The Visitor

“Oh my God ! Is this your station wagon?” asked Katie. She was looking at the Company issued, silver-blue Peugeot 405 Station Wagon, Model S, with a trailer hitch on the back. The car sat like a beaten horse in the airport parking lot, mud around the fenders, wheels and bumper. I was opening the trunk to put her luggage inside. My only reply was to order her into the car.

“You know, you can’t boss me around anymore. I’m the same rank as you,” she smiled at me mischievously. Normally the poster girl of Norwegian reserve - stoic, serious and well, professional – this was the new, vibrant, talk-show Katie. She pumped so much airy disposition into the car I thought we might float off the road. A squeal here and there, followed by giggles, teeth and batty eyelashes, accompanied us like a balloon bouquet. “Wow! This is a cool city,” she said as we crossed the first canal and into the outer ring. We were surrounded by railroad cars, electrical cables, and dark warehouses.

I was driving us back to Amsterdam Center from Schipol Airport. It was dark and I had gotten off the highway on the wrong exit. We were taking a back road through what looked like the city’s engine room. I saw some familiar buildings in the distance and tried to aim toward them using twisting streets that made going in a straight line impossible.

“Everything about your body language says we’re lost,” she said, analyzing me intently with her blue eyes. She played with her hair and smiled. “Yet, you seem to know where you’re going….hmmm.”

We had met in our New York office two years before I left for Amsterdam. We were in the same industry group and had a lot to talk about. We had a lot to learn from each other. We had a lot of networking contacts we could share. We had a lot of synergies we could leverage to add value, boost revenue and exploit opportunity. We scheduled a lot of business lunches that either she or I needed to reschedule. When we finally did start meeting one another, we met on professional excuses with subterranean intentions.

Most girls I worked with had all the allure of an empty restaurant on Saturday night. Katie was different. Her main attraction was that I was never sure how it would turn out. The last time I’d seen her was on the top of the Standard Hotel by the pool. We were with a group of other Company drones for a team-building happy hour. One by one, the others dripped out of the bar until only three of us remained. I sat with a martini staring out at the downtown buildings, pretending to have dreamy architectural fantasies. Katie was flirting ferociously with two of our colleagues, a tall, dark and handsome cardboard- boardroom, hand-out, named Lawrence Spince, who specialized in data analytics, and a blond Canadian guy wearing a green tie and a smile made for political campaigns.

After forty minutes of grueling conversation that began to sound like drilled teeth, Katie saved us both. “Justin Call is a hair-puller you know…” There was a silence. Our eyes met.

“What the hell are you guys doing there in Compliance?” asked Lawrence. Katie abruptly excused herself. She had to meet friends in Hollywood. I offered to walk her to her car. With a nod to Lawrence and an “I could use your vote for mayor” hand-shake from the Canadian, we hopped onto the elevator like it was a life raft launching from a sinking ship.

Now she was here in Amsterdam. All this history between us and I still didn’t know how it was going to turn out. When I left the states we decided to leave it where it was, which aside from a couple of nights in a bedroom, was nowhere.

“I think it’s weird that you’re here,” I said over lunch the next day.

“It’s not weird,” she said, examining her newly painted fingernails. “I’ve visited all of our colleagues here in Europe over the last year.”

“Oh,” I said. “And now you’re here visiting me. Just a visit?”

“Just a visit,” she smiled.

That evening we went to a going away party for one of the returning ex-pats. Katie spent most of the night skating around the room in a bright yellow, wool coat, flipping her blond hair out from underneath its collar. Watching her from the other side of the room I hoped for a glance or an eye wave or maybe a flyby to nudge my shoulder, but there was nothing.

As the party waned, she had gathered a squadron of groupies by the bar. Five Dutch guys in jeans and blazers cuddled around her, some hands holding drinks and other hands flirting with her shoulder, her waste, her arm, her chin, her back…just moving around, hoping for a landing, all while their faces and flapping tongues jostled to be the only audience for her smile. I took a position at the bar a few feet away, signaling the bartender to pay my bill.

“Time to go Justin?” she called through the music and laughter of her entourage.

