The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty (3 page)

“I can't relax,” you tell him. “I have to cancel my credit cards.”

“Just relax,” he repeats. “The police chief is coming.”

You ignore him and take the elevator up to the second-floor office. “He seemed really happy about the whole thing,” you say to the hunched man escorting you, forgetting that his English is not good.

“You are happy?” the hunched man asks, confused.

The elevator doors open and you exit without correcting him.

You are led to a desk in an office that has a computer and a phone. Two other people are in this office, answering phones and, you realize, taking reservations. One of these men is likely the same person who told you early check-in would be no problem. You sit down in the empty swivel chair, and as the hunched man turns and leaves the office you begin searching the Internet for phone numbers to your banks. You call your credit-card company and Christy in Denver says she will help you. You don't know your credit-card number by heart, so Christy in Denver has to access it by your name and ask you a number of security questions. When she agrees that you are who you say you are, you ask about recent charges. The
last thing Christy in Denver sees being charged to your credit card was a meal at the airport in Miami.

“Great,” you say, and then ask: “Are you sure I should cancel it, then? If it's not being used?”

“Do you know for a fact the card was stolen and not misplaced?” Christy asks you.

“Yes,” you say. “I saw them play back the surveillance camera. It was definitely stolen.”

“Then you should cancel it,” she says.

So you do.

You know as you hang up that you will have to call back the credit-card company and ask what their insurance policy is for stolen items, but now is not the time to do this. You are briefly overwhelmed by the amount of phone calls you already know you'll have to make in the coming weeks and months. You are certain paperwork will be involved.

You call to cancel your bank card. Vipul in India says he can assist you. First he needs you to answer security questions, which you do. Then he asks you how much money, approximately, you have in your account.

You look to your left, toward one man taking reservations, and you look to your right, toward the other man. Neither man is on the phone at the moment and so you know they are listening to your conversation. You know their English is good because you've heard them taking the reservations.

“I'm in a public place right now,” you say.

“I understand,” Vipul in India says, “but I need an approximate number.”

You are embarrassed to say the amount aloud because
it's considerably less than someone like you, someone who is thirty-three and in a foreign country, should have in their bank account.

Finally, you whisper the amount, and Vipul in India cancels your card and tells you a new one will be issued and mailed to the Florida address they have on file for you.

“It will arrive in three to five business days,” Vipul in India tells you.

“I'm in Casablanca,” you tell him.

“It will be in Florida when you return,” he says.

You are done with your calls, and only then does it hit you that you have no way to get money or to pay for anything.
Fuck,
you think, and imagine spending your entire time in Morocco in this shitty hotel. You sink deep in your chair. You try not to swivel.

The young, hunched man who can't use a computer enters the office. “I have good news,” he says.

You blink rapidly, taking this in.

“The head of security just watched video. He knows man who took the bag. He talks with him this morning at breakfast. He stays at this hotel. He is doctor at conference we are having here.”

And he hasn't checked out? Does he want to get caught?
You imagine the man as a kleptomaniac who steals because he wants to be found out and diagnosed. Or else he's a psychiatrist and the theft was part of a test case.

You are relieved. Your backpack will be returned. The head of security, who disturbed you because he was good-humored and telling you to relax, is now your friend. A hero.

You regret canceling your credit cards. You wonder if you can call Christy in Denver and Vipul in India again before you meet with the head of security. They must be able to reactivate the cards within five minutes of cancellation. There must be some law, some statute about that, you think. You hope.

“He waits for you downstairs,” the hunched young man says.

“Okay,” you say, and let him escort you down to the lobby.

The head of security is ecstatic. The two sides of his mustache, the left and the right, are forming their own smiles.

“You watched the video? You know the man?” you say. You can hear the excitement in your own voice, which sounds like it's coming from a different person than the despondent one speaking on the phone a few minutes ago.

“Yes,” he says. “If I saw him I would know him. I saw him as closely as I am seeing you right now.”

“Where is he now?” you ask.

“I don't know where he is this moment. He came to me this morning and asked where he could get breakfast. He asked in English, so he's not Moroccan because why else would he ask in English?”

“So you don't know who he is?” you say, more defeated than before your hopes were raised.

“He was wearing a badge. That means he's part of a conference of doctors at this hotel right now.”

“Have you checked?”

“Well, no, because they are all meeting upstairs right now and I can't just walk into the room and start accusing doctors. I have to wait until the meeting is over.”

“But what if he's not part of the conference? What if he was pretending to be?”

“I saw the badge. He's part of conference,” he says, this time with less certainty. You both stare at each other. You know it's only now occurring to him that the badge might have been fake. “You should go relax and rest and we will get him,” he says.

“Please stop telling me to relax and rest,” you tell him. This comes out sounding louder than you intend it to. You sound exactly like the kind of person who needs to relax.

“The police chief is coming soon,” he says. “We will put your bags in your room.”

“I only have one bag now,” you say. You are reluctant to leave your suitcase anywhere, so you've been dragging it around with you.

“Oh,” says the chief of security, spotting something or someone over your shoulder.

“What?” You turn to follow his startled look. “Is it him? Is it the thief?”

“No, it's the police chief,” he says.

You turn. The police chief has a dark mustache and his eyes are serious. “I'm very sorry for your loss,” he tells you as he shakes your hand.

You like him right away because he's apologizing and not acting like the theft of your backpack is cause for rejoicing.

The police chief assures you all forms will be ready for you when you show up at his office. You don't know why you have to go to his office when he's here now, but you're sure there's a good reason and he gives you one: “It will only take fifteen
minutes when you come,” he says. “All the forms will be ready.”

