Tangerine

He looked at me pointedly. “That girl.”

He was not talking about me, of course. I knew that he had wrongly assumed that it was my husband in the picture—and since I was supposed to be Alice in that moment, I supposed it technically was—and yet, though his words were not aimed at me, I was livid. Angry at him on behalf of Alice, and angry at something else, something I couldn’t quite define.

I grabbed my purse and began to walk away. It was only several minutes later when I realized he had not shouted for me to come back, had not chased after me in order to apologize. No matter. I continued walking, out of Café Hafa, back to the spot above the tombs. If Youssef would not help, I decided that I would find a way on my own. I paused, looking out at the blue merging of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and I wondered if there was a word for it, a name, a title, to indicate this strange layering that seemed to be commonplace in Tangier, where everything was something else first, and nothing was ever entirely one thing. I thought of Alice again. She was something else in Tangier too, something completely different. Hardened, distant, tired. A new Alice had been layered upon an old one, subsuming the original. But I had not given up hope. She was not simply Alice, John’s wife. She had been her own person once, she had existed without him. What I needed to discover was how to get her back, how to move from Tangier to Tingis—and whether such a Herculean feat was even possible.

I HAD BEEN WALKING in the Place de la Kasbah, alongside the fortified walls, stopping every now and then to scribble something in my notebook, trying to shake off my strange conversation with Youssef. I stopped at Bab Bhar, one of the gates that opened and broke up the monotony of the stone, so that there was nothing before me but the sea and the sky. Youssef had told me a story about the place, though I struggled, under the heat of the sun, to recall the exact words. Something about a beautiful female spirit who supposedly haunted the area, tempting men to their fate. I smiled at the idea.

And it was then that I saw him.

I was standing just outside the bab, hidden from his line of vision. At first, I thought he was alone, but then I saw him pull the woman beside him toward the wall—the same woman from the bar, I quickly realized, and my breath caught in my throat.

I noted first the confidence in the way the woman held herself, so unlike Alice: shoulders back, chest out, her body accentuated by the dress she was wearing, despite the loose shape of it. Her hair was piled on top of her head, her arms weighed down with heavy bracelets, both silver and gold, which clinked together as she moved.

I could see, under the light of the day, that she was most precisely as Youssef had described—a little Moroccan, a little French, the combination resulting in something that arrested one’s attention, that seemed to clamor and fight for it, in fact. Her skin was golden, her eyes dark. I thought about John’s love of Tangier and decided it all made sense—that his lust should find itself manifested in this creature, this woman who placed her foreignness on display in a way that was suited, designed, to attract a foreigner’s eye. I pitied the girl—for that was, I could now see as well, all that she was. No more than seventeen years old, I guessed.

Moving closer behind my hiding space, feeling the hot bite of the wall behind me, I watched as John’s fingers—his hands freckled and sun-kissed—splayed themselves across her tiny waist, his desire so evident, so easy. I stood, mesmerized by his hands, by their quick, insistent movements under the hot, unforgiving sun. My face burned, though not from the heat of the day, and ashamed then at the ache I felt watching them together, I moved quickly to turn away.

Later I would wonder at the calmness of my reaction, for I supposed that I should have felt something like outrage, upon seeing John there, his betrayal displayed so brazenly under the hot, brilliant sun of Morocco. He must have reasoned that Alice would never find out, as she rarely left the apartment and knew no one else in the city. He had, it seemed, decided to take full advantage of that fact.

But now, she had me.

It was something that must have occurred to him as well, when he turned and saw me standing there, underneath the arch. His face visibly paled beneath his tan and he started toward me, his arms still wrapped around the woman, entangled, I thought, and not in any way that could be explained away—particularly not if I had witnessed what had come before. I could see him thinking, calculating, wondering how long I had been there and just how much I had seen. At last his hands dropped away and he started toward me.

But I was quicker.

I moved from my perch into the crowd—tourists crowding the bab for a perfect photo, locals trailing behind, trying desperately to unload their jewelry, their hats, whatever piece of merchandise was on sale. It was easy to become lost, to let myself be swept up in the tide. I surrendered to its chaos, to the ebb and flow that grasped me in its clutches and refused to release me. I let it carry me farther and farther away until I felt brave enough to glance over my shoulder. I could barely make out his person. He was simply a small speck of color against a brightly decorated canvas.

My face was flushed from the exertion of my escape, my breath coming in small, sharp gasps. I wondered then whether John would confront me, whether I would return to the flat only to find him waiting, demanding to know what I had seen and whether or not I would tell Alice. A part of me hoped that he would, that his figure would be the one to greet me—I could feel the promise of it rush through me, could feel my fingers begin to tingle, my toes curl in anticipation. Walking back to the apartment—for I could no longer imagine pursuing my earlier wanderings—I noticed that I had managed to drop my notebook somewhere during my escape. And yet the realization seemed dulled somehow—far away and altogether foreign, as if it, what I had been doing earlier, could not possibly belong to the person I was in that moment, a person who burned and raged and did not wish to be silent. I headed for the flat, walking for what seemed like hours, though it could not have been more than a handful of minutes. I watched as the shadows around me began to lengthen, felt the heat of the day begin to dissipate. My heartbeat began to slow, my breath return to normal. By the time I reached the Quartier du Marshan, the emotions that had earlier coursed through me seemed to evaporate, leaking out of my skin, my pores, until there was nothing left but pure and utter exhaustion.

I let out a small sigh and continued inside.



Seven



Alice



IT’S SO HOT.”

Lucy paused at my words, waiting for me to catch my breath as we made our way to Café Hafa. The day was too thick, the sun too hot—but she had been determined, earlier that morning, that I accompany her to the café. I could feel my face, already red and sticky with sweat.

“I can’t believe you’ve never been,” she said, trying, I suspected, to distract me from the heat, though the comment only sat poorly with me.

I could feel my face grow more crimson still, my breathing ragged.

I placed one foot in front of the other, the sun burning the back of my neck, warming the top of my head, so that I looked with envy at the turban that Lucy had wrapped her own hair underneath that morning. She had traded, it seemed, her usual hat—an awful design made of black straw—for a pale wrap she had no doubt found in one of the shops frequented by expats. Earlier I had stared rather hard at the sight of it, just as we were leaving. It’s the fashion now, she had assured me, though I had continued to watch her with unease. It was not the design itself that had stopped me—but rather, the realization of just how well Lucy blended in with the rest of the expatriates that flooded the streets of Tangier. I had been here for months already, while her feet had barely touched soil for a week, and already it looked as though she was the one who lived here, as though I was only the visitor. It was with embarrassment that I had then reached for my own hat—a rather small white pillbox that fit oddly on top my hair.

“It’s supposed to have breathtaking views,” Lucy said.

I peered at her, curious. “How did you hear about it?”

“Some friends at the bookshop. The Librairie des Colonnes,” she replied.

I nodded, wondering when she had managed to sneak in a visit there as well.