by Denyse Woods
Her legs jerked; he was taking her apart. No one could see them. No one knew where they were. Only the dunes heard her cry out, as the keys dug deep into her palm.
A dome of light. The canvas was beginning to reflect the brightening sky. Gabriel was still sleeping, Thea still awake, failing to adjust to her new status: adulteress. It had gone too far. She had intended to seduce him only to a point, until she got the keys, fully expecting to be overcome with withering remorse even at that. But no remorse had come to halt proceedings, or any real resistance: she had been attracted to him for longer than she had feared him.
Now she understood how Sachiv had felt, when he had skulked out of her hotel bedroom, like a tortured dog.
No. This was different. Alex would have wanted her to do whatever it took to get back to him. Even the thing she did. An unfaithful wife coming home was better than a coffin. She had betrayed him in order not to be lost to him, and she would tell him everything, almost, from luring Gabriel into the tent, to feeling him up and hiding the keys—everything except the sex. And this deceit would be fair, and kinder than hurting Alex for the sake of a clear conscience.
She reached out, quietly, and found the bundle of keys nestling in the corner of the tent, but she no longer sought escape. Gabriel suffered, and his suffering entranced her. He didn’t deserve abandonment, of any kind, or the same fate she would have endured had he driven off. She was not a murderess, not cruel enough to run off and leave him in another great vacuum. During the night the jeep had seemed to be the solution, but where would it have taken her, when she knew neither her south, nor her east, nor from which direction they had come? Within half a kilometer she would have been lost, which was the same as being dead. So even now there could be no dawn break. Gabriel was her only way out.
The pale blue of the canvas was visible now, and reassuring. Somehow she slept.
She woke when Gabriel sat up, and crawled, naked, out of the tent. It was cold. She pulled the sleeping-bag around her and put her head through the gap. Sunlight was tiptoeing over the dunes, and the desert, so menacing hours before, had taken on a chummy aspect, its Humpty Dumpty hills marked with jagged shade. Gabriel was standing by a dead branch, a stream of urine giving it a sharp drink. Thea admired him: square shoulders, perfect butt, long legs. What a beauty. What a mess. She retreated into the tent, giddy and weak with relief.
In the creeping daylight, his strange words amounted mostly to those of a haunted man, more disengaged than unhinged. A railway carriage unshackled, left behind, no longer wanted, but still on the tracks. She wondered at what exact point his life had swerved off course. Was it the gift abandoned, like a foundling child, left on a doorstep where no one could pick it up because it belonged to someone else? In abandoning it, he had surely discarded a part of his own soul, which in turn had discarded him.
She heard a sort of roar, a bellow—inhuman. She held her phone away to look at it. Was that where it had come from? The roar of rocks, of space, and Gabriel leaping in. She could see him floating down, arms adrift, like a skydiver. A skydiver without a parachute; a climber without ropes. Another roar came up from the depths of the cave—
She woke, startled. A nightmare. No cave, only canvas. Yet she could hear it still, the gasp of the abyss, as if the earth were inhaling a cherished son. The Majlis al-Jinn was calling him.
Gabriel hadn’t returned to the tent. It was deadly quiet outside. Thea swiveled around again to look out. What was he up to? More shamanic circles? She stepped out and straightened up. No sign of him. Her head jerked—left, right, back.
Dunes.
Sand.
Curves.
Jesus. How long had she been asleep?
“Gabriel? . . . Gabriel!”
Fuck.
She dived into the tent, grabbed his shirt and scrambled out. Where the hell was he now? She looked inside the jeep and under it, turned around, calling him. The desert mocked her little voice, which didn’t echo or carry, but stayed in her throat and in their crater. Her body rattling, she headed for the highest crest and struggled up its flank, feet sinking, sand shifting, as she twisted in every direction looking for any speck of movement. The sands sighed and whimpered. He had wandered off, the bastard, abandoned her to nowhere. Frying. Dying. Family. Foolish! Breathless, she came to the top of the rise, her head spinning, but saw only hills and crevasses stretching—
Against the flesh-colored sands, Gabriel was camouflaged, except for his dark hair, which made a black dash over to the left where, in a slight depression, he was crouching, defecating.
