Who is Maud Dixon? Read online

  Florence, can you give me a call?

  Florence clenched her jaw. She hated talking on the phone. There was no time to plan and refine what you were going to say. Maybe that’s what other people liked about it; Greta didn’t seem like a person who self-edited. Florence trudged reluctantly into the kitchen where the house phone was and dialed the number Greta had included in her email.

  “Hi, Florence,” said the familiar husky voice.

  “Hi, Greta. It’s early there.”

  “Oh, I never sleep past five. One of the hazards of getting older. So what’s going on with Helen?”

  “She ate some bad octopus.”

  “And she can’t even come to the phone?”

  “She basically hasn’t moved from the bathroom floor in twenty-four hours.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. Have you called a doctor?”

  “Yes, of course. He just said to keep her hydrated.”

  “Twenty-four hours is a long time to be that ill. I think you should consider going back to Marrakesh. I can call the hospital there and tell them to expect you. I can’t imagine the one where you are is much better than a Civil War tent.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “You’ve been?”

  “Oh. Yeah. I took Helen yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “That was when they told us to keep her hydrated.”

  “Hm.” There was a long pause. “You said something about Helen having second thoughts about the Paris Review interview.”

  “Yes. She said she changed her mind. She doesn’t want to do it anymore.”

  “Interesting.” She paused again. “You know, she hadn’t even agreed to it yet. I was still trying to convince her that it was a good idea. So her mind, it seems, is unchanged. If I have my facts straight.”

  Fuck. “Oh, really?”

  “Really.”

  “That’s weird. Maybe she misspoke. She’s really out of it. Kind of delirious.”

  “Hmm.”

  Another pause.

  “Florence, I’ll admit it, you have me worried. You say that Helen is delirious, she can’t come to the phone, she hasn’t moved from the bathroom floor. None of this sounds good. I really urge you to go back to Marrakesh to get some treatment. Lauren would be happy to make arrangements for you. I could have a car come pick you up today.”

  “No… She’ll be okay, I think. I’ll ask her, but she’s been pretty adamant about staying here and finishing the research.”

  “From the way you’ve described it, it sounds like perhaps Helen is not in the right frame of mind to be making these decisions for herself. Listen, Florence, you’re young, and Helen can be intimidating, I know that. But making sure Helen is taken care of and gets healthy is more important than being on her bad side for a few hours.”

  “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 liste
ning. 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?”

  Florence laughed and shook her head. “Really, really no.”

  “Here, I take picture,” the man said, holding out his hands for a phone. Florence opened her hands uselessly. “I don’t have one.” The man turned to Nick.

  “It’s in my pocket,” he said. The man reached his hands into the pockets of the tunic—they were just slits, designed so that you could reach through to the pocket of your pants.

  “Oh, cool!” Nick exclaimed to Florence, “they’re slits!” Florence began laughing again.

  The shopkeeper took a dark, blurry picture of them, looking at each other in a fit of hilarity. Afterward, once Nick had struggled out of the tunic, and unwrapped the turban, he held up the blue kaftan he’d picked out first and asked the shopkeeper, “How much?”

  “For the beautiful lady? I do 200 dirhams.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Florence said to Nick. “You don’t have to buy that for me.”

  “We have to buy something.”

  “No we don’t, I’m sure he does this fifty times a day.” But Nick was already pulling out the money. He offered the salesman 150 dirhams, which was accepted with a nod, then handed her the wrinkled plastic shopping bag containing her new kaftan.

  “Thank you,” she said, embarrassed.

  “Don’t be too grateful. I only bought it for you so I can borrow it.”

  Florence rolled her eyes, trying not to show how pleased she was. But Nick was already wrist deep in a basket of beans at the stall next door.

  Florence wandered over to a fishmonger and watched him skin and debone a silver fish with quick, expert flicks of his knife. It reminded her of Helen hacking away at the chicken during her cooking lesson. The man tossed the cleaned fish, no longer a fish but simply fish, into a pile. A fly pounced on it and began to knead the flesh with its furry, thread-like arms and delicate elbows.

  Florence wandered deeper into the souk. The wares here were similar to the ones she’d seen in Marrakesh, a mix of the picturesque and the practical.

  Suddenly she felt a hand on her arm, and she spun around. A small, wrinkled man was pulling at her shirt toward a stall of silver jewelry. “Amethyst,” he whispered. “Very good quality. Very beautiful.” She pulled her arm back.

  “No, thank you.”

  He took another step toward her. “Only fake that way. Here, is real.”

