Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (7 page)

“Um, Judy,” Becky said. “Where are you taking us?”

“Old stomping grounds.”

“Well I’d just like to note that we just passed a store with a sign that said ‘condomerie.’”

“It won’t be the first.”

“Also,” Becky added, glancing over her shoulder, “I believe we’re being followed by multiple clones of Gina’s ex-boyfriend.”

Judy followed Becky’s gaze and noticed the two guys following them, men who’d just stumbled out of a nearby coffee shop. They
were laughing and swaggering, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. One had a tattoo up the side of his face. The other
peered at Monique through swollen, red eyes, cataloging her attributes from her sensible flats to the jean jacket she pulled
closed over her dress.

 “Just ignore them, they’re harmless stoners.” Judy pulled Monique closer, giving her a little squeeze. “And you two call
yourselves New Yorkers.”

“I’m no New Yorker,” Monique said. “I’m a suburbanite from New Jersey. I don’t walk red light districts in strange cities
at night.”

“Maybe we ought to plan a trip to Flatbush.”

“Right,” Becky scoffed, “because Gina doesn’t bring enough ‘harmless stoners’ into my house.”

“Think about it,” Judy said. “What kept us, back in Jersey, from taking a bus just to wander around some new part of New York
City?”

Monique made a scoffing noise. “Common sense?”

“Expectations. When we’re home we have those we put on ourselves, and those imposed on us by others. So we avoid adventure
altogether. Come on, let’s cut down here.”

Monique resisted. “That’s a narrow street.”

Judy grinned. “Winding and mysterious.”

“I think,” Monie said, “that we should stay by the main canal.”

Judy blew out a breath. “Honestly, is this how it’s going to be for the next two weeks?”

 “Do you want to get mugged in a foreign country?”

“Look at that crowd.” Judy gestured to the milling throng. “We’ll be just fine.”

Monique frowned. “I’m getting danger vibes.”

“So you’re going to spend this whole vacation sticking to the main canal, the tourist stores, and the well-worn routes?”

Monique nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

Judy felt a rumbling irritation, the frustration of the newly reborn girl inside her. “Listen, we’re thousands of miles away
from home. Don’t you feel it, Monie? The urge to try something different? To stumble heedless,” she said, waving down the
crowded street, “into another culture, another whole world?”

Becky breathed. “Who are you, and what did you do with our Judy?”

“The old Judy’s back home, painting the walls of the spare bedroom and dealing with a midlife crisis. But the young Judy is
right here, primed for fun. Believe me, you’d rather take this trip with her.”

Judy plunged them into one of the busier areas. She breathed in the perfume of Amsterdam, the familiar scent of hash that
lingered. The neon glowed brighter than she remembered it, the shouts of the crowd more boisterous.

Becky stumbled on the cobblestones. Judy tried to curl her hand under Becky’s arm, but Becky made a point of swaying out of
her range.

“Cobblestones are a bitch,” Judy said. “You’d think they’d be worn smooth after so many centuries.”

“Maybe I’m just getting stoned.” Becky took an exaggerated sniff. “All you have to do is breathe in this place.”

“Oh, look, a sex supermarket.” Monique made a tight smile. “I think I’ll just drop in and pick up some incredibly huge dildos.
That ought to be fun getting through customs. And how about—wait.” She slowed down, cocking her head. “Is that a gas mask?”

Becky squinted at something on the opposite side of the street. “Judy, what does that sign say?”

“It’s a theater,” Judy said.

“A gas mask?” Monique repeated. “What the hell would you do with that?”

“Is that some kind of tropical sex show?” Becky asked. “That neon sign is in the shape of a banana.”

“Hey, this gas mask place is right next to a shop called Sadomasochisme.
How convenient! I bet they sell a lot of those cat-o’-nine-tails.”

“Wait,” Becky said, “wait—the banana thing. Is that what I think? Is that when a woman puts a banana—”

“Bingo.” Judy tugged them both through the crowd. “I’m told the middle of the banana gets shot clear across the stage.”

