The man is taken aback rather than impressed. “Is that Dutch?”
“Yes,” Roberta answers for Cam. “He’s been studying it—adding it to the many languages he already knows.”
“I see.”
“You are of Dutch descent, aren’t you?” Cam asks. “I mean, your name is Dutch.”
“Yes,” says Bodeker. “?‘Descent’ is the key word. My parents spoke the language, but I never learned it.”
His demeanor is guarded. Decidedly off. Suddenly Cam feels like a child trying to impress an emotionally distant parent. He hates that he feels this way, but he can’t help it.
“Would you like me to show you around the grounds?” Cam asks.
“Maybe later,” Bodeker says dismissively, and then glances at his clean-cut, overeager attaché, who steps forward enthusiastically.
“I’d like a tour,” he says.
The moment becomes awkward until Cam obliges. “Of course. Let’s start with the garden.” For a moment, Cam is thrown by the way Bodeker has pawned off Cam’s attention to his lackey. It’s only as he and the attaché leave for the grand tour that Cam glances back and catches how intently Bodeker speaks to Roberta—as if Cam is not the center of the general’s attention at all.
* * *
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* * *
The rest of the day goes smoothly. That is to say smooth like a slick veneer that has yet to dry. To the eye it appears as a fine glaze, but to the touch it is sticky and unpleasant.
The evening meal is a stilted affair of formality around a table too large for only four, in a dining room specifically designed for the wining and dining of high-muck-a-mucks such as the general.
“My compliments to your chef,” Bodeker says, interrupting the silverware-sound-infused silence.
“Yes, yes, it’s all delicious,” says his attaché, as Cam knew he would, because he has an irritating habit of seconding anything the general says.
Through the meal’s pleasantries, Cam senses an atonal undertone he can’t put his finger on. Like when a single guitar string is slightly out of tune. Perhaps it has to do with The Girl he can’t remember. Or perhaps it just has to do with him.