The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty (6 page)

Something about this seems familiar to you. You remember that this is exactly what the thief did when he left the Golden Tulip. He pulled the backpack onto one shoulder, exited the front door, and turned right.

You walk down the boulevard, called Place des Nations Unies, dragging your suitcase, and you immediately sense your error. There are no other Western women walking down the street alone. You keep your eyes on the Regency in the distance and you move quickly through the crowds. The sun is high in the sky and it's hot on your skin and too many faces are turning toward you. You half expect to see someone wearing your backpack.

When you arrive at the Regency, a doorman in a suit opens the door for you, greets you with “good afternoon,” and then stares out at the distance to see how you've arrived—by limo or van? You are pulling your suitcase and wearing Sabine's black backpack and you realize that you're probably the only person who's arrived at the hotel by foot. You pass through
a security portal and enter an enormous lobby. Its sofas are mocha colored and deep and plush. The kind of sofas that are easy to relax into, and difficult to rise from. White orchids are staged artfully throughout the lobby and Lauryn Hill music pulses softly through the speakers. Everyone is dressed as though going to a business meeting in London or an upscale lunch in New York. No one is dressed as though they are in Morocco—they are not dressed in long skirts and scarves and sandals, the clothes you imagined yourself wearing here.

To your left is the reception desk. The area in front of the desk is large and vacant and there is nowhere to sit. A theft would not happen here because there's no place for a thief to linger, to watch. Two women stand behind the desk, available for anyone who might want to check in. No women worked behind the desk at the Golden Tulip.

You approach the kinder-looking of the two women, the one with long hair who smiles with her eyes, and tell her you don't have a reservation but you called this morning and understand there's room at the hotel. She studies the computer and confirms this. You give her Sabine Alyse's passport and her credit card.

“I may want to use a different credit card eventually,” you say. “So I can get frequent flier miles . . .” You congratulate yourself on giving a valid explanation. “Is it okay if I switch credit cards when I check out?”

She says that's fine. She barely glances at the passport, but slides a form across the desk. You open Sabine Alyse's passport and scribble down the relevant information.

You are asked if you would like help with your luggage and you decline politely.

As you wait for the elevator to descend from the tenth floor, you watch the numbers decrease 3-2-1, like a countdown to your fate. The elevator doors slide open smoothly like stage curtains and a young woman emerges. You do a double take because there's something familiar about her. She looks at you too. Is it Sabine? Is that why she's staring at you? Should you run away or approach her and say you've been looking for her to return something she's lost? But it's not Sabine.

You enter the elevator and study the woman's profile as she walks across the lobby. You both have olive skin (but of course her complexion is better; everyone's complexion is better) and dark brown hair. Her hair is longer than yours—it's the length of hair you had before you cut it this past hour. You're both around the same height and build, though she's younger and her stomach is flatter. In America, you probably wouldn't notice the resemblance, but here you do.

Your room is mostly white, with fluffed pillows and a light down comforter and white bathrobes and towels all awaiting you. You sit on the bed, you sit in the desk chair and swivel around. The view out the window is of the main square below. People are traversing the square and a band shell has been set up. It's vacant now and you don't know if the concert has already happened or if preparations are being made.

There are two bathrooms in your hotel room—one with just a toilet, far from the bedroom, and one with a bathtub and shower and sink. The light in the bathroom must be flattering because you don't look like you haven't slept for days and you
have been robbed of almost every possession you care about and have spent the morning at the Casablanca police station.

Your face is thinner than when you left Florida, as though you've lost a pound or two since taking flight. As soon as you see this, you are ravenous. Hunger takes over you suddenly and completely, like fear. You scan the menu and decide on an omelet. You call room service and they greet you with “Good afternoon, Ms. Alyse.” You consider ordering in French but decide you have been through enough challenges for one day. You order your food. You wait. You lie on the bed for a moment. You are so tired but you are so hungry and you cannot sleep until you have food.

You awake to knocking. You look at the pillow. You have been drooling. You look at the clock. You have been passed out for precisely six minutes.

You open the door and you're touched to see a flower on the room-service tray. You know all room-service trays at this hotel must come with a small vase with a single white rose, but you still wish to believe that someone has sent it just for you. When you sign the bill, charging it to the room, you write in an extravagant tip for the gentleman who brought you the food and the rose.

As soon as the door closes your fork hits the plate. The omelet is delicious. Cheese and mushrooms—you ordered only food that would be well cooked and you believed would not make you ill. You had visited a travel clinic before your trip to Morocco to get hepatitis and typhoid shots, and while there you also purchased loperamide in the event of stomach issues. But these items were in your black backpack, so now
you can't take any risks. You had never prepared for a trip as well as you had for this one—you even bought gum, a travel-size toothbrush and toothpaste kit, a small bottle of hand lotion, wet wipes, and an orange luggage tag for your new blue suitcase. You used a black permanent marker and neatly filled out the luggage tag with your name and address, and secured it onto the handle. As you were exiting the plane after everyone was clapping—was that only yesterday morning?—the new orange luggage tag fell from your suitcase. The man behind you handed it to you and you thanked him and stuffed it in the small pocket of your new black backpack. Now you own nothing with your name on it.

You have to force yourself to slow down as you tear off pieces from the baguette that accompanied your omelet, which has already disappeared.

Soon you are so full, so good; you lie down on the bed. But the moment you do you are fully alert, your toes pointed. You tell yourself you are exhausted and need to sleep. You tell yourself that if you're not asleep in ten minutes you can get up.

When you wake you see it's 3:14
P.M.
You've been asleep two hours. Now, with your mind rested, the reality of what you've done settles in: you've taken someone else's credit card and passport. You have shaken hands firmly with the police chief, accepting his not-above-the-table offer.