Thea turned away and made to go down the slope, but her legs gave up and she sank onto the sand. A sob escaped, and another. Reprieved, again. Safe, again. Tears flowed, until a hand on her shoulder made her yelp.
“What’s a man gotta do to get a bit of privacy around here?”
Thea laughed—an involuntary burst of gratitude. He was there. There. She would be spared the frying dying and loved him for it.
“Hey,” he said, sitting down. “What’s the matter?”
Quirky grin, clear eyes—this was Gabriel proper. Tour guide Gabriel. Naked, gorgeous Gabriel.
“I thought you’d wandered off.”
He pulled a face. “Wandered off?” He looked down at his body. “I’d be a piece of bacon under a grill.”
“I panicked. After last night . . .”
He pulled her close. She yielded. “Last night,” he said, “was . . . unexpected.”
“It really threw me.”
“Me too.” With his chin, he pushed back the shirt and kissed her shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
He glanced at his erection. “What do you think?”
“I mean last night. You scared me.”
“I scared myself.”
“Why were you reciting those verses? What was that about?”
He stopped kissing her. “Verses?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“I remember being seduced.”
Her shoulders sagged. “The sex. Of course. You only remember the sex.”
“I won’t tell.” His hand lingered on her knee.
“You were ambling, rambling.”
His fingers moved along her leg. “I sleepwalk sometimes.” Nibbling her collarbone, he pushed the shirt fully off her. “Terrible bloody sleepwalker.”
“You tried to drive off without me!”
“For God’s sake, why would I leave you, now that I have you?”
“You almost did!”
“Never.” He rubbed his stubble along her shoulder. It was terrible. Terrible, what it was doing to her, what she was allowing him to do. There was no reason for it this time, no excuse. Her breathing deepened. Stop, said a weak, unconvincing voice inside her head. Don’t stop.
“A piece of important advice.” Gabriel stood up suddenly, offering his hand. “Never sit arse-naked in the sand. You’ll regret it for days.” His fingers tightened around hers as he pulled her to her feet. The way he threw her about was dizzying. Self-conscious, she needed to be near him, to wear him almost, like a piece of clothing, so she moved against him, felt his chest on her breast and his arm around her back. Gabriel had never looked so tame, so loving. “Walk,” he said, pushing her gently away from his safe skin. “Enjoy the Garden of Eden.”
“This? Paradise?”
He nodded. “The day after the apple, God turned Eden into desert.”
“And they had to find their way out.”
“Without GPS.”
It was strange, wonderful, to walk naked along the ridge of a dune, kicking her feet, while the sun, still kind, was rising on her skin, warming her, head to toes, back to front. Her hair was full of sand. Her ears, too. Where did she end and the desert begin?
When she turned around, Gabriel was doing the salute to the sun on a shelf of level ground. All thoughts of flight, of hurrying back to civilization, seemed silly now. Civilization meant accountability. Their affair would be sh
ort. Flash in the pan. Dash in the sands. Being there was like being nowhere, and what took place nowhere could not have taken place. To secure escape, she had seduced him; to experience escape, she wanted to do so again. In the pale yellow light, she laid out his shirt and sat on it, to be there when he was done, and watched him extend his limbs in yogic poses on the toasted earth.
It brought on another wave of pity, a pull on her heart. Too close to him now, she had become part of the oddity that was Gabriel. Why else would she pity him, or admire his peculiarity, the way he lived and functioned like any man, yet existed in a realm of his own making? He had no other option. After dismantling his brother, there wasn’t much to be done except take cover. And what a job it must be, she thought, waking up every day knowing that while he swanned about in the wadis, Max struggled to get out of bed.
Thea wondered what would become of him when she was gone. Fate might have been kinder by leaving Gabriel in the comfort of his fantasy that Prudence would one day return.
