Free Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda Page A

of the collection can.
    While counting the takings, the woman told him, the Sportlust treasurer noticed that Miriam’s and Joni’s cans didn’t contain a single banknote, and that their proceeds were not only less than a quarter of the previous years’ but also the lowest of all the other cans, even the ones from what she called the grotty neighborhoods. Miriam was in the Tuesday evening gymnastics group; they took her aside and within ten seconds she had confessed. According to her, she and Joni managed to fish out all the paper money with a geometry triangle and then divided the loot—a little over 150 guilders—between them.
    Joni was furious. What a bunch of lies. She had nothing to do with it! How could somebody be
so
mean. She
hated
that Miriam,she always knew she had a mean streak, she should never have trusted her. When they had finished their rounds, she told him through her tears, it was already dark and dinner time and Miriam had offered to turn both cans in to the treasurer at the central collection point, near where she lived.
    Sigerius was livid. “My daughter is standing here in the living room bawling,” he said to the chairwoman. “I know Joni inside out, your accusations are premature and totally out of line. I guarantee you my daughter is not going around plundering charity collection cans.” They agreed that he and Joni would go together so she could tell her side of the story, a suggestion she accepted with a pout, but she backed out just as he was about to leave for the gym. She was afraid she’d burst into tears. Or explode in anger. So he went alone. It was an onerous meeting; the woman insisted that it was Miriam’s word against Joni’s, and he was adamant that Joni’s name be cleared. When he returned home at ten-thirty that night, he told Joni he’d given them the choice: either take her word for it, or that was the end of the training, and then we’d have to see whether she stayed in the club.
    He can still remember exactly where they were standing: in the front hall, he with his coat still on, right foot on the open spiral stairs; Joni halfway, holding her toothbrush with toothpaste already on it. He’ll never forget the moment she broke. After he’d finished his report she went quiet. Then she slumped down onto a step, dropped the toothbrush, tick, tack, tock, onto the slate floor. She hid her face in her nightie and said with a drawn-out sigh: “Dad?”
    He raised his eyebrows.
    “Listen, Dad, don’t freak out or anything. I, um, what I mean is … well, actually, Miriam’s telling the truth.”
    • • •
    He walks under the dribbling plane trees toward the Okura. He deliberately bangs against the shoulder of a phoning businessman, steers clear of the vegetable stalls on the sagging sidewalk and the garbage bags ripped open by stray dogs. A little group of Chinese, maybe five of them, dart out of a side street and spread a large purple tarp on the sopping wet pavement. In a wink they’ve laid out their wares: leather bags, Ray-Ban sunglasses, Gucci pullovers, Adidas T-shirts, CDs, DVDs, video games. Fake. He pauses for a moment, his shorter leg—the scooter one—hurts, he massages his hamstring. One of the hawkers accosts him in snarly Mandarin.
    “Fuck off,” he says with a smile.
    What’s worse: selling imitation Gucci or robbing a collection can? What about the gray area? Is it logical or worthwhile to worry about Joni, about a hypothetical problem—as long as he doesn’t know for sure, it doesn’t exist—while he also knows that Wilbert is free? Navigating his way between cars, he crosses the four-lane Huaihai Zhong Lu, turns left forty yards farther on and passes in front of the ramshackle Art Deco façade of the Cathay Theatre, where a horde of Chinese cinema-goers is waiting to see
Mission: Impossible 2
. What will happen now that the kid is free? What does six years in the slammer do to a man like Wilbert Sigerius?
    “Hitler knew the answer to