Who is Maud Dixon?(40)
*
About an hour into the drive, the air conditioner conked out. Helen leaned forward and flicked at the vent a few times then threw herself violently into the back of her seat and closed her eyes. They had another two hours to go.
Florence shut off the broken AC and rolled down the windows. The wind howled through the car, and their hair spun and whirled as if underwater.
Florence swerved slightly as a truck passed them.
“Jesus, Florence—careful,” exhaled Helen.
Helen’s eyes were still closed, and she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. She never did. Florence wondered what would happen if she were to slam on the brakes. Helen’s head would probably bounce off the dashboard like a soccer ball.
There weren’t many other cars on the road. She pressed her foot down on the accelerator and watched the needle climb upward. Soon they came to a curve and she had to ease off the gas. The sun had dipped lower, and its rays flickered through the trees. Helen opened her eyes and turned the radio on, then off. She lit a cigarette. She had to hold it inside the car so the wind wouldn’t snatch it from her fingers. The smoke clung to Florence’s throat.
They drove another hour in silence. The landscape became drier and dustier the farther they went. Marrakesh, Florence had read, was actually an oasis in the desert. Here, on the highway, there was none of the city’s lushness or color. The heat and steady thump-thump of the wheels on the road lured them both into a trance. They started to awaken only after noticing that the air rushing into the car felt different. It had cooled off a few degrees, and it felt fresher and brighter. Florence thought she could smell the sea. The area around them was getting greener too. Florence glanced at the map on her phone. It looked like they were about ten or fifteen kilometers from Semat.
The road approached a steep drop and continued along the cliff’s edge. Below, the Atlantic foamed and churned. The sun glinted off its surface in the distance. It was hard to believe it was the same body of water Florence had grown up beside. How disappointing the ocean must have found the flat-topped warehouses of Florida, she thought, after the ramparts and minarets of Morocco.
The cliffside road was barely wide enough for two lanes and every once in a while, when a car or a motorcycle raced toward them from the opposite direction, Florence felt compelled to slow to a near halt. She kept wiping her palms on the upholstery to dry the sweat.
A truck with canvas flaps closed in on her back bumper and let out a keening moan. It finally swerved around her, barely making it back into the right lane before a car on the other side zipped around a curve. Their competing horns created a distracting din in Florence’s head.
Finally the road pulled away from the cliff’s edge and soon after that Florence took a left onto a small road whose name matched the one on their rental papers. She breathed deeply through her nostrils as they bounced up the quiet street. It smelled like wet soil.
The road pulled them upward at a sharp incline, and soon a white house with vivid blue trim—another riad, Florence knew—loomed before them. It was perched, alone, at the top of a steep hill. They drove past a large boulder that had been painted white with VILLA DES GRENADES spelled out in blue.
“Des Grenades?” Florence had wondered aloud when they’d booked it. “Like hand grenades?”
“Pomegranates,” Helen had corrected.
Florence drove through the gate and parked the car in the driveway. She leaned back in her seat. Her entire body was sticky.
A stout, gray-haired woman in her sixties emerged from the house. She walked down the path toward them with a hitch in her step. Helen and Florence climbed out of the car to greet her.
The woman stepped forward and shook Florence’s hand. “Bonjour, mesdames, bienvenue,” she said.
“Do you speak English?” Helen responded.
“Yes, little,” she said with a shy smile.
She introduced herself as Amina and explained that she had worked at Villa des Grenades for more than twenty years. She would do all the cooking, shopping, and cleaning. Anything they needed, just ask her. She lived right down the road, she said, gesturing somewhere down the hill. She tried to take their bags, but Florence insisted on carrying them herself.
Stepping inside the house, Florence felt a wave of panic. The floor was missing large chunks of tile, and mold had found refuge in every corner. Creepers stretched their long tendrils inside the windows, crawling up walls and across ceilings. There were brown stains where the weeds had made gains before being hacked away. They reminded Florence of the sticky wakes left by slugs back home.
Upstairs, the walls and floors were in similarly bad shape, but at least the sheets looked clean, and the water ran hot and cold. As in the hotel, the second floor was open in the center, dropping down to the sunny courtyard below.
Behind the house, a large slate-paved terrace stretched back toward a small pool shaded by palm trees whose shaggy trunks of loose, burlap-like bark made it look like they’d been caught in the act of undressing. The pool itself was only three-quarters filled, and a thick layer of green algae filmed the water. Bugs marched fearlessly across the surface. Three mangled lounge chairs were arranged around the edge, trailing broken vinyl straps on the ground below them. Amina pointed to a stack of clean towels folded neatly on a nearby table, which made Helen laugh.
“I’ll call the rental agency,” Florence said. “Let’s see if there’s anything else available. I promise the photos did not look like this on their website.” Helen had seen the photos too and had okayed Florence’s selection.