Chapter Twenty-Eight
I’ve never been a firm believer in Murphy’s Law.
The statistics of anything going wrong that might go wrong just didn’t line up for me.
But some sources say that aeronautical engineer Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. meant the words that were later named after him as precautionary advice: In designing any plan, if anything can go wrong, it might.
When I came up with the plan on how to move forward, and with all the chaos of my flight to New York still fresh in mind, I took extra care.
I came up with contingencies for anything I thought could go wrong: Book a hotel for the night before, buy flexible train tickets, pack an extra outfit just in case.
But despite my plans B and C, Murphy’s showing me the upper hand again.
Getting to the Codify offices in Amsterdam for my job interview at Maria’s e-learning start-up has been an adventure, to say the least.
Some kind of track problems delayed my train to Amsterdam, turning the two-hour journey into a five-hour one, which made me arrive past check-in hours.
Thanks to an emergency number and a tired but kind receptionist, I managed to get into my room for a few hours of sleep.
This morning wasn’t any better, though. A coffee spill on my blouse led to a last-minute outfit change, which made me run late.
Then, on the way over, it started raining and I got something in my eye and rubbed it, losing my contact lens in the process.
A half-blurry sprint later, I finally arrive at the offices on the second-to-last floor of a renovated warehouse.
I have just enough time to swap my remaining contact lens for my glasses and to pull my drenched hair into a quick braid, which drips cold water onto my neck, before Maria meets me at the reception desk, her HR person Henrieke in tow.
Wary of what else Murphy might be coming up with, I tell myself to breathe when I follow them into the conference room where my interview will take place.
I really need this job interview to work out.
I’m not sure if a position in Maria’s tech ed start-up is the answer to all of my problems, but it doesn’t involve a move halfway across the world, provides the combination of stability and purpose I crave, and makes me excited about the future.
Plus, I’ve started learning Dutch, and now I want to leave this country even less.
“We’re having some problems with the screen in here today,” Maria mentions apologetically.
Of course. But this is an obstacle I can deal with. I smile with relief. “I brought my laptop just in case.”
Despite the IT problems, Maria and I hit it off, like at our first meeting back at the Sawyer’s picnic, and throughout the conversation, I get more and more excited about the job.
I can see myself relocating to Amsterdam and building a life here: wandering along the picturesque canals with their crooked houses, riding my bicycle in the crowds of aggressive cyclists, trying out all of the cafés I’ve bookmarked on my phone on past day trips here.
Maybe, if tomorrow goes well, even with Lewis at my side.
When Karo told me a few weeks ago her interview at an audiobook company was scheduled for the same Thursday as mine with Codify, I booked train tickets to Berlin so we could celebrate the changes in our lives together.
I’d also made the decision to seek out Lewis at his office the next day—tomorrow.
The silence of the six weeks since the Sawyer’s has been brutal and I miss him and I need to tell him how sorry I am, even if he might not feel the same.
My interview finishes without any other complications, and I make the mistake of thinking the statistically unlikely chain of events I’ve dominoed through since yesterday might be over.
But Murphy isn’t done with me yet. Instead, he reveals the final trick up his sleeve.
After the interview, when I’ve packed up my laptop and said goodbye to Henrieke, Maria leads me out of her office and back into the elevator.
“Do you have any plans for the weekend?” she asks, leaning against the wall and pressing the button for the ground floor.
“I have to say, I was surprised you agreed to today’s interview, what with Lewis giving a visiting lecture in Maastricht.
I thought maybe he was there to see you?
” When I don’t respond, Maria shrugs and keeps making small talk, the LED screen behind her counting down the floors we’re passing.
Six, five. We’re at four when her words catch on.
“What?” I blurt out, mind racing.
What is Lewis doing in Maastricht, the small town I still call home in the southern Netherlands? He has no business there. Soon, I won’t have business there anymore.
He has business here, in Amsterdam. So what’s he doing there?
“Rosanna likes to use me as a sounding board for all her experiments. Or practice for tricky mentoring conversations,” Maria tells me.
I guess that’s what she had started talking about while my mind was short-circuiting, but I’m only half listening while I contemplate what Lewis could be there for.
To grow his network in the Netherlands? To show to all my colleagues how his approach to our research topic is better than mine?
Or maybe, a small voice pipes up in a dusty corner of my brain, he’s there for you.
“I’m sorry, I need to check something real quick.
” I scramble for my phone in my pocket, have a short but nerve-racking battle with two-factor authentication, scroll down in my inbox, and there, among all my ignored department-wide emails, it is.
