d put on Netflix and continued watching Stranger Things, the series they’d begun last night. When you were in love, all you wanted to do was snuggle up together, all day long. And so they did, until the middle of the afternoon, when Timo had pointed to his wristwatch and she realized it was past time for her to leave for work.

They continued along the river, “the majestic five-star Amstel Hotel on your left, the Rolling Stones’ favorite place to stay when they’re in town.” The passengers were always on the lookout for celebrities. In fact, was that Robbie Williams working up a sweat on the treadmill in the glass-walled fitness center? No, too tall. Probably just some businessman.

After they passed the hotel, the captain turned them around and set a course for the Herengracht. When she could make out the distant bridge that marked the entrance to the world-famous Grachtengordel—the Canal District—Lisa felt a rush of pleasure well up from deep inside her. Not because of the bridge or the canal, but because she knew it wouldn’t be long now before—

First, of course, would come the Willet-Holthuysen Museum with its imposing latticed windows to the right, and then “the relatively new Waldorf Astoria hotel” on the left, but after that it would be barely half a minute before Wim throttled back the Princess Beatrix almost to a standstill to give the passengers time to point their cameras off to the left for one of the cruise’s highlights: beneath the graceful stone bow of the bridge over the Reguliersgracht, six more bridges could be seen, each of them illuminated, stretching all the way south to the Lijnbaansgracht, seemingly stacked up one atop the other. Yes, the Seven Bridges did indeed make for a lovely picture.

Her own personal highlight came almost at the same moment as the photo op: some thirty yards before it, there was something to be seen that seven hundred bridges couldn’t compete with—as soon as the boat slowed down and the passengers turned their attention to the left, she could blow unseen kisses to the handsome young man on the old houseboat not six feet to their right. For those ten or fifteen seconds, it would be as if she was home, with Timo, done with work for the evening, and the love that would wash over her would be so intense, so delicious, it would carry her through the second half of the cruise.

They were almost there: the first passengers were getting to their feet, their phones at the ready, and Lisa turned to face the scene where, just a few hours earlier, she and Timo had relished their warm, sweet croissants. The skipper slowed the boat. Another fifteen yards, ten. She ran a hand through her hair. Five more yards, and she would be able to see into the living room. Three . . .

Lisa’s shoulders slumped. Timo wasn’t standing at the window, waiting for her. He was on the couch, asleep. The TV was still on. She sighed, but her disappointment quickly melted into tenderness. He’s even cute when he’s sleeping, she thought.

It was natural that her boyfriend would need to catch up on his sleep over the weekend. He rose at six every morning and put in at least fifty hours a week at work, sometimes sixty. His own ad agency—he’d wanted that since high school. There were times that he and his team slaved over a pitch until two in the morning.

Behind her, the cameras began to click. She turned around, and almost got a selfie stick in her face.

The Princess Beatrix returned to Pier F at five thirty. That gave Lisa half an hour to prepare the boat for the six o’clock cruise. She’d have to hurry. The moment the last of the four o’clock passengers were gone, she gathered up the empty bottles, dumped the trash in a large plastic bag, replaced the dirty place mats with fresh ones, checked the tables and the restroom. Arno helped her restock the drinks, and she wound up with a couple of minutes to sneak a cigarette on the back deck before the next load of passengers boarded.

* * *

With her imperturbable smile, Lisa took orders, refilled the nut dishes, snapped pictures for everyone who asked. Meanwhile, her thoughts were filled with Timo.

He was so different from Stefan. Timo was the complete opposite of that bastard she’d somehow stayed with for two and a half years. In him, she found everything her previous boyfriend had been unable or unwilling to give her: attention, tenderness, great sex. And the things she’d resented in Stefan were absent from Timo: egotism, self-righteousness, emotional distance. Opening a container of chocolate milk, she asked herself for the umpteenth time why she had let herself suffer through a relationship that, if she was honest, she had never for one moment truly believed in. The only answer she could come up with was simple cowardice.

