Overbooked again. But Arthur Less does not hear her, or else he cannot consider a second stay of execution, a second day of possibilities before he turns fifty. Perhaps it is all too much. Or else just enough.
The piano piece ends, and the guests break into applause. From across the roofs comes either the echo of the applause or that of another party. A triangle of amber light catches one of Javier’s eyes and makes it gleam like glass. And all that goes through Less’s mind is the single thought: Ask me. With the married man smiling and touching Less’s red beard—Ask me—kissing him for perhaps half an hour longer, and here we have another man fallen under the spell of Less’s kiss, pushing him against the wall, unzipping his jacket, touching him passionately and whispering beautiful things but not the words that would change everything, for it is still possible to change everything, until Less tells him at last that it is time to go. Javier nods, walking him back into the green-striped room and standing beside him as he says his good-byes to the hostess, and to the other murder suspects, in his terrible French—Ask me—taking him to the front door and walking him downstairs as far as the street, all done in blue watercolors, blurred by the mist of rain, the carved stone porticos and wet satin streets—Ask me—and the poor Spaniard offers his own umbrella (refused) before smiling sadly—“I am sorry to see you go”—and waving good-bye.
Ask me and I will stay.
There is a call on Less’s phone, but he is preoccupied: already inside the plane, nodding to the beaky blond steward who greets him, as they always do, in the language not of the passenger, steward, or airport but of the plane itself (“Buonasera,” for it is Italian), bumping his awkward way down the aisle, assisting a tiny woman with her enormous overhead luggage, and finding his favorite seat: the rightmost, rearmost corner. No children to kick you from behind. Prison pillow, prison blanket. He removes his tight French shoes and slides them under the seat. Out the window: nighttime Charles de Gaulle, will-o’-the-wisps and men waving glowing wands. He closes the shade, then closes his eyes. He hears his neighbor sitting down roughly and speaking Italian, and he nearly understands it. Brief memory of swimming in a golf resort. Brief false memory of Dr. Ess. Brief real memory of rooftops and vanilla.
“…welcome you on our flight from Paris to Marrakech…”
The chimneys all looked like flowerpots.
There is a second call, this time from an unknown number, but we will never know what it contains, for no message is left, and the intended receiver is already deep in takeoff slumber, high above the continent of Europe, only seven days from fifty, headed now at last to Morocco.
Less Moroccan
What does a camel love? I would guess nothing in the world. Not the sand that scours her, or the sun that bakes her, or the water she drinks like a teetotaler. Not sitting down, blinking her lashes like a starlet. Not standing up, moaning in indignant fury as she manages her adolescent limbs. Not her fellow camels, to whom she shows the disdain of an heiress forced to fly coach. Not the humans who have enslaved her. Not the oceanic monotony of the dunes. Not the flavorless grass she chews, then chews again, then again, in a sullen struggle of digestion. Not the hellish day. Not the heavenly night. Not sunset. Not sunrise. Not the sun or the moon or the stars. And surely not the heavy American, a few pounds overweight but not bad for his age, taller than most and top heavy, tipping from side to side as she carries this human, this Arthur Less, pointlessly across the Sahara.
Before her: Mohammed, a man in a long white djellaba and with a blue shesh wound around his head, leading her by a rope. Behind her: the eight other camels in her caravan, because nine people signed up to travel to this encampment, though only four of the camels have passengers. They have lost five people since Marrakech. They are soon to lose another.
Atop her: Arthur Less, in his own blue shesh, admiring the dunes, the little wind devils dancing on each crest, the sunset coloration of turquoise and gold, thinking at least he will not be alone for his birthday.
Days earlier—awakening from the Paris flight to find himself on the African continent: a bleary-eyed Arthur Less. Body still atingle with champagne and Javier’s caresses and a rather awkward window seat, he staggers across the tarmac beneath a dyed-indigo night sky, and into an immigration line that is beyond reason. The French, so stately at home, seem instantly to have lost their minds on the soil of their former colony; it is like the redoubled madness of seeing a lover you have wronged; they ignore the line, removing the ropes from the carefully ordered stanchions, and become a mob charging into Marrakech. The Moroccan officers, in the green and red of cocktail olives, stay calm; passports are examined, then stamped; Less imagines this happens all day, every day. He finds himself shouting “Madame! Madame!” at a Frenchwoman elbowing her way through the crowd. She pouts with a shrug (C’est la vie!) and keeps going. Is there an invasion he has not heard of? Is this the last plane out of France? If so: where is Ingrid Bergman?
So there is plenty of time, as he shuffles with the crowd (in which, though European, he still towers), to panic.
He could have remained in Paris, or at least have accepted yet another delay (and six hundred euros); he could have tossed this whole foolish adventure aside for one even more foolish. Arthur Less was supposed to go to Morocco, but he met a Spaniard in Paris, and no one has heard from him since! A rumor for Freddy to hear. But if he is anything, Arthur Less is a man who follows his plan. And so he is here. At least he will not be alone.
“Arthur! You’ve grown a beard!” His old friend Lewis, outside customs, joyous as ever. Tarnished-silver hair worn long over the ears and bristling white on his chin; plump faced and well clad in gray linen and cotton; capillaries spreading in a fertile delta across his nose; signs that Lewis Delacroix is, at nearly sixty, a stride ahead of Arthur Less.
Less smiles warily and touches his beard. “I…I thought I needed a change.”
Lewis holds him at a distance to study him. “It’s sexy. Let’s get you into some air-conditioning. There’s a heat wave on, and even these Marrakech nights have been hell. Sorry your flight was delayed; what a nightmare to wait a whole day! Did you manage to fall in love with fourteen hours in Paris?”
Less is startled and says he called up Alexander. He talks about the party and Alex not showing up. He doesn’t mention Javier.
Lewis turns to him and asks, “Do you want to talk about Freddy? Or do you not want to talk about Freddy?”