The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty (4 page)

“Everyone knows Morocco because of Paul Bowles,” the driver says. “My father read for Mr. Bowles.”

“Read for him?” You are certain that Paul Bowles could read.

“At end of his life, Mr. Bowles cannot see well. My father lives in the same building and sometimes Mr. Bowles asks neighbors to read for him and so sometimes he asks my father.”

“Cool,” you say because you can't think of anything else appropriate.

“Yes,” the driver says.

You are both silent again, watching the traffic not move.

“Is it always this bad?” you ask.

“Casablanca traffic is the very most bad in Morocco,” he says.

You can't even see the road ahead of you because there are six large trucks.

“So many trucks,” you say inanely.

“Yes, very many trucks,” he says.

Your head is heavy and you realize you've nodded off. The clock in the car now says it's 3:06.

“I'm sorry. I fell asleep. Are we almost there?”

“Yes, five minutes,” he tells you.

In twenty-five minutes he parks the car. The neighborhood has narrow sidewalks and many shops. Dozens of people are on the street, talking with friends, parking their cars. The driver carefully reads the signs and is sure to put the proper amount of money in the machine.

“Sorry. I don't have any money,” you say.

He smiles grimly as though you've left him to face an impossible task alone.

The two of you walk down the crowded sidewalks. The sun is out and it's warm but you can tell this is still cold for Moroccans: many men wear leather jackets and all wear long pants. You don't see any women your age, only young girls and old women. Your generation of females is missing on the street.

“They said the station is next to the big grocery store,” the driver says. You pass a large grocery store, with a number of people smoking outside, next to the display of small fruits.

“Here it is,” he says.

You look at the decrepit building, the Moroccan flag waving from the top.

You enter the building and walk up two flights of stairs. You pass a man and a woman carrying a stroller with no child. You try not to wonder or stare. You and the man in the plaid shirt peek into a room and you see shelves of old shoe boxes, one labeled
A-Be,
the next:
Be-De.
This continues all the way through the alphabet. A child's version of a filing system.

The driver exchanges a few sentences with the policeman sitting behind the desk in the room with the shoe boxes. The driver seems upset.

“What is it?” you ask.

“This is the wrong station,” he says.

“What? How did that happen?”

“The hotel told me it was the police station next to the big supermarket.”

“We saw the supermarket,” you say.

“Yes, but there is another police station next to a big supermarket. That's where the police chief is waiting for you.”

You return to the car. The only good news about this is maybe the other police station is better organized. Maybe it doesn't use shoe boxes for filing its claims.

You drive through stifling Casablanca traffic. You nod off again. When you arrive at the other police station near the big supermarket you are told it's after 5
P.M.
and the police chief has gone home for the day.

You ask if you can report the theft to someone else. You don't want another night to pass.

You are told that that's not possible; the police chief is personally handling your case.

The driver returns you to the Golden Tulip. In your room you are somewhat surprised to find your suitcase still under your bed. You change into your pajamas and order room service. When the man from room service knocks at the door, you don't open it. Instead you instruct him to leave the tray on the other side of the door.

The chicken is an entire carcass. You eat a few bites and put the tray out of sight and crawl under the floral bedspread. It reminds you of staying at your grandmother's house—you would stay with her without your sister once a week, on Fridays—in her guest room with its cumbersome bedspread. It took so much effort to make the bed on Saturday mornings. You would fold the bedspread down before placing your pillow on top of the crease, pull the bedspread over the pillow, and tuck the ends down toward the headboard. The grandmothers of your friends didn't work, had never worked, but your grandmother worked as a cashier at a department store. You visited your grandmother at the high-end store and watched her in the back office efficiently counting dollars and expertly entering coins into small paper tubes that expanded from flat to round. When she put you to bed on the nights you spent at her house, her fingers smelled of dirty metal. Placed purposefully around her small home were expensive items she only owned because the store gave her credit every Christmas in lieu of a bonus. She usually selected bowls of orange
glass, or porcelain ducks, which disappointed you. The store she worked at sold so many brighter, shinier objects, slathered in gold.

In your hotel room at the Grand Tulip you watch TV—reruns of American shows you've never seen—and try to sleep. You turn off the lights and stare into the darkness.

You wake up. You had been dreaming of the surveillance camera. Your dreams are usually in color—or so you think—but this dream was distinctly in black and white. In your dream the surveillance tape is backed up to earlier in the morning, 8
A.M.
—before you arrived—and the hotel staff is talking with the man with the badge who robbed you. You wake not in a sweat but rather in full composure and clarity: the staff at the Golden Tulip was in on it.

You were set up. How did you not realize this before? Of course it was noted that you overtipped with a U.S. twenty-dollar bill. Of course your room at the Golden Tulip wasn't ready. Of course you were not attended to. Of course the desk clerks were distracted, otherwise occupied. Of course no one knew how to operate the security cameras. Of course the head of security seemed peculiarly thrilled.

But you don't blame the head of security. His behavior was so strange it suggests he was not in on the plot. He was just excited to have a security issue on his hands. His position was most likely on the chopping block, but now that a theft occurred at the hotel, he is ecstatic: he has a reason to be there. He couldn't care less about the retrieval of your bag.

The clerks at the hotel only care about not being implicated in the crime, which you are now sure they participated in. You
don't know what to do with this information. Should you tell the police? Were the police in on it? Why were you taken to the wrong police station? You're not yet sure whether you will tell the police chief your suspicions. You are in a country not your own, and you have to be careful. Could the conspiracy go all the way to the top? You get a brief mental picture of the police chief enjoying your camera and phone. You imagine him taking a photo of himself in swim trunks, holding a fish he's caught without a net.

