A Widow for One Year (55 page)

“Do you know what
usually
happens?” Rooie asked.

“No, I don’t,” Ruth admitted.

“The watching is just the beginning,” the prostitute told her. “With couples, especially—the watching just leads to something else.”

“What do you mean?” Ruth asked her.

“The next time they come back, they don’t want to watch—they want to
do
something,” Rooie said.

“I don’t think my character would come back a second time,” Ruth replied, but she considered the possibility.

“Sometimes, after the watching, the couple wants to do things immediately—like right then,” Rooie said.

“What kind of things?” Ruth asked.

“All kinds,” Rooie said. “Sometimes the guy wants to watch me with the woman—he wants to see me get the woman hot. Usually I start with the guy, and the woman watches.”

“You
start
with the guy. . . .” Ruth said.

“Then the woman,” Rooie said.

“That’s actually happened?” Ruth asked.

“
Everything’s
happened,” the prostitute said.

Ruth sat in the scarlet-tinged light, which now cast an intensifying, reddish glow throughout the small room; the pink towel on the bed, where Rooie sat, was doubtless a deeper shade of pink because of the scarlet color of the stained-glass lamp shade. The only other light in the room was the muted light that found its way through the window curtains and a dim overhead light that was trained on the door to the street.

The prostitute leaned forward in the flattering light; in so doing, her breasts appeared ready to slip out of her demi-bra. While Ruth held tightly to the armrests of the blow-job chair, Rooie softly covered Ruth’s hands with her own. “You want to think about what happens and come see me again?” the redhead asked.

“Yes,” Ruth said. She hadn’t meant to whisper, nor could she take her hands out of the prostitute’s hands without falling backward in the awful chair.

“Just remember—
anything
can happen,” Rooie told her. “Anything you want.”

“Yes,” Ruth whispered again. She stared at the prostitute’s exposed breasts; it seemed safer than staring into her clever eyes.

“Maybe if you watched me with someone—I mean you, alone— you’d get some ideas,” Rooie said in a whisper of her own.

Ruth shook her head, aware that the gesture conveyed far less conviction than if she’d said sharply, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Most of the women alone who watch me are young girls,” Rooie announced in a louder, dismissive voice.

Ruth was so surprised at this that she looked into Rooie’s face without meaning to. “Why young girls?” Ruth asked. “Do you mean they want to know what having sex is like? Are they
virgins
?”

Rooie let go of Ruth’s hands; she pushed herself back on her bed and laughed. “They’re hardly
virgins
!” the redhead said. “They’re young girls who are thinking about being prostitutes—they want to see what being a
prostitute
is like!”

Ruth had never been so shocked; not even the knowledge that Hannah had fucked her father had been this astonishing.

Rooie pointed to her wristwatch and stood up from her bed exactly at the same time Ruth stood up from the difficult chair. Ruth had to contort herself in order not to make contact with the prostitute.

Rooie opened the door to a midday sunlight of such sudden brightness that Ruth realized she’d underestimated the dimness of the lighting in the prostitute’s red room. Turning away from the light, Rooie dramatically blocked Ruth’s exit while she bestowed on Ruth’s cheeks three kisses—first on Ruth’s right cheek, then on her left, and then on her right again. “The Dutch way—three times,” the prostitute said cheerfully, with an affection more suitable for old friends.

Of course Ruth had been kissed this way before—by Maarten and by Maarten’s wife, Sylvia, whenever they’d said their hellos and goodbyes—but Rooie’s kisses had lingered a little longer. And Rooie had also pressed her warm palm against Ruth’s belly, causing Ruth to instinctively tighten her stomach muscles. “What a flat tummy you have,” the prostitute told her. “Have you had any babies?”

“No, not yet,” Ruth replied. The doorway was still blocked.

“I’ve had one,” Rooie said. She hooked her thumbs inside the waistband of her bikini panties and lowered them in a flash. “The hard way,” the prostitute added, in reference to the highly visible scar from a cesarean section; the scar was not nearly as surprising to Ruth, who’d already noted Rooie’s stretch marks, as the fact that the prostitute had shaved off her pubic hair.