We took a taxi back to my flat. She sat on my bed wearing my boxer shorts and a t-shirt. She didn’t take off her make-up. Her blond hair blended with the soft light, glowing and she looked at me with longing eyes. “I’m not making out with you tonight,” she said.

“Well, I’m not having sex with you,” I said.

“Well, if we’re not making out then we’re not having sex,” she retorted.

“That’s not always true,” I said. “I’ve had sex with girls that I haven’t made out with.”

“I can’t believe you would have sex with a girl and not kiss her,” she whined. “I think they would do anything you tell them to…I think it’s impersonal.”

“Should we try it?” I asked hoping she would laugh or hit me or find it funny in some way. She didn’t. She laid her head down on one of my pillows and turned away from me. I put my nose up against her neck but she moved away. I touched her on her hip but she pushed my hand away.

“I’m going to sleep, would you please turn out the light?” she commanded with a question.

I obeyed and lay down next to her trying to share the pillow. I could sense the heat from her body pulling at the heat from mine. The aurora from two suns blazing against one another and then the emptiness of vodka and tonic-laced sleep consumed us both.

I awoke in the middle of the night spooned against her. Our legs were entwined and our feet holding one another like hands. Hers were cool and smooth against mine. I started to kiss her neck and smell the faint perfume where her hairline starts. Her hips began to grind against me. I tried to turn her head around to kiss her lips but she wouldn’t let me. I was ready something.

“Go to sleep,” she whispered and then became still as a corpse.

We biked around Amsterdam later that same morning. We rode down my street, Oudezids Voorburgwal then over to Nieuw Mart, enjoying the scenic canals in springtime and the summer-like weather. We took some plutonic photos in front of the Central Station and again by the cathedral.

We went to the Bier Yard for lunch. It was a crowded bar with an interior constructed entirely of polished wood like the inside of an old sailing ship. We drank Duvels and ate chips and sandwiches. She smiled a lot with her nose crinkling and her cheeks dimpling, scrunching up her light freckled pale skin.

I told her about my views on marriage and family life, critiquing the dysfunctional relationships between my parents and other married family members like my aunt and uncle, sister and brother and law and cousin. I may have even mentioned the male and female Terriers we once had and how we had to get rid of the female after she severely wounded the male in a fight over doggie treats. She shared her perfect childhood upbringing and family life with me. There were no horror stories or negative thoughts on any subject. Everything was perfect.

“You’re a very negative person,” she said crinkling her forehead and sounding objective. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that….its just who you are…..just an observation.”

At the time I kind of thought and said, “uh huh” as if the observation was in fact non-offensive. Later I thought it was kind of like her telling me I was an asshole but there wasn’t anything wrong with it. It was like saying there wasn’t anything wrong with it was supposed to numb the insult or turn it around into some kind of benign observation or even a compliment. Maybe next time I’ll tell her she has a fat ass, “but there’s nothing wrong with that…..some people like fat asses.” She didn’t have a fat ass though.

I asked her about her move from Chicago and then back to Chicago. I asked her about her prior boyfriend, her new fiancé, and her now former fiancé. “Did you move away because he didn’t want to get married?” I asked.

“Sometimes you say the most terrible things to me,” she said. “I just want to sock you!”

In the afternoon we strolled through the alleys of the Red Light district, window shopping for flesh. “If I were kidnapped by sex-slave traders would you come to rescue me?” she asked.

“Depends on who they offered me as a trade,” I answered.

“If I got into a street brawl with those guys,” she pointed to two thuggish looking men with tattoos on their arms, “would you defend me?” she asked as we walked down Nes, an alley street leading from Dam Square to the south.

“Maybe if there was only one of them,” I said. She looked at me distressed or worried or disappointed, I couldn’t tell which.

Later that evening we went out with Ely, Kate, Cliff, Andrew, Niells and some other guys who I didn’t know. We ate steak at an Argentine steak house of which there seem to be an endless supply along the narrow streets of the city. Cliff was going on about strip clubs in Vancouver and how he took his staff there and bought two of the girls lap dances.

“You know, I think that’s really inappropriate,” said Katie.

