The Heat of Betrayal (20 page)

‘There is so much to be said for slamming the door on consumerism. Because we're all slaves to it. But here we are free from all that . . . for a spell.'

Then we talked excitedly about how we should consider a new way of dealing with that world. How, perhaps, in four or five more years, Paul could take early retirement from the university; how I could sell my accounting firm; how our house in Buffalo would be paid off, and could be sold and exchanged for a smaller house on the Maine coast, with a barn we could transform into a studio for Paul, and maybe with a large attic which we could convert into an office for me. An office where I could finally try to pound out the novel that had been gestating within me for years (but which, given my creative self-doubt, I'd never gotten around to starting): the story of my dad's life, and the sadness inherent at the heart of the American success ethos.

‘You'll be able to write and I'll be able to draw without encumbrance,' he said. ‘If I manage to shift a few drawings a year, we can easily afford a couple of months here in Essaouira, or maybe somewhere in the South of France where I've heard you can rent cottages in the Pyrenees for three hundred euros a month . . .'

‘A life of ongoing adventure.'

‘That will be us,' he said. ‘It's all there for the asking. Even when we have our son or daughter with us.'

I felt myself going rigid with fury again. Hurt and rage and . . .

He has a daughter – and he has a wife.

Another wife.

‘
Madame
, are you all right?'

It was one of the shop assistants – a very pretty young woman, no more than twenty-one, her hand on my arm, trying to steady me. Did I need steadying? Did I look as if I was about to tip forward into . . .?

‘Fine, fine,' I heard myself saying, even though I knew that was anything but the truth.

‘My apologies. I shouldn't have intruded. Can I help you find anything?'

‘Toiletries. I need toiletries.'

‘And make-up?'

‘Do I need make-up?'

‘
Madame
, I am not trying to interfere. My apologies again.'

‘No, it's me who's sorry,' I said. This kind young woman informed me that the toiletries were on the second floor, near the café. I thanked her and went upstairs and bought deodorant and talcum powder and shampoo and conditioner and a hairbrush and a toothbrush and toothpaste and a facial cream that ludicrously promised to reduce all noticeable wrinkles in two weeks. I paid for all my purchases and asked the woman behind the register where I could find the nearest post office. She said there was one right opposite a café called the Parisian. Now there was a bit of synchronicity. It was the café that Ben Hassan had told me had reasonable Wi-Fi. Leaving the department store I walked the block to the local outpost of Poste Maroc. I bought an extra-large padded envelope, then reached into my backpack and withdrew Paul's one intact sketchbook, containing over fifty of his Essaouira drawings. I resisted the temptation to look through them again, certain that the sight of his artwork would toss me into further tumult. I sealed the book into the envelope, wrote the name and address of my accounting firm on the front, then had it airmailed by registered post back to the States. I wanted to get Paul's recent work home right away. I figured that, whatever was to become of us, he would be relieved to know that not all his drawings had been lost in the vortex into which he had thrown himself.

I adjourned to the café across the street.

The Parisian was very much a facsimile of one of those big brasseries in Paris – like La Coupole or the Terminus Nord – which I had read about in guidebooks, and which I vowed to loiter in someday. I found a table. I ordered
un express
and asked the waiter if he could find me some bread and jam. I was ravenous. Seeing my laptop he told me the name of the network and the password that I needed to get online.

I hadn't checked my email since yesterday, so there were over forty messages awaiting me. Mostly spam or commercial mail shots. A few professional matters to do with clients, all of which I answered while simultaneously forwarding them on to Morton.

The coffee and sliced baguette arrived. I thanked the waiter and layered the bread with strawberry jam, eating it quickly, hunger and disorientation making me feel light-headed. I drained the coffee in one go, then asked for another, along with
un citron pressé
.

‘
Le petit dej' est à dix-sept heures
,' he said with a smile.
Breakfast at five p.m.
I managed to smile back.