Walking down the aisle with two bottles of Heineken in her hands, she heard someone say the words “Waldorf Astoria.” She delivered the beers and returned quickly to the back of the boat. Once they passed the Waldorf, everyone would be looking ahead for the Seven Bridges. Lisa took up her usual position by the window, but then changed her mind. She opened the door to the back deck and was greeted by a chilly gust of wind in her face. There were puddles of water on the wooden benches. Rain dripped from the Dutch tricolor that hung out over the black surface of the Herengracht, as if the flag had just been fished out of the canal.

They approached Timo’s houseboat. Inside the Princess Beatrix, passengers were getting to their feet, angling for a better view. Ten yards to go. She wished she had a cigarette but was afraid the captain might smell it.

Two more yards.

One.

“Can you give me a hand, please?”

Lisa whirled at the sound of the voice. A man stood in the doorway. He was having trouble staying erect, thanks to the thin elderly woman clutching his arm.

“My mother needs to use the lavatory,” the man said apologetically. “She’s ninety-four.”

The old lady seemed about to collapse, and a moment later Lisa was on her other side, propping her up. The woman looked up at her gratefully and managed to right herself.

Lisa looked back. The houseboat was already far behind them, and the distance was steadily increasing.

For the remainder of the cruise, her cell phone burned in her pocket. She wanted to call Timo, just to hear his voice and tell him she loved him, but each time she thought she might be able to slip out to the back deck, someone ordered a drink or suddenly needed to know what tram to take from the Central Station to the Leidseplein.

She let Arno help the passengers disembark by himself. That was against the rules, but Wim was nowhere to be seen. When she told Arno she had to make an important call, he merely shrugged.

Timo didn’t pick up. “Sorry I missed you,” she told his voice mail. “I was helping an old lady into the bathroom. With all the old folks on board, sometimes I feel more like a nurse than a server.” She dropped her voice to a whisper: “You look really sweet when you’re asleep. I’ll see you next time around!”

* * *

The candlelight cruise was not her favorite. It was harder to work in the dark, especially back in the kitchen. And the passengers were more critical, more impatient. During the day, no one complained if they had to share a table with another couple, but in the evenings there were often people who refused to sit with strangers. Sometimes they even left the boat and demanded their money back. Then of course there were always a few who took the forty-euro “all you can drink” offer seriously, and there was nothing to be done about that: “all you can drink” did, in fact, mean all you can drink.

The electric candles were on the tables, and the dishes of beer nuts had been distributed. When Wim closed the cabin door and Arno picked up his microphone to welcome the passengers, she took one last look at her cell: nothing from Timo. She stuffed it back in her pocket and asked the first couple what they wanted to drink. By the time she got back to her service cart, she’d already forgotten their order.

The weather had worsened. Arno had to turn up the sound system to be heard over the rain, and it was so windy the waves on the Oosterdok shook the boat from side to side. With two bottles of wine in her hands, it was hard for Lisa to negotiate the aisle without bumping into the tables on either side. Arno recounted the legend of the Skinny Bridge: a couple that kissed on or under it would stay together forever. A minute later, as the bow of the Princess Beatrix swept beneath the bridge, dozens of phones and cameras clicked off selfies of smooching tourists. Lisa couldn’t find it within herself to smile at the sight.

She was thinking of Timo. And, strangely, of Stefan.

It hadn’t ended well for them. But there had been nothing left of their relationship, other than the fact that they still slept in the same bed. Stefan had withdrawn into himself, barely spoke to her. Apart from the occasional mechanical sex, there was no intimacy between them. No wonder she had fallen so hard for someone new.

It hadn’t taken Stefan long to notice that she had metamorphosed into a new and reenergized version of herself, a Lisa who spent more and more time away from their apartment, who when she was home seemed to be constantly hunched over her phone texting. In retrospect, she realized why she had behaved so recklessly: without being consciously aware of it, she had wanted her affair to come to light as soon as possible. Which was precisely what had happened.

