Tangerine(23)

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.

“I made a friend today,” Lucy said, bringing me back to the present. “A Moroccan man. Rather strange, I suppose, though he was quite kind. I was sitting outside of Cinema Rif. Do you know it?” When I nodded, she continued: “I was having a tea and he happened to notice I was sitting there alone. He offered to show me around Tangier, in fact. He mentioned something about being an artist. A painter, I think.”

I felt myself flush at her words, felt it spread throughout my body. My dress, despite the pink blush fabric, was severe and unyielding in the evening heat. There was something strangely unsettling about Lucy’s piece of information, about the fact that she had already made an acquaintance, a friend, and suddenly I could feel it, a tinge of envy, of jealousy, growing hot in the pit of my stomach. I could feel a sheen of sweat break across my forehead. “Here,” I said, handing her the drink I still held clutched between my fingers. I moved toward the sofa, hoping she would follow, that she would forget what it was that she had just been discussing. “Try this,” I instructed, worried as she sat down beside me that she would feel it, the heat that now seemed to radiate from my body.

“What is it?” she asked, shifting closer.

“Just my own creation.” I let out a nervous laugh, raising the glass to meet my lips. “It helps to pass the time.”

She took a cautious sip and I knew what she was tasting—a sweetness, like cherries. “That’s the grenadine,” I said. “There’s a brand that I love in France. I make sure John always brings back a bottle or two whenever he travels to the Continent.”

“And you? Do you go home often?” she asked, peering at me over her drink.

“To England?” I shook my head, trying not to think of it, of the smell that was London, fragrant and stale, rich and musty. I pushed it aside, and in its absence something else occurred to me, in the silence of the room. “That sounds like Youssef,” I said.

She frowned. “What does?”

“The man you were just describing. I was wondering if it might be Youssef.”

“Joseph, you mean?”

I shook my head. “No, Youssef. He’s notorious for preying on unsuspecting tourists. Everyone here knows him, if not directly, well, at least about him.”

“Perhaps this was someone different,” she ventured, her voice sharper than it had been a moment before.

I could see that the information had unnerved her, that the idea that she might somehow have been taken in sat poorly. It was, after all, something that I would have expected of myself—I trusted too easily, too often, I knew. And then, there it was again—that awful feeling, tinged with green, that stirred in my belly and made me strangely glad to see that it was Lucy who had done something wrong, that it was Lucy who had been taken in by another’s kind word. I found myself unable to stop. “Fedora with a purple ribbon?”

She frowned and nodded.

“That’s him, then. John says he lures tourists back to his house, then demands money for all sorts of useless junk. I think he once had a girl involved, pretending to be his daughter.” I shrugged. “The locals never say anything to the tourists. In fact, they find it all rather amusing, I’m afraid.”