Helen was right: Fame didn’t matter; it was about pride. She would know that the words everyone was reading were hers.
Though maybe, one day, years from now, the world would find out that she was Maud Dixon.…
She shook her head. Stop. She was getting ahead of herself. She forced herself to take a breath. She needed to make a plan for the immediate future.
She would stay here in Morocco for the remainder of the trip they’d booked—one more week. She didn’t want to do anything that would raise suspicion for any reason. She would proceed as if everything were normal. And then what? She would go home to Helen’s house. Her house. Move into the master bedroom. Light fires in the big fireplace. Read all of the books that lined the walls of Helen’s study. Learn to cook. Grow tomatoes.
She’d have enough money to never work again, especially if she lived as frugally as Helen had. She could devote all her time to writing. She could write upstairs in Helen’s beautiful study. She’d play opera and wait for her genius to flow. Surely it just needed a hospitable environment. Of course it hadn’t wanted to poke its head out in her small, dark room in Astoria, surrounded by cheap Ikea furniture and empty yogurt containers.
She felt a surge of energy. Yes, yes! She was finally getting what was owed her.
Florence had been so cautious her whole life, working hard and following the rules, because she knew that that offered her the best chance of getting out of Florida—and away from Vera. And it had worked. Her discipline had taken her first to Gainesville, then to Forrester, and finally to Helen.
It had only been in the last few months—starting with that first encounter with Simon—that she’d begun to push against those self-imposed restraints. The old rules, she’d decided somewhere along the way, no longer applied.
Helen had told her once—referring to her writing, though it could also be applied to the way she lived her life—that the important thing is always to move the plot forward. Momentum matters. In general, she said, women tended to spend too much time considering consequences; by the time they finally made a decision, the men were already there, forging alliances, crossing battle lines, breaking things.
Mistakes, Helen said, can always be rewritten.
Well, fine. Florence would act too. She would break things and, if necessary, fix them later.
She smiled. Yes, this was a good plan. It was a very good plan.
Then she stood up and brushed some dried leaves off the back of her dress. She found Amina in the kitchen and asked her to call a taxi. She’d been cooped up too long. Far longer than the two days since the accident. She’d been cooped up for twenty-six years in Florence Darrow’s small, cramped life.
“Feeling better?” Amina asked.
Florence smiled. “Much.”
31.
The taxi dropped her off at the northern tip of the long, crescent-shaped beach. It lay just south of the harbor where she and Helen had watched the fisherman pound his octopus against the ground only four days before.
Florence stood at the top of a set of uneven stairs leading down to the sand and stared out at the water. The waves rolled in in low, steady curls like ice cream under a scoop. The wind whipped across the sand, picking up snatches of it here and there before tossing it away. By the base of the stairs, three camels sat in the sun under colorful blankets. A man dozed nearby, their leads in his hand.
Florence hadn’t been to a beach in years. The last time had been in Florida during college. She’d gone swimming alone and been stung by a jellyfish. She’d staggered up to the shore, and a woman on the beach had poured cold Evian water into a towel and held it against her reddening skin.
“Jellyfish are actually ninety-five percent water,” Florence had told her confidingly, woozy from the pain.
“But how can you tell which water belongs to them and which water belongs to the ocean?” the woman had asked. It was a good question.
Florence took off her sandals and walked down the beach. When she reached a relatively open space, she spread out the threadbare towel she’d taken from the house and buried the corners to hold it down. It rippled and pulled at its moorings but stayed put.
Even through the thin fabric, she could feel how hot the sand was. There were no clouds in the sky—just a few white contrails left by airplanes that were long gone. She stripped to her bathing suit—a black bikini of Helen’s—and walked down to the water’s edge. It was colder than she’d thought it would be. She waded in up to her waist. She wanted desperately to dive in but the doctor had told her to keep her cast dry. How was she going to get it off? She’d have to go to a doctor in New York. She plunged her head under the surface, holding her broken wrist up in the air. She emerged feeling reinvigorated.
As she walked back to her towel, a few people turned their heads to look at the purple bruises mottling her stomach and chest. They quickly glanced away in embarrassment, as if it were indecent of her to so brashly expose the frailty of the human body. She had used Helen’s makeup to cover her face as best she could, but there wasn’t much she could do about her body. She pulled The Odyssey out of her bag and lay down on her stomach gingerly. But instead of reading she let her head collapse onto her arms. Her skin had already grown hot again, and it smelled like Helen’s moisturizer. She closed her eyes and breathed in the deep, musky scent.
She wasn’t sure whether or not she’d been asleep when a shadow fell across her face. She opened her eyes. A girl who looked to be around twenty loomed over her. There was a phone tucked into her sagging orange bikini bottom and a dolphin tattoo on her stomach.
“Hi,” she said. She was chewing on her lower lip, which was chapped and swollen.
Florence just looked at her.
“Sorry, I know this is annoying, but would you mind putting some sun lotion on my back?”
Florence stared at her for another beat. “How did you know I spoke English?”
“Your book.”
Florence glanced at the incriminating evidence. “Oh.”
“Do you mind?” The girl brandished a greasy-looking bottle of sunscreen in front of her.
Florence pushed herself up a little, wincing. She took in the girl’s dark roots, the loose flesh on her stomach, the pimples mottling her chest. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
The girl let out a small, unsure laugh. “What?”
“I don’t want to put lotion on your back.”
“Oh.” Her smile faltered but prevailed. “Okay.” She started to turn away, but then her roving eyes found the bruises on Florence’s torso.
“Whoa. What happened?” The girl squatted down and reached out her fingertips toward the purple skin. She held them inches away, fluttering lightly.
Florence frowned. Her injuries had upended the balance of power. It was like something primordial—she was a wounded animal, therefore no threat at all. For this girl, the injuries were an invitation, a physical weakness that rendered irrelevant social niceties and abstract hierarchies.
“I was in a car accident,” Florence said curtly.
The girl widened her eyes. “That was you?”
“What do you mean? You heard about it?”
“A car going off Rue Badr? Yeah, everyone heard about it. Was it super scary?”