Rocks, The (23 page)

H
e opened his eyes.
The sun was up on the other side of the shutters. At some point in the night they had made it back to the bed and remained there. He looked at Aegina. Her dark hair across her face, olive complexion turned sallow. She appeared comatose. He lay down. He listened to Aegina’s slow, deep breathing.

He couldn’t sleep. He got up and went into the bathroom and closed the door. He rinsed in the shower. She was still asleep when he came back into the room. He pulled on his jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers. He went to the door, looked back at Aegina, and left the room.

•   •   •

S
he was walking
in the hard sand close to the water, djellaba billowing around her. She waved. They walked toward each other.

Minka hugged him closely as if meeting an old friend. “Where is Aegina? She is sick too?” she asked.

“Yes. Both of us. You?”

“Not me, thank God, but Rolf,
aieeccch
, both ends all night. Disgusting. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out. You are okay now?”

“Better anyway.”

“Aegina?”

“She’s sleeping.”

“I’m so sorry! Rolf is a pig, making us all stay here. But he did get very sick.” Minka turned to the clean sea. “It’s beautiful, no? The edge of Africa.”

The sea was bright beneath the sun, solid blue north and south.

“The sea is, yes,” said Luc. “The beach is too big.”

“Oh, I love it. But it’s amazing, there is nobody on the beach now. Maybe they all got sick.” She laughed, arching backward. “Shall we swim?”

“You go ahead. I don’t have a towel or anything.”

“Doesn’t matter!”

“I just took a shower.”

“Oh, come on, it’s perfect. You will dry quickly. Look at the sea. Come on!” She began pulling him toward the water.

“No, you go. I’ll just sit here.”

“Och! No adventure!”

She pulled off her djellaba and threw it over his head. She was naked, of course. She ran into the waves. He watched her diving in and out of the waves like a seal. She ran back out of the water, ran fast toward him, and hugged him tightly—“Please, I’m cold!”—until he was completely wet.

“Now you have to come in!” She pulled at his shirt, lifting it up. Then she pulled at his Levi’s.

“Okay, okay! I’ll do it,” Luc said. But she didn’t stop, she was pulling at his jeans, and he couldn’t help getting most of an erection. Then she pulled him, running into the sea.

In the water, she swam away from him into the sun in an effortless freestyle stroke. He followed slowly. She lay on her back and floated. She rose and fell and undulated like a long supple frond on the slight swell as the water rolled over her strawberry nipples and the sun caught the thatch of copper curls below her belly.

Luc got out first. He walked up to the dry sand and sat down hugging his knees.

Minka walked slowly out of the waves. She threw her head back, hair flying up scattering bright beads of water in the light. She smiled at him as she approached. “You are so slim. Rolf is like a bear. It looks good, the way you are.” She lay down full-length on the sand next to him. She stretched, throwing her arms above her head, taking deep breaths. “My God, after that hotel room.”

The water beaded across her body. Her skin had the lightest blush of pearl beneath the yellow sand that clung to her toes and thighs. Her nipples puckered and stood up. A wide but not dense swath of dark wet ringlets clustered below her hollow stomach, which rose and fell with her breathing.

She opened an eye and squinted up at him. “Oh, lie down in the sun. It feels so good.”

He stretched out, keeping one knee, the nearest to her, raised. He closed his eyes.

“Feels good, no?” said Minka.

“Yes,” said Luc, feeling the salt water evaporate with a sensation of tightening across his skin.

Minka lifted her head, twisted her shoulders into him, stretched her legs away, and laid her head, heavy, already warm through the damp hair, on his stomach. She turned her head until her cheek lay on the warm skin of his belly and she looked up into his face.

She rolled on her side until her other cheek lay on his belly. She put a cool hand around his cock which was straining from his groin like a dachshund on a leash.

“No, don’t,” he said. But remained still.

Minka raised her head and lowered it over him. Bands of hot and cool.

“Please stop,” said Luc. He looked up at the small clouds passing slowly high above them. They had formed over the ocean and were gliding now into Africa. How insignificant he and Minka were, tiny, fretful, heedless animals far below. He raised his hand to pull her away but his hand found her waist and then moved up over the rise of her hip and across her buttock. “Stop,” he said quietly. “Stop . . .”

