"I used to sing in a choir," Alice told him. "I know how to sing."
"It's no place to sing a hymn or say a prayer," the policeman said.
"Maybe you could come by from time to time," Saskia suggested to him. "Just in case she draws a crowd."
"She'll draw one, all right," Nico said.
"So what?" Els asked. "A new girl always draws a crowd."
"When a new girl takes a customer inside and closes the curtains, the crowd usually goes away," Nico Oudejans said.
"I'm not going to admit any customers," Alice might have repeated.
"Sometimes it's easier than s
aying no," Saskia said. "Virgins, for example--they can be nice."
"They're quick, too," Els told Alice.
"Not around Jack."
"Just not too young a virgin, Alice," Nico Oudejans said.
"I really appreciate it," Alice told him. "If you ever want a tattoo--" She stopped; maybe she thought that if she offered him a free tattoo, the policeman would construe this as a bribe. He was a nice guy, Nico Oudejans. His eyes were a robin's-egg blue, and high on one cheekbone he had a small scar shaped like the letter L.
Out on the Warmoesstraat, Alice thanked Els and Saskia for helping her get permission from the police to be a prostitute for an afternoon and part of one night. "I figured it would be easier to talk Nico into it than to talk you out of it," Saskia said.
"Saskia always does what's easier," Els explained. The three women laughed. They were walking the way Dutch girls sometimes do, side by side with their arms linked together. Alice was in the middle; Els was holding Jack's hand.
The Warmoesstraat ran the length of one edge of the red-light district. Jack and Alice were on their way back to the Krasnapolsky. Els and Saskia were going to help Alice pick out what to wear--she wanted to wear her own clothes, she said. Alice didn't own a skirt as short as the ones Saskia wore in her window or doorway on the Bloedstraat, or a blouse with a neckline as revealing as the ones Els wore when she was giving advice on the Stoofsteeg.
It must have been about eleven in the morning when they came to the corner of the Sint Annenstraat. Only one prostitute was working, way at the end of the street, but even at that distance, she recognized them. The prostitute waved and they waved back. Because they were looking down the Sint Annenstraat, into the district, they didn't see Jacob Bril coming toward them on the Warmoesstraat. They were still walking four abreast; there was no way Bril could get around them. He said something sharply in Dutch--a curse, or some form of condemnation. Saskia snapped back at him. Even though Els and Saskia were not dressed for their doorways, Bril surely recognized them; after all, he'd made quite a comprehensive study of the prostitutes in the neighborhood.
The three women had to unlink their arms for Jacob Bril to pass by them; it might have been the first time Bril had been forced to stop walking in the red-light district. Of course Bril knew Alice--she was standing between the two prostitutes. As for the boy, Bril always appeared to look right through him; it was as if he never saw Jack.
"In the Lord's eyes, you are the company you keep!" Jacob Bril told Alice.
"I like the company I keep just fine," Alice replied.
"What would you know about the Lord's eyes?" Els asked Bril.
"Nobody knows what God sees," Saskia said.
"He sees even the smallest sin!" Bril shouted. "He remembers every act of fornication!"
"Most men do," Els told him.
Saskia shrugged. "I find I forget it, most of the time," she said.
They watched Jacob Bril scurry down the Sint Annenstraat, as purposefully as a rat. The lone prostitute at the far end of the street was no longer in her doorway; she must have seen Bril coming.
"Jacob Bril is a good reason for me to be off the street before midnight," Alice said. "I can't imagine what he'd say if he saw me sitting in a window or heard me singing in a doorway." She laughed in that brittle way, the kind of laughter Jack recognized as a precursor to her tears.
It was Els or Saskia who said: "There are better reasons than Bril to be off the street before midnight."
They came out of the Warmoesstraat in the Dam Square and walked into the Krasnapolsky. "What's fornication?" Jack asked.
"Giving advice," Alice answered.