“Huh?” Wren says.
“The silent film actress,” Allyson explains. “My hair was like hers then. That’s why Willem called me Lulu.”
Lien looks at her, remembering that Louise Brooks movie Willem dragged them all to. She’d known then something was up with Willem. No one had believed her when she’d said he had fallen in love.
They believe her now.
• • •
W is having a hard time understanding.
After all the methodical work they put into it, calling all the American tour companies, finding the barge captain in Deauville, the charts of all the connections, this didn’t make sense. Willem going off to Mexico to look for her hadn’t made sense either. It would’ve been one thing had the girl visited a small town during a quiet time of year, but a resort area at Christmas? The odds were ridiculous. But at least that adhered to a logic. The Principle of Connectivity, albeit stretched very thin.
But he doesn’t understand this. All the looking they had done, and from what Broodje had said, the girl had done her own looking. But then she’d just happened upon him at the play last night? The play Willem was not even meant to be performing in? He’d been the understudy until last night.
It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make any sense at all.
• • •
Backstage, Willem is thinking about accidents again. And things that seemingly don’t make sense, except they do. Like right out there in the fifth row. All of them, together. That makes sense.
He doesn’t see Kate yet, but she has texted that she and David will be there but must leave right after the play. David is catching a late flight back to London, and she’s seeing him to the airport.
Willem’s cast mates slap him on the back, offer congratulations from last night, and condolences for next week. He accepts them both.
Max is by his side, as always. She is the other understudy, for Rosalind, and Willem’s best friend in the cast. “You win some, you lose some. And sometimes you win and lose at the same time. Life’s a bloody cockup,” Max says.
“Is that Shakespeare?” Willem asks.
“Nah. Just me.”
“Sounds like the Universal Law of Equilibrium,” Willem says.
“The what?”
When Willem doesn’t answer right away, she says, “Sounds like a bunch of shite.”
“You’re probably right,” Willem agrees. And then he asks her if she’ll come out after the show.
“I’m still hungover from last night,” Max complains. “How many parties does one man need?”
“This is different,” Willem says.
“How is it different?” Max asks.
Max has become one of his closest friends these past months, and yet he hasn’t told her a thing. There is nothing to do now but to tell her everything.
“Because I’m in love.”
• • •
Kate and David arrive just before curtain. She’d meant to come straight from the airport, but when she’d seen David, she had been overcome. It was a bit silly, really. It had only been a few days since she’d seen him, and they’d been together for five years. But she’d been feeling roiled since last night. A good Shakespearean performance was known to have aphrodisiacal effects. So when David arrived, she’d hustled him back to her Major Booger hotel and had her way with him. Then they’d fallen asleep and gotten themselves massively lost on the way to the park (someone should mention to city planners that Amsterdam was laid out like a rat’s maze, albeit a very pretty rat’s maze) and now here they are.