An announcement for a guest talk by Dr. Theodore L.
North, research associate at Berlin School for Mind and Brain.
In bold, underneath, is today’s date, the location, and the time of his talk.
12 p.m.
Which is in two minutes.
Please RSVP to join the borrel outside the lecture theater afterward, it continues, and of course the link for the drinks and snacks has expired, with the deadline long gone.
Where I am in Amsterdam is about a two-and-a-half-hour train ride sandwiched by two ten-minute bike rides away from where Lewis is lecturing, so even if he talks for a full hour, followed by questions, snacks, and drinks, there’s no way I will make it on time.
Not to mention the promise I made to Karo about celebrating the changes in our life together.
“Frances?”
“Huh?” When I look up, Maria is standing in the open door of the elevator, a man in a suit waiting behind her.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes. Sorry about that.” I follow her through the vast space of the lobby with its concrete floor and pendants of geometric lights.
If Lewis is there for me… I swallow, my heart beating a staggering rhythm. That would mean he’s not in Berlin, where I planned to meet him tomorrow. I won’t get to ask him whether he would give us another chance. I won’t find out if he’s still as hung up on me as I am on him.
“Thank you for coming here,” Maria says and steps around an exposed metal column. I almost walk into it, my brain quieted by the news that one key player in my whole plan is not where he should be.
“Shit squared,” I mutter to myself, impatiently following behind Maria even though I’m completely at a loss what to do.
If I don’t go to Berlin now, I’m putting Karo second. Again.
But Lewis… I need to not let him down, either.
No matter what it is that he has to say, I need to be there and listen.
After a lifetime of not being enough for his parents, struggling to connect to his brother, and only ever being able to rely on himself, I need him to know that it’s worth putting himself out there.
In the absence of a good mitigation strategy, I improvise.
After I thank Maria for the interview and we say goodbye, I dash through the rotating doors into the rainy afternoon, and as I sprint back to the hotel to pick up my backpack, I throw my original plan out of the window.
A breakneck-speed ride on a rented bike later, I’m back at the main station in Amsterdam, hopping onto the train as the doors slide shut.
On my phone, the live stream of the lecture theater shows Lewis in low-resolution, and my visual cortex fills in the pixelated gaps of the video: the tight expression that camouflages his nerves, the scatterplot of freckles on his nose, the soft swoop of his hair.
The sound quality is so bad that his voice cuts out every few seconds, but that only instills a stronger sense of urgency in me: I need to see him with my own eyes, bask in the real sound of his voice.
I take a deep breath before I call Karo, pushing Lewis and my racing heart aside.
“How did it go?” I ask her, as soon as she picks up. My voice sounds winded.
“I just got home,” Karo responds with a laugh.
“It went on for longer than expected because we couldn’t stop talking and then they gave me a tour of the place.
So… it went well? I think?” She goes on to tell me how they introduced her to what would be her team and how she gelled with them immediately.
“Karo,” I squeal, “this is amazing.” My phone vibrates against my ear, notifying me that the delivery I’d ordered from the hotel elevator is almost at her place.
“Hey, I got you a surprise—there’s someone going to ring your doorbell in about,” I check the app, “a minute, so can you get your ID ready?”
“Um,” Karo starts, but thankfully follows my instructions when the door buzzes. A muffled conversation and the clipped sound of a closing door later, she’s back on the line, voice incredulous, “Franzi, why did you get me a cocktail delivered?”
“Well.” I hesitate. “There’s been a change of plans. Before I tell you why, I want you to go out onto your balcony, kick back in your hideous rattan chair, and tell me how your interview went.”
Our chat about her interview fills an hour of my painfully slow train ride, but when I finally tell her what’s brought the change of plans about, she falls quiet for a moment.
My stomach drops. Did I just mess up the last four weeks of progress?
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, “I know there’s nothing more selfish than to skip out on a weekend with your sister because you’re still heartbroken over some guy.”
“Oh, Franzi.” Karo emits a long sigh. “I told you. It wasn’t so much about you being selfish, but about you pushing for things you’d convinced yourself you wanted without considering the harm they were causing you.
If you’re going after something—someone—you actually want, I am nothing but proud of you. ”
The encouraging tone of her voice makes me feel raw. Grateful. “Thank you.”
“And he’s clearly not just some guy,” Karo continues. “Thanks to you, I’ve done my bit of going after what I want today. Now you do yours. Go and tell him how you feel.”