Who is Maud Dixon?(37)



“Mm. Perhaps,” Helen demurred. Florence knew that she didn’t like plans being dictated to her; she’d found that out when she’d suggested a detour to the Atlas Mountains on their way to the coast. Helen had stared at her for an uncomfortable few seconds then walked out of the room.

“I assure you it is quite safe, Madame,” Brahim said, misinterpreting Helen’s reticence. “There are dozens of plainclothes policemen in the souks whose only job is to protect tourists. They pretend to be drunks, lowlife types, leaning against buildings, sitting on the ground, but the moment they see something, they strike.” He clapped loudly, and the sound echoed around the courtyard.

Florence raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Oh yes. Everyone in Marrakesh is pretending to be someone they’re not,” he added with a wink.

“I think we’ll go to our rooms now,” Helen announced, rising. She seemed to have abruptly deflated. Florence had to remind herself that Helen was not much more accustomed to international travel than she was. It was just past four in the afternoon in Marrakesh and they had been awake for more than twenty hours. Any curiosity they’d felt about the city had been blunted by fatigue and jet lag.

“Of course, Madame.” Brahim led them up a spiral staircase to the second floor. “This is a traditional Moroccan riad,” he explained. “It’s built around the open-air garden on the ground floor.” Upstairs, Florence peered over the edge of the wrought-iron railing down to the courtyard below, lit by the late afternoon sun. Their rooms faced each other across the drop. They stopped at Helen’s first. She and Florence agreed to meet downstairs at seven for dinner.

Brahim then led Florence to her room. As she walked through the arched doorway, she noticed a looped bracket on the wooden door and a matching one on the doorframe. It looked like the kind of thing you could slip a rod or a broom handle through to lock someone in.

She wondered briefly why anyone would have installed that there, but she was too tired to care. All she wanted was sleep; if someone wanted to shut her in, let them.





22.



Florence woke with a headache and a dry, sour mouth. She struggled to emerge from a dense fog. Her sheets were tangled and damp. She felt the aftereffects of adrenaline pulsing through her veins. She tried to remember her dreams, but they darted away like fish. She had been running, she thought. Pursued.

She forced herself to sit up and rubbed her face roughly. She looked at her phone. It said 6:14 a.m. How was that possible? Had she actually been sleeping for fourteen hours? She heaved herself out of bed and walked to the bathroom on stiff legs. She splashed handful after handful of cold water on her face.

Gradually the reality of her surroundings became more concrete. She was in Marrakesh. She had been planning to meet Helen for dinner last night, but she must have slept through it. And today they were driving to Semat.

Florence took a shower and dressed in the first clothes she found at the top of her duffel bag: jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt. In the hallway, she listened at Helen’s door but heard nothing. She looked over the railing into the courtyard below. She spotted Helen at a table under an orange tree, a black coffee in front of her. She was wearing a crisp black linen dress and leather sandals that wound up her ankles.

Florence sat down heavily across from her.

“I thought you were dead,” Helen said cheerfully.

“So did I.”

“It really would have ruined my plans.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Coffee,” Helen said, pointing at the silver urn on a buffet table laid out in the shade.

Once Florence had returned with a cup, she apologized. “I don’t know what happened. Did you end up getting dinner?”

Helen ignored her question. “I thought before we leave town today we could hit El Badi. I was talking to Brahim again this morning and it really does sound spectacular. El Badi means ‘the incomparable’—isn’t that fabulous? It’s apparently one of Allah’s ninety-nine names, which makes me feel quite impoverished, having only two. Let’s go right after breakfast, then you can go get the car.”

When they were planning the trip, Florence had suggested hiring a driver to take them to Semat, but Helen had insisted on renting a car. “Arabs can’t drive,” she’d said in the same matter-of-fact tone someone might say, “I grew up in Boise.”

After breakfast, they both went back to their rooms to get a few things and then met again in the corridor. Helen held out her wallet, cell phone, and cigarettes to Florence and said, “Do you mind? I don’t feel like carrying a bag.”

“Oh. Sure.” Florence stuffed them into her already full purse.

It took some time to find their way out of the dark maze surrounding the hotel. The walls were too high to allow much sunlight in and so close that Florence could touch them both at the same time. Some of the buildings, she noticed when she looked closely, were covered in a synthetic wrapping printed to look like stone.

Brahim had assured them that El Badi was only a short walk from their hotel, but they hadn’t counted on how long it would take to orient themselves. They eventually came to the large intersection where their driver had dropped them off the day before, which sprouted wider, busier roads. Cars, mopeds, pedestrians, and donkeys all competed for space. The donkeys looked skinny and miserable, pulling nearly identical carts of construction materials—bags of concrete, bricks, and long rods of rebar that hung down and scraped the dusty ground behind them. A few taxis, old ochre-colored Mercedes sedans from the ’80s, stopped for them, but they waved them on and kept walking. It was barely 9 a.m. but it was already hot. Florence wished she hadn’t worn pants.

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