be sitting there waiting, a man reading a newspaper. Of course the hairdresser knows he can hear everything, but the hairdresser doesn’t give a damn. The hairdresser doesn’t talk to customers who aren’t in the chair. But Elisabeth is bothered by their silent witness. One of the ones who always seems to be there. One of the ones who pretends not to notice but whose very existence makes things inappropriate.
-
MY MOTHER IS dying, Coco thinks, wanting to say the words out loud. She knows to whom and she is also looking forward to being comforted by him. The feeling in her stomach resembles being in love, she can still remember it from last year, though it might be hunger too. Funny, the way she can just keep on cycling; she still knows the way to the deli on the Rozengracht. Getting into the right lane at the big crossing goes as smoothly as usual, she takes the tram rails diagonally. It’s not that she’d expected her emotions to make cycling impossible, she is far from sentimental, but she does long for a fitting reaction. She would like to stop and reflect, and this feeling does really seem like hunger. It’s not that far to the snack bar on the Kinkerstraat that has RAS super fries, crispy on the outside, soft in the middle.
As she approaches the snack bar, she sees that the blue lettering on the façade no longer spells ‘De Vork’ but ‘Corner Inn’—there’s a new owner, and now she realises that the feeling in her stomach is not love, it is not hunger but panic, because bloody hell, they must still have RAS super fries, mustn’t they?
It isn’t until after she’s ordered, ‘One RAS fries and two battered sausages, please,’ until after she’s paid (did he hear her properly?) and the sausages have been dipped into the batter, and the man has turned his back and used the concealed RAS fries machine, that now she sighs, turns around, and sits down at a table in the window in relief, a view of the key-cutting shop on the other side of the street. She slumps into the hard plastic bucket seat, is happy, thinks calmly: what was that other nice feeling again? And is shocked to discover it is the news of her mother’s impending death.
She stares at the safes in the key shop window, searching for appropriate thoughts, and is fairly satisfied with: later I’ll be able to think, ‘this is where I was when I heard that my mother was going to die.’
The new owner brings the fries and the sausages on a brown plastic tray. She doesn’t take the food from the tray. She should eat slowly, ideally in a calm state of mind, but she doesn’t.
When she’s finished everything, she sits there aimlessly, staring at the key-cutting shop. As much as she’d like to share the news, you should wait with something like that, she thinks. And she knows that it’s only half past three. His last client leaves at four, he gets home about half past.
‘Apart from my parents,’ she’d said, ‘I don’t know anyone who still has a house phone.’
‘Yes,’ he said, not for the first time, ‘you’re too young for me.’
Telling him over the phone would be a shame, she’d miss his facial expression. She’ll call and leave a message that he has to eat at hers tonight, that she’s cycled right across town to fetch truffle pasta.
Hans flies into a rage. Coco looks at the red flush on his cheeks and is happy, as though she’s hit the bull’s eye on the shooting range and a bunch of roses has popped up.
‘She told you like that?!’ Hans says, ‘on the Overtoom?! “I’m dying” on the Overtoom?!’
Coco nods, wild, like a child. ‘Yes, like that, just as I was about to cycle off.’
Hans is no longer leaning on the counter, he is standing with his hands on his hips, his belly thrust out. ‘And then she left? Crossed the tram rails and that was that?’ His eyes are enormous.
‘“We’ll call,” she said.’
‘We’ll call?!’ He thrusts his belly out even further.
‘Yes, that’s what she said.’ Coco carries on nodding and just stops herself from saying: bad, isn’t it?
‘And that was that?’ Hans asks.
The water boils, Coco turns down the heat.
‘Oh yeah,’ she almost shouts, ‘whether I’d had my hair cut, she asked that too!’
‘What a horrible woman! She must be a ho-rri-ble woman.’
Coco grins from ear to ear. She basks in the indignation he is so good at.
She says, ‘Oh well,’ and again, ‘oh well.’ She carefully lowers the truffle pasta into the water with a wooden spoon and waits for more indignation, louder exclamations.
‘You can put the plates on the table, we’ll eat in three minutes.’
‘Oh well?’ Hans repeats.
‘Oh well,’ Coco says, ‘perhaps she was caught off guard.’
‘Oh well?’ Hans says again.
‘Oh well.’
‘Are you going to be like that?’
‘Huh?’
‘No, no, no.’ Hans takes a couple of steps backwards, as though he wants to view the situation from a greater distance. ‘This is typical of you. Feeding me horror stories about your parents and then playing it cool. “Oh well.” And then you keep coming up with new details and let me do the swearing and then you go and defend them. I’m not going to go along with this. I refuse to have an opinion about this. Yes, well tell me, Coco, what do you think?’ Hans looks triumphant. He doesn’t lay the table and the pasta will be ready in two minutes.
‘The plates,’ she says. Hans gets the plates.
‘Well?’
‘Perhaps she shouldn’t have told me… like that?’
‘I don’t know, you tell me.’
Coco looks at the clock on the microwave and feels like her party has been spoiled.
Hans doesn’t stay. Hans has to work.
‘A client?’
‘I have to work.’
‘Reading.’
‘You can read here.’
‘Sweetheart,’ he kisses her forehead, ‘I’ll give you a call before I go to sleep, all right?’
She nods slowly.
‘Or you should say: “It’s very important to me that you stay.”’
Coco doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know whether it’s important or not. It seems like a trump card that she can only play once. She’ll keep it.
She met him a year ago in the launderette. A middle-aged man who didn’t know how a washing machine worked. She had just loaded her wash and was wondering whether to go back to bed or go somewhere for coffee. She suspected that she was still drunk from the night before and that the headache would come later. That was when he came in. She was still crouched down next
