“I was just talking about what we should do between now and dinner,” I repeat for her. “I wanted to take the SPOKE bikes for a ride through the Jewish quarter to test them out. Everyone is welcome to join.”
“I want to ride the bike again!” Layla declares, sure to let everyone know she already got to do it once.
Lauren leans forward in the back seat and addresses me. Already, she is making an impression on Morocco, as much for her aggressively blond hair as for her not-so-sly innuendo. No one has ever handled my bags like that, she purred to the driver when he met us at the curb. “They, like, do the work for you, right?” She grins at the driver in the rearview mirror. “I’m loyal to one kind of cardio and one kind of cardio only.”
Jen groans.
“You won’t even break a sweat,” I promise her.
“Then I’m in.” She gives me a flirty wink. Just a few months ago, Lauren stonewalled the trip to Morocco, convinced I was the one who sold her out to Page Six. But Digger alliances are like New Year’s resolutions—made to be broken. She even seems to have softened on Steph, her new projected mole, though her gentle ribbing doesn’t necessarily mean all is forgiven. She could just as easily be lying in wait. In some ways, Lauren is the most dangerous. A butcher with a blowout. You never know when she’s going to come for you.
I turn to Kelly, my expectation that she will want to stick by me apparent. Instead she says, “I’ll go with Jen. So she’s not alone.”
“Kel,” I say, annoyed, “don’t you think we should make sure the bikes are working properly?”
“I don’t think it takes both of us to do that.” She leans around me and taps Layla’s knee. “And Layls, I’d prefer it if you came with me too.”
Layla whines, “Why?”
“Because it’s different riding the bikes here than it was in the warehouse. There’s traffic and people walking and I don’t want you or anyone else to get hurt.”
“I thought nine-year-olds could ride them.”
Kelly glances at me, but I refuse to meet her eye. I don’t want Layla riding the bike on a busy city street either, but that’s Kelly’s fault—for begging to take on the responsibility of the manufacturing process, for being the cheapskate who said no to thumb grips. The next shipment of bikes will arrive in the fall with a safer design feature, but in the meantime, we’re here with the prototypes. It’s not the end of the world, necessarily. Plenty of early model electronic bikes were designed without thumb grips and plenty of people have ridden them without incident. We just have to impress upon the villagers how easy it is to unwittingly accelerate with a twist grip, that you can kill a person going only forty miles an hour.
Kelly says to Layla, “Well, when you have to walk ten miles to collect water for your family I’ll let you ride it again, okay?”
Layla appeals to me with her eyes stuck in the back of her head.
“Sorry, Charlie,” I tell her, pursing my lower lip to assure her that her pain is my pain. “But I’m with your mom on this one.” I glance over Layla’s shoulder. “Steph? You coming with?”
Steph speaks to the window with glazed eyes, lulled by the rolling portrait of brown earth and blue sky. “I have some calls to make when we get to the hotel.”
“You sure?” I ask her. “This is the only full day we have in Marrakesh. Don’t you want to see the city?”
Stephanie shuts her eyes again. “It’s beautiful.”
When we arrive at the hotel, the hits keep coming. Lisa informs all of us, in her creepy little-girl voice, that there has been a change to the rooming assignments. I am no longer staying in the suite with Kelly and Layla. Jen will be taking my place, and I am to room with Stephanie.
“I’m happy with that.” Jen bumps Kelly’s shoulder with her own, and I try not to gag.
“And I’m happy to be on my own.” Lauren beams. I eye the luggage that hasn’t left her side. I’ll bet she is.
I’m also betting that this is a setup, so that Lisa can see if her theory has legs, and that there is a very real possibility she may bug my room. I am alone in that concern, it seems, as Stephanie appears indifferent to the fact that we have been stuck together, and that there is only a single, king-sized bed for the two of us to share—not a coincidence. When we get to the room, she drops her things, kicks her nice shoes across the room, and heads for the privacy of the bathroom.
“Steph, wait,” I say to her before she can shut the door.
She pauses without turning to face me. I put my phone in front of her face so that she can read the unsent text message to her: Marc told me Lisa thinks we SLEPT TOGETHER! That’s why she wants us in the same room. She might have bugged it so we have to be careful what we say.
Stephanie reads and rereads the message, her face eerily blank. She takes my phone and composes a response, handing it back to me and shutting the bathroom door without waiting for me to read it. I look at my screen to find that she didn’t write me back in words. Instead, she selected three emojis, the ones with the screaming faces and hands clasped to the jaw.
“She’s definitely not coming?” Lauren asks when I meet her by the elevators.
I shake my head. “I think she’s pretty tired. She’s probably jet-lagged from being in L.A. right before this.”
The elevator doors open and Lauren and I wait patiently while Marc backs in with the camera first.
“Is she tired?” Lauren asks when the elevator doors have trapped us inside. “Or is she upset?”
The hair on my arms prickles. “Why would she be upset?”
“I don’t think it’s escaped her that Vince has a little crush,” Lauren teases, and I instantly regret giving Lauren this opening on camera. “Did you not notice at your engagement party?” she continues, to my complete horror. “He followed her everywhere.”
I steady myself against the gold ballet bar lining the inside of the elevator. “I didn’t even get a chance to eat at my engagement party. So no, I didn’t notice. And anyway, Kelly would never.”
Lauren slaps a hand over her mouth, capping a gotcha! laugh. She is wearing the most impractical biking outfit I’ve ever seen. To not exercise Lauren wears head-to-toe Nike and to exercise she wears a gown rimmed with rainbow-colored tassels that the wheels of the bike are going to gobble alive.
I glare at her. “What?”
Lauren drops her chin to her chest with an infuriating giggle. “I didn’t mention Kelly by name.”
A cold sweat surfaces on the back of my neck. “No,” I insist. “You did.”
“Nope.” Lauren says the word with a pop of her lips: no-pope! She grins, adjusting the gold beaded tikka splitting the part of her baby blond hair.
“That’s Indian, you know,” I tell her.
“I know,” Lauren huffs in a way that makes it clear she didn’t. She lifts her chin as the elevator door opens on the ground level. “Africa is trying to improve relations.” I follow our self-appointed U.N. representative into the lobby, making did she really just say that? eyes at the camera.
“And by the way,” Lauren says to me over her shoulder. “I would never either. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t tried. This slut has standards.”
I accidentally land on the heel of Lauren’s sandal, and she snaps backward. “Fuck!” she cries, and when I look down, I realize I’ve torn her ankle strap.
“Oh my God, Laur. I’m so sorry.”
“I just got these,” she moans, crouching down to examine the damage.
“You’re supposed to bike in closed-toed shoes anyway.”
Lauren scowls up at me from the brightly tiled floor of the riad and I laugh. “I’ll buy you new ones at the Tanneries, okay?”
“Américain maladroit,” Lauren mutters, standing.
“I’ll wait for you down here,” I tell her, as she hobbles back toward the elevator. Marc stays with me.