She paused. “You want me to stop?”

“I love Aegina,” he said to the clouds.

“Of course you do,” said Minka. “She’s adorable. I love her too.” She sat up, looked around briefly, straddled Luc, and lowered herself onto him.

T
he cow was ambling
slowly
across the right lane as the Renault barreled around the corner.

“Jesus!” Luc pulled hard away from the cow, into the left lane.

The cow saw the car, paused, registered alarm with a toss of its head, and broke into a gallop continuing the way it had been going, into the left lane.

“Shit!” Luc’s arms crossed as he swerved back for the right lane being vacated by the cow. But the cow, seeing the car change course a second time, abruptly made a hoof-skidding turn, bolted back in the direction of where it had once felt safe, and the Renault’s left headlight and front fender impaled themselves on the animal’s long right horn. The car shuddered to a stop.

“Fuck!”
Luc shouted—because it expressed everything he was feeling up to that moment—and then also because the wheel had instantly become rigid in his hands in a way that told him they wouldn’t be driving away from this. He looked over at Aegina, but she was already climbing out the door crying, “
Oh my God, my God!
The poor
thing
!”

“Don’t touch it!” Luc yelled at her, getting out of the car, moving to intercept her. “It might hurt you.”

“No, she won’t. Poor thing!”

“It’s a he—he’s got a horn.”

“Look!” She pointed fiercely.

He saw the udder, swaying heavily beneath the animal. The cow stood in the middle of the road, quivering, head down, a little above grazing height. The right horn had sheared off neatly at its base above the cow’s brow. Not a drop of blood. Apparently the animal was no more than dazed.

Luc looked at the Renault. The front fender was smashed inward and down over the left front wheel. Yellow headlight glass glinted in the road.

A shout—a single-syllable wordless utterance, not outrage or reprimand, nothing more than an exclamation of sadness—came from the side of the road. A man with a straw hat, who looked like a scarecrow, was walking toward them. Other cows stood off the road near him. He kept his eyes on the cow as he came toward them.

“Excusez-moi, monsieur. . . .”
said Luc. “There was nothing I could do. The cow was in the middle of the road. I tried to avoid it. . . .”

The cowherd muttered pained, wordless noises—“
Ehhhh . . . ohhhh . . .”
—that sounded sadder and sadder. Not a hint of recrimination aimed at the car or its occupants. Only sadness.
“Ohh-ohh . . . ehhh-eh-eh . . .”

The cow ambled away, back toward the right side of the road where it had come from, toward its brethren creatures, who stood looking vacantly at the scene of the accident.

The cowherd looked at the Renault. He stepped toward it and pulled at something—the cow’s horn, its base protruding from the crumpled housing of the headlight. He pulled it out—now an uncertain keratinous artifact, somewhere between a tusk and a small antler—and looked at it mournfully.

“I’m sorry,” Luc began again. The man, no bigger than a boy, of rawhide-wizened middle age, looked up at him, looked down at the horn, turned, and walked slowly after the cow.

“Are you all right?” Luc asked Aegina.

“Yes,” she said, “but that poor thing . . .”

“Well, the poor cow’s already eating. Look.” The creature, with its lone asymmetrical horn, had reached a small dusty bush at the side of the road and its lips were curling around what passed for small leaves. Luc turned back to the car. “The cow’s fine. We’re the ones who’re completely fucked.”

He approached the car and tentatively tried to pull the crumpled fender up off the wheel, to little effect. He sat in the driver’s seat and tried to turn the wheel. “The wheel won’t turn.”

“Shall we try to get it off the road?” said Aegina.

Luc tried the engine, which started immediately. With the front wheels locked, the car could only move in a circle, but aiming off the road. It made a grinding noise from somewhere near the front axle. Luc kept going until the car sat on the dirt shoulder, and then turned off the engine. “That’s it.”

“Don’t you think we can fix it?”

“Well, even if we could, it would probably cost more than the car’s worth. And take forever. We’ve got to leave it.”

“Right,” said Aegina. She opened the side rear door and pulled out the large suitcase full of shirts and her own and Luc’s small duffel bags. “Do you think we should hitchhike?”