Rooie let go of the waistband of her panties, which made a snap. Ruth thought: If I’d rather be
writing
than what I’m doing, imagine how
she
feels. After all, she’s a
prostitute;
she would probably rather be
being
a prostitute than flirting with me. But she also enjoys making me uncomfortable. Irritated with Rooie now, Ruth just wanted to go. She tried to edge around Rooie in the doorway.

“You’ll be back,” Rooie told her, but she let Ruth slip into the street without further physical contact. Then Rooie raised her voice, so that anyone passing in the Bergstraat, or a neighboring prostitute, could hear her. “You better zip up your purse in this town,” the redhead said.

Ruth’s purse was open, an old failing, but her wallet and passport were in place, and—at a glance—whatever else should be there. A tube of lipstick and a fatter tube of colorless lip gloss; a tube of sunscreen and a tube of moisturizer for her lips.

Ruth also carried a compact that had belonged to her mother. Face powder made Ruth sneeze; the powder puff had long ago been lost. Yet at times, when Ruth looked in the small mirror, she expected to see her mother there. Ruth zipped her purse closed while Rooie smiled ironically at her.

When Ruth struggled to return Rooie’s smile, the sunlight made her squint. Rooie reached out and touched Ruth’s face with her hand. She was staring at Ruth’s right eye with a keen interest, but Ruth misunderstood the reason. After all, Ruth was more used to people spotting the hexagonal flaw in her right eye than she was used to being punched.

“I was born with it . . .” Ruth started to say.

But Rooie said, “Who hit you?” (And Ruth had thought her bruise had healed.) “About a week or two ago, it looks like . . .”

“A bad boyfriend,” Ruth confessed.

“So there
is
a boyfriend,” Rooie said.

“He’s not here. I’m alone here,” Ruth insisted.

“You’re only alone until the next time you see me,” the prostitute replied. Rooie had only two ways of smiling, ironically and seductively. Now she was smiling seductively.

All Ruth could think of saying was: “Your English is surprisingly good.” But this barbed compliment, however true, had a much more profound effect on Rooie than Ruth had anticipated.

The prostitute lost every outward manifestation of her cockiness. She looked as if an old sorrow had returned to her with near-violent force.

Ruth almost said she was sorry, but before she could speak, the redhead responded bitterly: “I knew somebody English—for a while.” Then Rooie Dolores went back inside her room and closed the door. Ruth waited, but the window curtains did not open.

One of the younger, prettier prostitutes was scowling resentfully at Ruth from across the street, as if she were personally disappointed that Ruth should spend her money on an older, less attractive whore.

There was only one other pedestrian on the tiny Bergstraat—an older man with his eyes cast down. He would not look at any of the prostitutes, but he raised his eyes sharply to Ruth as he passed by. She glared back at the man, whose eyes were fixed on the cobblestones as he walked on.

Then Ruth walked on, too. Her personal but not professional confidence was shaken. Whatever the possible story was—the most probable story, the best story—she had no doubt that she would think of it. She hadn’t thought enough about her characters; that was all. No, the confidence she’d lost was something moral. It was at the center of herself
as a woman,
and whatever “it” was, Ruth marveled at the feeling of its absence.

She would go back to see Rooie again, but that was not what bothered her. She felt no desire to have
any
sexual experience with the prostitute, who had certainly stimulated her imagination but who had
not
aroused her. And Ruth still believed that there was no necessity for her, either as a writer
or
as a woman, to watch the prostitute perform with a customer.

What bothered Ruth was that she
needed
to be with Rooie again—just to see, as in a story, what would happen next. That meant that Rooie was in charge.

The novelist walked quickly back to her hotel, where—before her first interview—she wrote only this in her diary: “The conventional wisdom is that prostitution is a kind of rape for money; in truth, in prostitution—maybe
only
in prostitution—the woman seems in charge.”

Ruth had a second interview over lunch, and a third and fourth after lunch. She should have tried to relax then, because she had an early-evening reading, followed by a book-signing and then a dinner. But instead, Ruth sat in her hotel room, where she wrote and wrote. She developed one possible story after another, until the credibility of each felt strained. If the woman writer watching the prostitute perform was going to feel humiliated by the experience, whatever came of the experience sexually had to happen to the woman writer; somehow, it had to be
her
sexual experience. Otherwise, why would
she
feel humiliated?