“How is that even possible?”

“As our kids would say, epic skills.”

A man suddenly stepped directly into their path, startling all of them. His unfocused gaze shifted everywhere at once. “Coca?
Eh, you want coca?”

Monique glared at him as she hiked her hands on her hips. “Should I explain to you what a preemie looks like, born to a mother
addicted to cocaine?”

Judy tugged Monie away. Judy’s heart pounded a little, in a good-bad way, excitement skittering with fear. A group of young
people stumbled by like zombies, giggling uncontrollably. Judy grinned at the sight of them because, a few decades ago, she’d
have been bouncing around right in the middle of them.

Then Monique came to a jarring stop.

Judy followed Monique’s gaze. They stared up at one of the famous red-lit windows that gave the area its name. A young woman
gyrated behind the glass. She was dressed in a silver G-string and a strap of some sort that stretched across her back and
covered just enough of her breasts to keep some mystery. The girl’s eyes were closed as she swiveled her hips to music only
she could hear. In the corner of the window lay a little placard.

Fifty euros.

Judy felt the same cold jolt she’d felt the first time she’d seen one of these prostitutes, caged in glass. The sight caught
her by the throat, filling her with revulsion, disbelief, and an inability to look away.

She’d talked to Thierry. She’d said it was terrible what those girls did for money. Thierry had argued with her. He said that
their work was legal, that these women weren’t coerced. They made enough money to support their families, that at least here
they were protected by the law. His explanation unhinged her. It filled her with confusion. Her mind had been cracking open
to so many new possibilities. This bit of caustic reality had flummoxed her. So she’d shrugged it away, unwilling to dwell.

Now Judy stared at this girl gyrating in the window and wondered why she’d ever believed that deceptive crap.

This girl was Audrey’s age.

She resisted a violent urge to pull her belly pack from around her waist and hurl it at the glass, crack it to slivers, and
set the poor girl free.

Monique’s voice was flat. “I want to leave now, Judy.”

Judy swiveled on a heel, the brightness of her mood snuffed and smoking. Mindlessly she led her friends down the street past
smart shops and coffee shops, sex shows, loiterers, and buskers playing reggae. Slowly she noticed the creatures in the shadows
of the doorways, poking up from the underground entrances, loitering on the stairs, all the lurking silhouettes. The homeless
sprawled in nooks and under awnings. She looked at her old stomping grounds not with the eyes of the young girl she'd been,
but with her fifty-year-old eyes, and it was like a veil had been torn from her vision.  She saw all that she’d once blithely
ignored—the danger and the fear, the crime and the addictions, the poverty and the stink of desperation.

Monique took a deep, sucking breath as they tumbled out into the open air of a canal. “Please tell me there are better parts
of Amsterdam than this.”

“I know a restaurant,” Becky suggested. “I read about it in the guidebook while we were on the train.”

Monique asked, “Is it far from here?”

Becky nodded. “We’ll have to hail a cab.”

Judy leaned over the railing by the bridge while Monique flagged down a taxi. Her knee twanged, her legs felt leaden, her
mind raced. The herring sandwich turned acid in her stomach. And suddenly she felt the weight of every single one of her last
twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years of a happy marriage, made meaningful with the all-absorbing work of raising five kids.
Twenty-seven years of worthy life lessons. In the blind excitement of being back in her old stomping grounds, Judy had forgotten
why she’d abandoned that former life altogether.

Yes, she’d been happy, as that young girl.

But that girl had been a fool.

B
ack at home, Becky could be walking up the neighborhood street on a pitch-black Halloween night and know—with one lift of
her head—whether she was up by Judy’s house or down by the Holts’. The glow of the Holts’ single yellow bulb followed by the
Reeses’ flanked lanterns was a familiar pattern, as was the solar-powered trail of low lights that edged the winding pathway
to the McCarthys’. All up and down the street, the lights had a particular sequence, a visual Braille. She was hardly conscious
of noticing this. She’d just assumed this was the way everyone made their way through the darkness.