* * *

The cruise had another hour to go. Lisa walked up and down the aisle with plates of Dutch cheese cut into cubes and dotted with mustard. Passengers nudged each other and oohed and aahed over the toothpicks topped with red-white-and-blue paper flags.

“This is canal?” asked an older Japanese gentleman, pointing at the dark water outside the window.

“No sir, this is the Amstel River. We will turn into the canals very soon.” She looked ahead to orient herself. In the distance, the red neon letters of the Koninklijk Theater Carré were visible. She explained their route: first they would sail past the Carré and the Amstel Hotel, then they would turn around and retrace their path, go back under the Skinny Bridge, and then turn left into the Herengracht, the most elegant of the city’s three main canals. “Ten minutes, sir, maximum, until we’re there.” The man nodded politely and translated the explanation for his wife. Satisfied with her own professionalism, Lisa moved on.

There hadn’t been an explosion, more of an implosion. A change came over Stefan, subtle but inescapable, definitive. She knew she’d have to say goodbye to their little studio, the first place she had ever lived with a man. She felt guilty, miserable, but beneath all of that was excitement at the realization that she would now be able to bring her growing relationship with Timo out of hiding.

The Princess Beatrix passed beneath the Skinny Bridge. A young Italian couple sitting near her service cart struggled to take a kissing selfie. The volume of the conversations of those passengers who’d by this point downed three or four alcoholic beverages swelled.

Lisa snuck her phone from her pocket and checked the screen. No calls, no messages, nothing.

She looked at her watch. Quarter to nine. A little longer, and they would reach the houseboat.

As she served the next table, a memory welled up inside her. In her mind’s eye, she saw Stefan’s angry face. She was on her way to the elevator, a box of clothing and textbooks in her arms, and he stood in the apartment’s doorway, watching her go. He took a step toward her, leaned closer, and she would never forget the single sentence he whispered in her ear: “You haven’t seen the last of me.”

White wine flowed over the rim of the glass, and the passengers sitting at the table jerked away from the spill.

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry!”

She whipped a dishtowel from her apron pocket and dropped to her knees. When she’d cleaned up the mess, she apologized yet again and shot a glance out the window.

Fifty yards.

It was raining hard. She hid herself away in the narrow passage leading to the restroom. The boat slowed, the passengers looked around excitedly, figuring out where to stand for the best possible shot of the Seven Bridges. They were nearing the houseboat. In the darkness, it looked like a black shoebox, with thick cables mooring it to the embankment.

In the flickering blue light of Timo’s TV, she could make out the outline of his bookshelves, then the painting on the side wall.

Then the couch.

She couldn’t believe what she saw: Timo’s arm hanging off the edge, his head bent slightly to one side—it was all the same. Timo was lying in exactly the same position she’d seen him in four hours earlier.

Four hours.

The only thing that stopped her from screaming was the fact that, at that moment, a girl tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Would you mind taking a picture of us? With the bridges in the background?” Lisa stared at her for two full seconds, as if the girl had appeared out of some other dimension, before taking the proffered cell phone. She clicked off three shots, numb, and managed a weak smile as she handed the phone back, but the moment she turned away, fear overwhelmed her. She felt it accelerate her heartbeat and breath, and her hands trembled so badly she had to clasp them together to stop the shaking. She was afraid her legs would give out beneath her, and she held tightly to the handle of the door leading out to the back deck to keep herself upright. She peered out the window at the houseboat, already far behind them, and for just an instant considered diving into the water and swimming back. But for what purpose? To say a last goodbye?

The passengers had returned to their seats, the boat was picking up speed, it was time for her to get back to work. She ran her hands through her hair and grabbed a bottle of wine and began to refill glasses.

All she could see before her was Timo’s face as she had just now glimpsed it. Was his expression merely relaxed in sleep . . . or was it frozen in death?

He’s not dead, she thought. There’s nothing wrong. He shifted in his sleep a few times over the last four hours and wound up the way he was before.

For half a minute these thoughts calmed her, but then the panic reasserted itself. She kept on working, but she was on autopilot.

