Flashback (6 page)

“How do you know him?”

Joshi shrugged. “The Continental, the Pub. I've seen him around. There aren't many of us. I ran into him on the ferry. He asked me to keep an eye on you.”

I loosed my grip, and he straightened himself, smoothing the wrinkles from his pajama top. “Where does he live?” I asked.

“I don't know. Somewhere in the Ville Nouvelle, probably.”

“Where can I find him?” I moved toward him again, and he cringed.

“It's Wednesday, right?”

I thought for a minute, then nodded.

“The Pub,” Joshi said, “across from the Hotel Ritz. Wednesday's dart night. Things usually get started early, around the cocktail hour. If he's not there, you can try the piano bar at the El Minzah later.”

I turned for the door, stopping briefly to look back. Joshi pulled his robe tight around him, and I could see for the first time that the blue cotton had been mended and remended. The hem was frayed with wear.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

*   *   *

With one exception, the rooms at the priory were simple and unadorned. Decades, even centuries, of the same off-white paint covered the hallways, the kitchen, and the sisters' quarters. But at some point in the long history of the building, someone had decided to distinguish the library with wallpaper. And in the years after, other sisters had added more layers.

The library was a beautiful room and well used, airy and high-ceilinged with a stone fireplace and a view of the priory's garden. But at the time of my stay it had obviously seen some years of neglect. There were places where the paper had begun to peel away, ragged holes that revealed the old patterns underneath. A form of time travel, Heloise had called it, and sometimes the two of us would contemplate this backward record and its makers.

The upper layer was young enough for Magda to remember its having been hung, though the sister who hung it had long resided in the little cemetery next to the chapel. It was green, faded now, with a pattern of darker green leaves. Beneath the green were other prints, gaudy flowers, gold fleurs-de-lis, and simple stripes. My favorite paper was printed over and over with a Chinese village scene. It was a tiny world of fishermen and farmers, of pagodas and bridges, and a solitary oxen driver on a winding mountain road.

I often wondered at the sister who had picked it. Did she sit in the evenings and contemplate an escape to this strange place? Did she wonder at those static lives, the woman forever fanning herself, the fisherman still without a fish?

Once, when we were sitting in the library, I asked Heloise what it was like to remember, and she said it was like the library walls, the present faded green leaves, the past poking through here and there, and always, farther down, another mystery.

When I left Joshi's that morning and headed back through the Continental's gates, I felt as if a piece of my own present had begun to peel away. Somewhere beneath the glue-stiff layers lay this city. I was certain of it now. And beneath the faded print of Tangier lay the tattered edges of a far darker pattern, a part of myself I had long expected to find.

I climbed the stairs to the veranda and stood for a moment looking out at the harbor. The sky was an impossible predawn blue, glowing like a jewel above the bay. I knew this place, I thought. It was familiar to me in some deep-down way. But more familiar than Tangier, than the smells of the medina, than the cloaked shapes swaying under djellabas and burnooses, was the risen power of my own anger.

I thought of Joshi in his worn pajamas, his little arm moving to protect his face, and suddenly I was afraid. I would have beaten it out of him, I thought. I would have gotten the information no matter what. I knew how to do that kind of thing.

*   *   *

I slept late, then spent the afternoon wandering the city. It was just before five when I stepped into the Pub, and already the place was packed with expatriates. Bare-shouldered English girls and sunburned Australians flirted with each other over shandies and pints of porter. I ordered a lager and wandered back toward the dartboards and pool table.

Except for the small slice of Tangier that was visible through the front window, I could have been on any London corner. A large television over the bar broadcast Premier League soccer. A blackboard beside it listed the daily specials: scampi and chips, ploughman's lunch, and kidney pie. Save for a framed operating license, there was not one scrap of Arabic in the establishment. The man Joshi had called Brian was nowhere to be found, so I grabbed a free seat in a back corner of the bar, ordered some scampi and chips, and settled in to wait.

I didn't have to wait long. I was tucking away the last of my greasy french fries when the front door opened and a group of girls stumbled inside. Pulling off long-sleeved shirts and jackets to reveal half T-shirts and navel rings, shedding their outerwear like crabs ready for mating, they headed for the bar. I was watching them with fascination when the door opened again and a man stepped inside.