Her doctor said that the deterioration of her night vision must have occurred over years, in such slow increments as to be
almost imperceptible. She’d long ceded night driving to Marco, and that hadn’t seemed unreasonable. Whenever she’d complained
of the blinding glare of oncoming headlights and the terrors of badly lit roads, people bobbed their heads and commiserated.
See? Everybody else had these problems too.

Now Becky clambered out of the silver taxi into the Jordaan section of Amsterdam, into a dizzying world of smeared lights
disengaged from any sense of structure. She could assume that the dim square glow ahead of her was the entrance to In Het
Donker, the Dutch restaurant she’d read about in the guidebook, but until she approached she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just
a light cast on a wall from a store window across the street. Beyond the cab car headlights loomed, brightened, and then cut
away in odd directions. She turned her back on their unpredictable configurations. She took one hesitant step away from the
cab and then waited as casually as she could for Monique or Judy to come around and join her on the sidewalk.

She started as a couple passed right by her, her hand freezing in her purse as she pretended she was searching for a lipstick.
The couple had passed close enough for her to smell a faint aroma of men’s cologne. They were young. She could tell by the
laughter and the bouncy way they walked.

 “Dutch hipsters,” Monique said, coming around to her side. “Good call, Becky. I think we’ve taken a significant step in the
right direction.”

With a rustle of movement, Monique headed away. Becky stepped swiftly into her wake. Resisting the urge to touch her friend,
Becky watched for any sudden changes in Monique’s walking cadence or height that might indicate stairs or a rising slope or
a sudden step downward or any one of the hundreds of things that had been tripping Becky up since she’d stepped off the plane
in London. Fire hydrants. Little fences around the plots of sidewalk trees. Uneven pavement. Curled welcome mats in hotel
lobbies.

Inside the restaurant a gentle light bathed them. Her eyes strained to adjust. She could just make out a few shapes in the
small anteroom—tables, high café chairs, a milling of merged silhouettes. Monique wandered off to talk to the maître d’, and
Judy made a beeline for something. Becky fell into Judy’s wake and soon found herself in an eclectic, language-bending crowd
by the bar. Judy ordered three glasses of white wine. She thrust one in Becky’s hands just as Monique returned.

“Good news,” Monique said, raising her voice to be heard above the crowd. “We made it in time for the next seating. They’ll
be letting us all in in a few minutes.”

“Excellent.” Becky took a sip of the wine and then clutched her stomach, growling since the disaster with the herring sandwiches.
“I’m going to pass out if I don’t eat soon.”

“Here’s the catch. We have to lock everything up.” Monique’s face was bathed in blue light as she checked her cell phone,
not for the first time this evening. “I mean
everything
. Cell phones, watches, anything that might possibly give out light.”

Becky didn’t actually see the glance that Judy and Monique exchanged. Some things didn’t need to be seen in order to be sensed.
She’d been getting the nervous vibe from them all during the cab ride, from the moment just outside the red light district
when she’d suggested they eat at this particular—and very peculiar—specialty-themed restaurant.

“So,” Becky said, as she followed Monique toward what was shaping up to be a wall of lockers, “what worries you two more?
Eating in absolute darkness? Or being served by a fleet of blind waiters?”

“Blind waiters,” Judy responded. “It’s dangerous. Like I’ll get the tip of a steak knife driven into my hand.”

“I assume they won’t be juggling the knives,” Becky said drily.

Monique shoved her purse into the locker and held out her hand for Becky’s. “The whole concept is unnerving. Not knowing what
we’re going to eat. Not seeing what we’re eating. Trying to manipulate cutlery in the dark.”

“They’re feeding us meat, fish, or chicken, not bull testicles,” Becky said. “The place wouldn’t last long if it were some
grand prank on the sighted.”

“Down, girl.” Monique shut the locker and pulled out the key. “How did you find out about this place, anyway?”

“I’ve got a knack for noticing things with the words ‘blind’ and ‘darkness.’”

