Katje

by R.K. West

He came to Amsterdam every two months or so, and as soon as he dropped his bag at the hotel, he went to Katje. He had found her on his first visit to the red light district, when his only requirements were that the girl was pretty and that she spoke English; as he went from window to window, they were all pretty, but Katje was the first one whose English vocabulary extended beyond a list of available services. She proved to be both compliant and playful, with crooked teeth that subtracted nothing from her charm, and a language learner’s nonstandard phraseology that struck him as borderline satire. When he was in town, he saw her every night, and although she always delighted him, he found the cheap furnishings in her room depressing, but when he asked her to come to his hotel, she laughed and said, “It is not allowed.” This time, he found her window empty, and although she might have been inside with someone, the absence of the pink sofa where she usually posed suggested something amiss, so he knocked on the door of the next cabin, and when the girl opened it, he held out the translation app on his phone to ask, “Where is Katje,” only to get the stunning response, “Married with rich guy in Frankfurt.” With no alternate plan for the evening, he slowly headed for the long way out of the district, thinking he’d stop somewhere for pastries and beer, until he noticed a pretty blonde in a bright green kimono waving at him until he knocked on her door and asked, “Do you speak English?”

6S

R.K. West is a former ESL teacher and travel blogger currently hiding out in the Pacific Northwest.