He had traded his raincoat for faded jeans, a gray cotton sweater, and running shoes, but it was the same man I'd seen on the Continental's veranda and in my hotel room early that morning. Yes, I thought, watching him make his way to the bar, he was definitely an American. He ordered a beer and started in my direction, evidently heading for the dartboards. I leaned my elbows on the table and watched him. He was handsome up close, his hair slightly mussed as if he'd just woken from a nap. He passed right by me, his eyes skimming my face, then moved on.

I ordered another pint and let him play a game of darts. When he made his second trip to the bar, I elbowed my way in beside him.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

He signaled for the bartender, then looked over at me nonchalantly. “I don't think so.”

“No. I'm sure I know you. It's Brian, right?”

He shrugged. “I've got that kind of look.”

“Maybe this'll jog your memory,” I told him. “Four o'clock this morning. Hotel Continental. Room two-oh-five.”

The bartender came over. Brian ordered another pint and slid a twenty-dirham note across the bar.

“Who the fuck are you?” I demanded. “And what do you want?”

He picked up his glass, took his change, and turned to move away. “Listen, I really think you've got the wrong guy.”

I watched him walk back to the dartboards, exchanging brief hellos as he went. Most of the Pub's patrons seemed to know each other, and Brian was no exception.

A young woman with dreadlocks muscled her way in next to me.

“You a regular?” I asked.

She smiled. “Regular as I can be.”

“You know that guy over there?” I pointed to Brian.

“Sure.”

“His name's Brian, right?”

“Cute, huh?” She nodded.

“You know anything about him?”

The woman lit a cigarette and waved the smoke away. “American,” she said. “From California, I think. Poor guy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He's down here looking for his brother,” she explained. “Disappeared about a year ago.”

“Did you know him? The brother, I mean.”

She shook her head. “Before my time.”

“What happened?”

“That's the problem, isn't it? No one knows.”

The bartender appeared, and the woman ordered a vodka tonic.

“He was some kind of do-gooder,” she offered. “You know, trying to modernize the medina, bring the Internet to the carpet dealers.”

I watched Brian put his beer down and start for the men's room.

“Don't get any ideas,” the dreadlocked woman said wistfully as her drink arrived. “He's single as they come, and appears to like it that way. Believe me, we've all tried.”

I smiled. “Well, then, wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” I heard her say as I started toward the rear of the bar.

The rest rooms were tucked in a small hallway behind the pool table. I set my beer down next to Brian's, slipped into the little corridor, and leaned against the wall next to the men's-room door, listening to the sound of the faucets running. Something was wrong. No one took that long to wash his hands. Moving my ear to the door, I knocked lightly and got no answer.

I put my hand on the knob and pushed. The bathroom and its single doorless stall were empty. The one small window was too small and too high to have provided an exit. Stepping back into the hallway, I surveyed my surroundings. Next to the men's room was the women's. Across the corridor was a door marked
Office
and a second, unmarked door. I tried the blank door and felt the knob give way in my hand. The door swung outward to reveal the dank and putrid alley beyond.

Something moved in the darkness. I craned my head out to see a knot of rats swarming on the Pub's garbage, a tangle of teeth and furless tails. Farther away, near where the alley opened onto the street, a shapeless beggar coughed, the sound hoarse and hollow as a death rattle. There was no sign of Brian.

SEVEN

Figuring I'd try the El Minzah later, I took a taxi back to the Continental. I was doubtful I'd find Brian at the piano bar that night, more doubtful still that he'd tell me anything if I did, but Joshi's tip was the only trail I had to follow and I planned on pursuing it to its end.

Abdesselom had evidently quit for the night, and a middle-aged Moroccan woman with a bad orange dye-job and too much makeup had taken his place behind the desk. When I asked her what time things usually got started at the El Minzah, she folded her arms across her chest and eyed me skeptically.

“You are going to Caid's?” she asked.

I gave her a look of confusion.

