I began to close the door, anxious now for the man to be gone—but then he paused and turned back, his face pinched in concentration. “Forgive me,” he said, “but what time did you say he left?”
I crossed my arms tightly across my chest. “Sometime in the afternoon. I’m not sure exactly. Perhaps late morning,” I said, unsure just how long I had actually stayed in bed the day before. It had felt like ages and only seconds, all at once. I shook my head, looking up at the man now staring intently into my face. “I don’t know, I’m afraid.”
He frowned, as if my uncertainty displeased him. “I see,” he said. “Well. If you hear from him.” He withdrew a card from within his suit pocket. “Please be in touch.”
I took the proffered card and frowned, thinking again of that morning’s dream. “Is he—has something happened?”
He fixed me with an odd expression. “Do you think something has happened?”
“What?” I felt my face flush. “No, I only thought, I mean, I thought you were implying—” I stopped, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t. Instead he pointed to the card in my hand and then started to leave once more. “Wait,” I said, my voice trembling. “Should we—I mean, shouldn’t I telephone the police?”
His brow unfurrowed, the scarred white stretch expanded, and his mouth slipped into a wide grin that made me want to do nothing so much as shut the door between us, firmly, not waiting for his response. “I don’t think there is any reason to do that,” he said, his voice low, placating. “After all, we wouldn’t want to involve the locals in our business, would we?”
I heard the force, the threat, implicit in his words, despite the odd smile that clung to his lips. He turned, and at the sound of his retreating footsteps, at last I closed the door.
John wasn’t in Fez, then. Wasn’t with his friend Charlie. Surely the man—I was unsure whether he had given me his name, and looking at his card realized it was nothing but a telephone number—had already spoken with him. I thought about ringing Charlie, just to make sure, before realizing I didn’t actually know how to get in touch with him. I had met Charlie only a handful of times, at one party or another, and in those moments, I had been convinced that he did not have a sense of who I was, not really. He knew that John had married, knew that he was bringing his wife with him to Tangier. But my name, my face—both of these were a mystery to him, and ones I suspected he was not intent on solving.
I moved to the living room, to the desk that John rarely used, the drawers transformed into a receptacle for papers and pens. Surely John had written down Charlie’s contact information somewhere. I sorted through each, flinging paper to the ground around me, not caring about the mess that I was making, frantic to find something, anything at all, so long as it would help dispel the image of John’s lifeless body from my mind. As long as it would stop it from becoming a reality.
“What are you looking for?”
I jumped at the sound of her voice, slipping in the process, my already bruised knees connecting with the hardwood floor. Lucy stood above me, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders, the long strands trailing down her soft white blouse, which seemed to glow in the morning light.
She gave a small laugh. “You’re too easily startled, Alice.”
I blinked. It wasn’t a trick of the light, a trick of my mind. She was there, still. I shook my head—it wasn’t possible. I had asked her—no, told her—to leave, just the other night. I remembered standing there, staring in at her, asleep in the bed, knowing that I could no longer allow my fear to persuade me to remain silent. And so I had spoken the words, had finally released them, at last.
It had happened.
“Lucy,” I sputtered. “What are you doing here?” They were similar to the words that I had spoken to her the first day she had arrived in Tangier. My head felt fuzzy, weighted down—my mind filled with nothing but the certainty of her presence and the terrible implication of what that might mean. I placed my hands on the floorboards beneath me, used the force of my arms to push myself upward, grit pressing into my skin. “I told you to leave.”
Lucy gave a quick, short laugh. “Don’t be silly, Alice. We were tired, we had a bit too much to drink.” She gave a slight shake of her head. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
I could feel it, that all-too-familiar sensation of fear, in the very center, in my very core, pushing and pulling. My limbs trembled, and I was convinced that just one more moment in her presence would undo me completely. I pushed past her, walking—practically running—back to my bedroom, back to safety. I bolted the door, my fingers fumbling over the lock.
I SAT IN THE CORNER of the bedroom, waiting.
Earlier, I had heard her footsteps as she had approached the door, heard the slight creak of the wood as she had leaned on it, presumably listening for me, just as I listened for her now. The symmetry of it made me shiver. My eyes roamed the space of the room, searching, though for what I could not explain—a way out, a trapdoor, something that would let me escape from what was happening around me, a nightmare I could not wake from. My eyes fell on the telephone next to John’s side of the bed.
It had been an extravagance, something we had not needed—two telephones in one small household, it was absurd, I had told him—but John had insisted, telling me he wouldn’t be dragging himself out of bed and down the hall each and every time my aunt decided to check in on us. An excuse, I soon realized. What he really meant was that he wanted to be able to conduct meetings while still in bed, so that I would have to turn away, a pillow pressed against my ears in an effort to block out the sound. As I crawled toward it now—pausing every so often as a board shifted under the weight of my frame, listening, waiting, frightened at what might happen if she were to realize what I was about to do, as if Lucy could already sense my plan, as if my thoughts were able to slip from my mind, porous and unreliable as it was—I silently thanked him for the decision.
Once next to the bed, I clasped the cold Bakelite between my hands, the one and only number that I had ever managed to commit to memory, ready on my lips.
At the sound of her voice, I grasped the telephone tightly between my fingers.
“Alice?” Aunt Maude asked, sounding for one moment as if she were there in the room with me and not thousands of miles away. “Alice, what is it? What’s happened?”
I wondered briefly how she had known—that it was me, that something was wrong. If she could somehow feel it, despite the distance between us. But then I remembered the operator and I shook my head, embarrassed. “It’s John,” I began, realizing that she was waiting for me to speak. “He’s—” I hesitated.
“He’s what?” she demanded, her voice, so typically calm and measured, now sharp with panic. I thought I could feel it, vibrating through the phone.
“He’s missing,” I finally managed, the words coming out cracked, broken. “Someone from his work showed up at the flat this morning, looking for him. I told them he was supposed to be in Fez, with his friend Charlie—but now I don’t know if that’s true.” I took a deep breath. “They told me not to go to the police, but I think something has happened. And I think—I think I know who might have been involved.”
There was no response.
“Auntie?” I whispered, worried that I might have only imagined her voice a few moments before.
“Yes, Alice, I’m here.” There was another pause. “I want you to listen carefully to me, now. I am going to have my secretary book a flight to Spain, and I’ll board a ferry from there. I’m not sure how long it will take to organize, but I am going to do my best to be there by the end of the week. Do you understand?”