The invitation was quickly read. The salute completed, Gabriel scrambled over and without any fuss—since the seduction was already done—fell back on her and pressed in, there on the flank of the dune, while she opened her eyes at the sky.
“You see how patience pays off,” he said, his lips against her ear.
She lifted her knees around his back. No one would ever know.
“Can you feel us?” he whispered, touching her.
Not one—other—person—would know.
“Both of us.” Gabriel said. “In you.”
“What?”
“Her and me, Prudence. You and her. We’re all together now.”
Thea yelped, wriggled, pulled away. “Get off!”
“Ow! Fuck!”
“What did you say?”
“‘Fuck.’”
Thea stared, panting. There again. Gone again.
“What’s got into you?” he gasped, grasping his groin.
She scurried down the dune, like a crab scuttling, her hands and feet beneath her, until she reached the level and ran to the tent, where she rummaged through their clothes. Her phone was in her pocket. Pulling on her own shirt, she collided with Gabriel as she crawled out again, but pushed past him and headed for another dune and ran up it, the sand pulling her, sucking her backward, impeding her, as if someone were gripping her ankles. Gabriel was pulling on his jeans outside the tent.
Her phone, lifted to the heavens, found no signal. “Shit!”
She turned another way, but Gabriel took the phone from her hand, saying, “You’re out of range.”
“Jesus Christ!” He was dressed already. There already.
“Next time you get a fit of guilt, try not to castrate me, would you? What the hell’s come over you?”
“You tell me some jinn lover of yours is in me, and you wonder what’s wrong?”
“I never said that. I didn’t say anything!”
Doubts harassed her. Vacillating so fluidly between fear and desire, she no longer knew if he had spoken at all. “You were down by the tent. Just now, you were down there. How did you get up here?”
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re babbling.”
“Me? Babbling?” She heard hysteria in her voice. “I want to leave now.”
“Fine.”
There was movement down by the tent. Sand spiralling up. Dust devil. Thea grabbed her phone from him. “The only reason I had sex with you was because you were going to drive off.”
“I told you. I will never leave you. And you can’t leave me either.”
Given their situation, there was a truth in those words that drained her. The sun’s early kindness was over. Its warmth had become its heat, and its heat was becoming its deadliness. The aim it took. Like phone signals, clicking onto coordinates. A shard of fire on her scalp. She had yet to drink. She must drink. When did she last drink? “I have to get back to Muscat.”
“We’ll go to the cave first. I want you to see Majlis al-Jinn.”
“No!” That earthly howl echoed plaintively. “No way. The only place I’m going is Muscat! I have a flight to catch.”
Gabriel smiled, walking backward. “I’ll pack up.”
And he did. The scene was so ordinary—a man collapsing a tent, opening the back doors of his 4x4—but the ordinary wouldn’t hold. It kept shifting, moving, leaving Thea adrift. She had to phone Abid. Get him to come. Hoping Gabriel’s phone would have a stronger signal, she went down to the jeep, reached in and took it from the dashboard. It did have signal, but only marginally better than hers. She went to his contacts and scrolled up for Abid’s number—and noticed something.
The soul drained out of her, down her legs, through her feet and into the Omani ground. Love and fear.
Gabriel came over with her sleeping bag. “What are you looking at?”
“There’s no . . .”
“Reading my messages now?” He winked, shook out the sleeping bag, scattering sand.
“No Max,” she said, “in your Contacts.”
Gabriel kneeled down to roll up the bag.
She stared at the names.
“Yeah, well. Max is Max. He doesn’t have a phone, just like he doesn’t have a life.”
“Kim thinks he might actually have died, that that’s why—”
“It amounts to the same thing. If you’re not really living, you might as well be dead. Now hurry up or we’ll never make it to the cave.”
“I’m going to Muscat.”
He looked up, stood up. “No.”
“Take me back to Muscat! I need to go home.”