She’d first heard about this restaurant weeks ago, back in New Jersey. It showed up in one of her Google searches, for “tips
for blind travelers” or “How long does it take to go completely blind?” The restaurant she’d read about was actually in London.
Like this one, it featured legally blind waiters serving a mystery meal in total darkness. If she’d had the nerve last night
in London, she might have suggested they’d go to the trendy section of Clerkenwell and give it a try. But they’d all been
so exhausted she’d let the moment pass. Noting, even as she did so, that there were similarly themed restaurants in Florence,
in Paris…and in Amsterdam.

“Don’t worry, ladies.” Becky lifted her glass, making it a target for easy clinking. “We’ll all manage just fine. You’re dining
with a professional.”

A waiter emerged from across the room and asked for attention in a voice that carried. He introduced himself as Hans and then
repeated, in three languages, the instructions to form two lines of twelve and put their hand on the shoulder of the person
in front of them. He then led both lines through a curtain into an antechamber, and then through another room into utter darkness.

Becky didn’t squeal, like some of the other patrons did, as they encountered the thickness of the gloom. The blackness washed
over her with a peculiar sort of comfort. Here there were no confusing, darting blobs of light. Here there were no problems
of depth perception or mistaken identity. She heard the voices of the other diners, felt, once, the brush of a chair against
her thigh. She smelled sautéed garlic and the slight wood-chip scent of char-grilled meat. As they filed deeper in a room
of indeterminate size, she heard the clatter of a utensil, the squeak of something against the floor, and the undeniable sound
of a glass tumbling off a table and shattering.

Becky muttered, “Greenhorns.”

Monique snickered.

The waiter guided them to what seemed like a very long single table but, as they were directed to take the seat in front of
them, they realized they were sitting at a series of smaller tables, pressed so close together that they may as well have
been sitting on the laps of the Germans beside them.

“Wow,” Monique murmured. “This is cozy.”

Judy muttered, “I’ve got my wine right in front of my face, and I can’t see a thing. These waiters could be naked for all
I know.”

Becky snorted. “That might make things interesting.”

“After the red light district,” Monique murmured, “I’d believe anything. Becky, you sure this isn’t some kind of twisted strip
club?”

“Right. Like I’m into oiled, hairless, gyrating men.”

“Well, if it were,” Judy said, “at least nobody would be staring.”

In the silence she knew their thoughts had turned back to that window in the red light district, to the young girl dancing
inside. Becky had only seen a swaying silhouette in a pool of pink light, but her imagination had filled in the rest. It might
be the first time she’d ever be grateful for partial night blindness.

A waiter announced his arrival. He asked them to sit back as he slipped the appetizers on the table in front of them. Becky
could smell onions and something vaguely fishy, which made her remember the raw herring sandwich Judy had fed her. Her stomach
turned a little, and she told herself it was because she was so hungry. He took their orders for the main meal—chicken, fish,
or beef—and then slipped away.

“What the hell is on these plates?” Judy made an exaggerated sniff. “I smell the onions, and maybe some peppers. I think I’m
touching an olive but I can’t be sure. It’s slick. For all I know, it could be a cow eyeball.”

“I think I’ve got a sausage.” Monique sounded as if she were facedown in the china. “Or maybe a pickle.”

“Sausage.” Judy breathed deeply. Even in the darkness, Becky could sense her nodding and leaning back in her chair. “Nice.
A little spicy. You’ll love it, Monique.”

“The garlic smell is coming from shrimp.” Monique tip-tapped her way through the plate with a knife or a fork, and Becky held
her hand back until Monique was done exploring. “And there’s some kind of…I don’t know. I guess it’s chutney? It’s got a sweet-onion
sort of flavor.”

Judy murmured, “I think this is an olive. I never really knew how much olives felt like slimy little eyeballs.”

“Yup. They’re definitely olives,” Becky said, popping a slimy orb into her mouth. “I’d guess green ones, Judy, pitted with
pimento.”

Monique spoke around a mouthful of something. “When you can’t see it, it even
tastes
different.”

