Choke Point

It’s unnecessary,” Knox complains to Dulwich as if Grace weren’t part of the conversation. “We’re making progress.”

They sit at different tables in Café Papeneiland, a brown café—the Amsterdam equivalent of a London pub—at the intersection of Prinsengracht and Brouwersgracht. The mood is lively, the beer flowing. It’s so dark, due to the wood-paneled walls that stretch back to 1624 and and the thick smoke in the air that might be as old, it’s difficult to make out Dulwich in the corner by the main door. Grace is visible where she sits on a bench seat alongside a table of men, most of whom can’t keep their eyes off her. The three speak into their cell phones, a Skype conference call initiated by Grace.

Grace places her hand across her mouth as she speaks into the mobile. “The object is to bring them to us. Not the soldiers, but the generals. The soldiers outnumber us. We have been lucky so far—all of us. If we are to expedite results, if we are to survive, we need a new strategy.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Dulwich says.

But Knox wishes he would. The plan as proposed presents unnecessary risk to Grace. It amounts to a frontal attack instead of the guerrilla methods they’ve been using. While certain to win the attention of those behind the knot shop, there’s no guarantee it will have the intended results, and Knox says so for the third time. He finishes with, “They’ll have your head.”

“They would rather know my business,” she says. “They will be impressed by my investment capital. Before you kill the competition, you win all their assets. Who knows? Maybe they would welcome a silent partner with deep pockets. Expand the business.”

“And maybe they’re content to just kill you and move on.”

“Not without having a look at me first.”

Dulwich intervenes like a boxing referee. “Let’s remember, she’s not proposing that they will set up something face-to-face. It’s stealth warfare. It’s a good plan, Knox. Give it a chance.”

“At what cost? We’re doing fine. Kreiger is going to connect me to them as a buyer. We’re so close to that. There’s a teacher . . . If we can get to one of the parents . . . Let’s give the current plan some time.”

“No one is suggesting one plan over the other,” Grace says. “We continue working every angle.”

“If she’s going to set up shop, she has to find a shop,” Dulwich says, attempting to clarify things for Knox. “That means—”

“I get it, Sarge,” Knox snaps. He’s left Sonia. He doesn’t trust her to stay put and is therefore anxious to be out of here. “My vote, for what it’s worth, is no.” He can’t see her face clearly as Grace turns to look at him across the barroom, but he knows her expression must be disappointment. Wonders when that came to matter to him. Is he opposed to the idea because he didn’t come up with it, or because it’s ill-conceived? “We have too many balls in the air. We don’t need another.” His last push.

“That’s for me to decide,” Dulwich says.

Knox leaves five euros on the table for the empty beer and heads to the door without looking at either of them. He wants badly to catch Grace’s eye, but is afraid it might be the last time he sees her alive.

“Get a load of that,” Dulwich says to Grace, Knox having left the conversation, “I think he cares about you.”

“John Knox cares only about his last lay and his next meal.”

“Not necessarily in that order.” Alone at the table, Dulwich laughs to his stein of beer. People sitting nearby purposefully avoid looking at him.

—

GRACE HOLDS ON to a cool brick wall behind the line of street market tents on Ten Katestraat where empty coolers and stacked crates, cardboard boxes and plastic milk cartons spill out of cars and microvans raked up onto the curb. Taking a drag on a cigarette, she sees through the tents to the quickly emptying center of the street, the pedestrian lane down the market’s middle. It’s a disgusting habit she picked up in the Army and dispensed with shortly after her discharge, but one that comes in handy at times like this. Truth be told, she misses it, though knows she’s better for the decision to quit.

The stalls are joined one to the next, their aluminum tent poles secured with plastic ties. They stretch two blocks on either side of the street, sandwiching the milling crowds and squeezing money out of pockets. The regular shoppers bring their own bags, making the tourists easier to spot. Grace buys a green tote from a nearby vendor and carries it on her forearm. The linen vendor who steered her to the community center packs up by category: napkins, bath towels, kitchen towels. Each unsold stack goes into its own plastic bin, the bin into the back of a beat-up Volkswagen. The woman is methodical, robotic in her movements. Her lip stud catches the light from the string of bare bulbs that runs the length of the tents, sparking like an animated hero’s teeth. She is forced to shut the hatchback door twice in order for it to latch.

Grace grinds out the cigarette’s ember with the toe of her shoe and crosses to intercept. She grabs the vendor by her upper arm, twists her against the vehicle and blocks the woman’s right hand as she raises it defensively.

“You listen carefully.” Grace leans against the woman to pin her, but the contact is more than that—both threatening and intimate. “Remember me? Your idea of a little fun?”

The vendor’s eyes remain at half-mast. She’s on the wrong end of having been stoned for the past two hours. Grace represents a buzz kill.

“Marta?” calls a man’s rough voice. “Everything okay?”

Grace releases the woman’s right hand, and the vendor waves off her retail neighbor. “A lovers’ quarrel is all.” Until the woman smiles, Grace had forgotten what beautiful lips she has.

“Your son? Brother? Lover? Who was it that attacked me?”

“Screw you.”

“You only sent two? Do I look like I am so easy?”

“Yes, you do.”

Grace chokes the woman’s upper arm tightly; isn’t afraid to turn and crush her hip against the woman’s pubic bone. She blocks the woman’s free arm with her elbow and cups the woman’s small breast painfully. “I am looking for a dozen girls to start. Twice that within a month. Five euros a day. Decent conditions. Working toilets. A true lunch break. No chains. No one held against their will. No questions asked from either side. But I can tell you this: my shop will be run by women, not men. The highest quality garments. You tell the mothers that. If trouble follows me or finds me, a colleague knows where to find you. And he—yes, he—will find you. You will be punished.” She exerts enough pressure to know the woman is by now light-headed. “Clear?”

The woman’s lips are bloodless, her eyes squinted shut. She manages a nod.

—

THE WAY BACK TO HER HOTEL challenges her patience. She doesn’t trust any form of public transportation, and the walk is a long one. She stops to use storefront glass as mirrors; she takes four consecutive right turns, walking squarely around the block in an attempt to spot tails, not just once, but three separate times. She shakes off the dirty feeling of being watched, not knowing.

Wanting to avoid her room, needing an outlet for pent-up aggression, she makes eyes at a man in the hotel bar. Men are so easy, so predictable. A plunging neckline and they’re putty. She lets him buy her a drink.

This encounter is just nuts-and-bolts. He twists and she receives and soon there’s a fit of convenience. His small talk lacks originality; her flirting lacks interest. As it wears on into a second drink, it’s clear to both that it’s to be purely physical—a grinding struggle to find some sense of satisfaction amid unfamiliarity that borders on embarrassment. Finally upstairs to the man’s room. She demands it remain dark. She’s rough with him and he climaxes too early. She pulls off, raw and annoyed at herself, disappointed and unsatisfied. It isn’t the first time she has screwed a stranger, which makes the experience all the more loathsome.

She begs a shower off him. He’s snoring by the time she’s toweled off.

Grace sleeps in the overstuffed chair. Wakes to rain on the windows. The self-loathing burns her stomach. This is not who she wants to be. It disappoints her. She wishes the sun would never come up.