“Yes, of course.”
I could see then, instantly, that I’d said the wrong thing—but that this was also what he wanted. To be able to shake his head and laugh at the na?veté of the young American woman in front of him. To lean in, with a conspirator’s grin, beckoning me to come closer, closer and closer still.
“You are unfamiliar with Bowles, I see. You must read him, if you wish to understand this place,” he instructed.
“Is he Moroccan?” I asked, unfamiliar with the name.
He laughed. “He is not Moroccan, no, but he spends a good deal of time here. We see one another often and wave. He is familiar, a neighbor. Not simply a famous writer.”
Bowles. I placed the name somewhere in my mind, making a mental note to check whether John had any of his work scattered among the unread books that lined the flat. For while I considered myself something of an expert in classical literature—particularly anything British—I was the first to admit my deficiencies in more contemporary work, as it had never managed to hold my attention in the same manner. Give me the wilds of an English moor, or the gritty urban streets of Victorian London, and I would feel, if nothing else, at home. But as to the latest stream of authors sweeping the country, I was essentially a novice.
Perhaps this is what the man offered—a guide to the country that Alice now called home, however reluctantly. Perhaps there was worth to be found there, I thought.
“I promise to read him, the very first chance I have,” I said.
“Good. Then you will learn the difference between a tourist and a traveler. And we shall see which one you are.” He leaned over, offering a cigarette. “Here.”
I paused—Alice did not smoke. The distinction seemed important to uphold, so I shook my head demurely. He shrugged and pulled an expression, as if to indicate it was my loss. And I did regret my decision—almost instantly. I inhaled the fragrant smoke: heavy and perfume-like. French, most likely. Gauloises. One didn’t smell many of them around Tangier, I had already noticed. I wondered if I could change my mind, but then, that would reveal a part of me to this stranger that I wasn’t yet sure I could trust. Better to remain behind the veneer a bit longer.
“I have a studio by the ocean, where I paint,” he said, after a few moments’ consideration. “This is where you must come.”
“By the ocean?” I repeated. After several days in Tangier, despite the fact that it was a port city, I had seen very little of the water. It was strange, I thought, the way the city was able to swallow you up so completely.
“Yes, it is next to Café Hafa. Do you know it?”
I shook my head.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “this is the place you must go. It is where all the artists are. They also have the best mint tea,” he said, gesturing to my empty glass. “And the view—it is much better than this. Just the ocean, nothing else.”
“It sounds beautiful.”
“It is.” He smiled, nodding his head. He peered at me through the smoke. “So, Miss Alice, tell me. Do you want to see the real Tangier?”
I hesitated, assuming he meant to offer himself as a guide and wondering, at the same time, at the advisability of such an idea—disappearing into a city I knew little about, with a man about whom I knew even less. But then I thought of Alice, stagnated by fear, stuck inside the dark confines of her flat day after day, waiting for John to return from work. Waiting, both of us, always waiting. I shook my head, as if to shake the word from my mind, as if I could somehow physically dislodge it from my vocabulary. I had spent a good deal of my life waiting. Too much time. I nodded—a sharp, pointed gesture that conveyed my acceptance of his offer.
“Morocco is your home.” He said the words slowly, watching my face closely as he spoke. “Yes, it is yours. You are a Tangerine now.”
He pronounced it tangerine, like the fruit. I smiled, letting the thought settle. Morocco was mine. And it could be, I reasoned. After all, what did I have to return to? A damp, shared room on the wrong side of New York. Endless days spent typing up other writers’ manuscripts. Here I could finally write something of my own, put pen to paper as I had always dreamed of during college—as Alice and I had dreamed, together. And if that meant making Morocco my own, I was prepared to do just that.
I was a Tangerine now, after all.
Five
Alice
I DID NOT ASK HER WHERE SHE HAD SPENT HER DAY, OR WHOM she had spent it with. I did not ask what she was doing in Tangier, why she was here, what she wanted—still too afraid of the answers I might receive. Instead, I smiled, the gesture feeling odd and forced, and told her to sit, told her I would make drinks again—the nights already beginning to take on the shape of those we had spent at Bennington.
I wondered at the ease of it, of how quickly we had slipped back into our roles, how comfortable already it had begun to feel. And I resented it, the feeling that I had tried to clasp onto at the bar suddenly mine, strong and fierce, until I could think of nothing else but the way that she had so carefully reinserted herself back into my life without a mention of the past, of her part in what had unfolded between us, the tragedy that had ensconced us. I didn’t know what I expected her to say, not exactly, but there was neither a word nor a glance, not anything at all that seemed to indicate she recalled those last few weeks we had spent together and the tension that had grown between us.
I could feel my anger growing, and I forced myself to concentrate on the task at hand, peeling the zest from the lemon that I had bought at the market two weeks past, the skin of the fruit now dried, withered.
I called from the kitchen: “It’s like this most nights, I’m afraid. John is always off to one dinner party or another.”
“And what about you? Don’t you ever go with him?” she called back.
“No, not anymore.” I thought of the faces I had been introduced to those first few months—appraising and cold. “I did at first, but well, it turned out they weren’t for me. Tangier seems to attract a certain type, and I’m afraid that I don’t generally fit the description.”
I found her perched beside the window, gazing out. At my entrance she turned, frowning. “Do you like it at all, Alice? Tangier, I mean?”
My face burned a fiercer shade of red. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I haven’t really given it a chance. Or at least, that’s what John always says.”
I did not add that I often doubted whether there was any truth in what John said, wondered instead whether the truth wasn’t something much simpler: Tangier and I were not suited for one another, that we never would be, no matter how many chances I gave it. From the little I knew of it already, I had realized what a hard place it could be. It was not a place where one simply arrived and belonged—no, I imagined that it was a process, a trial, even an initiation of sorts, one that only the bravest survived. It was a place that inspired rebellion, a place that demanded it, of its people, its citizens. A place where everyone had to constantly adapt, struggle, fight for what they wanted. I looked up at the woman in front of me. It was a place for someone like Lucy.