Who is Maud Dixon?(45)

“This is rather treacherous, isn’t it?” Helen said.

Florence just nodded without taking her eyes off the road in front of her. She hadn’t wanted to betray her nervousness; she’d assumed Helen would mock her for it.

They arrived at the restaurant without incident fifteen minutes later. Florence rubbed a tight knot in her shoulder as Helen pulled open the door, fighting against the wind.

The restaurant was empty except for two other patrons, a British couple in their sixties who were already on dessert.

The host greeted them warmly. “Bienvenue, welcome,” he said.

“Two whiskeys,” said Helen in response, holding up two fingers.

Florence had discovered only after they’d booked their trip that they were missing Ramadan by just a few days. It would have been nothing short of a disaster if Helen hadn’t been able to drink.

They were led to their table by a waiter who looked like he was pushing ninety. A few moments later, the whiskey arrived in glasses smudged with greasy fingerprints.

“When in Rome…” Florence said with a shrug, reaching for her drink.

“…get salmonella,” Helen finished.

They tapped their glasses together. “To new beginnings,” Helen pronounced. They both took a long swallow.

*



Helen had ordered them both the house specialty, camel, but when their food arrived, Florence was put off by the pile of meat in front of her. She was feeling the effects of the sun and the heat, and she suspected she had drunk too much on an empty stomach. Tinny Arabic music played from a speaker mounted above their table, and it seemed to be getting louder, strobing in conspiracy with the lights.

Helen was talking but she seemed very far away. Everything felt very far away. Florence felt as if her whole self, her whole consciousness, had shrunk down to the size of a pebble and was knocking around inside her skull. Her insides felt dark and vast, the outer world too distant to matter, like a movie projected on a remote screen. The meat on her plate seemed to be sweating. Do you keep sweating after you die? No, no, that was toenails and hair that kept going. Growing.

The music quieted down then. Everything got quieter. As if underwater. Sounds were swallowed up by the water. She felt lulled by a swift current, swept away by the waves, pulled back by strong hands, then swept away again, and all the while Helen’s voice was deep and pulsating, like a whale’s song, like an echo, like a shadow in sound, like it had all been said before and would be said again but deeper and richer until it faded away entirely and all that was left were the waves. Lapping softly, softly, softly—





PART IV





26.



Madame Weel-cock?”

The next time Florence woke, she was more lucid. She’d been in a car accident, she remembered the doctor had said. And she remembered, too, that he had called her Madame Wilcox. What did that mean? Where was Helen? Perhaps in another bed, in another room, being called Madame Darrow?

When the nurse returned, Florence asked, “The woman who was with me in the car, is she here?”

The nurse looked at her blankly.

“Is there another American at the hospital? A woman?” She struggled to find some basic French vocabulary in the foggy recesses of her brain. “Autres américaines? Ici? A l’h?pital?”

The nurse shook her head. “Il n’y a que vous.” Just her.

“There was a woman in the car with me. Do you know what happened to her? L’autre femme?”

The nurse smiled helplessly and shrugged.

“Have I had any visitors? Quelqu’un visite, um, moi?”

The nurse shook her head. “Personne,” she said before leaving.

Florence contemplated the ceiling. No one. No one had been to visit her.

She turned her head toward the window and noticed for the first time a wrinkled plastic bag on the table next to her bed. She reached for it and a jolt of pain shot through her ribs. Grimacing, she pulled it onto her lap.

Inside were the clothes she’d been wearing the night before: the white dress, her underwear, and the purse she’d bought earlier in the day. It was all soaking wet. Zippered into the side pocket of the purse were Helen’s passport, wallet, phone, and a sodden pack of cigarettes. Well, that explained why everyone was calling her Madame Wilcox. There was nothing else in the purse. Her own wallet and phone and passport were gone.

She pressed the power button on Helen’s phone. Nothing happened.





27.



Florence woke with a start. She was out of breath and her heart was beating too fast. As she rubbed her eyes, she realized that there was someone else in the room with her. It was the man in the uniform she’d seen the first time she woke up in the hospital. The one the nurse had shooed away. Why did he only appear when she was asleep? He was like a figure conjured by her dreams.

“Madame Weel-cock,” he said. “Do you remember me? I am Hamid Idrissi of the Gendarmerie Royale. It is important that I now ask you questions about the accident.” His English was slightly off, but better than she would have expected from a small-town policeman in Morocco.

Florence looked around, hoping the nurse might appear to provide another reprieve, but no one came. She nodded at the policeman.

The man patted his pockets until he found a small beige notebook, which he pulled out along with a chewed-up pen. All his movements had a jerky abruptness to them, as though his joints were brand-new and he was still getting used to them.