“Caid's. The piano bar,” she elaborated.

I nodded.

“Ten, ten-thirty.” The woman shrugged. “But you can't go like that. Caid's is very fancy, very fancy.”

I looked down at myself, at my convent work boots, faded canvas shirt, and patched jeans. The change of clothes in my pack wasn't much better, and certainly less clean. “It'll have to do,” I told her.

Making my way up to my room, I locked the door and rummaged in my pack. I pulled out a rumpled black sweater and laid it on the bed, smoothing the wrinkles with the back of my hand, dabbing it clean with a damp washcloth before putting it on. I ran a brush through my hair and pulled it back off my face. With a little luck I hoped I could pull off the slumming-rich-girl look.

Yes, I thought, giving myself a good once-over in the mirror, it would have to do. I tucked a stray wisp of hair behind one ear, turned, and headed for the door. That's when I noticed the little book that lay open on my nightstand. I stopped short and stepped toward it. It had not been there before, of that I was certain. The maid must have left it, I told myself, glancing at the two open pages, the Arabic script. And yet if a maid had come while I'd been out, she had not stayed long enough to fold the two towels I'd tucked haphazardly over the chrome bar next to the sink.

I picked up the book. The text was divided into short, numbered sections, verses, it seemed. A religious book, but not the Bible, the Koran most likely. I closed the cover and, taking the book with me, picked up my rucksack. No doubt it wasn't appropriate attire for the El Minzah, but I couldn't leave it, not now, knowing someone had been in my room. Hoisting the pack onto my shoulder, I stepped into the hallway and headed down to the lobby.

“Is this the hotel's?” I asked the clerk. I set the Koran down on the counter in front of her.

The woman scowled up at me. “Where did you find that?”

“Someone left it in my room,” I told her. “Do you know who it belongs to?”

She slid the book protectively toward herself, then set it on the desk next to her computer. “I will see that it gets back to its owner. Good night, Mademoiselle.”

*   *   *

It was just after ten-thirty when I pulled up in front of the sandstone portal and heavy, iron-studded wooden door that marked the El Minzah's front entrance. I paid my taxi driver, climbed out, and made my way inside. If the Hotel Continental was the geriatric specter of French colonialism, then the El Minzah was its teenage reincarnation, the Versace-clad, cell phone–carrying spirit of the unstoppable empire of twenty-first-century globalism.

Inside the plush lobby, potbellied oil money mingled with B-list celebrity. American English predominated; a variety of well-crafted accents wafted through the potted palms and up toward the blue-and-white zillij mosaics. The air smelled of Cuban cigars and eucalyptus.

Conscious of my convent clothes and work-blunted fingernails, I followed one of the doormen's directions down a flight of stairs, past the rambling Andalusian courtyard at the heart of the hotel to the piano bar. Scanning the sea of faces for Brian, I stepped into the elegant room, found an empty table, and settled in to wait. The piano bar was more British than French or Moroccan, dark and richly paneled like the library in some English gentleman's country estate. A large oil portrait of a serious-looking Scot in full military dress dominated the room, staring down on a crowd tinged with the shabby, desperate whiff of exile.

From down in the dank and tangled streets of the medina it would be hard to imagine the existence of such a place as Caid's. It would be difficult to conceive of such blind and easy luxury, the thin rattling of ice in a crystal glass, the fizz of champagne, a woman's bare shoulders rising like a frail white flower from the black sheath of her dress. There were no beggars in Caid's, no dirt-smeared children grappling for change, only the pervasive stink of orchids and tobacco, and a nauseating blend of expensive perfumes. Here, I thought, was the fantasy money can buy, the Victorian illusion of a separation between this world and the savage one, these few dozen bodies clustered under the pale archways and dark pleated drapes like exotic orchids in a winter hothouse.

The staff was all Moroccan and male, as was the piano player, a small round man with a smile as white as his dinner jacket. He was singing a maudlin rendition of “Ne Me Quitte Pas” while several couples pawed each other on the dance floor. One of the waiters, a handsome young man in a neatly tailored red vest and black pants, started over to me, his face brightening as he neared.