Then I forced Erika out of my mind. I wasn’t going to let her poison Antwerp’s best beer.
No one came in while I ate. Bert emptied the glass in front of him and refilled it. He extended the bottle toward me. The label read “Oude Antwerpsche.” That was the source of his foul breath: not gin but geneva, a near-eighty-proof spirit flavored with juniper and swilled by inhabitants of the Low Countries with the same single-minded devotion they gave to maintaining their dikes. I shook my head and asked instead for another beer.
As I ate, I studied the wall behind the bar. It was covered with a collage of posters, photographs, postcards and beer ads—the usual barroom decor. Discreetly centered above the cognac bottle was a familiar red-and-blue pictograph. The same picture of the lion beneath th
