Tangerine

There had been few travel guides on Tangier, but I had hunted down whatever literature I could find, reading line after line about the city that I would soon call home, however temporarily. I had read Wharton and Twain, and once, in desperation, some pages by Hans Christian Andersen. He had, quite surprisingly, been the most helpful in preparing me for this onslaught of eager guides, the crushing tidal wave of faces who descended upon the arriving boats like locusts, ready and able to provide services to the naive and inexperienced traveler. The latter I could be described as, certainly, but the former, never. So I was ready, prepared, armed with words and research to protect me against this scene of chaos. I knew precisely what it was that I would be stepping into from the safety and relative quiet of the ferry. And yet, nothing could have prepared me for it. Wharton, Twain, and even Andersen—their words failed to act as swords and shields in the end.

I tried to move away from the hawkers, a map held firmly between my hands—as if to prove my determination. A shake of the head, then a murmur of first French, non, merci, followed by Spanish, no, gracias, and then, out of frustration, the minuscule Arabic that I had learned prior to my journey—la, choukran. Nothing helped. I pushed on, determined to make my way out of the port and into the medina. Most dropped back, but a few still persisted, following me from the water’s edge and up onto the hilly path that led into the old city. “You are lost? You need help?” Finally, there was just one solitary man who refused to leave. He was unobtrusive at first, insisting on following me slowly, relaxing his gait so that he mirrored my own. His command of English was better than the rest, and he put it to good use, rattling on about all the places that he would take me—places that no other tourists would ever see.

I tried to ignore him, to shrug off the crushing heat that already caused my cheeks to flush red and hot, to look away from the swarm of flies that seemed to lurk in every corner as I made my way into the city’s twisting labyrinth. But then, after several minutes, he moved in front of me, cutting me off so that I stopped in confusion, grasping at my single bag. I tried to push past, but he stood, insistent.

“Yes,” he said, smiling, “I am a mosquito, I know.” He leaned in closer and I could feel his breath, hot and moist, against my face. “Lady, listen. It is better to have one mosquito with you, do you know why?” He paused, as if waiting for a response. “One mosquito will keep all the other mosquitoes at bay.” He smiled, threw back his head, and laughed, the sharp, unexpected noise echoing off the walls that now surrounded us, so that I started, stumbled, my bag landing heavily beside me as my knee connected with the hard, dusty road beneath.

I let out a sharp exclamation, moving to assess the damage while recoiling from the outstretched hand of the Mosquito. My new taupe stockings—which I had paid a dear one dollar and fifty cents for after the shopgirl’s insistence they were top-of-the-line—were ruined. There was a tear just above my knee, with a run trailing downward, and I noticed with increasing dismay an angry-looking red spot that threatened to bleed. “Of all the rotten luck,” I murmured.

The Mosquito, as if sensing my discomfort, my unease, moved closer still. “You look lost,” he whispered, his voice suddenly low, insistent. As if my newly subjected stance required such theatrics. “Do you know what you are looking for, mademoiselle?”

At his words I paused for a moment—just a moment—wondering what it was that I was actually doing in this strange foreign land that I had dreamed of so often that it had begun to take on a shiny, unreal quality each and every time I conjured it in my mind. So that even now, as I rested on the hard truth of its existence, it still failed to be real. My breath caught in my throat—but then, there it was: a hazy image of her, just before me.

That was all it took, and then I was myself again.

“Yes,” I told him, the Mosquito, my voice now hardened with determination, with purpose. I stood, abruptly pushing past him so that our shoulders collided, so that he felt the weight of the impact, felt the weight of my body thrust against his own. I saw the shock on his face. “Yes, I know exactly what I’m looking for.”

The Mosquito gave a quick shrug and began, at last, to amble away.

