The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

by Vendela Vida

  One of the detectives is seated at the computer and the two others sit atop bare desks. They sit like detectives.

  “We are all here to listen to details of crime,” one detective tells you. “We saw video. We saw what thief looks like. We do not think he was part of the conference. We think his badge was . . .”

  He can’t find the word.

  “Fake,” you suggest. You notice there’s an echo in the room.

  “Yes. You are not surprised?”

  “No,” you say. You are not surprised.

  “We also see from video he has two people he works with. They both have badges too. One outside the hotel, the other also in the lobby.”

  “There were three people?”

  “Yes.”

  This makes you feel better. You were the target of a crime ring. There was probably little you could have done differently. They had fabricated badges and were going to rob someone, so they robbed you.

  “Do they do this at other hotels? Make badges and rob people?”

  “No, we have not heard of this before,” another detective says. “It is first time.”

  “Oh,” you say. You’re not sure you believe this.

  “We will start with entering information,” says the man at the computer.

  “Okay.”

  “What was your grandfather’s name?”

  “My grandfather?”

  “Yes, it is a formality here. We have to fill out the forms.”

  “Anthony,” you say. You have not thought of your grandfather in years. He died when you were five, and he was not such a good man. The last time you and your sister saw him you stood in front of his reclining chair, dressed in matching blue jumpers, patterned with Raggedy Ann dolls, and holding your parents’ hands. Only years later did you realize you were all there to say good-bye.

  Now you are giving his name to a Moroccan detective. It takes the detective five minutes to type the name. The computer or the keyboard—maybe both—are giving him trouble.

  “What is your father’s name?”

  “Gian-Carlo,” you say.

  He spends five minutes typing it. He has difficulty first with “Gian,” then with the hyphen, and then with “Carlo.”

  “Listen,” you say, “I’m wondering if we can get to the part where I tell you what was stolen? I’m afraid I’ll never get my computer back . . . I’ve already lost a day.”

  “You lost a die?” one of the detectives asks. “What is a die?”

  “No, I lost a day. It’s an expression,” you say. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Was it a Dell?” another detective asks.

  “No, a day.”

  “The computer was not a Dell?”

  “Oh, a Dell computer!” you say.

  “So it was a Dell.”

  “No, it was an Apple.”

  The three men look at you blankly. “An Apple Macintosh?” you say, slowly.

  The phone rings and the detective at the desk stares at it, startled.

  He says a few words into the receiver, glances at you, and is off the phone in twenty seconds.

  “It’s the police chief,” he says. “He wants you to come to his office. He has development.”

  You are directed across the hall where a door is open.

  The police chief beckons you in and asks you to close the door behind you. In contrast to the three detectives who were thin and nervous-seeming, the police chief seems even larger than he was yesterday, and his office could not be more different from the spare, beige room you just left. A plush burgundy rug expands to the edges of the room, and a blown-up map of Casablanca takes up one wall. The curtains are burgundy as well and cascade to the ground in thick folds. There’s the same photo of the King of Morocco, but this one is framed in ornate gold.

  From a coatrack in the corner hang two dry-cleaned suits and at least three shirts, all in plastic bags. A tie that’s already been tied hangs from a hook.

  “We have found a black backpack,” the police chief says.

  “That’s fantastic,” you say. You are stunned. You were wrong to question him when he was 100 percent confident it would be retrieved. This man radiates competence.

  “Not everything is in it, but it has a passport and a wallet with credit cards. Thieves here are never interested in credit cards.”

  You wish you had known this before you canceled all of yours.

  He produces a black backpack from behind the desk where he’s sitting. It’s not your backpack. You know it’s not your backpack but you don’t have time to say anything because he’s already unzipping it and pulling out a dark blue American passport. With a snap of his wrist, he places the passport on the desk before you, as though he’s a blackjack dealer giving you your last card.

  “I imagine everything will be easier if you have this,” he says.

  You open the front page of the passport and see that while the photo resembles you—the woman has brown straight hair and bright wide-set eyes—it is not your passport. It belongs, you see, to a woman named Sabine Alyse.

  The chief of police places a red wallet in front of you.

  “They took the cash from the wallet but it still has the credit cards.” You wonder if these credit cards, like yours, have been canceled. You imagine using these cards to check in to the Regency and ordering everything on the menu before sleeping all the sleep you have not slept.

  It strikes you as relevant that the police chief has not asked you for your name, that he has been careful with how he describes the backpack, wallet, and passport. Here is the backpack, here is the wallet, here is the passport. Not once as he called any of them yours.

  You stare at the coatrack, at the expensive-looking tie that’s already tied. Shaped like a noose. You do not have many options. You know this. The police chief is suggesting you claim something that isn’t yours. And you’re not sure what will happen if you protest. You stare at the map of Casablanca on the wall. The city is large and overwhelming, its many rectangular piers jutting out from the rest of the city like large teeth.