I switched over to a new screen, calling up the joint MasterCard account that Paul and I shared; a credit card with a severely enforced credit limit, over which neither of us could spend. I checked the balance and was horrified (but not surprised) to see that the $3,000 limit had been exceeded earlier today – whereas when I last looked at its balance only three days ago, it had just $300 worth of eating out and small incidentals in Essaouira. But since yesterday, there had been two large cash withdrawals of 10,000 dirhams apiece, a plane ticket on Royal Air Maroc this morning to Ouarzazate, and a 1,600-dirham charge to a hotel named the Oasis in that same city. I googled the hotel and was directed to its website, where I discovered it was a two-star establishment with rooms at this low-season time of year costing 400 dirhams a night. Which meant that he must have booked himself in for at least four nights. I wanted to call and find out if he was indeed in residence there right now, to confront him on the phone, to demand . . .

His ‘wife' – his other wife – must live in Ouarzazate. So why did he drag us to Essaouira instead of going to that city where he could have snuck between the two of us? Why run here – to Casablanca – to see his daughter after I had exposed his deceptions? Why did his daughter slam the door in his face, and why did he feel the need to run off to his wife? And how did he get on a plane without some piece of identification . . . like the passport he left behind, and which I was now carrying?

Ouarzazate. I googled its name and discovered that it was a city of around sixty thousand people in the south-east of the country; that it was considered ‘the gateway to the Sahara'; that it had a film studio and was often used by foreign film companies as a location for anything with a desert setting; that it prided itself on ‘its modern infrastructure and historic Saharan architecture'; that it was home to an international airport with daily flights to Casablanca and Marrakesh, and three-times-weekly direct service to Paris Orly.

It was now five-twelve in coastal North Africa. Twelve-twelve in Buffalo. I found the printout of my changed Royal Air Maroc reservation. I went to their website and tapped in my reference number. I switched over to the Jet Blue website and changed my internal JFK-to-Buffalo flight to the same time tomorrow. The
citron pressé
arrived. I added a small half-teaspoon of sugar and a dribble of water to the freshly squeezed lemon, then downed it in one go.
Citron pressé
: such a simple drink; the soothing and beneficial within a very sour fruit.

I felt improved by this late-afternoon breakfast. I paid the waiter. On my way back to Ben Hassan's I passed a florist and purchased a gift for my host: twelve long-stemmed lilies. Yes, I smelled my host's deviousness, but he was also being hospitable and I needed that right now. And my mother would have climbed out of her grave to haunt me if I hadn't followed one of her key social directives: always bring a gift.

‘Lilies!' Ben Hassan said when I returned to his apartment. ‘How did you know I love this flower?'

‘Just a guess.'

‘Perhaps you think me death-obsessed?'

‘Are you?' I asked.

‘When you weigh two hundred kilos and cannot walk more than two blocks without chest pains, yes, lilies do remind you that the River Styx is just a few streets away. But thank you for the gesture.'

‘Speaking of death wishes . . . I know that my husband is now in Ouarzazate. That's where she lives, isn't it?'

Ben Hassan pursed his lips.

‘Paul told me that you were a dangerously thorough woman, as befits your profession. We will talk more over dinner. The guest bathroom, as you may remember, is two doors down on the right. If you throw your clothes out into the corridor, Omar will have them washed and ironed by the time we return tonight. We don't want to send you back to the United States with dirty laundry, now do we?'

‘Don't we all have dirty laundry,
monsieur
?' I asked.

‘Ah, an accountant with soul.'

The bathroom was cramped; the shower a tiny stall with a handheld hose. But the water pressure was reasonable, the temperature hot. And it was good to strip out of clothes in which I had travelled and slept for the past twenty-four hours. I did indeed crack open the door to toss them into the corridor.

Getting dressed in the new clothes I had bought I caught sight of myself in the mirror. The eight-hour snooze had lightened the dark circles beneath my eyes. The seismic disturbances within had hardly dissipated. But the upending of a life –
my life
– is so much better handled after a proper sleep and a very hot shower.

‘Don't you look radiant,' Ben Hassan said when I wandered down the corridor and found him and Omar at work in the office in which multi-coloured passports were stacked high.