One thing you know for certain: you need to get out of this hotel. You are a target here. They got away with the theft and are now emboldened. You are scared of what will happen next here. You rise from the bed and make sure the hotel room door is locked and bolted. You turn the bathroom light on. You go to the window to make sure there's no possibility of anyone climbing in. You wonder what you'll do if someone does come in; you can't call the front desk. What is the number for the police station? In the desk drawer you find a phonebook for Casablanca. It's in Arabic and of no use to you.

You think of the gleaming, grand-looking hotels you passed when coming to the Golden Tulip. The Sofitel. The Regency.

You wait for morning to arrive. You cannot sleep. Silence takes on its own sound.

At 6:30
A.M.
, you call the Sofitel and ask if they have a room for tonight. You are told they are booked because of Jazzablanca. You say thank you, as though you know what Jazzablanca is.

You call the Regency and ask if they have a room for the night. Yes, they say.

“Do you have a room for a week?”

“How many people?” they ask.

“Just me. Just one,” you say.

They have a room.

The woman on the phone takes your name and then tells you she needs your credit card to secure the reservation.

“I'll have to call you back with that,” you say.

She goes over a few more details about the hotel and says that your passport and credit card will have to be shown at check-in.

“Of course,” you say, and hang up.

You know the reservation will be canceled. You have no credit card or passport.

You think of who you could call back in America but it's the middle of the night there. You don't call your father because he's busy with his new wife and their three small sons, and you don't call your mother who now lives in Arizona, because you've chosen not to tell her about the theft. Your mother was recently fitted with a pacemaker and she waited five months to tell you this. You were strong when she told you, but that night you sobbed. You haven't told your parents about what happened before your departure, why you and your husband are divorcing.

At nine in the morning the same driver comes to meet you in the lobby. Yesterday he wore a plaid shirt and white sneakers but today he's wearing plaid sneakers and a white shirt.

In the car Paul Bowles's shoes are gone. The backseat
feels lonely, but the traffic is better today. You pass by the Regency and stare at it longingly. If only you could stay there one night; if you could feel safe enough to get a good night's sleep you know you will be able to think clearly about what to do. You will be able to make a plan. There's a part of your brain that you cannot access, that you're not rested enough to get to.

You arrive at the police station within half an hour of leaving the hotel. Again, the driver uses the machine to carefully pay for the parking ticket, and then returns to the car to place the ticket on the car's dashboard. Again, you apologize for not having any money.

You pass a sign in the lobby that is in Arabic, French, and English. The sign says
POLICE STATION, NEXT FLOOR
. The sign has been laminated—this is encouraging. But when you get to the top floor you panic: Has this been a ruse? The hallway is filled with mismatched chairs, all facing different directions. The police station looks like it's just been moved into, or is about to be vacated.

The plaid-sneakered man whose father once read to Paul Bowles talks to another man with a mustache and you hold your breath. This man's mustache is thin and it appears a small comb has been used to coerce the hairs to point in the same downward direction. You are convinced you'll be led back downstairs and to another police station across town.

But the mustached man nods, as though they're expecting you. The driver looks relieved. He tells you he's going outside to have a cigarette. You can smell that other people on the floor are smoking inside, so you know it's just an excuse
to take a break. Maybe he wants to check on the status of his parking meter. The mustached man leads you into a room with four desks, one of which has a computer. Two other men, also with mustaches, enter the room.

You are ushered to a chair on the other side of the desk with the computer. On the desk is a box holding paper clips and erasers and thumbtacks. On the side of the box there's a calendar; the calendar is three years old. The ceilings are high and the eggshell paint on the walls is peeling. The room has a photo of a man who you assume is the King of Morocco. On top of a beige filing cabinet sits a bouquet of fake flowers. You imagine the flowers were brought in by a secretary or one of the detectives' wives who wanted to add some color, some semblance of cheer to the empty room. At some point somebody must have decided they didn't like the flowers—too pink, too prissy—so the vase was relocated to that spot above the file cabinet where you imagine they'll remain for eternity.

One of the detectives is seated at the computer and the two others sit atop bare desks. They sit like detectives.

“We are all here to listen to details of crime,” one detective tells you. “We saw video. We saw what thief looks like. We do not think he was part of the conference. We think his badge was . . .”

He can't find the word.

“Fake,” you suggest. You notice there's an echo in the room.

“Yes. You are not surprised?”

“No,” you say. You are not surprised.

“We also see from video he has two people he works with.
They both have badges too. One outside the hotel, the other also in the lobby.”

“There were three people?”

“Yes.”

This makes you feel better. You were the target of a crime ring. There was probably little you could have done differently. They had fabricated badges and were going to rob someone, so they robbed you.

“Do they do this at other hotels? Make badges and rob people?”

“No, we have not heard of this before,” another detective says. “It is first time.”

“Oh,” you say. You're not sure you believe this.

“We will start with entering information,” says the man at the computer.

“Okay.”

“What was your grandfather's name?”

“My grandfather?”

“Yes, it is a formality here. We have to fill out the forms.”

“Anthony,” you say. You have not thought of your grandfather in years. He died when you were five, and he was not such a good man. The last time you and your sister saw him you stood in front of his reclining chair, dressed in matching blue jumpers, patterned with Raggedy Ann dolls, and holding your parents' hands. Only years later did you realize you were all there to say good-bye.

Now you are giving his name to a Moroccan detective. It takes the detective five minutes to type the name. The computer or the keyboard—maybe both—are giving him trouble.