“No, I know. I’ll think about it, okay?”
“Okay. I’ll call back this afternoon to see how the situation is progressing. Oh, that reminds me—I’ve tried both of your cells and I can’t get through.”
“Yeah, the service is really bad here.”
“So this is the number I should use?”
“Yes, this is the house line.”
“Great. Talk soon.”
Florence slammed the phone into the cradle. Shit. What was she going to say to Greta in a few hours, or days, when she still couldn’t produce Helen?
“Hi, Greta, actually I killed Helen—whoops!—so can I be Maud Dixon now or what?”
Perfect.
34.
Florence sat on the beach and buried her toes in the sand. The wind that had pounded everything ceaselessly since her arrival had disappeared without explanation. The air sat still and heavy around her. There was no relief from the sun’s relentless onslaught.
She tried to put the phone call with Greta out of her mind. She wanted to regain that rush she’d woken up with; the electrifying pleasure of being Helen. She hadn’t liked going back to being Florence while dealing with Greta. It left a residue. Something sticky and uncomfortable that she wished she could scrub off. She wanted the lightness back, the confidence, the strength.
She picked up a handful of sand and let it stream through her fingers. Her skin was pink from the sun. Underneath, her bruises were changing from purple to yellow and green. She poured sand on her legs, covering them up.
After the call, she’d looked up the article in Le Matin and done her best to translate. It was only a few lines long. A tourist from New York named Helen Wilcox had driven her rental car off Rue Badr at ten o’clock on Saturday night. By chance, engine trouble had kept a local fisherman out late, and he heard the splash. He made it to the car while it was still floating, and pulled Ms. Wilcox from the open window. She arrived at the hospital with minor injuries and was expected to make a full recovery. It was already the fifth crash on Rue Badr this year. Two people had died in an accident there the year before.
Florence had shut the computer in frustration. She hadn’t learned anything that she hadn’t already been told. Her memory was still a black hole, and she was terrified that Officer Idrissi was going to fill in the blanks before she did. Then not only would her new life as Helen Wilcox be ruined, but her old one would be too.
She stood up and brushed the sand off her body. She noticed a scraggly group of kiteboarders assembled a ways down the beach. She gathered her things into her bag and began walking in their direction. As she got closer, a few of the boarders turned to look at her, but none of their gazes lingered for long. Her looks weren’t suited to the beach; the sunlight reflected harshly off her pale skin, and she barely filled out Helen’s bikini top.
She spotted Nick sitting on a towel the size of a place mat. His wet suit was unzipped halfway, and the top half of it sprawled out behind him like a shadow. He was lapping furiously at a melting red popsicle. “Hi,” she said, standing over him.
Nick looked up and smiled happily. “Hi, you!” He’d paused just long enough for the dripping popsicle to make inroads onto his forearm. “Shit,” he said, and craned his head to drag his tongue from his elbow to his wrist.
Florence finally realized who Nick reminded her of; it was Bentley, the golden retriever that belonged to Helen’s neighbor.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Not much. It’s total mush out there.” He gestured at the nearly flat water.
Florence looked at it and nodded thoughtfully.
Nick threw the rest of the popsicle into the sand. “Jesus, that thing was eating me alive.” He wiped his hands roughly on the thighs of his wet suit and smiled up at Florence. “What are you up to?”
“Not much. I was just reading but it’s too hot to stay on the beach. I was maybe going to go walk around town.” She paused. “Do you want to come?”
Nick was unguardedly delighted. “Yeah. Let’s do it.” He immediately stripped off his wet suit and dug around in a small backpack for a wadded-up T-shirt. When he pulled it out, a book came with it. Florence picked it up and looked at the cover: The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles.
“Are you reading this?”
“I just finished it. You can borrow it if you want. It’s awesome.”
Florence tried to hide her surprise. She hadn’t thought of Nick as the type of guy to be reading a book by a writer Helen had spoken highly of. She’d almost bought a Paul Bowles book before their trip, but Helen had inundated her with so much research that she hadn’t gotten around to it. She flipped it over and read the description on the back. It was about a trio of Americans traveling through the North African desert in the 1940s. It had been Bowles’s first book and enormously successful. She read the first few sentences. He was right; they were good.
“Ready?” Nick asked.
Florence nodded and handed the book back to him.
“Later,” he called over his shoulder as they walked away from the group.
They ambled slowly up the beach. Nick was explaining something about kiteboarding, but Florence wasn’t listening. She let her mind wander.
They trudged up the hill, through Place Hassan II, toward the center of the town. When they reached the busy road surrounding the walls of the medina, Nick reached his tanned, blond-tufted arm across her torso to block her from walking into a stream of motorbikes. She looked up at him and smiled.
As they crossed the street, a familiar face suddenly snagged her attention. There, standing ramrod straight in front of an ornate building, was Idrissi, the policeman from the hospital. Her breath quickened. She told herself that there was no reason to be afraid. As far as he knew, she was just a stupid tourist who’d gotten away with driving drunk and crashing her rental car because she happened to have American dollars to spend. But she remembered the way he’d looked at her in the car, when he’d asked about her friend from the restaurant. He suspected something.
And why shouldn’t he? She was keeping a secret. The thought of Greta’s phone call returned on a gust of apprehension. She pushed it away. Idrissi’s head rotated slowly as he surveyed the crowd. Florence instinctively flattened herself against a wall.
“What’s up?” Nick asked.
“Nothing. I thought I saw a rat.”
“You’re adorable,” he said, drawing her close and giving her a sloppy kiss. He tasted like Coppertone and artificial strawberry flavoring.
“Let’s look in here,” she said, drawing him into the souk.
It was cooler and darker inside the marketplace. Dust glistened in the shafts of sunlight that managed to slip through the cracks of the slapdash ceiling.
“What do you think?”
Florence turned around. Nick was standing in front of a stall hung with colorful fabric, holding a long blue tunic against his body.
Florence laughed. “No.”
The shopkeeper approached them. “It’s a kaftan,” he said. “For women.” He pulled a black tunic from a stack. “This, for men. Try.” He started to pull it over Nick’s head. Nick waved his hands and said, “No thanks, man,” but it was no use. It was already halfway on. The man ran his hands over the fabric to smooth out the wrinkles. “And this,” he said, rolling some gray fabric into a twist and wrapping it around Nick’s head. A turban. Nick stood awkwardly, his arms held away from his body. He looked at Florence. “Well?”