That was what the fog had hidden from me—but I remembered now, remembered how, in the days afterward, I had been convinced that she had been the one responsible. But when I had tried to say it, first at the hospital, and later in England, Aunt Maude had brushed aside my accusations, had told me instead to be quiet and still. And because I was not entirely certain, because I was never entirely certain when it came to Lucy, when it came to the dark recesses of my own mind, I had listened, closing my eyes to the possibility.
I thought of Chefchaouen, of everything it had stirred within me, both good and bad and frightening, and I was furious with Lucy, with myself. I turned the water spigot farther to the left, willing the scorching heat to burn away the thoughts circulating in my head.
I would tell her that I knew what she had done, and then I would make her leave.
I shut my eyes and willed myself to be brave enough, smart enough this time, to ensure that she left, and not just Tangier, but my life as well. There could be no more reappearances, no more unexpected knocks on the door. I needed to cast her out, to purge her from my life, once and for all.
I had done my best to forget it, to bury it, to move past it. I had married John, I had moved to another continent, hundreds and thousands of miles away from the place that reminded me of him, of Tom. But now, I knew—that the past was never truly past, and that I could not outrun it forever, that the fog would not always protect me. I felt it begin to resurface then, every painful detail of that time, so that I could no longer feel the heat of the water, of Tangier, pressing against my skin.
I shivered, suddenly feeling as though I would never be warm again.
Ten
Lucy
WE WALKED THROUGH THE VILLE NOUVELLE DISTRICT IN silence. As we moved, I felt almost instinctively that the space was somehow outside of my jurisdiction, as if those other places in the city—the medina, the Kasbah, and all the twists and turns that existed between them—belonged to me entirely, while these streets continued to remain unknown, refusing to yield their secrets. Instead I felt as if I was on John’s territory. And there was something else too—an uneasiness as a result of Alice’s silence, so that Chefchaouen seemed all at once far away, and I found myself unable to read her, to understand why she had not told John about our plan, why, instead, we were following him through the streets of Morocco, an unsettling scavenger hunt where none of us knew the prize.
“One other stop first,” John said, turning down a darkened alley that I did not recognize.
“Oh, John,” Alice began. I could tell Chefchaouen had taken its toll on her. Dark circles had appeared under her eyes, and although she had spent time in the bath before we departed, it looked as though some of the sand and peeling skin still clung to her, as if she had made no real attempt to scrub them away at all. “Maybe another night.”
“Don’t be like that,” he said, laughing. He tugged at Alice’s arms playfully, though there was something urgent in his movement, something insistent and desperate. I was reminded of Alice that first night, the way she had smiled and laughed, the falseness behind it, and the sinking feeling that it would inevitably all come crashing down around us, the shards splintering onto the ground. John had that same manic look in his eyes, I thought. But where I had felt concern for Alice, I felt only unease under John’s wavering temper. He turned from us then, increasing his speed, so that he walked in front, rather than next to us. “Hurry up, we’re almost there!” he called, the singsong lilt in his voice making it seem like we were playing a game, as if this were all in jest. I thought of the Pied Piper, leading the children out of the town and into the forest. And although I knew the fairy-tale version that children were told, I was reminded of the much darker telling, where the man, in an act of revenge, led the unsuspecting children to their deaths.
But instead of directing us out of town, John ushered us into one of the city’s many anonymous bars. It was stained and weathered, the inside intentionally dark so that it hid whatever refuse the light may have illuminated. I wondered aloud why John had chosen to bring us here, but he only ignored me, walking farther into the belly of the place until at last it seemed we had come to the end and were going to continue out the exit. John came to a halt, sending us both crashing into him.
“Here,” he said, indicating the floor. “Take off your shoes and leave them.”
I frowned, looking over at Alice—but if she was startled by John’s game of follow the leader, she did not show it. Instead she bent down, undoing the ankle straps on her kitten heels and letting them fall onto the grime-covered floor. I watched her in surprise and then, realizing there was nothing to do but push on, I undid my own, placing them in the corner, hoping that they would not get trampled in my absence.
“Good.” John beamed at us, looking over his shoulder. “Now, follow me.”
I was the last to enter the back room, and it took a few moments of rapid blinking to adjust to the dim light, so that by the time I took in our surroundings—a floor mat of some sort, not quite bamboo, but not quite wood; walls so deeply stained with tobacco that in the dim light I could not make out the color; and finally, a few low tables, around which a handful of men in traditional djellabas sat, smoking from pipes—John and Alice had already claimed one of the low tables and were sitting cross-legged beside it. I quickly joined them.
“It took a fair amount of convincing to get you in here,” John said, his face serious, though his tone was self-congratulatory. “This is what would amount to an old boys’ club here, so strictly no women allowed. You’re both in luck that the owner of this joint owes me a favor—still, I promised him no more than fifteen minutes, a half an hour tops.”
“And what are we doing here?” I asked, eyeing the other men in the room. Most of them appeared to be well into their fifties, maybe sixties, and though they had turned to us with interest upon our arrival, a majority of them had already looked away, rejoining conversations that had stalled and picking up their slackened pipes.
“This,” John said, producing his own pipe, one that had apparently been stashed somewhere within the folds of his suit until then. “You aren’t afraid, are you?” he teased, waving the kif pipe nearer to Alice’s face. His smile seemed to alter, turning small and mean. Not the Pied Piper after all, I found myself thinking: more like the big bad wolf, tempting us off the path. It felt as though he wanted to poke, to prod—to turn us upside down and see what would fall out. He was nervous, I realized—of what I had told Alice about Sabine, of what, perhaps, had happened between us. I could see it—his suspicions, his paranoia—shimmering in the air around us.
Alice extended her hand and dutifully inhaled the smoking pipe, only to then cough and sputter, much to my amazement and John’s apparent delight. I hesitated when it was passed in my direction. While I had always liked cigarettes—from an early age when I had stolen my first pack from the corner shop and ridden my bicycle down by the creek to smoke them—this was something different. I pursed my lips, trying to decide whether or not it suited me, trying to decide what it was that was happening, the night already taking on a strange disorder that I could not figure out, could not reassemble into something familiar and known.