The Blue Hour (20 page)

“Omar simply wants to help you inside—before you faint.”

Wooziness was overtaking me.

“He's gone where?” I asked.

Ben Hassan looked directly at me. And said, “He's gone to see his wife.”

Now I was in free fall.

“His wife?” I heard myself saying. “I'm his wife.”

That's when I felt myself pitch forward. Omar caught me. I remember mumbling something about needing to sit down. What happened next? I remember little, except being led into a large room that appeared to also be painted purple and furnished with a surfeit of heavily embroidered velvet cushions. I was led to what seemed to be a mattress on the floor covered by some sort of velvet blanket. Words were being spoken to me in French. They wafted over me, sounding as garbled as my brain. I kept telling myself, Get up, you have a plane to catch. Just as that declaration,
He's gone to see his wife,
kept ricocheting around my head. Surely I didn't hear that correctly.

And then, having been settled by Omar on the mattress, I promptly blacked out.

When I woke again I was in a world of shadows. It took a moment or two to work out where I was and then another nanosecond for me to descend into panic as I glanced at my watch and saw that it was 4:12. I jolted upright. After four in the afternoon. I had been asleep for hours. I had missed my flight.

I was in a large living room with dark purple walls. Floorboards painted black gloss. Heavy red velvet drapes. Red velvet cushions. The red sheet covering the mattress on which I'd crashed for the last . . . had I been asleep almost nine hours? Strange bad abstract art on the walls, depicting boxes within boxes, or gyrating circles that seemed to spin inward and had been painted in bloodied tones against a black background.

I had an urgent need to pee. I also had a terrifying thought: Where was my backpack, within which was my laptop, the printout of my airplane ticket, my wallet with all my credit cards, and, most crucially, my passport? I was on my feet, scrambling around the room in search of it. When there was no sign of it in this velvet whorehouse of a room, I started shouting, “
Monsieur, monsieur, monsieur
,
” and ran down a corridor, throwing open doors. The first one led into a room, bare except for several wooden folding tables, on which were several piles of passports in a variety of official colors, a photocopier, assorted embossing stamps, and a machine that, on closer inspection, seemed to provide a plastic covering for documents.

What the hell was this all about?

I charged down the hall, entering a kitchen that had several days of dirty dishes and brimming ashtrays scattered everywhere, not to mention a stench that I associated with rotting vegetables. I kept shouting, “Monsieur!” Again no answer. Another charge down the long corridor. Another door thrown open. Only this time I found myself staring in at a huge carved bed, on which Omar and Monsieur Ben Hassan were sleeping naked. They were on separate corners of the expansive mattress, Omar looking so diminutive and compact compared to the fleshy enormity of Ben Hassan. As soon as I threw open the door, Omar snapped awake. Seeing me he scrambled for a sheet to cover himself, then started hissing at me in Arabic. At which point Ben Hassan opened his eyes slowly, took me in, then said, “You interrupted our siesta.”

“I can't find my backpack.”

“And you immediately thought that the dirty Moroccans had stolen it.”

“You let me sleep through my flight. Where have you put my bag?”

“In the closet by the front door. You will find that nothing has been touched. If you need the bathroom, it's the door next to the closet. There is a shower there as well. Fresh towels have been laid out for you. Please excuse the state of the kitchen. We have been working flat out on a project for several days, and housekeeping, alas, has taken a backseat. But we'll eat out tonight.”

“I need to get going.”

“Get going where?”

“To find Paul. You know where he's gone, don't you?”

“Go have a shower. I will have Omar make some tea, and then we will discuss your husband and his whereabouts.”

“I left Essaouira in a hurry yesterday when I learned that Paul had come to Casablanca. So I have nothing to change into, and nothing with which to brush my teeth.”

“I could supply you with a toothbrush, but I sense we are in two different worlds when it comes to size or taste. However, there is a big French clothing store just five minutes' walk from here. Omar would be happy to guide you.”

“I'll think about it,” I said. “Could I use a phone, please?”

“Are you wanting to call Royal Air Maroc?”

“Perhaps.”

“I've taken care of that for you.”

“You what?”

“When you passed out I tried waking you many times. When you wouldn't arise I took the liberty of going into your bag and finding your travel documents and the printout of your airline ticket. I saw it was for midday today. Given your exhaustion I knew you simply wouldn't be making the flight. So I called a friend who runs everything at Royal Air Maroc. You are booked on the same flight at midday tomorrow. May I now extend the invitation for you to take advantage of our guest bed tonight and allow me to take you out for dinner?”

I was completely dumbfounded.

“Now, if you will give us ten minutes to wash and dress . . .” Ben Hassan said.

Still in shock, I simply nodded and headed down the corridor. In the closet near the front door there, indeed, was my bag. My passport was in place. So too my computer. And my wallet with assorted credit cards. And a fresh printout of the changed airplane ticket with the old ticket stapled behind it. The new ticket also reflected the fact that the flight change had been made without cost to me.

