The letter-sized envelope was thick and heavy in my right hand, stuffed full of something from someone I couldn’t have known, and I stood there on the cobbled street in front of the hotel, frozen in fear watching Roxanne sashay back down the cobbles we just followed her up, her round butt muscles moving in time like pistons inside her brown, wool slacks. She seemed in a hurry and anxious to get away from us.
“Baby?” my wife asked, breaking the spell, and then again, “Baby?” before my eyes connected with hers and the tears started welling in her lightly colored brown eyes, and before she grabbed my arm like a scared child and hid her tan face in my shoulder and said,. “Don’t open it! Let’s call the police.”
The feel of the thick envelope in my hand sent a shock of nerves up my spine and my stomach lurched, a cramp immediately settling in my lower intestine like a brick had fallen from the upper intestine. Suddenly, the constipation that had wracked my ass for the last two days was gone and replaced by a desire to shit, or puke, and right away.
We couldn’t check in to the Hotel Mozart fast enough. After figuring out the Persian maze of halls and rooms, all the while clenching and skipping from hallway to hallway and room to room, we finally unlocked room 32 with the old-fashioned brass key.
I dropped everything, including the envelope on the Persian rug next to the Persian bed with the Persian quilt, unlocked my belt, let my jeans fall to my ankles as I shuffled to the small bathroom in the far corner, dropped the boxers and aimed my ass at the toilet as two days worth of farts and burning mass exploded out of me like a hot landslide.
10 noisy, painful seconds later and 10 pounds lighter, I felt better, but was covered in sweat from head to toe, a sheen exposed on my forearms, with drops of dew now in my forearm hair. A breeze from an open window in the bathroom gave me chills down my back, my t-shirt soaked. It seemed the event was over, but I didn’t move from the toilet, or engage the bidet.
New thoughts I had never considered before now entered my head. We were being hunted and watched by someone in a strange country, somewhere we had no history. For what? And why us? Who would watch us? We were neither rich, nor famous and thought we had been acting as un-American as possible during our European travels, attempting to attract no attention to ourselves.
How could they have tracked us to Belgium? Who is they? Was there some strange tracking device on our luggage? On me? On my wife?
The questions that started flooding my thoughts caused another round of cramps and noisy passage, and I wondered if the bathroom door was locked.
Had it been the Chinese woman in Paris — the stylish one in the red beret and white chinchilla jacket standing outside Versace on the sidewalk who had waved cash at us and begged us to buy her a purse, claiming Versace was racist and would only let her buy one? Could she have planted something on us? Who was she?
Or was it the two darkly dressed punks on the Left Bank who had followed us home from dinner three nights ago, making us out as seemingly easy targets? Had they planted something on us when they casually walked by after we aggressively turned to face and confront them? Had they even touched us?
Who knew we were in Belgium except friends and family?
A knock at the door broke my thoughts.
“Baby? Are you okay?”
“Yes. I feel better, “I shouted towards the dark, Persian door with the silver handle. “I’ll be out in a sec.”
She tried the handle. The lock held firm. I could hear her muffled sigh, and a sob from behind the door. There was a pause.
“I’m scared,” she said. “Can you please hurry up in there so we can call the police?”
Once cleaned up, I opened the bathroom door and Jenny was still standing in the doorway. My soaked shirt startled her even more and she stepped back from the door.
I took off my shirt, threw it in the Persian-tiled, miniature shower and replaced it with a brown hoodie from my backpack that I had bought in Paris three days ago.
Jenny was watching me, rubbing her wrists and hands nervously. She was pale.
“I don’t think involving the Police is necessary yet honey,” I said, hoping to eventually convince her to open the envelope now and find out our fate.
“But, that’s crazy!” The color returned to her face, a shade redder than tan at the moment.
“No, it is not crazy,” I replied, grasping her busy hands in mine. “For all we know this thing could be a letter from our parents. I agree it was a sneaky way of delivering it, but as far as we know right now it could be harmless. The police would just cause problems for us. We are Americans, you know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we are on our own.”
“Why? That’s not true! We could call the embassy1″
“And say what honey? Some strange woman gave us an envelope and we are afraid to open it? They will laugh. . .”
“Well then, the police! Or we could just leave, get on a train to Amsterdam, or Paris and then fly home. Who is to stop us from leaving right now?”
“Let’s just open the envelope.” I picked it up off the floor and held it in my hands.
She turned away. And then turned back around and hugged me.
“Baby no, please,” she pleaded. “I think we should go home and just leave this thing unopened right here on the bed.” She pushed me away and patted the bed, the diamonds on her ring finger cascading prisms on the white, Persian ceiling above. “We’ll just go home and pretend we never received anything from anyone. C’mon.”
I held up the envelope and smiled, as if to say, “nope.”
Her eyes darted between my eyes and the envelope in my hands.
She bit her lower lip, contemplating her decision and then she looked at the envelope again, and then back up to look at me with the same twisted look of cold fear and soft trust I had encountered so many times over our lives together, the look that seemed to say, I’m not sure I signed up for this, but if you stay beside me and think I can do it, then I trust you and will go for it.
I had seen this tortured, yet loving look while kayaking unforeseen whitewater in Wyoming, skiing no-fall zones in Telluride and Crested Butte, sailing a tropical storm in the Caribbean, and in the moment I proposed for her hand in marriage, upon one wet knee in a park in Paris six years ago, and each time we crossed these lines we strengthened our bond.
“Okay fine,” she said. “Open it, and get it over with. I’m just not going to watch” And she turned her slim silhouette and gentle curves away from me again.
The way Jenny stood when she was nervous, with her legs and arms crossed, all protective and closed, made me want to hug her and hold her and break the chains of her fear. She was so tightly wrapped in this stance she presumably turned off her senses as well and effectively tuned out the opening of the envelope, the slow ripping of the paper to reveal the contents inside, which were noting more than blank sheets of paper folded into letter size, giving the package its bulk.
What the fuck?
And out of the blank sheets of paper fell a white matchbook with simple, black lettering.
ERNIE’S EASTSIDE BAR
1000 Rue Bostraat
Brussels, Belgium 02 502 66 61
I opened the matchbook and there was something handwritten on the inside cover.
Saturday at Noon at Ernie’s. I can help you. You are in danger. Ernie
To be continued. . .
