Tangerine

And there was something else too.

It was absurd, grotesque even, but there was something like a physical ache, just there, behind my rib cage. I remembered the moment at the police station, earlier, when I had turned to look for her. Almost as if there were some missing part of me that only Lucy’s presence would ever truly complete. For even though I blanched at the idea, without her, I knew from experience, my resolve diminished, my voice disappeared. Whatever symbiosis existed between us was real, tangible, and now, without her presence I could feel the absence of it, as if she were an extension of my own person. She was, I realized, that awful, wretched part of me that should be locked away and boarded up forever—like Jane’s madwoman in the attic. She was the unfiltered version, the rawness that no one should ever see. She was every wicked thought, every forbidden desire turned real and visceral. I held up my hand and saw that the dye from the leather had stained my skin. I laughed, whispering the words to myself, See, you will never be rid of her. I looked down once again, willing myself to feel something, anything.

But there was nothing. Nothing at all.

I HEARD MY NAME BEING CALLED, muffled, from the other side.

It was the police, I knew. They had returned at last.

I looked at the walls of my apartment, desperate to be swallowed up by them, to be consumed, once and for all, by the shadows lurking in the corners.

I should have known that I would never be able to outrun them.

That I would never be able to outrun her.

I moved from my place on the floor. Strips of leather, of fabric, now stuck to my arms. There was a small piece affixed to my cheek. Pulling them away, gazing down at the strips of canvas, I was gripped with the conviction that none of it, what happened with Tom, with John, with anything in between, mattered. Not really. This had always been about her, about me, about the two of us. And it was always destined to end this way.

There was an ache in my head, and I pushed my fingers into my temple.

The knocking grew more insistent.

I thought about the last time I had heard someone knock on the door like that, the morning that John had disappeared. No, not the morning of his disappearance, but the first time I had learned of it, from that strange man with the scar. I wondered then, and not for the first time, who he had been and why he had been so reluctant to contact the police. If he truly had been the person following me that day in the streets. If what the police had said, about John leaving with Sabine, had been true. It made me realize that I had never really known John, only the hazy mirage he had presented to me that summer we first met, a shimmering beacon of hope that I had clung to in my darkest moment. I turned toward the door, toward the sound of someone fumbling with the knob. It was locked. They would not get in so easily.

I moved quickly, toward the bedroom.

They had come for me at last, my invisible shadows, which Lucy had made real. But this time, I knew, they would not go away. After all, the police believed that I was responsible for John’s death—if not the actual physical act, then at least in the collusion of it. A Lady Macbeth whispering that could not go unpunished.

I thought about John’s body, wondering whether they would bury it here or whether they would return it to England. I thought of his eyes, empty—or at least I imagined they were empty, for they had been closed when I had seen them last. It seemed strange, the idea of returning him to his birthplace. He had loved Tangier, and she had loved him, for a time. It didn’t seem right for them to be parted. No, it made sense for him to remain with her, forever. I hoped they would realize that.

I grasped the knife that I had picked up from the floor.

In many ways, this too seemed to make a certain sort of sense. As if all the years in between now and my parents’ death I had only been waiting, for this. For the end that I was meant for that night, that I perhaps would have succumbed to, if not for some strange miracle. Or perhaps it had not been a miracle after all. Perhaps it had only been a mistake. Perhaps I had not been meant to survive, and the shadows were simply warnings, or time, watching over me, waiting, for my impending death.

Perhaps I had always been moving toward this day, all on my own.

There was a comfort in the thought, I realized as I moved onto the bed. I crawled, pulling the duvet back and slipping under the sheets.

It sounded now as though a large body was pummeling the wooden frame, over and over, so that I worried the sound of it would never stop, that it would go on and on forever.

But then, I remembered, looking down into my hand, it would stop.

All of it. Soon.

And nothing that had come before would matter ever again.



Twenty



Lucy



IN FRONT OF HER, THE QUEUE WAS FINALLY MOVING. “TICKET, please,” the man commanded, opening his hand in expectation. For a moment, she considered turning back. Pushing through the line she had waited in for nearly an hour, making her way through the port and into the heart of the city, just as she had done the first day. She could almost feel it, the heat of the medina pushing up against her, the frenzied excitement that ran through it, as though a vein that kept the city alive—pumping and rushing, working relentlessly so that the rest of Tangier could survive. She longed to be in the midst of it again, suspecting—no, perhaps already knowing—that she never would be. That Tangier would be a stranger to her, now and forever. Well, not really a stranger, but a piece of her past. One that she might take out and examine from time to time, holding it up to the light—but one that she would never revisit. That was impossible.

If only Alice had not called Maude.

If only Youssef had not blackmailed her.

Lucy handed over her ticket to the attendant and found a seat toward the back, away from the screaming children, their faces sticky with sweets, their parents already wearing the resigned look of those who know they are facing a losing battle. It was an expression they no doubt shared—for Lucy also knew that this was the end for her and Alice as well. There would be no more chances between them.

She felt the fabric beneath her shift, and she half turned, surveying the occupant of the seat beside her. The woman was older, perhaps a decade or more than Lucy’s own years, but there was something soft and inviting in the way that she smiled and nodded her head. Just a slight tilt, nothing too intrusive, but Lucy found herself returning the easy gesture, suddenly eager to leave her heavy thoughts behind.

The woman sighed loudly. “It’s a relief, isn’t it?”

Lucy frowned. “What is?”

The woman gestured to the window beside Lucy, which had grown hot and hazy from the afternoon sun. Already she could feel the force of it pressing up against her cheek.

“Leaving this behind,” the woman said. She let out another sigh, moving farther into the cushion. “Not that I don’t love Morocco, of course, but it’s always such a relief when it’s time to return home. Like I’m, oh, I don’t know, shedding my skin, or something. Like suddenly I can breathe again.” She turned back to Lucy. “Isn’t there some saying about it?”

“Saying?” Lucy repeated. She was staring at the woman more intently now. There was something about her, in the way that she moved—theatrical, Lucy thought—with an elaborate flourish of her gloved hands. There was a sturdiness to the woman’s voice, a confidence that Lucy found herself enthralled with, and she found herself wondering whether the woman did this often, talking to strangers as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her tone confident, self-assured, as if she was already certain that such a quote existed and that the question she put to Lucy of its validity, its existence, was nothing more than a mere formality.

There had been a time when Lucy had been that certain—when everything had seemed easy and fitted into place. But then the world had tilted upside down, and when it righted itself at last, she had stood in front of the burning wreckage, suddenly unsure of everything. This time more of a change would be required, something more than a simple relocation and fabricated résumé. She thought of Tangier and its many names and alterations. Of the people who had claimed it as home over the centuries—a vast array of nationalities, of languages. Tangier was a city of transformation, one that shifted and altered in order to survive. It was a place where one went to be transformed. And it had, in a way, changed her. Gone was the girl, the young woman who had loved so carelessly, so blindly, that she was willing to do anything to keep that love. For while she still believed that Alice had loved her once, she could no longer pinpoint the exact time in her mind.