Cliff had been angling himself next to Katie all night and now started to feel himself fumble. He looked around for an escape, an excuse, and Godly hope that perhaps he had not upset her highness beyond repair and thereby ruined his chances of being with her. Saying something like, “Oh, well, it’s not like that…”

I interrupted. “You know, I don’t think there’s anything that men need to be ashamed of going to a strip club. I think all these rules society has imposed against going to them or taking our clients to them are ridiculous. These sexual harassment classes which are designed by middle aged mothers working in Human Resources are intended to present sex and strip clubs and anything sexual as shameful and I think its bullshit.” I was on my fifth or sixth vodka-tonic and may have sounded like a preacher for the Evangelical Church of Larry Flint.

“Then why don’t you go work somewhere else?” she was yelling. She was pretty emotional about this subject. Angry, I think.

“I don’t think I should have to go work somewhere else because I don’t like the way things are run,” I was starting a filibuster I’d been waiting to deliver now for years. “I’m going to change things, start a movement, gather a group of people behind me to support my cause……” I was reaching “for more corporate sponsorship of nudie bars!” Cliff was stunned and the rest of the table fell silent.

Katie was winding the crank, pulling back the lever, ready to release her rebuttal. It was like a Vaudeville slapping contest. I was smiling still the same, drunk and numb to whatever she could throw at me. Taunting her.

“Why don’t you two arm wrestle over it,” said Andrew, breaking the trance of anger that was growing between us. It was a welcome relief. We realized we’d become the dinner show and instantly returned to our ha, ha, ha, jolly-o’l good times out with colleagues, can’t upset me about anything….drone-like-selves.

Katie agreed and so we arm wrestled. She tried using two hands and pulling with all her weight. I won. She laughed and giggled, the talk-show Katie was back, the room inflating.

“You didn’t think you were going to win did you?” said Cliff, out of place. We all ignored him and moved onto dessert.

As the night progressed she leaned on my arm and we walked through the alleys and along the canals. I held her away from passing motor bikes and bicycles, and kept her warm. She asked me if she could smoke and I told her no.

Around three in the morning Cliff and Andrew argued over whether we should end the evening or make one last stop at the Amsterdamer by Leidseplein. We reluctantly agreed with Cliff where he bought a round of Red Bull and vodkas to keep us awake. Then he danced around and came over to play with Katie’s coat collar. She corrected it, he danced around, then returned to do it again. She looked annoyed and suggested we leave. We left.

On the way back she broke away from me and started at a quicker pace. “I’m not making out with you tonight,” she announced to the wind.

“I know you’re tempted,” I said, frustrated.

“I may be, but I’m not going to do it,” she pronounced once again.

“Why not?” I asked, now obviously frustrated but I was too drunk to care.

“Because you say the most asinine things !” she said, in an almost angry, I’m frustrated too, please fuck me, you’re an asshole – kind of voice. “And you think I’m a desperate woman who is trying to trap you into marriage…a ball and chain, ball and chain, ball and chain, that’s what you think I am…here to trap you,” she chanted uncontrollably. In hindsight, I should’ve pulled her to me and put a stop to her ranting mouth with the pressure of my lips, but the world would be a much better place with rewind.

Instead I just stood there looking hopeful and lost, staring into her crazy beautiful eyes, wanting her and not knowing how to have her. We ended up on my bed passed out next to each other until morning when I was awakened by my erection in close proximity to her smooth pale skin.

I rolled on top of her, willing to accept no refusal – much like Coppola’s Dracula. She giggled delightedly and repeated, “I’m not making out with you.” I pushed my lips onto hers and we touched tongues, wet and soft against one another.

Later that day I took her to the airport. “Let’s make a bet as to whether I make my plane on time,” she proposed. “If I make it, you buy me a six pack of good beer and if I don’t, I have to buy you a nice bottle of wine, ok?” I agreed.

As I left her at the gate we kissed and I said, “come back,” to which she replied, “I will.” She stepped into line and looked back to me. “Call me,” I said, then paused, “If….”

“If I get lost?” she said with a giggle. “Yeah,” I said smiling. Then she disappeared into the smoke.