Tangerine(53)

A man rounded the corner. I ignored him, willing him to do the same—daring him to do otherwise. He passed by me, silent, and for a moment I felt the anger start to retreat.

Then he turned and spoke: “Smile. Be happy.”

I shot him a look, one that boiled with hatred, overflowed with violence. He shrank backward, and I was suddenly anxious to get away from him, from this putrid-smelling alley. No, not anxious, desperate. I was desperate to get away, feeling my cheeks flush red again, hot with newfound anger. I was embarrassed and I was angry that this man was able to make me feel this way, that anyone could make me feel this way. I could feel it, as I had in the past, growing out of control. As it had that day of the accident. I could feel its energy coursing through my body, as if I had been shocked, zapped, brought back to life so that all of me was burning, electric, and the source of energy could no longer be contained. It took everything in my willpower not to lunge at him. I knew, rationally, that my anger had nothing to do with him. That it was directed somewhere else altogether. At the same time, I was powerless to stop. I did not want to. I worried that if I did, I would simply break apart, break down, the anger and power—yes, it felt powerful—seeping out of my pores and leaving me small and pitiless, a figure to be laughed at, one to be derided. I felt the tears begin to well. “Get away from me,” I hissed, aware that while he probably would not understand my words, he would by no means miss my tone.

A look of confusion swept across his features.

I almost wished that he would do something—shout, slap, spit—anything, but all he did was slink away down one of the city’s countless alleys, disappearing into the labyrinthine maze.

In that moment I felt nothing but contempt—for all of them. I hated John and his confident smirk, I hated the nameless faces that I had to push past in order to find one solitary spot in this sea of strangers, and even, for the briefest of moments, I hated her. Alice. I had done everything for her—traveled halfway across the world in order to find her, to rescue her from the mess that she had made of our life. I hated her for her weakness, her spinelessness, for always going back on the decision she had made.

There was only one thing to do now.

I turned quickly, leaving behind the darkened alley and heading back into the heart of the medina, back to the Petit Socco. I slipped into Café Tingis, ordered a coffee, and then asked the waiter to use the telephone.

I dialed the number, hoping he would still be home, hoping he would be the one to answer. I held my breath and waited to hear John’s voice.

ALICE WAS NOT SUPPOSED to have been in the car that night.

Tom was not supposed to have died.

But then we had fought, a torrent of angry words and accusations, powerful enough to match the snowstorm raging outside around us. A blizzard, I had later heard it referred to, so that by the time I had realized what was happening—the car pulling up, Alice stepping inside, the storm at its zenith—the roads were covered in a sheen of ice and the accident was far worse than I had ever intended.

I had meant it as a scare, imagining—as I felt for it, underneath the hood of Tom’s car, alongside the firewall, moving quickly, my hands working from memory, from experiences I no longer wanted to claim as my own, as I inhaled the deep, unnerving scent of oil that was both home and somewhere else entirely foreign—a broken leg, a lost scholarship, something that would take him far and away from Alice so that she and I would be alone once more. With a pair of pliers I had crimped the line, knowing it would affect the pressure, affect the brakes—but I had not expected it to burst, had not expected the snow and the ice and the mountains and Alice.

I had tried to stop her, to warn her, but she wouldn’t listen. I had thought about following, about pushing past, crawling into the car alongside her—but I had stopped, frozen, from both the growing storm around us and the words she had spoken to me, about disappearing, about never wanting to see me again. She had fixed me with a look of such anger, such hatred, that I had been rendered useless by my surprise.

Afterward, I had gone back inside, had stood in our quiet little room, and had realized it was over. That there was no longer a reason for me to stay. And so I had packed my bag, a single suitcase, nothing more, filled only with the things that I had come there with—a few dresses, a couple pairs of stockings. The bits I had acquired along the way—a novel from the town bookstore, a pressed leaf from the previous autumn—these I left behind.

At first I had thought to avoid the main road and what I might find there—but then I had thought of the woods, of the darkness and the snow, and I had pushed ahead.

Walking through the blizzard, my hands shaking, blue and numb, I had paused at the wreckage that my desires had conjured, had stood, wondering, my blood thrumming loudly within my ear, what it was all for. I had found Alice, lying in the snow, a good distance from the car, her body smeared with red and black, nearly unrecognizable. And as I stood over the lifeless body of the girl I had loved, the consequence, I thought, of my dreaming, of my wanting, I had felt it: the darkness around me, transforming and moving me, making me into something that I had not intended, a monster I had not foreseen.

I had moved to New York, to the city—stopping first by the garage I had grown up in, which only days earlier I had been thankful for, for the summers I had endured, sweating alongside the other men in the building, casting them murderous glances when their own lingered too long. From the garage I had taken what little money was in the register—it was owed, I thought, for my years of servitude—and purchased a one-way ticket on Greyhound. Once there, I did not bother to change my name; the city was big and no one would come looking for me, I knew.