Gently, swiftly, before her very eyes, Gabriel slid into his fretful self—grimacing against the sun, moving back and forth, watching her. In a flicker of sunlight, he became the stranger of the night before—his movements jerky, his words fast. “You don’t know where you need to be, Prudence.”
Seasick, Thea took on another slope and climbed it, holding Gabriel’s phone high, waiting for it to properly find its home, click into its beam and display a stronger signal. A way to the world. . . . Instead, that one bar of signal vanished. There was no way to call Abid, to beg him to come and meet them along the road, to save her from Gabriel and Gabriel from his curse. Her head pounded. Her throat was parched. They needed to drink, both of them, then, somehow, she would persuade Gabriel to drive to the nearest town. Meanwhile, they were alone. Almost.
Thea turned.
There she was.
Down on the flat, Gabriel was talking to her.
To her. Same clothes, same hair, same self.
“Go away from here.” Thea’s hand, burning on the hot bonnet of the jeep, was the only thing keeping her upright.
You would repel her.
You are stronger.
They turned. She was holding a bottle. She said, “It’s only me,” and lifted the bottle to drink. The scraping thirst in Thea’s throat eased.
Gabriel stepped toward her. “Thea—”
“Why is she me?” It wasn’t like looking in the mirror, or watching a home movie, or being out of body. No. Seeing another person who was her own self was like being in Hell. She managed to speak. “Go away.” Three times, Abid had said. Tell them three times to leave, the Prophet, peace be upon him, says in the Hadith. “You can’t have him anymore. Leave us al—”
“Don’t!” Gabriel cried. “Don’t say it again.”
Double vision. Double perspective. Whose arms were these? Whose eyes? “Get into the jeep, Gabriel. You’ll be all right. We’re leaving.”
Prudence poured water over her face. It wet Thea’s hair and cooled her body, as she cried out, “Go from here! Go!”
Someone said, “You can’t leave, Thea.”
“No? I have the keys. And the water. Get in the car, Gabriel. This is over now.”
Not quite. The other, suddenly, lurched at her.
Terrorized, she heard a growl come from deep within her chest and, gathering all her own limbs and with a punch of determination, s
he pushed past Gabriel, fought him off, clambered into the driving seat.
Ignition. Accelerator. Thrust.
Sand flew out as the wheels took the slope.
Behind, Gabriel was running.
Acknowledgments
There is a small army behind every novel, and I would like to thank mine. I am indebted to Dettia O’Reilly, Honorary Consul of Oman in Ireland; to David Sergeant, Hatim Altaie, Yayha Al Hashmi, and Aziza al Habsi for their guidance, knowledge, and generous hospitality on the ground in Oman; and to Kathleen Hindle, the most amenable of traveling companions, and our driver, Rashid. Warmest thanks and appreciation also to the team at Hoopoe Fiction, especially my wonderful editor, Nadine El-Hadi, for her clarity, conviction, and wisdom; my peerless copyeditor, Hazel Orme; Katie Holland, for her extraordinary patience, and Neil Hewison, for opening the door. It is an honor and a delight to be published by the American University in Cairo Press, not least because the first paragraph of fiction I ever wrote was inspired by Cairo.
I am indebted to the Arts Council of Ireland for the Literature Bursary Award and to Cork County Council Arts Office for the Artists’ Bursary Award. The dedicated work of arts administrators—those who keep the arts and artists afloat—often goes unseen, so I would like to acknowledge the support of Sarah Bannan, of the Arts Council of Ireland; Francis Humphrys, of West Cork Music; and, most particularly, Sinead Donnelly, of Cork County Council Library & Arts Service.
Thanks also to Sue Leonard, Elaine Cotter, Bernadette Gallagher, Ahdaf Soueif, and Anita Desai; to Vincent Woods, for permission to quote from “The Good People”; to Tim Mackintosh-Smith, my guide in all things literary; to Finola Merivale and Tamzin Merivale, for being assiduous, shrewd, and fair readers; and to William Merivale, the writer’s perfect companion.
My agent, Jonathan Williams: six books, twenty years; so much learnt, so many thanks.