‘I thank you for all your kindnesses.'

‘You deserve nothing less than that,
madame
. Especially with all that you have discovered in the past few hours. Not that Paul himself would ever stare directly into the wrecked ship that is his life. Who on earth wants to do that?'

A pause, as Ben Hassan let that last comment hang between us. Then he whispered something in Arabic to Omar who got up from the laminating press at which he was at work on a Belgian passport. He brushed by me.

‘Time for a Kir,' Ben Hassan said, ‘if that is agreeable with you.'

‘Yes, I could use a drink.'

‘Glad to hear it. I am a good Muslim who believes in Allah and the inevitable gates of paradise from which I can finally cast off this corpulent worldly shell and spend the rest of eternity floating in the celestial vapours. But I am also a bad Muslim who believes that it is very hard to get through the day without having a drink, or two, or three. In fact I am rather suspicious of anyone who doesn't drink. Paul doesn't overindulge . . . unless the world is crowding in on him.'

‘So he was drinking heavily when he was here last night?'

‘Of course. Especially after his daughter slammed the door in his face. But more on that anon. May I ask how you figured out that he went to Ouarzazate?'

I explained how we shared the same credit card and could track all purchases online.

‘You really are Big Brother.'

‘Hardly. Had I been watching him closely I would have known long ago about his secret.'

‘You mean, his
secrets
.'

‘Yes, I have discovered they are plural. But let me ask you something – as Paul ran off without his passport, how did he get onto that Royal Air Maroc flight?'

Ben Hassan smiled wryly, then fanned his hand out to indicate our immediate surroundings.

‘Surely you know the answer to that question already.'

‘So he's now travelling on what passport?'

‘British.'

‘How much did you charge him?'

‘My usual price is ten thousand dirhams.'

‘Which is why he withdrew that sum yesterday.'

‘Your powers of deduction are exceptional. But ten thousand dirhams is, I should point out, my “friends and family” price. If you are someone in need of false documents owing to problems with the authorities – or must vanish thoroughly – the price does head considerably northwards.'

‘You were benevolent towards your old friend.'

‘That's one way of looking at it.'

‘Did Paul tell you why he showed up in Casablanca, without papers and in what I gather was an extreme mental state?'

‘The business with his daughter, of course – but how much exactly do you know of all that?'

‘Only that he has a daughter named Samira and a wife named . . .'

‘Faiza.'

‘What does Faiza do?'

‘She teaches English language and French literature in a
lycée
in Ouarzazate.'

‘How long were they married?'

The drinks arrived.

‘We'll get to that matter – and many others – over dinner. Meanwhile . . .'

Omar handed me a glass of cassis-coloured wine.

‘The basis of this Kir is a white from the Meknes region, which is the Moroccan Bordeaux when it comes to our
vignobles
,' Ben Hassan explained, also accepting a glass from Omar. ‘Your very good health, Robin – and a good flight tomorrow out of all this unfortunate mess.'

We clinked glasses. Ben Hassan whispered something again to Omar, who withdrew from the room, closing the door behind him. Once he was out of earshot Ben Hassan said:

‘It was rather unfortunate, attacking poor Paul with a bottle.'

‘I never did that.' I was stunned by this accusation.

‘So you say.'

‘I'm telling the truth. Paul threw himself against the wall of our hotel room after—'

I cut myself off, not wanting to go further.

‘After what?'

I chose my next words with care.

‘After I caught him out in an enormous lie.'

‘But if you caught him deceiving you – I presume it was another woman . . .'

‘It wasn't another woman.'

‘Then what was it?'

‘That's my business.'

‘And it's also your business why you attacked him with a bottle.'

‘Why won't you believe me?'

‘Why should I? Paul is my friend. Paul arrived on my doorstep last night in a state of emotional disarray, telling me that he fled Essaouira when his wife attacked him with a bottle, and showing all the physical side effects of this attack. Had the person I shared my bed with attacked me with a bottle . . .'