“However we do it, I think we should get out of here as soon as possible. Somebody might get upset about the cow.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“We should stop the first bus going in either direction. If it’s going north it’ll go to Tangier, or to Rabat or Casablanca or somewhere where we can get a bus to Tangier. If it’s going south, we’ll take it back to Marrakech and get the next Tangier bus or train. Okay?”

“That will be expensive.”

“I’ve got money.”

They’d come straight from Essaouira, collected the shirts, packed, and left Marrakech all in one day. They’d slept, tired, chastely, in the car while parked at a petrol station.

Aegina looked out across the dusty plain where the cows and their herder were already some distance away. “Poor cow.”

“Hey, fuck the cow. And that fucking Moroccan cowboy who let it wander into the road. It’s not even hurt, it’ll probably grow another horn. We’re the ones stuck in the middle of nowhere with a hundred shirts, and very possibly a tribe of angry Bedouins about to appear out of the desert wanting payback.”

“Luc, I’m sorry about your car, but at least we’re not hurt, and it really isn’t your fault. I know it’s all really unfortunate. But you’ve been in a bad mood ever since we left Essaouira, and this isn’t helping you, I know.”

“Can we stop talking about them, please?”

“We’re not talking about them,” she said. “I’m not anyway.”

They had parted from Rolf and Minka in Marrakech on strained terms. Aegina had decided they weren’t really a couple but were partnered in some more mysterious alliance.

She sat down on the large suitcase and took off her sunglasses, cleaned them on her cotton shirt, and put them back on. She looked studiously up and down the road.

North and south, the ends of the road dissolved into liquid distance. Cars materialized as indistinct nuggets of boiling atoms that soon resolved into dark approximate shapes and grew bigger—Luc thought of Omar Sharif’s indelible first appearance in
Lawrence of Arabia
. But they came on like low-flying aircraft, the Moroccans sealed inside staring bug-eyed at the couple with the big suitcase beside the road as if they were Martians, before streaking past in a Doppler wavefront, leaving Luc and Aegina in a wake of wind and dust and filling quiet.

Yes, he was in a bad mood. He wanted to get out of Morocco, back to Spain, where he would feel steadier, where maybe they would be like they had been before Essaouira. He’d been speeding toward Spain and feeling better with every kilometer put behind them until they’d hit the cow.

Another molten speck emerged from the mirage across the road to the south. It grew clearer, larger, then low and sleek, and shiny black.

“Fuck,” said Luc almost inaudibly. “I don’t believe it.”

Aegina stood up. She looked from the approaching car to Luc. “I don’t want to go with them.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to either, but they
are
going in the right direction. And I really think we should get out of here.”

The car approached, slowed, pulled off the road and stopped.

“Fuck, man. What happen to the little Renault?” said Rolf through Minka’s open window. He and Minka got out, looking from the car to Luc and Aegina. “Are you all right?” Minka asked them.

“We hit a cow,” said Aegina. She pointed at the small shambling herd now some distance away. “One of those.”

Rolf and Minka looked from the cows to the crumpled car. “
Ja
, man, you are fucked. It is the end of the road for the little Renault.”

He turned to them. “Well, we give you a ride, then. You’re going still to Algeciras,
ja?
”

“Thanks, but you don’t have room,” said Aegina.

They had returned the Peugeot. The newly tuned and cleaned Jaguar Mark X carried two suitcases on its roof rack, and the interior looked filled with bundles. It rode low to the ground.

“No, man. We put your big case on the roof with ours. We get you in, with all your shirts.”

•   •   •

R
olf drove more slowly
than he had in the Peugeot on the way to and from Essaouira, picking his way carefully and defensively through small towns. The Jaguar seemed to feel the weight of its new passengers.

Luc pretended to fall asleep in the backseat, while, beside him, Aegina chattered with Minka. Then he really fell asleep.

•   •   •

A
t Tangier,
Rolf drove the Jag onto the ferry, directed by the car deck crew. They got out and climbed the stairs up to the passenger decks.

“We see you in the bar, yes?” said Minka.

Aegina didn’t answer. She pushed through the door leading onto the deck.

Luc followed her. She walked quickly ahead, focused on where she was going, as if she couldn’t wait to get outside, as if unaware that he was behind her. At the edge of the deck, she stopped, placed her hands before her on the rail as if bracing for a wave, and looked out at the city beyond the port.