  You now know you will take the backpack and the passport and the wallet and check in to the Regency. Once you’re in the Regency you will feel safe. You need to feel safe to sleep. Once you’ve slept you will go to the American embassy and tell them it was a mistake, that the police returned the wrong bag to you. That is the plan.

  For now, you need to get out of this police station. You need to get out of the Golden Tulip. You will not tell the police or the Golden Tulip where you’re going.

  You glance down under the desk and see that the chief’s shoes are to the right of where he’s sitting. He’s taken them off while talking to you. He’s become more comfortable; you’ve grown more tense.

  “So everything is finished,” he says.

  You consider bringing up the fact that your computer and many other belongings are still missing. But the words he uttered—“So everything is finished”—was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes,” you say.

  “Good,” he says. “Then you can put that in your article. How good the police are here in Casablanca,” he says.

  “Yes,” you say. You’d almost forgotten about your New York Times lie.

  “I just need you to sign a document here saying that a backpack was returned to you along with a wallet and a passport.”

  “Okay,” you say.

  He slides a form across the desk and hands you a pen. On the form you sign the name you saw in the passport.

  You sign “Sabine Alyse.”

  The chief of police doesn’t look at the passport to compare the signatures.

  “I do need one thing, though,” he says.

  You panic. This is when he’ll arrest you for pretending to be someone else, for claiming someone else’s belongings.

  “I need to get this paper stamped.”

  Before standing, he shifts strangely in his seat. He’s slipping his shoes back on beneath the desk. Then he gets up and leaves the room
.

  You stare at the closed passport. You don’t open it. You glance around the room once again, and study the King of Morocco’s eyes. It’s taking the police chief a long time. What is he doing? You tell yourself that when he returns you’ll say it was a misunderstanding. You don’t know why you acted as if someone else’s backpack and passport and wallet belong to you. You’ll explain that you haven’t slept in days.

  The door opens and he comes in with the paper you’ve signed with Sabine’s name. It now bears a large bloodred stamp. A circle with Arabic words in its center.

  “Here’s your paper,” he says. “Your proof.”

  Finally something is yours. You put the paper in the black backpack and zip it closed. The police chief extends his hand, and you take it. He shakes it firmly and with meaning: you understand he is communicating that a deal has been made and you are to uphold your end of it. You feel a wart on the side of his thumb press into the side of your own thumb. After what seems like a full minute, he releases your hand. You walk down the stairs of the police station nervously, your shoes loud on the stone steps.

  Outside, the driver is checking the dashboard of the car to see if he got a ticket. You run toward him as though he’s a lost friend.

  “Let’s go,” you say.

  “You got your backpack!” he says. He looks surprised. “So we go back to the hotel?”

  “Yes,” you say, and your mood dampens.

  You place the backpack beside you on the backseat and unzip it carefully as though worried about disturbing its contents.

  You open the U.S. passport and take a better look at Sabine Alyse. To be more convincing you could cut your hair. You notice her smooth complexion. You had acne as a teenager and it left raked lines across your cheeks and chin.

  You flip through the passport, taking note of the countries Sabine has been to: Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Japan, and now Morocco. Until recently she has traveled only to countries that operate with the precision of expensive electronics.

  You look through her wallet: Blue Cross insurance card suggesting she has a job, AAA insurance card meaning she owns a car, store credit at J.Crew that gives you an idea of the way she must dress. Crisply. Cleanly. Never too daring or dark.

  Next you pull out her notebook, a red Moleskine. On the first page is a line where the owner is asked to write their name, and another line where the owner is asked to state the reward for finding the notebook in the event that it’s lost. The reward Sabine has indicated is “Happiness.”

  You flip to a random entry, dated a month before. You see the words “I tried to tell them it wasn’t dangerous.”

  You close the journal. You have already done this girl enough harm by claiming her things. Reading her diary makes it worse.

  “Everything is okay? Everything is returned to you?” the driver asks. His voice startles you. You had almost forgotten he was there, that you were in his car.

  “Not everything,” you say.

  This quiets him.

  “I need to stop at a shop soon,” you say. You know that before you check into the Regency you will have to confirm that Sabine Alyse’s credit cards work, you will need to find out whether they’ve been canceled.

  “What kind of shop?” the driver asks.

  You are at a stop sign and out your window you see a narrow store with a pyramid of body lotion on display in the window.

  “This one is good,” you say. He pulls over on the next block.

  “If okay with you,” he says, “I wait in car so we don’t get ticket.”

  The short, older gentleman who runs the shop ignores you when you enter. He continues talking to his friends, also older men, also short. You are still without toiletries. You pick out a toothbrush, toothpaste, a hairbrush, face wash, and a pair of scissors. Would you really cut your hair to look like Sabine Alyse?

  You bring everything to the glass counter. Through the top of the counter you see makeup below. The lipsticks and blushes are displayed on a deep blue velvet material, the way a fine jeweler might showcase rubies or emeralds.

  The shopkeeper’s friends leave, and he finally turns his attention to you. His smile is kind, sudden, as though he’s an old acquaintance.

