Live Fast Die Hot (17 page)

Randolph peered out the window, but it was too dark to see if the cow was missing.

“I could live on olives,” Dan said, popping a single olive in his mouth, then kicking back in his chair as if he was now full.

Randolph and I scarfed down what was left of the tagine as the rest of the group watched.

“You two are way more adventurous than I am,” Brandon said. “What if you get sick?” He stuck a stick of butter between two pieces of bread and made a sandwich.

“I want to get sick!” I said. “I still have baby fat to lose.”

“Me, too!” Randolph pinched his perfectly round cheeks, causing a bit of marrow to peek out of the corner of his mouth.

After dinner, Dan walked us through the schedule for the morning. A car would pick us up at seven and take us to the co-op. Around 3 p.m., a different car would retrieve us and drive us back to Danger's house to get our things, where yet another car would be waiting to return us safely to Marrakech. The plan seemed reasonable. Though he'd grossly oversold the lodging situation, I still trusted that Dan had everything under control.

When it got too dark in the room to make direct eye contact, the group started to disperse. Dan reached his arms up and fake-yawned, then bid us good night. Tifa followed, but not before making it very clear that they were sleeping in separate rooms. Brandon popped a melatonin, slipped into a matching silk pajama set, and disappeared into the Osama chamber.

I was tired, but Randolph was wide awake and wanted to talk about the people we both hated on Twitter. I was more interested in our host.

“Wait,” I said, “can we revisit the Dan subject again? Why isn't he more into us? And, I mean, he isn't just some asshole posting selfies with a piece of paper that says #JeSuisCharlie. He's like a real-life humanitarian who doesn't even have a Facebook page. There's obviously something deeply wrong with him. What do you think it is?”

“Do you think that he hates us?” Randolph said under his breath.

“I wish! I don't think he even cares about us enough to hate us.”

It was pitch black, and I'd followed an indifferent stranger into the middle of nowhere. I scolded myself for not having prepared myself better for this trip. For not being more like Jason and doing my research. And why was I there? So I could prove that I was capable? Capable of getting lost?

My eyes were bloodshot and my clothes unchanged when we met Dan and Tifa in the dining area for breakfast. The rooster we'd seen in Danger's arms the night before wasn't making a sound, which explained our dinner. Randolph and I had stayed up all night, eating argan-oil crackers and discussing how even Miranda must think she is the Carrie of her group.

We waited an hour, bleary-eyed, for the van taking us to Ait Bouguemez, but it never arrived. Dan stepped out, then returned.

“So, I spoke with Danger and he said we missed the van. Guess it came earlier today,” he said casually.

“Earlier? When? Is there another car we can get? Where's Doud?” I was going to be pissed if I'd come all this way just to eat a fucking rooster. Dan was killing me.

“Doud had to go pick up some people in the Sahara.”

“Doud drove directly from us to the Sahara? How does that even make sense?” If only I'd stayed in Doud's Mercedes, I'd be relaxing in a casbah in Ouarzazate, smoking a strawberry-flavored hookah.

He ignored my question. “That van is the only car coming through for the day. If you guys are up for it we can walk to the next town over and see if we can catch a lift there. It's only six miles.”

Two and a half hours later, we were still walking. Patches of neatly cut grass that looked like putting greens stretched alongside roaring white rapids. Tifa explained that flocks of grazing sheep were responsible for the grass's manicured appearance.

I started to feel like we were walking in a loop. There was little protection from the sun as the temperature started to build. Randolph was sweating through his ascot. I made eye contact with a woman and her child who stood stoically on the edge of the road, collecting firewood. Instantly I felt a pang of grief. I missed my own child. I wondered if he noticed I was gone or if he was anticipating my return or if he was already trying to
Parent Trap
Jason into meeting a new, more suitable mom, someone with less ambition and more self-esteem, or else just a killer blueberry muffin recipe.

Brandon's cell service started working and he immediately called his travel agent.

“Yes, two rooms and three massages. Tonight. We get in around seven. Jenny? You like your hotel in Marrakech? Because we're going back, baby!” He clicked his heels in the air clumsily, like a leprechaun desperate to take a shit. None of us had been able to release our bowels at Danger's house. I'd squatted over the hole twice and even played a Sia song on my iPhone to relax me, but nothing came out.

We were backed up with bread and baking in the sun when a large windowless van drove past.

“Stop! Wait!” I threw myself into the road. The van pulled over and Dan asked the driver if we could hitch a ride. A local nodded for us to get in.

