Tangerine(57)

The knocking grew louder.

I pulled my dressing gown tighter and hurried down the hallway. “Coming,” I called, my footsteps sounding against the cool tiles. I reached down and touched the brass knob, already convinced I would find John on the other side, back from gallivanting with Charlie, sulking, most likely, having misplaced his keys somewhere during his adventure and ready for a hot bath and a cup of tea. I smiled at the familiarity, eager to dispel the image of the John from my dreams, and opened the door.

It wasn’t him.

Instead a man I did not recognize stood before me, a hat clutched between his hands. He was tall, his stature filling the doorway, his body, it seemed, expanding on each inhale. A scar, I noted, cut through his eyebrow, such that a patch was missing, and the smooth sheen of it, stark white against his skin, seemed to be illuminated in the darkness.

I frowned, peering through the dim light into the corridor, trying to place the man in front of me.

“Pardon the early hour, Alice,” he began, his accent indicating he was a fellow countryman.

I started at the sound of my name. “Yes?” I asked, regretting how small, how tentative I knew my voice sounded.

“I’m looking for your husband. He wasn’t in the office yesterday. Or today, in fact.” He paused, looking over my shoulder, into the flat. “As you can probably imagine, we’re a bit concerned at his absence.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling, as I did, the relief that surged through my body at the realization it was only a concerned colleague from work that stood on my doorstep, not a policeman out of uniform, carrying with him bad news that would transform my morning nightmare into something real. “He isn’t here. In Tangier, I mean. He went with his friend Charlie to Fez,” I said, giving him a tentative smile.

The man frowned. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“He left yesterday afternoon, after breakfast,” I said, ignoring the tiny pinpricks starting in the tips of my fingers. “Can I ask what this is about?”

“But you saw him?” he asked, ignoring my question. “Yesterday, I mean, before he left.”

“No,” I admitted, the word leaving my mouth slowly. “We had a bit of a night out and I’m afraid I slept rather late the next morning, so I didn’t see him off.” It seemed important, somehow, to explain how it was that I could be so unsure of my husband’s movements, to this stranger who stood before me, assessing.

The man looked behind me again. “But he was here with you, afterward?”

I frowned. “I was asleep when he arrived home.”

“Then how do you know he did? Arrive home, I mean?”

“I heard him,” I said, defensive. But I wondered then what it was that I had in fact heard, whether it had been John after all, making breakfast the previous morning. I felt my stomach contract and worried, for a moment, that I might be ill. “It was him.”

The man smiled, but there was something about the expression that made my insides clench further still, made me shrink backward, into the apartment. I thought about all of John’s allusions to his cloak-and-dagger work. I had often scoffed at his stories, believing them to be exaggerations built on insecurity and pride, the result of having nothing but his name to cling to, but now I was seized with the thought that there might be some form of truth in them, and I wondered what that might mean about the man in front of me.

“And did anything out of the ordinary happen?” he asked, not responding to my admission. “That night, I mean?”

“No, of course not,” I said, taken aback by his question. “Nothing at all.” Then I thought of Lucy, our argument, and my breath caught in my throat. I was certain he had noticed it, by the way his eyes narrowed. Still, after a few moments of silence, when I said nothing further, he nodded, thanked me for my time, and turned, as if intending to leave.

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?”