  “Welcome! I have perfect makeup,” he says, looking into your eyes.

  Since you were a teenager and developed your first bout of acne, makeup consultants at Nordstrom’s and MAC have bestowed advice on you. “Bring attention to your eyes and away from your skin,” they’ve instructed as they rainbow eye shadow across your lids. “Bring attention to your mouth with a bright color,” they’ve told you, swiping alarming red over your lips.

  Distract, distract, distract is everyone’s advice.

  But this shopkeeper, wearing a green sweater vest, tells you he has the perfect makeup for you, and because he’s not looking worriedly and disapprovingly and judgmentally at your skin, you trust him.

  “Let me show you,” he says. “May I?”

  Yes, you nod.

  He applies a thin layer of foundation. “You want it thin,” he says. “No powder.”

  “You’re right,” you say. “Everyone always wants to do powder and that accentuates it.”

  “Too fast,” he says. “I don’t understand. Can you say again, please?”

  “Good,” you say. “You are right.”

  He applies a makeup brush over your face and you close your eyes.

  “Look,” he says, and you open your eyes. He’s holding a handheld mirror up to your face, and you have no choice but to look. There’s still the palimpsest of acne, but for the first time in fifteen years, your skin looks almost smooth.

  “Can I take this to the window?” you say, carrying the mirror toward natural light.

  You have consulted a number of unhelpful dermatologists over the years and have discovered a secret from a portly shopkeeper in Casablanca who looks into your eyes instead of frowning at your skin. You tell him you’d like to buy a bottle of the foundation, and then tell him you’ll buy four. And two brushes. You want the magic to continue. You hope the credit card works.

  The man tallies up your purchases by hand on graph paper and gives you a discount for each item. You hand him one of Sabine’s credit cards and you wait. You are suddenly convinced it will not go through. It’s taking a long time. But then the man at the beauty store tears off the receipt and hands you a pen. “Please sign.”

  You smile so broadly your face almost hurts. He sees your pleasure and hands you his business card and requests that you tell your friends about his store. Yes, of course, you say, you’ll tell your friends when you get back to the U.S. the address of a narrow and nondescript beauty shop in Casablanca that sold you toiletries at a discount and charged a credit card that was not yours.

  You return to the car and maybe it’s your imagination, but once you’re on the road again, the driver continues to sneak looks at you in his rearview mirror. He notices something is different.

  The driver takes you back to the Golden Tulip and you thank him. You tell him you wish you could tip him, and he too looks dismayed that this is not an option. You flee the car quickly, wanting to escape his disappointment. You go to your room, which has still not been made up—the bedspread is contorted into an unwieldy bundle at the foot of the mattress—and pack up your things.

  You take out the scissors you purchased at the beauty store and cut your long brown hair to shoulder length, like Sabine’s. You place all the hair you’ve cut onto a long piece of toilet paper that you’ve stretched across the sink counter. When you’re done you roll up the tissue with the hair inside and flush it down the toilet. You flush again.

  You leave your key card on top of the television set. You walk through the lobby without informing anyone you’re checking out, without looking in the direction of the clerks at the desk. You exit through the front door with your luggage, and the black backpack over your shoulder, and turn right.

  Something about this seems familiar to you. You remember t
hat this is exactly what the thief did when he left the Golden Tulip. He pulled the backpack onto one shoulder, exited the front door, and turned right.

  You walk down the boulevard, called Place des Nations Unies, dragging your suitcase, and you immediately sense your error. There are no other Western women walking down the street alone. You keep your eyes on the Regency in the distance and you move quickly through the crowds. The sun is high in the sky and it’s hot on your skin and too many faces are turning toward you. You half expect to see someone wearing your backpack.

  When you arrive at the Regency, a doorman in a suit opens the door for you, greets you with “good afternoon,” and then stares out at the distance to see how you’ve arrived—by limo or van? You are pulling your suitcase and wearing Sabine’s black backpack and you realize that you’re probably the only person who’s arrived at the hotel by foot. You pass through a security portal and enter an enormous lobby. Its sofas are mocha colored and deep and plush. The kind of sofas that are easy to relax into, and difficult to rise from. White orchids are staged artfully throughout the lobby and Lauryn Hill music pulses softly through the speakers. Everyone is dressed as though going to a business meeting in London or an upscale lunch in New York. No one is dressed as though they are in Morocco—they are not dressed in long skirts and scarves and sandals, the clothes you imagined yourself wearing here.

  To your left is the reception desk. The area in front of the desk is large and vacant and there is nowhere to sit. A theft would not happen here because there’s no place for a thief to linger, to watch. Two women stand behind the desk, available for anyone who might want to check in. No women worked behind the desk at the Golden Tulip.

  You approach the kinder-looking of the two women, the one with long hair who smiles with her eyes, and tell her you don’t have a reservation but you called this morning and understand there’s room at the hotel. She studies the computer and confirms this. You give her Sabine Alyse’s passport and her credit card.