Who is Maud Dixon?(44)
“You like?”
“How much?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“Down from what?”
“Down from nothing. Twenty dollars seemed like a bargain.”
“You didn’t haggle?”
Florence shrugged. “He probably needs it more than I do.”
“That’s not the point. They respect people who know how to negotiate. Now he has one more reason to think all Americans are spineless, coddled buffoons.”
Florence was briefly exasperated by Helen’s determination to always cast her as a fool. “Exactly,” she insisted, “wouldn’t it be wrong to mislead him?”
Helen laughed, a begrudging snort.
They left the souk and passed through Place Hassan II again, toward the harbor. Vendors were grilling fresh fish at stalls up and down the street. Smoke billowed up into the air before being tugged away by the wind. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of boats bobbing in the water, mostly beat-up rowboats painted a brilliant blue and single-man fishing operations, though there were a few tall wooden ships and a handful of small, ugly yachts. In a way, it reminded Florence of home. When she was in high school, she and her friend Whitney used to sneak onto empty boats at the harbor. You couldn’t actually get inside, but you could lie on the deck and pretend it was yours.
They came across a man slapping an octopus on the ground over and over. They stopped to watch.
“What is he doing?” asked Florence.
“Tenderizing it,” said Helen. “It’s too tough to eat if you don’t slap it around a little first.”
They ate lunch outside at one of the seafood places on the harbor rather than walk back up into town. The breeze coming off the water seemed to blow in more of the same hot, heavy air. They each ordered octopus fresh from the ocean, or advertised that way, with a variety of grilled vegetables and bottles of the local beer, Casablanca. As the sun climbed toward its apex, the shade of their umbrella shifted and exposed Helen’s bare legs. She asked Florence to switch seats with her.
“Your young skin can handle the sun,” she said.
Florence frowned at this justification; she was only six years younger. But then she reminded herself that she wouldn’t even be here if not for Helen and quickly stood up.
Under the sun’s glare, Florence felt herself wilt. She held the bottle of beer to her forehead and neck. She could barely look at the octopus. She thought of it being pounded to death on the ground. She pushed the plate away.
“You’re not eating?” Helen asked.
Florence shook her head.
Helen pulled the plate toward her. “I’m starving.”
When Helen finished her meal, she lit a cigarette and tapped the ash onto the uneaten tentacles on her plate. Florence looked away in disgust.
The walk back up to the square under the scorching sun was steeper than Florence remembered. She recalled that she had wanted to buy a hat. “It’s hot as blue blazes,” she said under her breath.
“What was that?” Helen asked.
“Nothing.”
Florence hadn’t thought to park in the shade, and they had to bunch up their dresses in their hands to grasp the door handles. The air-conditioning was still broken.
*
That afternoon they both retreated to their rooms. Florence tried to nap but she slept fitfully and woke up feeling less rested than she had before she lay down. It was past eight by the time they left for dinner. Florence was wearing a white cotton dress and a pair of leather sandals she’d splurged for in Hudson along with her new bag. Her face was pink from the sun.
She knocked on Helen’s door. “Ready?”
“One minute,” Helen called from inside. “Just finishing up some work.”
Florence heard a drawer slam roughly then Helen swung open the door. She was wearing a navy dress that buttoned up the front, with a blue-and-white-striped scarf over her shoulders. “Let’s hit it,” she said, with the short stub of a cigarette sticking out of the corner of her mouth. Her whole room reeked of tobacco. So much for the no-smoking clause in their rental agreement, Florence thought.
In the hallway, Helen flicked her cigarette butt over the side of the railing with ink-stained fingers. It floated down fifteen feet or so to the hard tiled floor below. Florence grimaced at the thought of Amina stooping to pick it up later. At the door, Helen handed her belongings to Florence once again.
The night was nearly as warm as the day, the air scented with jasmine. They drove with the windows open and the sea air whipping their faces. They were going to a restaurant up in the hills, just north of Semat, which a friend of Helen’s had recommended to her.
“What friend?” Florence had wanted to ask, but didn’t.
“So you haven’t really explained what type of research you want to do for the book,” she said instead.
“Hm?” Helen asked, looking out her window.
“I mean, is there anything you want me to do while we’re here? Talk to anyone? Visit anyplace? I’m still not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Oh, nothing so regimented. I just want to get a feel for the place, that’s all.”
The car’s engine hummed as the road climbed upward. Both the town and Villa des Grenades receded in the rearview mirror. The road clung to the coastline even as it rose ten, then twenty, then thirty feet above the churning Atlantic below. Florence gripped the steering wheel tightly. It was a windy night, and sudden gusts kept buffeting the car. She inched it closer to the right side of the road, as far from the drop as she could.