What have you done? This is a major crime. This is a State Department issue. What will they do to you?

You need to get to the embassy. You will explain. You were afraid of not taking what the police were offering you; it was of paramount importance that you get out of the Golden
Tulip, that the hotel and the police might have been in on the scheme together. Your life was in danger.

The embassy will forgive you. You're sure everyone there will forgive you.

You shower and douse yourself with the small bottles of shampoo and conditioner and soap provided by the hotel. The fragrance is strong, herbal, unisex. As you towel off you notice that you smell like someone else, and it's not entirely unpleasant. You take note of the two white bathrobes hanging on either side of the bathtub. Their belts are tied loosely around their midsections as though a very thin person is inside each of them. You carry one bathrobe to the closet and hang it where you won't have to see it.

You dress in the most presentable outfit you have packed, a pleated skirt and a silk blouse and a light scarf. It's a combination you've never worn before. You bought the skirt because you wanted something demure for your trip, something you could imagine wearing when touring mosques.

The document from the police chief is lying flat on the desk. You will need to show the document to the embassy. You need proof that the police gave you Sabine Alyse's passport and credit card, that you didn't steal them. The document is everything. You can't lose it. In fact, you should make copies. You will go to the business center and make copies.

In the lobby you ask the long-haired woman who checked you in where the business center is, and she points you down a corridor to her left. You pass a currency-exchange booth,
where another woman is working behind glass. The existence of the currency-exchange booth reminds you that you have no money, and no ability to access cash. You only have a credit card and no pin number.

You enter the business center and find the copier. The copier requires a prepaid card, so you return to the long-haired woman at reception.

You tell her you would like to use the copier and she asks how many copies you'd like to make and you tell her two. She casually hands you a card that allows you to use the Xerox machine. “Is it okay if I charge the copies to your room?” she asks.

“That's fine,” you say casually, with the air of someone who has a choice.

You make your way back to the business center, again passing the currency-exchange booth, where the woman working behind the glass is now licking her fingers, counting money, as though to taunt you. An hour ago it was food that you desired, food that made you greedy; now it is the sight of money that makes you want a lot of it. You avert your gaze.

Inside the business center, you place the document the police chief gave you in the Xerox machine and make one copy to test it before making more. The paper that comes out is blank; you didn't place the original facedown. You take the blank piece of paper that the copier slides out of the machine (not unlike the way money slides out of an ATM, you can't help noticing) and fold it and place it in the pocket of your pleated skirt. You want to hide your mistake from . . . whom? You start over. You place the police document facedown on the machine, which emits a strange, stovelike smell.

The door to the business center is thrown open, and startles you. It's a businessman, probably in his thirties. Maybe French.

“Excusez-moi,”
he says.

“It's okay,” you say. He sits down at a computer station and places his cell phone beside him. It's the latest incarnation of the iPhone, and almost instantaneously it starts to ring. The man glances at who's calling. A woman's face appears on the phone. She's holding a child. You can see this much from your vantage point. The ring is a techno beat you've heard on radio stations you pass over while driving, the kind of thing played at a disco at three in the morning. But instead of answering the phone, or turning it off, he lets it ring until the call goes to voice mail.

A second later the ringing starts again, and the iPhone flashes the same photo of the woman with child. Again, the Frenchman takes a look at his phone, ignores the call, and without turning off the ringer, returns his attention to the computer.

The sound is driving you mad. The business center is the size of a small bathroom and the phone must be set on the highest volume. You're tempted to grab the phone, answer the call, and tell the woman calling, the woman who is most likely his wife and the mother of his child, that her husband is calmly ignoring her urgent calls.

You exit the business center feeling brittle and claustrophobic and you return to the lobby. Through the glass doors at the front of the hotel you see a mass of people in black, bathed in bright lights and surrounded by complicated-looking
machines. If you were anywhere but a hotel in Casablanca you would think a movie was being filmed. You walk closer. You see cameras and trolleys. A movie is being filmed. You stop and stare for a moment, and while standing, squinting, you're approached by a man in an expensive-looking suit who introduces himself as the manager of the hotel. He welcomes you to the hotel and asks your name.

“Sabine Alyse,” you say. You are proud of your lack of hesitation. You haven't slept much in thirty hours, fifty hours—you're too tired to do the math and you know that doing the math will make you more tired. But you've remembered your new fake name.

“I am so very sorry for the disturbance,” the manager says. You are momentarily taken aback—is he apologizing for what happened at the other hotel, the Golden Tulip?

He continues. “They are shooting a film here in front of the hotel. It's a Moroccan film company, very respected, but we did not anticipate . . .”

He searches for the words. You have no idea what he's about to say. You stare at his mouth.

“We did not know that the film crew would be dressed so shay-billy.”

“Shay-billy?” you say.

“Yes, with their pants hanging down on their hips and their hair not combed . . .”

“Oh, shabbily,” you say. “They're dressed shabbily.”

You are merely repeating what he said, and correcting the pronunciation in the process, but he takes your utterance to mean that you are in agreement: the film crew is a disgrace.

You don't think you have ever worn a pleated skirt and a tailored long-sleeved blouse and scarf before, but you decide at this moment that you will do so more often. Usually the way you dress is not so different from the way the film crew is dressed, but now you see that the world—as represented by this manager at the Regency Hotel in Casablanca—sees you and treats you differently when you dress like this and apply makeup to cover the ridges of your skin. You are apologized to for things that don't merit an apology.

“We are trying to ask them to dress more appropriately for a hotel such as ours,” the manager says, “but in the meantime I apologize for the inconvenience. Please let me know if I can be of help to you.”