You wonder how he knows that you don't like filling out forms, but you appreciate that he understands this about you, that he's intuitive.

“We already have policemen on the street and in the markets looking for the man.”

Of course they're scouring the markets. That's the first place the thief would go. To the markets to sell the computer, the phone, the camera.

“How many policemen?” you ask.

“Seventeen,” he says.

Seventeen policemen. You try not to show how impressed you are. But seventeen policemen! The police chief is a serious man. But why not eighteen policemen? Where's the eighteenth policeman?

“They are of course also looking for the property that was stolen from you.”

“Thank you,” you say, wondering how the seventeen men know how to look for your property when no one has asked you what was inside your backpack. They only know from the surveillance video that your backpack was black and it was full.

“It's really important to me that I get my backpack back,” you say. “It has my passport and my computer.”

He nods. You have the feeling he has heard this complaint before. Crime in Casablanca must be common. You have faith in this police chief, but you have little faith that in a city of three million your backpack will be returned.

Desperation comes over you—there must be a hundred tourists right now who have filed police reports in Casablanca about stolen goods. You are just another one of them. Not distinguishable in any way. You are not even staying at one of the upscale hotels, where you're sure the victims of crimes are treated with more attention.

You hear the lie coming out of your mouth before you even have time to think it through: “I'm a writer for the
New York Times,
” you say. “I'm doing a travel story on Casablanca. I really don't want to have to include this.”

You stare at him. He stares at you.

“The what?” he says.

“The
New York Times,
” you say.

He takes out a little notebook, the same kind of small pocket notebook detectives use in movies, and he starts to write something down.

“The what? How do you spell?” He hands you his pen.

You write down the words
New York Times
in his little notebook.

“And this is a company?” he asks. “What kind?”

“It's a newspaper,” you say.

He thanks you and closes the notebook.

“How likely is it,” you ask, “that you will catch this man, that you will find my things?”

“I am one hundred percent confident,” he says.

“Wow,” you say. You don't tell him that you were putting the likelihood at more like 5 percent. “One hundred percent,” you repeat.

“Yes, one hundred percent,” he says.

You're impressed he didn't say 99 percent. He could have given himself some leeway.

You shake his hand good-bye enthusiastically. Only after he's left do you realize he hasn't asked you your name.

You remain standing in the lobby once again with your blue suitcase and the head of security. He asks you if you would like to sit at the restaurant and have some lunch.

“No,” you say. “I'd like to go to the police station.”

“Yes,” he says. “Someone from the hotel will take you there in a few minutes. But the head of police wants to make sure he gets the papers ready.”

“Yes,” you say. You don't want to be with this man anymore. His smile is disturbing you. His mustache is disturbing you.

“Why don't you go put your suitcase in your room, and when you come back downstairs someone will take you.”

“Okay,” you say.

It seems like days have gone by since you were given your key card. You're almost surprised you still have it. You have to look at the room number written on the small accompanying sleeve to see what floor you're on.

You enter your dark room, and place your suitcase on the suitcase stand. The stand's straps are worn out from bearing the weight of the luggage of past travelers. Out the window you have no view except for the back of another hotel.

Before leaving your room, you move your suitcase so it's under the bed, out of sight. You can think of nowhere else to hide it.

As you walk to the elevator you pass a room-service cart that's waiting to be ushered back to the kitchen. On the top of the cart sits a basket of bread rolls of various sizes and shapes, seeded and unseeded, light and dark. You consider stashing a few of them in your purse before you remember you have no purse, no backpack. You are carrying nothing. All you have is the key card in the pocket of your skirt. You grab a seeded bun. By the time the elevator lets out onto the lobby floor, you've eaten it.

A young man in a plaid shirt and clean sneakers has been assigned and paid by the hotel to take you to the police station. You have no idea what his affiliation is with the hotel—he's not in uniform—but he has kind eyes, the green of an old leather atlas, and you trust he will get you where you need to go.

He opens the backseat of the car for you and you get in. You see, on the floor of the seat next to yours, a pair of leather shoes, and you wonder what they're doing there.

The car's clock says that it's already after 2
P.M
. How did it get so late? Is that the right time or yesterday's time? You know there was a time shift. You think how odd it is that they change times in the middle of the week here, not at 2
A.M.
on Sundays like back home. You try to remember which day is the day of rest here, and you consider asking the driver. But instead you look out the window at the traffic surrounding you, and when you tire of all the cars and faces and gray exhaust swirling out of mufflers, you roll up your window and stare at the shoes.

“You know Paul Bowles?” the driver says, out of nowhere.
Because you're staring at the old leather shoes, you think for a brief moment he's going to tell you that they belonged to Paul Bowles.

“Yes,” you say. You know who Paul Bowles is. You devoted a paragraph or maybe even a page to him in a college essay you wrote about post–World War II bohemians. You had no prior interest in the subject, nor any sustaining interest for that matter; you signed up for the class because the professor was intriguing to you. She was a burn victim, and two-thirds of her body was scarred, but this made her more beautiful. You weren't the only one who thought this: the class was filled with young male theater majors and aspiring poets. You were the sole athlete in the class. When you met with her in her office to discuss your mediocre essay, she obsessively rubbed a potent-smelling vitamin E lotion onto her shiny red wrists, her lavender-hued elbows. She kept a large tube of the lotion on the corner of her desk, where others might place a colorful paperweight. Each time she loudly squirted the lotion onto her palm, you silently marveled at the framed photos of her swimsuit-clad children, their skin impeccably unflawed.