“Speaking of friends,” Florence said brightly, “Amy must be wondering what I’ve done with you. Let’s go back out there.”
Whitney stumbled a little when she got to her feet. Florence steadied her and asked, “You good?”
“Fiiiine, fiiiiiine.”
Florence pried the drink from Whitney’s fingers. “Here, let me take that. I think we’re done with this.” She poured the rest of the drink out the window, then looked in the empty cup. Some of the powder had congealed into a white sludge at the bottom. She chucked the whole thing out the window. She led Whitney back into the living room, holding her by the hand. Nick and Amy weren’t there. She found them in the kitchen laughing by the sink.
“Hey,” Amy said brightly, then her smile fell when she saw Whitney’s slack-eyed expression. “Whoa, you okay, Whit?”
“Oh, fiiiiine.”
Amy turned a questioning gaze at Florence.
“She downed her drink in like one gulp,” Florence said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made them so strong.”
Amy took Whitney’s hand and looked her closely in the eyes. “Whit?”
Whitney’s eyes struggled to focus on her friend. She smiled, but couldn’t maintain the tension in her lips, and they collapsed into a limp gape.
“Okay,” Amy said. “Apparently we’re going to call it a night after what has apparently been a very wild ten minutes. Quick work, Whit.” She turned to Nick and said, “Sorry, do you mind calling us a taxi? I don’t have an international phone plan.”
Nick took out his phone. “Of course.”
“We’re staying at Riad Lotus.” She turned to Florence. “I’m so sorry, she’s not usually like this.”
“Oh, we’re all allowed to lose ourselves on vacation,” said Florence.
“Five minutes,” Nick said, putting his phone back in his pocket.
All three of them helped corral Whitney down the stairs and into the back of the car. She lay her head on Amy’s lap. Amy stroked her hair gently and apologized again to Florence.
“It’s totally fine. It happens to the best of us.”
“You’re so sweet, both of you. Thank you again.”
As they drove off, Nick put his arm around Florence’s shoulder and pulled her close.
* * *
Later that night, Florence lay nestled in the crook of Nick’s arm as he rubbed her back slowly up and down.
“Can I ask you something?” he said quietly.
“Mmm.”
“Amy kept calling you Florence.”
She opened her eyes.
“And she seemed kind of confused when I referred to you as Helen.”
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. She noticed that Nick had stopped rubbing her back.
Finally, she said, “I was known as Florence growing up. I started going by Helen in college. It’s my middle name.”
Nick didn’t say anything. It was too dark to see his face.
Then he said, “Oh. Okay. I like the name Florence, though.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. One of Nick’s greatest assets—for her purposes at least—was his total lack of mistrust. He tended to see the best in people, and to believe whatever he was told.
“No, it’s so stodgy.”
“It’s not. It’s pretty.”
“Well, thank you, but I prefer Helen now. Okay?”
“If that’s what you want, sure. I don’t care what your name is. I just like you.” He pulled her closer, and Florence smiled bright-eyed into the darkness.
36.
The next morning, she woke before Nick. Her chest felt tight with anxiety. And then its bedfellow, regret. Why had she let Nick be alone with Amy? She should have drugged Amy too, of course. That was obvious now. She had shrunk from leaving them both incapacitated, trying to find their way home like two injured lambs. But that was silly. They were adults. It was one drunken night. She was sure they had both had plenty of them in the past.
Her plan had been too limited; she saw that now. She needed to loosen the restraints. Boldness, audacity—that was what was required of her. No more half measures. How many times did she have to remind herself?
She wanted to roll over, to curl up onto Nick’s chest again, return to where she’d spent last night—a place of comfort and warmth. But that, she knew, was a trap. She forced herself to sit up. She pulled on her clothes and went into the kitchen, where she scooped handful after handful of cold water into her mouth. Then she patted her cheeks with her wet hands. Onward. The plan was still in effect. She wasn’t tossing away this opportunity just because of an ill-timed encounter with an old friend.
She paused for a moment. She’d made the same mistake with Greta, she now realized. She’d been too cautious. That story about food poisoning had been too small, too tame, too short-sighted. Not Helen’s style at all.
She went back to Nick’s room and woke him up.
“Hey,” she whispered, “can I borrow your laptop?”
He sat up and rubbed his eyes blearily. “Yeah, it’s over there.” He gestured at a pile of dirty clothes. She dug underneath it and found an old, cracked Dell.
She signed into the Maud Dixon Gmail account. Then she opened a new message and started typing. When she was finished, she read it over.
Dear Greta,
I haven’t been honest with you. I’m not sick, and it isn’t fair of me to ask Florence to keep lying for me. The truth is, I wanted a few days off the grid to consider some things. I’ve done that now, and I’ve reached an important decision.
I’m going to change representation. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me over the last few years, but I need an agent who supports my literary ambitions wholeheartedly. I understand why you keep pushing me to write a sequel to Mississippi Foxtrot, but I want to write a different type of book, and it will take the time it takes. Since you can’t give me the space to do that, I’ll find someone who can.