Becky then bit into a plump, greasy bit of shrimp, listening to her friends chatter. She didn’t need light or eyesight to
know what her girlfriends looked like right now. She’d eaten so many meals with them that she knew Judy was digging in with
gusto, using her fingers without hesitation. She’d be chewing with enthusiasm and finishing everything on her plate. Monique,
on the other hand, was struggling to use her silverware. Monique would prefer to slice up the shrimp and then spear each individual
piece, chewing thoroughly before picking up the next, and Becky suspected it might take a course or two before Monique finally
gave it up to eat with her fingers.

Becky’s throat grew taut. When her eyesight faded to nothing, this feast of sound and smell was what dinner would always be
like. The three of them would be old ladies catching the early bird special at the local diner, but in her mind’s eye Monique
and Judy would always be the vibrant middle-aged women they were right now.

Only their voices would age.

“So,” Monique said, as she did something with her fork, a low, scraping sound. “How are you managing, Becky?”

Becky forced words out of her throat. “Just peachy.”

“This isn’t freaking you out?”

“No.” She winced. In the dark she could hear the wobble in the word. She hoped her friends couldn’t. “This place is just like
a romantic Saturday night dinner at Epernay.”

Monique laughed. Epernay was a fi-fi little French bistro in their hometown. “At Epernay there are candles on the tables.
You can see what you’re eating.”

“Well,
you
can see what you’re eating.” She rolled the wineglass under her nose, breathing in the perfume of the fruity white, as an
excuse to take a long, deep breath. “I should tip extra every time Marco and I go there, just to cover the cost of cleaning
those lovely linen tablecloths.”

“So is that what this is all about? You’re evening the odds?”

“At least here I’m not the only one making an ass of myself.” As if to punctuate her comment, somewhere deep in the room a
glass clattered over. “And maybe, after an evening in mutual darkness, you’ll see how well I manage. Then you’ll both stop
treating me like I’m going to stride off a bridge and drown in some canal.”

Monique sputtered, the sound echoing, as if she did it from within the bowl of her wineglass. “That’s a little harsh.”

Becky set her glass on the table. “Truth hurts.”

“Listen.” Monique shifted in her seat. Becky knew because the action made the table shake. “I know we’ve been a little overprotective.”

“You’ve both been smothering me.”

“Well, frankly, in the past thirty-six hours I’ve seen you trip over more things than I’ve seen you trip over in the last
four years.”

A slow heat prickled across her skin. Becky had a new reason to be grateful for the darkness. Her fingertips grazed the point
on her thigh where she’d bumped into the sharp edge of a planter at Heathrow. A throbbing began on her foot, where she’d miscalculated
the size of a man’s trailing luggage. Her shoulder ached from where she’d taken two full-body blows into commuters rushing
across her path. And she’d already broken into her pack of emergency Band-Aids to hide the cut on the shin she’d received
as she hurried to dress in the hotel room, sliced by the edge of the lower bureau drawer.

“You know what, Monie?” Becky said. “You’re right.”

The scrape of utensils on Monique’s plate stopped. Judy’s noisy chewing slowed. Becky pressed her spine against the back of
the chair until the wood squeaked. It was always easier to speak frankly in the dark. This was why she’d brought them here,
after all. She was freaked out enough by her diagnosis, but each time they coddled her, they drove a sharp spike through her
pride. She didn’t need to be reminded that someday she would be completely and hopelessly dependent.

“Look,” Becky began, “this is the situation. Back home, on the third stair to the second floor in my house, there’s a crack
in the riser that I’ve been nagging Marco to fix, but we’d have to rip up the carpet to do it right.” Ripping the carpet up
meant spending money to have it repaired or replaced. And all nonessential repairs had been put off until Marco was no longer
on furlough. “That riser always gives under my feet, especially if I’m racing up the stairs. It’s a slight difference. Marco
doesn’t even notice it. But when Brian was sick with the flu last winter, and I heard him cry out, I took the stairs too fast.
I didn’t compensate for the change in the rise. I stumbled and bruised my knee up good.”