“Are you okay?” said Luc, leaning on the rail beside her.

She was breathing deeply. She didn’t answer.

After a moment, he said, “What’s the matter?”

She turned and aimed her suddenly inscrutable sunglasses at Luc. “So when did you fuck her? While I was passed out in our room?”

“What?”

“When did you fuck her?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can tell.”

“You can tell what?” Now even he could tell.

“She didn’t look at you the entire time we were in the car. You both ignored each other—
I can just tell! I know!
”

He opened his mouth several times like a fish in the air. Aegina turned and walked away down the deck.

Luc walked after her. “Aegina—”

She turned and shrieked at him,
“Stay away from me!”

People along the deck turned to look at them. Aegina spun and ran down the deck. Luc paused, then walked slowly after her. But he couldn’t find her.

•   •   •

R
olf and Minka
reached the car first. Luc, who had been looking all over the ship without finding Aegina, came down the stairway with other passengers returning to their vehicles and saw the odd group beside the Jaguar. Aegina, sullen, stood away from the car, three car-deck crewmen standing around her, effectively trapping her, one of them straddling the large suitcase full of shirts, which had been removed from the car’s roof rack. Luc heard the crewmen as he approached: “Is this your suitcase?”

“It’s okay,” said Rolf. He appeared uncharacteristically alert, focusing his attention on the three crewmen. “She is with us. It’s my car.”

In fluent Spanish, Luc said to the three crewmen, “What’s the problem?”

“El problema es que los pasajeros—”

Aegina interrupted, in English to Luc: “I came down to get my suitcase. I’m getting off by myself.” She repeated this in fast, angry Spanish to the crewmen.

One of the crewmen, looking implacably at Luc, said, “Passengers who boarded the ferry in cars must disembark in the cars, with all their luggage in the cars. She cannot walk off the ferry.”

“Bueno,”
said Rolf to the crewmen. He turned to Luc and Aegina. “We all get back in the fucking car now. We don’t fuck around with these guys anymore.” He unlocked the car, then grabbed the suitcase and threw it up onto the roof rack. “Get in the fucking car now,” he said quietly. He pulled the rubber spider lashing over the suitcase, anchoring it atop the other cases.

“Aegina—” said Luc.

Silently she pulled open a rear door and got into the car.

“Todo bien?”
said the crewman who had been their spokesman.

“
Todo
completely
bien
, man, okay, okay,” said Rolf.

The crewmen walked away.

When they were all in the car, and Rolf had started the engine, Aegina said: “I’m getting out as soon as we’re ashore.”

Rolf—a brand-new, electrified Rolf—turned around and looked at her. “You don’t get out of the car until we are through the port and into Algeciras. Then, don’t worry, I throw you and your fucking bag, all of you, out of my car—”

“Hey—” began Luc.

“Fuck you, man.” Rolf thrust an index finger into Luc’s face. Then at Aegina. “You be still. You sit and you be quiet.”

For the first time in hours, Luc glanced at Minka. She was looking ahead; her face was gray.

Rolf turned and looked forward and pulled the gear into drive. The Jaguar followed other cars off the boat into the line that moved fitfully toward passport control and customs.

•   •   •

T
wenty minutes later,
they stood mutely around the Jaguar as the
aduana
agents removed the door panels and pulled out the first plastic-wrapped bundles of kif.

“Oh,
Scheisse
, man,” Rolf said to a customs agent. “I had the car serviced in Marrakech. Fuck, I don’t believe it. Look what my
mecánico
has done to me. I don’t know anything about this.”

Abruptly, Minka bent over and began to vomit onto the dusty tarmac. She collapsed onto her hands and knees. Spasms wracked her. Long viscous threads hung from her mouth; she tried to wipe them away and smeared vomit across her face. She began to weep.

Luc glanced at Aegina but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. He looked at Rolf, who was regarding Minka with disgust and anger.

The agents stood back, as if in fear of being spattered, and watched her.

Luc walked to Minka and kneeled beside her. He tore the tail off his blue-and-white-check cheesecloth shirt and began to wipe her mouth. He couldn’t help it: he put his hand on her shoulder.