Tangerine

But then, neither had I.

I SPENT SEVERAL MOMENTS IN THE BATHROOM, a towel pressed against my face, willing the color to disappear from my cheeks. When I emerged, my hair still matted to my face with sweat, I discovered a stack of pink, overly starched towels in front of the door, a few scalloped soaps sitting on top, and the sound of Alice, singing from the kitchen.

I left the towels, following the lyrics and smiling to myself as I walked through the hallway, my hands attempting to push my hair back into place. She was singing a song I recognized from the radio. The girls in my most recent boardinghouse had gone in together on a cream-and-gold-colored Silvertone, at first taking turns keeping it in their respective rooms, more to show it off than anything else, until it had at last ended up downstairs, largely forgotten, becoming a permanent fixture of the common area.

I hummed the melody. “I see you haven’t improved your singing,” I teased, my voice raised just a note or two, so that she could hear me more easily.

A sound of laughter escaped from the kitchen—no longer quite as hesitant, I noted. “Go ahead, take a seat. I’ll be there in just a moment.”

I returned to the sitting room, taking it in for the first time. Similar to the other rooms, it too was composed of dark woods and leather—the sweet, sickly smell of which was overpowering in the late afternoon heat. A few dozen books lay scattered throughout the room. I glanced at one. Charles Dickens. Another was by a Russian author I had never heard of before. Alice, I knew, was not a big reader. I had tried to encourage her during our four years as roommates, but try as I might to interest her, she had only stuck up her nose. They’re all just so serious, she had complained. I remembered thinking that I would have detested the comment had it been made by anyone else, but with Alice, the words were strangely fitting. The idea of her trapped behind a heavy book seemed somehow wrong—she was made of lightness and air, she was made, it seemed, for living, rather than reading about the experiences of other lives. I had told her this once, and in response, she had laughed and waved me away. But it was true. It was Alice who would wake me early in the morning, when it was still dark outside, dragging me to the Adirondack chairs on the Commons Lawn, blankets slipping from her arms and onto the dewy grass, insistent that we be the first to see the sun rise. I would always marvel, in those quiet moments, watching as my breath billowed out in great white clouds, that we had found each other. That Alice’s mother, an American who had later moved across the pond and married a Brit, had been a graduate of our tiny Vermont college, which had, in turn, prompted Alice to attend her mother’s alma mater, in her memory. That Alice had somehow managed, with her tentative smile, to pull me from the comfort of my hiding spot in the library, had exhumed me from the voices of the dead and thrust me into the world of the living. Pulling the blanket tighter, I would shift closer to the warmth of her body, willing those moments to last forever, knowing that they could not.

I ran my finger over the pages of a few books, noting, curiously, that the pages were still uncut. A portrait of the man Alice had married began to form in my mind.

“Were you surprised to see me standing outside your doorstep this morning?” I called out, settling onto the leather sofa, where almost immediately my skin began to sweat.

There was only silence from the kitchen.

“Alice?” I called again, frowning. I squirmed from side to side, trying to alternatively air out the parts of my skin in contact with the leather, hoping the sweat wouldn’t stain my new dress. The air in Tangier, I had already begun to notice, moved slowly and without any real insistence. It seemed to hang: thick and humid. Languid. That would be the right word to describe it, I decided.

“Oh, yes,” she said, her voice muffled, sounding as if she were somewhere far away, and not simply in the next room. “Yes, quite.”

Before I could ask anything more, I heard the turning of the doorknob from the foyer. “Alice?” a voice called out, deeper, somehow, than what I had imagined. “Are you home?” And then, somewhat more quietly, “I don’t suppose you made it to the market today?”

Looking back, I’m quite certain that, in that exact moment, my heart stopped.

It often did, of course. A slight murmur, nothing to worry about—at least, according to the doctors. It didn’t really affect anything, they assured me, except that there were moments, only once in a great while, when my heart refused to beat in rhythm. When it acted up—or out, I supposed—stopping for the smallest second, perhaps less than that, but long enough so that the next beat felt like a resounding thud inside my chest. Like something trying to trample me or push me underfoot. I could have reimagined it over the years, of course—my memories altered and changed by what eventually transpired—but I’m almost certain my heart skipped then. Perhaps in warning, perhaps sensing danger. There is no way to ever really know, but I believe my heart was trying to tell me something: to warn me of the man slowly making his way through the hallway and into the room where I sat.

I sometimes wondered what would have happened if I had listened.

A MAN STEPPED INTO VIEW.

I took in the tanned face, splattered with freckles, the golden hair that was styled into a sweeping wave. He looked, I thought, like most men our age: vivacious, eager, not yet dulled by the monotony of everyday life. He was handsome, that much I could ascertain. And yet, while I suspected that his features would have been classically pleasing to some, I found them overbearing and difficult to look at for any great length of time. There was something else there too I could already see—something harder, more concrete. But then, I brushed the thought aside, reasoning that perhaps it was just the imposing line of his suit. Though I knew little about men’s fashion, I could tell that his clothes were expensive. He wore a three-piece suit cut from a textured pattern that looked entirely out of place in Tangier and a tan fedora with a narrow brim resting atop his head. He seemed, I noticed with a touch of envy, unfazed wearing the heavy material in the unforgiving heat of Morocco.

“We have a visitor,” Alice called out, in a strange tone. “It’s Lucy.” Falsetto—was that the right word? I wondered.

“Lucy?” he repeated, standing at the threshold of the room, a frown crossing his face.

“Lucy, darling. My friend from college.” Alice let out a hollow laugh. “I’ve told you loads about her.”

She hadn’t, of course. I could tell from the start of confusion that clouded John’s face when Alice first said my name. From the look of it, John had never heard of me at all.

“Any chance you made dinner tonight, Alice? I’m starving,” John said, starting to remove his tie, a note of exhaustion evident in his voice. It was at that moment he noticed me: the stranger sitting on his couch. A flicker of annoyance flashed, but then he seemed to take in my figure—well dressed, reasonably attractive—and his features relaxed, growing into one of surprise, pleasure. “You must be the infamous Lucy, then.” He smiled, smoothing out the tie in his hand and extending his other one. “It’s so wonderful to meet you at last.”

I offered my own hand, instantly regretting that it was so moist. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

He cocked his head to the side, his smile turning into something that resembled a smirk, though I suspected he imagined it to be charming. I could feel him reading the situation, trying to figure out if he knew me or, worse yet, was supposed to. He was waiting for my indication. I remained silent. A few seconds passed before he asked, “Thirsty at all?”

At that moment, Alice emerged from the kitchen. She was balancing a silver platter between her two hands, which I half rose to take from her, but then she was already setting it on the top of a wooden bar, tucked back into the corner of the room.