The more Ruth made an effort to involve herself in the story she was
writing,
the more she was delaying or avoiding the story she was
living
. For the first time, she knew what it felt like to be a character in a novel instead of the novelist (the one in charge)—for it was as a
character
that Ruth saw herself returning to the Bergstraat, a character in a story she
wasn’t
writing.

What she was experiencing was the excitement of a
reader
who needs to know what happens next. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep herself away from Rooie. Irresistibly, she wanted to know what would
happen
. What would Rooie suggest? What would Ruth allow Rooie to do?

When, if only for a moment, the novelist steps out of the creator’s role, what roles are there for the novelist to step into? There are only creators of stories and characters in stories; there are no other roles. Ruth had never felt such anticipation before. She felt she had absolutely no will to take control of what happened next; in fact, she was exhilarated
not
to be in charge. She was happy
not
to be the novelist. She was not the writer of
this
story, yet the story thrilled her.

Ruth Changes Her Story

Ruth stayed after her reading to sign books. Then she had dinner with the sponsors of the signing. And the following evening in Utrecht, after her reading at the university there, she also signed books. Maarten and Sylvia helped Ruth with the spelling of the Dutch names.

The boys wanted their books inscribed, “To Wouter”—or to Hein, Hans, Henk, Gerard, or Jeroen. The girls’ names were no less foreign to Ruth. “To Els”—or to Loes, Mies, Marijke, or Nel (with one
l
). And then there were those readers who wanted their last names included in the inscription. (The Overbeeks, the Van der Meulens, and the Van Meurs; the Blokhuises and the Veldhuizens; the Dijkstras and the De Groots and the Smits.) These book-signings were such arduous exercises in spelling that Ruth left both readings with a headache.

But Utrecht and its old university were beautiful. Before her reading, Ruth had had an early dinner with Maarten and Sylvia and their grown sons. Ruth could remember when they’d been “little” boys; now they were taller than she was and one of them had grown a beard. To Ruth, still childless at thirty-six, one of the shocks of knowing couples with children was the disquieting phenomenon of how the children grew.

On the train back to Amsterdam, Ruth told Maarten and Sylvia of her lack of success with boys the age of their sons—that is, when she’d been their age. (The summer she’d come to Europe with Hannah, the more attractive boys had always preferred Hannah.)

“But now it’s embarrassing.
Now
boys the age of your boys
like
me.”

“You’re very popular with young readers,” Maarten said.

“That’s not what Ruth meant, Maarten,” Sylvia told him. Ruth admired Sylvia: she was smart and attractive; she had a good husband and a happy family.

“Oh,” Maarten said. He was very proper—he actually blushed.

“I don’t mean that
your
boys are attracted to me in that way,” Ruth quickly told him. “I mean some boys their
age
.”

“I think
our
boys are probably attracted to you in that way, too!” Sylvia told Ruth. She was laughing at how shocked her husband had been; Maarten hadn’t noticed the number of young men surrounding Ruth at both her book-signings.

There’d been many young women, too, but they were attracted to Ruth as a role model—not only as a successful writer, but also as an unmarried woman who’d had several boyfriends and yet still lived alone. (Why this seemed glamorous, Ruth didn’t know. If only they’d realized how little she liked her so-called personal life!)

With the young men, there was always one boy—at least ten but sometimes fifteen years Ruth’s junior—who made a clumsy effort to hit on her. (“With an awkwardness that approaches heartbreaking proportions,” was the way Ruth put it to Maarten and Sylvia.) As a mother of boys that age, Sylvia knew exactly what Ruth meant. As a father, Maarten had paid closer attention to his sons than to the unknown young men who’d been falling all over themselves around Ruth.

This time there’d been one in particular. He’d stood in line to have his book autographed after her reading in Amsterdam
and
in Utrecht; she’d read the same passage on back-to-back nights, but this young man had not appeared to mind. He’d brought a well-worn copy of one of her paperbacks to the reading in Amsterdam, and in Utrecht he’d held out the hardcover of
Not for Children
for her signature—both were English editions.