Maud
Florence thought it hit the right note: direct, considered. She hovered the mouse over the Send button, then forced herself to click it. She logged out of the account, then abruptly shut the laptop and tossed it back onto the pile of clothes.
Done.
Nick had gone back to sleep. There was a stack of tattered secondhand paperbacks in the corner of his room. She started picking through it, and saw another book by Paul Bowles. She pulled it from the pile. It was called Let It Come Down. According to the back cover, it was his second novel. It was about a bank teller who moves to Tangier and falls into moral dissolution. She flipped through it. A page heading caught her eye: “The Age of Monsters.” She frowned. Where had she heard that phrase recently? She read a few pages:
When she heard the word “forceful” being used in connection with herself, even though she knew it was perfectly true and not intended as derogation, she immediately felt like some rather ungraceful predatory animal, and the sensation did not please her.
It hit her when she saw the word predatory. It was the same passage that she had transcribed for Helen back in Cairo. Helen had handwritten it, word for word, on a notepad and presented it as a draft of her own second novel. Why? Was it some sort of statement on the male-dominated literary canon? No. That was ridiculous. It was flat-out plagiarism.
This must have been why Helen was withholding the manuscript from Greta. But what was her endgame? It didn’t make any sense. She would have known she’d never get away with it. Someone was bound to catch her before the book was even printed. Was she deliberately trying to torch the Maud Dixon name?
“Whitney just texted,” Nick said behind her.
Florence looked at him in confusion. She’d forgotten where she was for a moment. “What?”
He was sitting up cross-legged on the mattress, naked. He repeated himself and held out his phone to her. She looked at the screen: “Hi Nick, please tell Florence I’m sorry about last night. I don’t know what got into me. Can I make it up to you guys tonight?”
F
lorence felt a wave of relief that she was okay.
She wrote back: “Hey, it’s Florence. No worries at all, but I think we’re just going to lay low tonight.” After she sent it, she deleted the entire message chain and blocked Whitney’s number. She handed the phone back to Nick, who tossed it onto the mattress without looking at it and reached out his arms toward her.
“Breakfast?” he asked. She nodded. She felt better. She was finally getting things under control.
They went to a nearby café run by a couple from New Zealand. Over coffee and avocado toast, they watched the sky change from light blue to purple.
“Whoa,” said Florence, pointing. Dark clouds were gathering forces on the horizon. Discarded napkins and cigarette butts started to swirl at their feet.
“Look at that wind,” said Nick. The leaves on the trees began struggling violently for release from their branches. It was as if the wind had been storing up its strength throughout the long, limpid day before for this. “I’ve gotta get my board.”
“You’re not going to go out on the water in this weather, are you?”
“Fuck yeah, that’s why I’m here.”
“Is it safe?”
Nick smiled at her. “You’re so sweet. It’s totally fine. I promise.”
Florence watched a man across the street struggle to attach a makeshift awning above a table laid with small, carved animals. The wind kept ripping the fabric out of his grasp.
“Have you gone out when it’s this stormy before?”
“Yeah, tons of times. Actually, the first week we were here, it was insane. Thirty knots, side-on shore wind, epic waves. A fucking shark washed up. A legit shark.”
Florence froze.
Nick laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to get eaten by a shark.”
Florence said nothing.
“Babe? You okay?”
All of a sudden, Florence recognized the gaping hole in her plan: Helen’s body was going to wash up. Bodies always washed up. It was simple luck that it hadn’t already. She looked out at the gathering storm with a new sense of dread. How could she have been so careless?
She turned back to Nick. “I have to go,” she said robotically.
“What, right now?”
“I feel sick all of a sudden. Anyway, you should go kiteboarding if you want to.”
“Alright, let’s go. I’ll drive you back.”
She nodded.
On the way to Villa des Grenades, she kept her eyes on the sky. It was a dark granite color, and the clouds churned around each other ominously. She wanted to leave Semat as soon as she could. She had to pack. And book a rental car. And maybe even move up her flight out of Morocco. She had to test out Helen’s passport sooner or later.
Would they put it together if a body washed up? Would Idrissi figure out what had happened?
Of course he would. It was the missing puzzle piece he’d been waiting for. Forensics would show how long the body had been in the water, and perhaps even where it had gone in, based on the tides and where it landed.
Then he’d come knocking on her door.
Nick slowed to a stop in the driveway. She climbed off his bike and stood for a moment looking at him. This was the last time she would see him, she supposed. She wanted to say something to mark the moment, but she didn’t know what.
“See you tonight?” he asked.
She nodded.
And with that unceremonious goodbye, he kicked the gear shift and drove off, raising a hand in salute.
“Be careful,” she called out after he’d already disappeared.
She turned back to the house. The leaves were shivering in the wind, showing their pale, vulnerable undersides. The birds had all disappeared. A few fat drops fell on the stone. She ran inside as the darker spots began to accumulate and the ground turned shiny and black.
