Tangerine(43)

I turned my face upward, watching as the rain fell on the glass and then began to slide down, away from our building.

In the common room, the temperature had shifted. I passed the tables where tomorrow our breakfast would be served—fresh cheese, olives, and bread. A bit of oil, or butter, if we were lucky. I walked, without purpose, without aim, past the floor cushions that served as sofas, the decorative coverings hiding the dilapidated state of the frame. I noticed a forgotten pack of cigarettes, nearly full, sitting on the table, and although I already had some in my handbag, I reached for them. Extracting one and placing it in my mouth, I palmed the rest of the packet, tucking it into the pocket on my nightdress. The cigarette was harsh and it burned my throat. I tried to remember the last time I had had one of this poor quality. Senior year, I recalled. When Alice and I had snuck into the dance studio one night. Of course, it wasn’t really sneaking in, since none of the buildings were ever locked. I had always thought that Bennington inspired a peculiar brand of rebellion in its students—particularly, when the idea of breaking into a school, rather than out, was our definition of amusement.

Martha Graham used to teach here, you know, Alice had said as we made our way into one of the dance studios. The floors, even in the dark, had shone with a fresh coating of wax. Three sides of the room were covered with mirrors, while the fourth was glass, looking out across the campus, although the view was blanketed in darkness. There, I could see our reflections: thin, long hair, one a bit taller than the other. There was nothing remarkable about either of us, not at first glance. But I had thought then, staring at our reflections, that we could have passed for sisters. There was something so similar in the way that we held ourselves, in the way that we moved, one motion made in reaction to another.

Did you hear? What I said before? Alice had moved over to the mirrors, where a long, sturdy-looking rope hung from the ceiling. She was holding it between her hands. About Martha Graham?

Yes, I replied, smiling. I didn’t know who Martha Graham was, but I didn’t say so, eager to have the night go well. Things had been strange between us, with Alice spending most of her time with Tom, or tucked away in the darkroom on her own. Paris, and all the plans we had once made, seemed far away—promises made by two girls I could no longer remember.

She motioned me over to where she stood. Here, she said, thrusting the rope between my hands.

I stared at it, doubtfully. What am I supposed to do?

Swing.

I continued to look at her in confusion until she sighed and took the rope back from me. Watch, she instructed. Alice pulled the rope to the far corner of the room. Stepping onto the thick knot at the bottom of the rope with one foot, she folded her body, so that her arms and one leg wound themselves around the roping. She jumped, pushing her leg back and up, the force propelling her forward. The rope swung across the space of the room, and I stepped back to watch. Alice’s hair flung first forward and then back, so that her face was obscured, her laughter echoing throughout the small room as she swung back and forth, a human pendulum.

A clap of thunder sounded overhead, and I was brought back to Chefchaouen. I turned toward the window, although all I could see was blackness and my own lonely reflection. I continued to stare, realizing how much had changed between my memory of that dance studio and Chefchaouen. It was not just Alice who had altered. Without her, my own sense of self had wavered. I had tried, in the days after the accident, to accept that I would never see her again, that whatever had existed between Alice and me had been ravaged, had been burned up inside that raging inferno until there was nothing left but cinder, the remains of something that once was. And I felt it, this loss. A physical pain, a knot in my stomach, that churned, acidic and angry. There had been moments in New York when I had wandered the streets, unable to sleep, unable to stop thinking of her. I had walked until my feet cracked and bled, and then walked farther still, unable to stop. I had been lost, adrift.

There was that same swooshing noise in my ear, as normal to me by now as it had once been strange. Carefully, I examined it. There was still no pain, no sign of infection—just that unusual feeling of fullness. But then, there was something. I looked at my finger, now covered with grit. It didn’t matter how much I had washed in the bath, Tangier refused to let me go. But where only a few days before I would have relished this notion, I thought of it now with something like panic. Morocco was becoming too dangerous, not just for the expats who remained, but also for Alice, the city threatening to hold her captive. Both of us needed to get back to our original selves, I realized, and not just for twenty-four hours.

I stood by the window, though the view outside was obscured in the darkness. Alice would have to know. There could be no more stalling, no more waiting. I would have to tell her about what I had seen, about the fast-ticking clock that was sounding behind us, everywhere we went. I knew that John would not wait forever.

Ticktock. Ticktock.

And then, Alice was standing behind me, as if she had simply materialized, as if a part of my brain had somehow managed to conjure her. I looked at our reflections in the glass, but we no longer looked like sisters. I wasn’t sure exactly what had changed. It was true that we had different hairstyles now—mine was still long and old-fashioned, whereas Alice had cut hers into something that resembled a bob. I wondered if she had done it before or after her move to Tangier, if it had been in response to the heat or in anticipation of it. There was something else too, something in the way our expressions settled upon our respective faces. They were no longer interchangeable. Gone were the shared gestures, the intertextuality that had once existed between us. We were simply two women—close, once, but different. No longer the same at all.