“You’re Broodje,” the girl says.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Broodje says. He is tired and hungover and his muscles ache and he doesn’t want to entertain one of Willy’s girls. “Who are you?”
“I’m Allyson,” she says. Then she seems to reconsider. “But you might know me as Lulu.”
Broodje looks at her for a minute. And then he tackles her in a hug.
• • •
When Willem comes home, he finds his best friend and the girl his best friend tried to help him track down sitting together, eating. Broodje has emptied the kitchen, it seems: cheese, crackers, sausage, herring, beer. He is feeding Allyson, which is what Broodje does with people he loves. Willem sees Allyson has received a fast pass to his best friend’s heart.
“Willy!” Broodje calls. “We were just talking about you.”
“You were?” Willem says. He steps forward and his instinct is to kiss Allyson. He does not want to enter or leave a room without kissing her. This, too, is something new. But he doesn’t because this is all so new, even though the way Broodje and Allyson are sitting there, smearing cheese on crackers, it seems like they’ve been doing this for decades.
“I was telling Lulu, sorry, Allyson, what a sad sack you’ve been all year.”
“Not all year,” Willem says. (Though, really, it was almost all year.)
“Okay. Maybe not in India. I wasn’t with you in India. He went to India for three months to see his ma,” Broodje explains to Allyson. “He was in a movie over there.”
“Are you famous in India?” Allyson asks.
“I am Brad Pitt in India,” Willem says.
“And maybe not since he came back. But shit, after he got back from Paris, he was a mess. And in Mexico, when he couldn’t find you—”
“Okay, Broodje,” Willem says. “No need to give away all the family secrets.”
Broodje rolls his eyes. “Far as I’m concerned, she’s family now.”
• • •
Speaking of family, Allyson loves watching Willem with Broodje. Not that she needs reassuring exactly, but seeing him with Broodje is reassuring.
“I was going to take you out to eat,” Willem says to her. “But Broodje beat me to it.”
“We can still go if you want,” Allyson says.
“I have to be at the theater in less than an hour,” Willem says. “We can go out after? Just us.”
“Not just you,” Broodje says. “W, Henk, Lien, they’re all coming. And they will all want to meet her.” He nods to Allyson. “You are like the business we all invested in and now you’re paying off so . . . you can be alone later.”
“Wren called, too. The friend I was in Amsterdam with” Allyson says. “She wants to meet up.”
And, Willem thinks, there would also be Kate and her fiancé.
Allyson and Willem look at each other, the invisible chain connecting them pulling hard. Why hadn’t they taken more advantage of those quiet hours this afternoon? Why had they just sat there, her feet in his lap, when there was a perfectly good empty apartment here?
Except Allyson wouldn’t have exchanged those hours with Willem for anything in the world.
And neither would Willem.