“Are we sure this is safe?” Randolph looked into the dark space covered on all sides with aluminum paneling. The double doors shut behind us, and I couldn't help but wonder if they'd ever open again. The van threw us from side to side as it traveled up the washboard road to Ait Bouguemez. We were so close.

At last, the large metal doors opened and we all filed out. Across seventy acres of row crops sat a small concrete building on the top of the mountain. The words
TAPIS BERBÈRES
were spray-painted in white on the outside. It was the building I'd seen in all the pictures online, sometimes steeped in snow, other times brittle and parched in the high desert sun. This was the birthplace of my Beni Ourain. I wished Sid could see me. I accomplished what I'd set out to do. I pushed further than I thought I could go. I had held my bladder for an entire car ride, forgone a shower for twenty-four hours, slept on the floor, ingested rooster, and hitchhiked in a rape van to make it to this moment.

With newly restored conviction, I marched toward my weavers like a soldier returning from battle. My hands dug into the rocks as I climbed the last few feet to the co-op. My stomach was covered in dirt and my UGGs were dusty shells of their former selves, but I'd arrived.

“I'm heeeeere,” I announced proudly, like I was the Fonz from
Happy Days.
A studio audience erupted into applause in my head as I brushed myself off and surveyed the scene.

I turned to my right, hoping to be greeted by cheerful throngs of leather-skinned mountain women, when an empty Coke can came flying at my head. Touching my cheek to make sure my filler hadn't shifted, I looked up at the culprit. Three giggling children stood above me on a rock, laughing. Their faces were rosy and their bellies were swollen (from carbs, not starvation). I picked up the can, which instructed me to share its contents with a “BFF,” and walked farther into the co-op to go find one.

“Hello!” I called into the next room. “It's me, everyone! Jennyandteets!”

Inside, I found that the co-op was in fact a simple room of four concrete walls, buried in stacks and stacks of rugs. A long provincial loom with tiny strands of thread stood in its center. Ten Berber women sitting on the floor glanced over at me. None of them struck me as BFF material, but I tried to keep an open mind. An elderly woman with half-scribbled facial tattoos approached me and smiled. I tried to focus on her eyes instead of the erratic markings, which looked like she'd given Sid a pen and then left him alone in a room with her face.

Before I had a chance to connect my new BFF's face dots, Dan and Tifa appeared behind me to translate. Dan told the women that I was the lady from Los Angeles who'd ordered the large Beni Ourain.

“I am so happy to meet you guys! I've been looking at pictures of you for months.” I used my hands to express myself. The woman and her fellow weavers shook their heads “no,” trying to remind me that they didn't speak English. Tifa translated my enthusiasm, but they continued to stare at me blankly.

“So…” It had been only a couple minutes and I'd already run out of things to say. I craned my neck out the door, looking for Randolph and Brandon. The weavers continued with their work as if I weren't there. It wasn't every day that they got to meet one of their customers. Why weren't they interested? Weren't they impressed?

“Do you guys have any questions for me?” I ventured, trying to reclaim their attention.

Tifa and a younger woman combing cotton into a bucket exchanged several words, then Tifa looked at me and spoke.

“They want to know why you are here.”

Caught off guard, I stopped for a beat and thought about it.

“Well, I…” It all made so much sense a minute ago, but now it was hard to articulate. “Originally it was because all these people kept telling me I couldn't. But I guess the root of why I'm here is to prove to myself that I have what it takes to be a good mother.” It felt true, and yet it sounded so feeble as I said it. Maybe I had secretly hoped that these rural women, who looked so rugged and fearsome in pictures, would tell me how impressed they were with me. How brave and courageous I was. How I was the most epic mom of all time.

I waited as Tifa translated. The women nodded, processing what she was saying. One of them fired back a question. I waited nervously for the translation.

“They want to know where your child is,” Tifa said.

“Oh. He's in New York. I considered bringing him, but to be honest, this isn't really his scene.” I glanced around the room. “No iPads.”

Tifa stopped translating. She paused, then diplomatically explained that a Berber woman would never separate from her child. I turned to my side. An infant no more than a month old with a face that looked like a dehydrated apple lay swaddled and wedged between two carpets. Another weaver who I originally thought had a beer gut was actually wearing her sleeping toddler under her smock. I was surrounded by children. None of whom needed anything I had to offer. The one person who needed me was thousands of miles away, probably helping Jason eat blueberry muffin batter off his new girlfriend.