  “No,” she said more harshly. She walked quickly away from him, turning down a small alley leading off the main artery, where it was even darker. A few men sat huddled on small stools, drinking from steaming cups. They glanced up at her, then away, disinterested. She ran her hand along a row of bright leather slippers. They emitted a warm, dank smell like a wet animal. Her heart was beating quickly, though she couldn’t say why.

  Suddenly she felt his hand on her again, spinning her around. She jerked away violently and turned to face him.

  “Florence!”

  She took a step backward and stumbled on the uneven ground. She regarded the face in front of her, the oversize teeth, the bright pink polo shirt, the dry, flat-ironed hair.

  “Whitney?”

  It was her old friend from Florida, staring at her in wide-eyed amazement. They paused awkwardly before leaning in to hug one another. Whitney had been five-eleven since seventh grade, and Florence had to stand on tiptoes to wrap her arms around her. She hadn’t seen Whitney since high school graduation and they’d probably exchanged only a couple dozen messages since. After Florence had moved to New York, she’d stopped responding altogether. Whitney’s smile didn’t seem to be hiding a grudge, but perhaps it had just been momentarily set aside in the serendipity of this encounter.

  “Oh my gosh!” Whitney exclaimed. “How crazy is this!?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Whitney suddenly gasped. “What happened?” she asked, gesturing to Florence’s cast and face, which was still discolored from the bruising. “Are you okay?”

  “I was in a fender bender. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “What are you doing here?” Florence asked again with a slight edge to her voice. She had felt so threatened by her recent encounters with Idrissi and Greta, even the man selling amethyst, that she was now primed for alarm. She had to remind herself that Whitney was just Whitney. The same girl who’d belted out the theme song from High School Musical at the talent show four years in a row. From the sudden vantage point of someone who’d known her as a child, Florence saw her current self with a brief flash of horror. But it passed as quickly as it had come.

  “I’m on vacation with a college friend,” Whitney said. “We just got to Semat this morning. We’ve been in the Atlas Mountains for a few days.”

  Whitney had worked hard in high school, but she had never been as good a student as Florence, and it still stuck in her craw that Whitney’s father—Florence’s dentist—had paid full tuition at Emory while Florence had been shunted off to UF like everyone else.

  “What are you doing here?” Whitney asked.

  “Working, sort of.”

  “Really? What do you do?”

  “I’m—well, it’s a long story. I’m doing research.”

  “How cool! Are you still in publishing?”

  “Yes, pretty much.”

  “That’s so great. I’m really happy for you. You always loved books.”

  Florence had noticed that people who didn’t feel the way she did about literature—that it was, as much as biology or physics, one of life’s organizing principles—regarded it as little more than a collection of physical objects: books. Did they think the power of music could be whittled down to the look and feel of a violin string? In fact, Florence di
d love books—the smell of the binding, the roughness of the pages—but they were nothing compared to the magnitude of what was inside them.

  “What about you?” Florence asked. “What are you up to these days?”

  “I’m a project manager at Verizon in Tampa. I tried Atlanta for a while, but I missed the beach and my family. And Verizon is just, like, the best place to work.”

  Florence remembered that Whitney’s great social failing in high school had been her unchecked enthusiasm at a time of life when most people they knew would have gnawed an arm off before expressing any form of eagerness, about anything.

  Whitney suddenly closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose. She reached out and took Florence’s hands. She had always been a toucher. “Actually, Florence, can I just say? I feel like this is fate, running into you here, because there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for months.”

  Florence couldn’t imagine what Whitney could possibly have to say to her after six years of little to no contact.

  “Trevor and I are seeing each other,” she said all in a rush.

  Florence struggled to keep a smile from her face. “That’s great, Whitney. I don’t mind. Really. We dated a long time ago. It feels like another lifetime, back when we were very different people.”

  Whitney exhaled loudly. “Oh my gosh, I’m so relieved. We’ve both been feeling wracked by guilt.” Florence could believe it of Whitney, but she doubted that Trevor, whose two great passions when she’d known him had been Minecraft and Ayn Rand, felt much remorse.

  “Hey, babe.” They both turned. There was Nick, clutching a sack of bright orange turmeric in his big, paw-like hand.

  “Hi,” Florence said tightly, realizing all of a sudden the predicament she was in.

  “Hey, I’m Nick,” he said to Whitney when Florence failed to introduce them.

  “I’m Whitney. I grew up with—”

  “Whitney and I grew up together!” Florence interjected loudly.

  “Oh, wow,” said Nick. “Small world.”

  “Whitney’s traveling around Morocco with a friend of hers from college.”