I reproached myself for assuming that my host and his assistant-lover had robbed me. I was having that knee-jerk Western reaction to things North African; a belief that, with few exceptions, no one here was to be trusted. But if the past few weeks had proven anything, it was that, outside of a few hassled moments, I had been treated with considerable respect and propriety. And Monsieur Ben Hassan, rather than turning me away from his door, took me in, allowed me to pass out and sleep unencumbered for many hours, changed my ticket to the following day, and was now offering me the chance to stay here tonight. I owed him thanks for that, although I couldn't help but be a little suspicious about his going through my bag just to see if I had an airplane ticket in need of changing. Was there some hidden motive there? The man was up to something in what I presumed was the false passports industry. And I wondered what he might have on Paul in the way of information that my husband might not want shared with others. Then there was the way that, like a ruthlessly cool bridge player, he trumped me with that little bombshell: “He's gone to see his wife,” a revelation that landed like a kick to the head.

Still, I couldn't fault his hospitality, while I could certainly fault my hyperanxiety and paranoia for coming across as wildly suspicious and distrustful. I returned to the living room and began making up the bed.

“There is no need to assuage your guilt by tidying up.”

I turned around and saw that he was in a white djellaba, already marked with sweat, as the ceiling fans did little to temper the heat of the late afternoon.

“But I do feel guilty—especially for the way I immediately assumed . . .”

“We all have our prejudices—even when we tell ourselves that we are not prejudiced.”

“I apologize.”

“
Ego te absolvo
,” he said with a smile.

I smiled back. “You're Catholic?”

“My mother was. My father kicked with the Muslim foot.
Moi
 . . . I am somewhere in between. But the Catholic in me likes the instant redemption of confession. There is no need to be apologetic about before. You will join me for dinner tonight?”

“That is most generous of you. But I need to find clothes first. I left Essaouira with nothing at all.”

“Being on the run from the police usually means exigent departures.”

“How did you know I was running away from the cops?”

“I have my sources. But fear not, none of them know you are here. I am
complètement discret
. But bravo for eluding them the way you did. Of course they think that you beat up Paul with some heavy object. Perhaps he deserved your wrath. A brilliantly talented man, Paul. One of the most gifted artists I've yet to encounter, yet someone who cannot face any sort of grounded reality. Instead of simply saying what he does not want, he plays the game of agreeing to something that he knows he cannot follow through on, thus creating an entire substructure of lies as an exit strategy.”

I looked at Monsieur Ben Hassan with even greater respect. Never before had I heard someone nail Paul's manifold psychological complexities. Of course, when you are in the midst of a crisis with somebody else, you are more than receptive to anyone who confirms your own dark thoughts. I sensed that if I hung around today and accepted Mr. Ben Hassan's hospitality, I would learn much more about the man I once thought I knew and understood.

“If you can put up with me for another few hours,” I told Ben Hassan, “I'd very much like to stay.”

“I think I can put up with you,” he said.

THERE WAS, INDEED,
a large chain department store just five minutes from Monsieur Ben Hassan's apartment. Ben Hassan explained how to find the H&M outpost, and said there was a café next door—The Parisian—that had Wi-Fi. I took what few worldly goods I had with me, knowing that a passport is something you never leave anywhere in Morocco, especially with a man who dealt in travel documents of an illegal variety.

Ten minutes later I found myself back in a monocultural world of consumerist goods and fashion, an air-conditioned environment with a low hum of poppy Muzak which, some marketing guru no doubt reasoned, provides the right sonic smoothness to encourage you to buy more. As I filled my basket with several pairs of underwear, T-shirts, a pair of tan cotton pants, khaki shorts, two white linen shirts, and a pair of sandals, I felt another stab of desperate sadness. A fantasy Paul and I concocted just days earlier came back to me. Standing out on the balcony of our room, the sun declining into the Atlantic, a glass of wine in hand, still intoxicated with the love we had just made, the heat of the day diminishing, the light bathing the cityscape in a cognac glow . . .

We'd talked excitedly about how we should consider a new way of dealing with the shallow consumer world and how we might live our lives with more purpose. How, perhaps, in four or five more years, Paul could take early retirement from the university; I could sell my accounting firm; 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 that we could convert into an office for me, 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 dream.

“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,” I added.

“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, her hand on my arm, trying to steady me. Did I need steadying?

“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 makeup?”

“Do I need makeup?”

“
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 face cream that ludicrously promised to reduce all noticeable wrinkles in two weeks. I paid for all my purchases (close to two thousand dirhams . . . prices were hardly bargain basement here), and asked the woman behind the register where I could find the nearest post office. She said there was one opposite a café called The Parisian. Now there was a bit of synchronicity. It was the café that Monsieur Ben Hassan told me had reasonable Wi-Fi. Leaving the department store I walked the block to the local outpost of Poste Maroc. I bought an extralarge padded envelope, 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 might toss me into further tumult. Instead I sealed the notepad 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 I had ensured his drawings had not been lost.