AFFINITY. I HAD LOOKED UP THE WORD in a dictionary during my first year at Bennington College—that strange little cluster of buildings that sat, hidden, or so it seemed, in the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountains. A spontaneous or natural like or sympathy for something. A similarity of characteristics suggesting a relationship. I began to search for other similar words. Similitude. Inclination. I wrote them all down in my notebook, carrying it with me as I moved between the library and class and back again. I clutched its fraying blue leather to my chest, careful to guard it, to remember it, so that it would never be left behind: my treasury of found and cherished words. I took them out to read often—in the morning before class, at night before I fell asleep. I whispered them to myself, as if the memorization of these words were something I would later be tested on—as if they were integral to my education, to my survival at the college.

I had stumbled across that particular word—affinity—a few weeks after I had first met Alice. The moment had seemed poignant—a description for something I had not yet known I was looking to describe. The relationship that Alice and I had formed after only a few short weeks, the partiality that we felt for each other—it went beyond any rational description. Affinity, I decided, was a good enough start.

We had met on our first day at college. Alice was standing in the hallway of our assigned clapboard house—each one consisting of two floors with nearly a dozen or so rooms per level, a common living space replete with fireplace on the bottom floor—searching for our room, arms clutched around a stack of books, looking as if there was nothing more she wanted in all the world than to disappear. And she almost did—her upper body and face nearly vanishing behind the books that were obviously too heavy a burden. I knew already that she was my roommate—we had earlier arranged to meet, a flurry of letters sent back and forth before we arrived at school, a picture included so that we would recognize each other—and yet, I couldn’t help waiting, stalling, drawing out the moment for as long as possible. I didn’t want to go up and help her, to introduce myself—not yet.

And so I waited. And watched.

Her ankles and wrists were the most delicate things I had ever seen. It was still summer, and her ballerina-style skirt, which floated against her calves, and her thin short-sleeved camisole revealed them in startling clarity. Her hair was long and blond, with curls that looked like they had been created rather than organically grown. When she finally approached, I saw that her nail varnish was a soft pink, almost too subtle to be noticed. The same could be said about her makeup. For a moment I wondered whether or not she even had any on, but it was there, I decided, nearly invisible, but still there all the same. She was put together nicely, with the intention of others not noticing. There was nothing about her that clamored for attention, nothing that demanded to be seen, and yet, everything was done exactly in anticipation of such notice.

That was how I knew she was used to people looking at her, used to having to present herself in front of others. And it was the way she chose to do so that told me she had never had to scrape together money for rent, had never worried about what was in the cupboards and whether it could be made to last a week rather than a day or two. And yet, I didn’t resent her the way I did some of the other girls I had already met. There was nothing gloating or spoiled about this girl, nothing that reeked of superiority. The other girls at college were always so keen to prove themselves better than one another, boasting about family holidays or dropping names they knew would inspire fear and awe in others. Alice, I would soon learn, wasn’t like that at all. While the other girls stuck up their noses at the shippers—their word for the scholarship girls—Alice had treated me, a shipper from the next town over, the same. Watching her that day, before we had exchanged so much as a greeting, I thought she seemed kind, lonely even.

I moved back into the room then, pretending to observe the barren white walls, all the while holding my breath, waiting for her to approach, frightened, in that instant, that I might lose her to someone else if I stalled too long, if I waited for just one moment more. At last, she appeared in the doorway, and I smiled and began. “I’m Lucy Mason,” I said, holding out my hand as I walked toward her, feeling as if each and every word I wanted to say were twisted and tangled into that one small gesture, so that everything—the very future—depended on it. I waited for what seemed an infinite amount of time, though it was likely only a hairbreadth, wondering whether she would accept my outstretched hand, wondering where it would lead us, how our journey together would unfold.

She shifted her books to one side and an instant smile broke across her face. “I was worried you’d forgotten,” she said, blushing at the words, her accent British, clipped and polished. “I’m Alice. Alice Shipley.”

Her hand was warm. “It’s nice to meet you, Alice Shipley.”

THE NEXT MORNING, I dressed carefully.