She heard Arno say something about the blue of the imperial crown and glanced outside. They were passing the Western Church. She shook her head. She had completely missed their transit from the Herengracht to the Prinsengracht. She tried to remember something of the last ten minutes, anything—an order, a glimpse of the canal—but her mind was completely blank.

Arno started talking about the Anne Frank House. In half an hour, they would be back at the pier. She would clean up faster than she’d ever cleaned before.

* * *

When they docked, Arno apologized and took off. His son was sick, he explained. Lisa forced herself to empathize. Inside her head, she caught herself praying that Timo was merely sick too. Perhaps he was unconscious. Was that possible? Some sort of temporary condition that would resolve itself the moment she shook him out of it?

As the passengers got to their feet and shrugged into their jackets, she reached for her phone. No calls, no messages. She speed-dialed Timo’s number. Then again, and again, and each time her call went to voice mail she had the same thought: I’ll never hear his voice for real again.

* * *

The boat was empty. Arno and Wim were gone. The rain had slackened, but the wind was stronger, and the Princess Beatrix thumped against the rubber bumpers. The dock was deserted, the café shuttered. A single light burned in the office, at the Damrak end of the pier.

Lisa raced up and down the aisle like a madwoman, brushing tricolored flags, brochures, and crumpled napkins from the tables. She scrawled the date on the front of an envelope and dumped the contents of the tip jar into it and licked the flap. She packed empty bottles and glasses into their crates and stacked the crates on the back deck, ready to be transferred to the trash cart. In five minutes she was finished—but she decided to call once more before jumping onto her bike.

Breathing heavily from exertion and nervousness, she pressed the icon beside Timo’s name and waited for the ring . . . and then her eyes narrowed. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of music. It was faint, barely audible beneath the wind, but it was unmistakably Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”—Timo’s ringtone.

A warm glow spread from the pit of her stomach up through her body, and she shivered with relief, her terror turned in an instant to joy.

Far ahead, past the row of darkened tour boats, she saw a figure step into the light from the office. It cast a long shadow that moved toward her. The guitar riff echoed off the wooden pier. She was still holding her phone to her ear, but it suddenly felt different against her skin. It was as if she were hugging Timo’s dear face to her own.

The music stopped as her call was answered.

“Hey,” she heard, and the phone almost dropped from her hand. It wasn’t Timo. It was Stefan’s soft, icy voice, and at the same moment she recognized his walk. “I see you,” he said. “Thanks for calling.”

She broke the connection.

“You should have seen this coming!” he shouted over the wind. “You’re next, darlin’, you hear me?”

Lisa pulled back behind the cabin door and peeked around the edge of its frame. Stefan had reached the Prince Claus, the next boat over from the Beatrix. He was gaining fast, his steps determined, staring straight ahead. It felt like he was staring right into her eyes.

She eased out of her heels.

“I’m going to reunite you with your boyfriend,” Stefan said coldly. “You two belong together!”

She reached behind her back and untied her apron. It dropped to the deck.

Stefan was at the bow of her boat. Carefully, without making a sound, Lisa slipped to the other side of the deck. She climbed onto one of the wooden benches, ducked down to stay out of sight. The wind ruffled the surface of the black water, stirring up tiny foam caps. Stefan was still talking, so loudly it sounded like he was standing right beside her.

“You dumped me, you fucking bitch! Now I’ll dump you! You’re gonna be fish food!”

There was the screech of metal on metal.

She raised a foot to the gunwale, her arms stretched out to the sides to maintain her balance. She brought up her other foot and stared down. She could smell the water’s chill.

“Look at me when I talk to you, bitch!”

She straightened, then pushed off with all the strength she could summon, as if she were diving into a pool at the start of a race.

She tucked in her chin, exactly as her swim coach had taught her, and the one second she hung in the air stretched out as if someone had adjusted the dials on the laws of nature.

Just out of reach, she could see Timo’s face, could see the two of them together, entwined on the couch in the living room of his houseboat.

The vision enveloped her like a thick warm blanket, and it was so beautiful, so grand, that when she hit the water she never even heard the shot.