Just One Day 02: Just One Year Read Online Free PDF Page B

over. “Scariest sight you could ever imagine,” Bram would say, smiling at the memory.
    Yael. Hitching her way back to her army base in Galilee after a weekend’s leave spent in Netanya, at a friend’s house, or maybe a guy’s, anywhere but at the apartment she’d grown up in with Saba. The brothers were driving to Safed, and after she reconnected their radiator hose, they offered her a ride. Bram gallantly offered her the front seat; after all, she’d fixed the car. But Yael, seeing the cramped backseat said, “Whoever’s shortest should sit in back.” She claimed to have meant herself, and to not have known which brother was taller, because Daniel had been in the passenger seat, rolling a joint with the Lebanese hash he’d bought off a surfer in Netanya.
    But Bram had misunderstood, and so after a needless measuring decided Bram was taller by about three centimeters, Daniel took the back.
    They drove the soldier back to her base. Before they parted ways, Bram gave her his address in Amsterdam.
    A year and a half later, Yael finished her military service and, determined to put as much distance as she could between herself and everything she grew up with, took what little money she’d saved and began hitching her way north. She lasted four months and got all the way to Amsterdam before she ran out of money. So she knocked on a door. Bram opened it, and even though he hadn’t seen her in all that time, and even though he didn’t know why she was there, and even though it wasn’t really his way, he surprised himself and he kissed her. “Like I’d been expecting her all that time,” he’d say in a voice full of wonder.
    “See how funny life is,” Bram used to say as the epilogue to their epic love story. “If the car hadn’t broken down just there, or if she’d run out of money in Copenhagen, or if Daniel were the taller one, none of this might ever have happened.”
    But I knew what he was really saying was:
Accidents. It’s all about the accidents
.

Six
----
    T wo days later, one hundred thousand euros appears in my bank account, as if by magic. But of course, it’s not magic. It’s been a long time since I was kicked off my economics course, but I’ve since come to understand that the universe operates on the same general equilibrium theory as markets. It never gives you something without making you pay for it somehow.
    I buy a beat-up bike off a junkie and another change of clothes from the flea market. I may have money now, but I’ve grown used to living simply, to owning only what I can carry. And besides, I’m not staying long, so I may as well leave as few fingerprints as possible.
    I wander up and down the Damrak looking at travel agencies, trying to decide where to go next: Palau. Tonga. Brazil. Once the options increase, settling on one becomes harder. Maybe I’ll track down Uncle Daniel in Bangkok, or is it Bali now?
    At one of the student agencies, a dark-haired girl behind the desk sees me peering at the ads. She catches my eye, smiles, and gestures for me to come inside.
    “What are you looking for?” she asks in slightly accented Dutch. She sounds Eastern, maybe Romanian.
    “Somewhere that isn’t here.”
    “Can you be more specific?” she says, laughing a little.
    “Somewhere warm, cheap, and far away.”
Somewhere that with one hundred thousand euros, I can stay lost as long as I want to
, I think.
    She laughs. “That describes about half the world. Let’s narrow it down. Do you want beaches? There are some fantastic spots in Micronesia. Thailand is still quite cheap. If you’re into a more chaotic cultural affair, India is fascinating.”
    I shake my head. “Not India.”
    “New Zealand? Australia? People are raving about Malawi in Central Africa. I’m hearing great things about Panama and Honduras, though they had that coup there. How long do you want to go for?”
    “Indefinitely.”
    “Oh, then you might look into a round-the-world ticket. We have a few on