I HAD BEEN WRONG: ABOUT THE PAST, ABOUT THE CLOSED BOX. Surely.
As we walked toward the bar—night having fallen fast and quick, so that my eyes searched and sought for safe ground—my heart thumped loudly in my chest, berating me for my hastily spoken declaration. I should not have risen to John’s taunt—for that was what it was, I knew, his words intending to harm, to injure. I should have remained silent, just as I always did. But then he had made that comment about the spare bedroom. About our stalled attempts—which was my decision, my fault. And then, she had been there, staring at me with that same queer, inquisitive gaze she always had, and which was so intimately familiar and yet now somehow so utterly foreign, the year in between the last time we had seen each other and the things that had happened since spanning an ocean between us, so that my breath had caught in my throat.
Lucy Mason. For a moment, earlier that morning, I hadn’t trusted my own eyes, my own mind, when I first saw her. But it was her, standing on the doorstep of my flat in Tangier, the look on her face closing the distance, dispelling the darkness of that night, the fog threatening to retreat so that I was once again reminded of how entirely I knew her, how entirely familiar she was to me, so that it seemed at times as if we were one and the same person. And yet—and yet, there was always that strange sense of how little I actually knew her when it came down to facts and truths.
I thought of the few works of Shakespeare I knew and the line that frequently rattled in my brain—what’s past is prologue.
And there she was: my past, made corporeal, made tangible, or whatever other fancy words I was certain she would use to describe it. Lucy Mason. I had started, grabbing the old housecoat that I had only just shed, my intentions for the day already forgotten, and headed for the door. And as I did so, all I could do was think of that collar from the day before, that stupid, awful little tear and what it seemed to mean, what it seemed to predict. Wasn’t there a smarter word for it? I struggled to recall it then, under the heavy gaze of my former roommate—no, that wasn’t an accurate description—of my once friend, the closest friend that I had ever known before it had all gone wrong.
We stood together in the front hall, and I remembered, in the space of our silence, the last words I had spoken to her that night. I had told her . . . no, I had shouted—the first time I could ever remember raising my voice to her—something awful, something wretched, something about wishing she would disappear, wishing I would never see her again. And then I remembered what had happened afterward, what I had thought, what I had said—though not to her, not to Lucy, who had disappeared long before I regained consciousness.
I felt my cheeks go warm, felt her eyes watching me—certain, in that moment, that she knew precisely what I was thinking about.
She was different from what I remembered—although at first I was not sure how, my eyes searching her for any clue. Anything that would tell me why she was here, after all that had transpired between us. She was thinner, her features sharper, more defined. She was, I realized, more beautiful than I remembered—but there was still that strange quality, that penetrating gaze that made me blush and look away and that made me love her and hate her all at once.
I cleared my throat. “Lucy.” Her name escaped me like a declaration, a single word that held so much meaning, and yet nothing at all. I had never, not once in the many moments that had occurred between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the dusty alleyways of Morocco, expected to see her again. Not after what had happened. Not after what I had said and all the questions I still had—about what she had done, about what I had only imagined. My heart began to pound.
I had stared into her face and wondered—for one mad moment—if, somehow, I had summoned her, if somehow, from across the Atlantic, despite my lingering mistrust, my anger, she had managed to feel my unhappiness, my desperation, and materialized in front of me, a genie I had unwillingly conjured up. I had looked at her, the early morning heat of Tangier beginning to pulse around us—a safety and a danger all at once, just like her. My knight in shining armor, always. I felt the truth of it, heavy against my chest.
I PUSHED THROUGH THE DOOR, into Dean’s. It was Tangier. That was my first thought upon entering, the bar a strange mix of anyone and everyone. Locals, foreigners—French, Moroccan, and beyond—suits and ties, their more casual counterparts. It seemed that everyone flocked to this small, dingy bar, no matter who they were or where they were from. The noise was overwhelming. A loud sonic boom of voices shouting over one another, a cacophony of raucous laughter, the kind that grated and thrilled. I watched a man fall onto the ground, his face red with laughter and drink. His companion, a woman in a sleek black dress and large, glittering diamond earrings, threw back her head and let out what I could only think of as a barking noise, though I realized soon enough that it was meant to be a laugh. We moved farther into the belly of the place, and I felt the stickiness of one too many spilled drinks underneath my feet.
“I’ll get us some drinks,” John shouted, heading to the bar without bothering to ask what we wanted first.
There were few stools left at that late hour, at least placed together, though after several minutes of searching we managed to find a space toward the back, hidden away in the corner. When John appeared moments later, drinks in hand, he stared down, frowning. “Did you want to sit somewhere else?” I asked, suspecting—no, knowing—that John would want to be more in the center of it all. It was one of many things I had learned about him during our time together in Tangier: his enduring need to be in the spotlight, to be noticed by those around him. Or no, perhaps not need, perhaps that was too cruel, too calculating a word. It was simply what happened. Wherever John went, heads seemed to turn, gazes seemed to linger. It was the natural order of things, so that he began to expect it, so that even I considered it to be part of everyday life. And I had felt it too once, that strange pull toward him, the one that had led me to Tangier, to Dean’s, to this particular moment in time, my past and present flanking me on either side as I sipped on a lukewarm gin.
In that moment, I wanted to rebel. To punish him for the way he was so obviously trying to punish me. John had resented my decision to come out—for the simple reason that it had not been his own, I suspected—grumbling about the long hours he had worked that day. “But who is she, even?” he had pressed, his eyes searching mine in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. “I’m quite sure I’ve never even heard you mention her name before today.” By the time he had done a quick toilette, layering his hair carefully with cream—the powerful scent causing my stomach to turn—and we had left the apartment at last, his mood had shifted, the alcohol turning him sullen and petulant, though he attempted to hide it behind a large grin.
And throughout it all, I could feel her. Lucy. Sitting beside me, eyes peering through the darkness, watching John, watching everything, just as she always did. She had only been in Tangier for the space of a few hours, but I could already feel that same effect she always had over me: strengthening and emboldening me, her presence serving as an armor I could somehow never manage to affix on my own.
John grabbed one of the stools. “This is fine,” he said, his voice a bit harder than before. He swirled the amber liquid in his glass, its scent like smoke and dust and something ancient. “Well, what do you think?” he asked, turning to Lucy, sweeping his hand around him. “It’s not much, but it attracts quite the crowd.”