She went right to the laptop and checked Helen’s email. Still no response from Greta. Fine. Good. She found a car rental agency in Semat and booked the only SUV they had, something called a Dacia Duster. It could handle bad weather, and it was available immediately. She looked out the window. The rain was thrashing the glass, and thunder shuddered in the distance. A few seconds later, the room was lit up by a flash of lightning. Could she even drive in this? With a cast on her wrist? Well, she’d find out.
She went into the kitchen to call Delta to see if she could change her flight, but when she picked up the phone to dial, she heard a tinny voice shouting from the receiver: “Hello? Is anyone there?”
She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Who is this?”
“Who is this?” Florence realized that she must have picked up before the phone had even begun to ring.
“This is Greta Frost calling for Helen Wilcox.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“Helen?”
Florence paused. “Yes.”
“Helen, I got your email. Could we please talk about this?”
“Okay.”
“Helen?” she asked again.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Or Florence?”
Shit. “Yeah?”
“It’s Florence?”
“Yep.”
“Why did you say you were Helen?”
“What? Sorry, this connection is terrible. There’s an insane storm going on here right now.”
Florence ran her shirt over the phone, trying to create the sound of static.
“Could you please put Helen on the phone?” Greta asked curtly.
“Pardon?”
“I’d like to speak to Helen. Now.”
“I’m sorry, she’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know, actually. She left this morning.”
“Where did she go?”
“I’m not sure.” And then, an idea: “She fired me.”
“She fired you?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” Greta paused. “She fired me too.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yes, that was my reaction too.” Then she asked, “Did she say why?”
“It was sort of convoluted. She kept saying I was on your side, whatever that means. She suspected I was passing information to you.” Florence paused. “Actually, she said that I should just write the sequel to Foxtrot; then you and I would both be happy.”
“What?”
“I mean, she was joking.”
“Obviously.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
“Did she say where she was going?” Greta asked.
“No…just that she needed to go on this journey alone.”
“What journey?”
“It was like an artistic journey, I think? That’s the impression I got. A…creative walkabout, of sorts.”
“Helen said she was going on a creative walkabout?” Greta asked doubtfully.
“Mm-hmm.”
“And did she say where this walkabout was going to take her?”
“I think that’s sort of the thing about walkabouts? They don’t have a destination?”
“Did she seem, I don’t know, in her right mind? This doesn’t sound like the Helen I know.”
“She sounded pretty sure.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then Greta said, “Where are you, exactly?”
“What?”
“Remind me of the name of the town you’re in?”
“Why?”
“I’m going to come.”
“Come here? To Morocco?”
“I think I have to. Helen is one of my biggest clients, and frankly I’m worried about her. She hasn’t been herself recently.”
“Greta, I don’t even know where she is.”
“We’ll find her.”
Florence said nothing.
“Florence—don’t worry, we’re going to get everything all sorted out. Helen is volatile, but she always settles down.”
“Uh-huh.�
��
“Listen, I’m going to get Lauren to book me a flight. You flew into Marrakesh, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then where?”
Florence paused. Then she slowly replaced the phone into its cradle.
It started ringing less than a minute later. Florence just stood there with her hand still on it, not moving, while Amina watched.
“This is why I don’t like talking on the fucking phone!!!” she wanted to scream. A creative walkabout? What the fuck was that? And Greta was coming here? No. No.
She released her frustration in a low, grumbly growl. As she did, the lights flickered and went out. Amina looked at her in alarm as if she’d done it.
37.
As Florence climbed the stairs she realized she was gnawing on her knuckle and abruptly stopped. Helen was right: Panic is a waste of energy.
She had a plan. She was leaving Semat today. She was leaving Morocco as soon as possible. And she was taking over Helen Wilcox’s life. No one was going to stand in her way. Not Officer Idrissi. Not Greta Frost. Not anyone.
Florence started packing. She would have liked to leave all of her old belongings behind, but that would raise questions. It shouldn’t look like two people had arrived at the house and only one had left. Especially if a body washed up. So she packed two bags, one filled with Helen’s things and one with her own. She dragged them one by one down the stairs, ignoring the pain in her wrist.
The rain had stopped while she was upstairs. She left the bags by the front door and walked out onto the back terrace. Everything was dripping. A few brave birds were hopping around, seeing what items of interest the storm had turned up. They were rewarded: Dozens of drowned worms, their bodies swollen with rainwater, clung to the top of blades of grass. Florence took a deep breath. The heat had broken.
She turned to go inside and tell Amina she was leaving. She’d need her to call a taxi to the car rental agency. She’d be back in Marrakesh by nightfall. She’d have to make a reservation at a different hotel, because tonight she was checking in as Helen Wilcox.
Suddenly she froze. She could hear voices coming from inside the house. She poked her head in.
From the foyer, a man’s voice said, “There she is.”
Who is Maud Dixon? Page 20
