Amsterdamned

By Craig Laurance Gidney

T2, or Tiny Tim steps off the tram, on to the wet cobbled stones surrounding Central Station. He’s wearing a red knit cap over his messy blond hair, a faded t-shirt that says FCUK YOU!, worn brown corduroys, and brand-spanking-new blue Pumas. A green backpack dangles from his left shoulder; he leans on a cane with his right hand. The ligament he tore last year is aching. The cane is the very thing that gave him his current sobriquet, since he arrived on the scene in the last few months.

It’s a broodingly gray day above him. The sky is tense and pebbled with cloud. The colors are echoed in the cobblestones and pavement. T2 limps across the ground, away from the tram carrels to an open area.

He takes it all in. The lingering smells of cigarette smoke and pot, the scream and skirl of gulls. Children are running; that same Indian man is selling samosas. The sinister oompa music of a distant accordion underscores it all. T2 passes groups of families, safe in their circles of conformity, and heads toward the fringe, where his customers are likely to be. On his way to the area where taxicabs wait, a little towheaded girl points at him. He smiles back. He never wants to see her again. Not in 10 years.

    Of course, Karma hears him. There, about 10 feet away from the little angel is a girl who looks like she will in about 10 years. (More like 15 years later, but who’s counting?) Fat American face, decorated with flower-power stickers, dirty blonde hair cascading from a bandana, jeans with stickers all over them, and a Radiohead t-shirt. She’s standing around with a group of three similarly attired guys. They have those passé moptop hairdos with monstrous sideburns and wear Converse hi-tops. They look ready to party. He’d mark them as pothead tourists, heading to the city for its lax laws, except one of them has a definite rave vibe, with his Jamiroquai hat. Is that techno squeaking microscopically from his iPod? Innocence radiates from them. He chuckles to himself, limping over to them. The girl sees him, and gives him a big smile.

 

***

    The wail of the draaiorgel wakes Cinda up from her brief nap. Life is just a series of naps now; the stuff in between the naps is too confusing. She feels the striated lines of the bench she dozed on pressed into her face; she scratches at them absently.

I’m here again, she sighs.

The flat train station, with its chattering tourists spilling out into the cobbled streets. There’s Asim, selling his wretched samosas. (She barfed for days after eating one). Trendy teenagers on holiday, waiting to sample the city’s sex and drugs. (She was once one of them). The dead grey sky above, with its gulls, fighting for food. Sometimes, she feels like a gull. Grey and beady-eyed, scrambling after the last crumbs. (Except, the gulls can fly). She’s bound to the earth.

One seagull lands in front of her.

    It stares at her, looking remarkably evil. It’s thin and some of its feathers are missing. But of course, it knows Cinda’s little secret—that she has 80 Euros in her pocket. The devil bird appeals to her.

    Buy some food this time. Share it with me.

    “Away! Away, you little fucker!” Cinda mutters aloud. She’s not sure what language she’s using. “You won’t get shit from me.”

The creature shrugs, and fly-hobbles off. Whatever.

    Cinda’s stomach growls. When did she last eat? She remembers a particularly grisly meal in the Vondelpark, a half eaten pannekoek with the slugtrail traces of stroop. She recalls wiping the pannekoek free of cigarette ashes. She could still taste the ashes anyway.

Cinda. Cinders. She was Cinderella. She chuckles, hacking up a little phlegm.

    “Where’s my crown, eh? My pretty dress. My shoes of glass. My prince.” This was said aloud, in Flemish, this time. Because that’s what Maman told her fairytales in: always in Flemish.

    A tow-headed girl, walking by with her family, must have overheard her talking, because she’s looking this way, with wide eyes.

Cinda averts her eyes quickly. She doesn’t need to see that. The house in Ghent, with its magic garden and swing set that could send her flying high, further than any damn gull could go…That little girl wouldn’t recognize stuttering polylinguist she is now. She wasn’t blond, like the little girl in front of her. Cinda was a little angel all the same, in dresses and bows, smelling of baby powder.

    As good as food sounds, Cinda needs happiness more. She needs a treat. After all, she earned it well, her 80 Euros. The cinder girl needs a little glamour in her life. Who doesn’t?

    Cinda stands up, shivering and weak. She scans the crowd, and sees her prince. He’s wearing a red knit cap, and leans on a cane. He always has candy. He’s talking to that callow group of American tourists. She’s seen him many times, Tiny Tim.

    As she stumbles in his direction, the gull flies in front of her.

    You sure you don’t want food? it asks her.

    “Did you have to suck the crusty dick of a fat German to get 40 Euros? Eh? I deserve something more.”

    You have a point, the gull says. It flies up, and drops a perfect white pill of liquid shit on the pavement.

 

***

            “…you’ll really be rolling,” T2 is saying to the crowd of Americans. “It’s pure MDMA. I can vouch for it.”

