Who is Maud Dixon?(47)

The policeman continued with a series of benign questions. How long had she been in Morocco? Where was she staying? What was the purpose of her visit?

“Research,” she said.

He glanced up severely at that. “You’re a journalist?”

“No,” she said quickly, startled at his tone. “No. For a book. Fiction.”

He seemed appeased. “You’re a novelist?”

Florence looked down at her hands. She nodded, once.

He stayed for close to half an hour but never mentioned Helen. Finally, he stood up to leave, and said, “You are very lucky” in a way that made it sound like an accusation. As he turned and grasped the curtain, Florence said, “Wait.”

He looked back.

“What about the car?” she asked. “Was it dredged?”

“What is ‘dredged?’”

“Pulled out of the water?”

“Yes, of course. But it is finished.” He spoke as if she were a child. “The engine is all wet. There is no windshield.”

“No, that’s not…” Florence paused.

There was no windshield. It must have shattered on impact. And Helen, Helen who never wore a seat belt…

He continued to stare at her intently.

“So there wasn’t any…thing else in the car?”

“What else?”

She paused.

“My shoes,” she finally said. “I’m missing my shoes. They were expensive.”

Idrissi flared his nostrils. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and made a call, speaking rapidly in Arabic. When he hung up, he said to her, “No shoes. But they found a scarf.”

“A scarf?”

“Yes. A blue-and-white-striped scarf. Were you wearing something like that?”

In her mind’s eye, Florence watched Helen flick her cigarette over the edge of the railing, her striped scarf slipping from her shoulders as she did.

“Yes, that’s mine,” she whispered.

“Okay, I will collect it for you.”

“Thank you.” She stared resolutely at the thin blanket covering her legs. She wanted him to leave. And with a violent yank at the curtain, he obliged.

She forced herself to breathe more slowly.

He didn’t know there was someone else in the car. He didn’t know she’d killed someone. He didn’t know. Helen must have just…floated away.

Florence put her hands over her face. She stayed like that for several minutes, until she realized that what she was doing was a type of performance, and that she had no audience. She put her hands back on the bed.





28.



Early the next morning, a nurse brought Florence some forms to sign; she was being released. The forms were written in Arabic, but Florence didn’t care. She printed the name Helen Wilcox where the nurse pointed and scribbled an illegible signature underneath.

And just like that, the chance for Florence to tell them that she was not Helen Wilcox came and went.

Her legs almost collapsed beneath her when she stood up. The nurse helped her to a communal bathroom in the hallway. It was small and filthy. For the first time she felt grateful for the bedpan she’d been using until then.

She dressed stiffly, avoiding a brackish puddle on the concrete floor. Afterward, she spent a long time looking in the mirror. Her face was swollen and discolored. She had a strange feeling of disassociation, as if the mirror were in fact a window or a photograph of someone else. She remembered when people were drunk in college they would draw with Sharpie on the faces of friends who had passed out. She felt like someone had done that to her—painted on bruises and blood with stage makeup while she slept.

But of course they were real. They were tender and raw. The salt-stiff fabric of her dress stung when it scraped against the abrasions on her body. The heavy tape wrapped around her torso pulled at her purpled skin.

She turned on the hot water tap at the sink and held her hands underneath the uneven stream. It stayed a disgusting tepid temperature even after several minutes. She shut it off in frustration.

Before she was released, they handed her a bill. It came out to ninety US dollars. She put it on Helen’s credit card. Then the policeman, Idrissi, arrived to drive her back to Villa des Grenades. She would rather have taken a taxi, but she didn’t want to raise suspicion. What innocent person would refuse a policeman offering a ride? Especially someone without any shoes.

In the car, she turned to ask him, “Am I in trouble?”

“As I said, it is against the law, alcohol and driving.”

“But why do you think I was drinking? Was I Breathalized?”

“What is that?”

“I mean, do you have proof that I was drinking?”

“The restaurant says yes.”

“You talked to them?”

“Of course I talked to them.”

Florence shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The seat belt was hurting her ribs. “What will happen?” she asked.

The car in front of them stopped suddenly, and Idrissi punched the horn. He leaned his head out the window and shouted angrily at the other driver. When they were moving again, he leaned back in his seat and took a deep breath. At the next stoplight he turned to Florence and said, “What will happen? Probably nothing. Tourism is important here. You understand?”