They’re from somewhere called Ohio. That name alone suggests long stretches of bland farmland. Tiny Tim focuses on the blonde girl, Gwen. Every time he does so, she lights up, her eyes sparkle. He hates that he’s lying to her. But he still hands the perfect little white pills over to her, wrapped in their baggy. A quick scan of the plaza reveals no authorities near.

“You won’t get a better price…” He smiles at Gwen, the way her breasts swell the RAD and the EAD of the font above Thom Yorke’s face. He feels himself harden.

“It better be good,” Jamiroquai-hat warns. “We’ll find you and kick your ass, if it’s not. We know what you look like.”

Gwen turns to the guy. “Brian, don’t be so…” She turns to Tiny Tim. “I’m sorry about him—he’s always so suspicious…”

(Brian scoffs and walks off with one of the other guys in the group. Another guy spits dramatically, startling one of the many squabbling gulls).

“I’m sure that it’s wonderful.” Gwen comes up to him, touches his face. Tiny Tim smells her: baby powder, sweat, and cloves. It’s intoxicating. He would love to bury his face in that golden hair, to free it from the bandana.

“80 Euros, right?” she says. She counts out the money. The other guy, Pete, with his messy moptop and straggly beard says, “Man, that’s ugly money. Looks like fuckin’ Monopoly cash.” He’s already fried. His eyes are the low burning red of embers. He must have smoked weed on the train from Schiphol. Quite a feat. He reeks like a Coffee House.

“Well, thank you.” It’s Gwen the angel again. “Hope to see you around.” She and her crew gather their duffel bags and giant backpacks, heading for the trams. T2 feels a twinge of something as they go. He convinces himself that it’s lust.

He sees Gwen taking the pill, waiting for the tendrils of Love to snake out into her blood stream. Endorphins waiting to be released, like birds from a pie. Instead, she’ll feel the jittery nervousness of bad speed. Her heart will pump a little too fast, like an out of control Jungle track with scratch-happy D.J. The lights of the club won’t glimmer for her. They’ll scream…

T2 buries his guilt. She’s probably fucking that Jamiroquai poseur anyway…. As if it’s reminding him, his leg aches. A good, bone-scraping throb. He wouldn’t have to do this, sell crap, if it weren’t for the accident. Doctors aren’t cheap.

Tiny Tim decides to take a tram into town, and crash in the room he rents from Nils. Perhaps a little Vicodin, combined with some warm tea would soothe him. He makes a note to himself not to go to any clubs this weekend, to lay low—he might run into Gwen’s group. As he walks to take one of the trams into town, he runs into a lurching black woman.

Cinders. She’s called that, because her skin is ashy. She’s a Central Station fixture, though he’s seen her before in different places, skulking around the Flower Market, or hanging around one canal or another. Her face is gaunt, and her short hair is crisped from lack of washing. Her brown eyes are covered with a yellowish film. Her walk is comical and grotesque; she walks a little like Noseferatu. She smiles at him. It’s all the more ghastly, because it’s heartfelt.

“What you got today?” she says in Dutch. She looks like she has to think about it.

“Nothing for free,” he says automatically, and begins to walk away.

“Stop! Stop!” she says, this time in French. Then, in Dutch: “I have money!”

This makes T2 pause, and reconsider. He slows his limp. (Thank God, since his leg was beginning to ache like a motherfucker).

“I don’t have— " he pauses, turns to her wracked figure—“I don’t have smack.”
Cinders laughs, perhaps a little too loudly. A couple of trendy-looking homosexuals glance in their direction. One of them raises his 200 Euro sunglasses in curiosity.

“That’s not what I want,” she says, softly. She pauses to scratch her arm, which is buried beneath several layers of clothing.

As he’s waiting, Tiny Tim glances around. It’s such a blasted day. Low flying birds fight each other for garbage. The tourists do their best to ignore the rot in their midst. A gull lands, and waddles behind Cinders.

“What you got, for 80 Euros?” she finally asks.

T2 is about to sell her 4 tablets of the mock ecstasy. The bird behind Cinders croaks. It’s an ugly sound. Cinders turns around, and begins babbling in some incomprehensible tongue to the bird. The gull merely cocks its head to the side, as if it’s actually listening. What an awful bird. The feathers are dirty grey-white, with a ruff of dinghy grey around the neck and wing tips. The feet are dirty, with a couple of the toes missing. It’s so thin. The bird is the color of ashes stubbed out on the pavement.

“I have nothing, Cinders. I sold my last batch.”

Cinders stops her conversation with the gull, and glances at him: “But I thought…”

Tiny Tim is more adamant this time: “I don’t have anything. Nothing. Go fuck off. And get yourself something to eat. You’ll die.”

He turns around, and starts limping toward a waiting tram. He’s shaking a little—but it must be from the ache in his leg.

 

© Craig Laurance Gidney