“What are you doing in Tangier, Lucy?” Alice asked, shaking me from my reverie.
I blinked, startled by her words. “I’m here to see you, of course.” I smiled, my voice catching on the words as I worked to hide the emotion behind them.
I looked at Alice then—properly looked at her—for the first time. She was, as I had noted before, slimmer than the last time I had seen her—paler too, which was strange, considering the climate. There were dark circles underneath her eyes and she looked, I thought, like she hadn’t slept properly for quite some time. Her fingers were worrying at that spot just below her throat, which had turned a more threatening color since I had first arrived. She was wearing a housecoat, despite the hour, a yellow piece that tied at the waist with a simple sash and nearly touched her ankles. Her face was bare, without any trace of paint, and her hair—that once brilliant, thick tangle of golden curls—was shorter now and hung limply, its dingy color indicating that it was in need of a good wash.
“Is everything all right, Alice?” I moved closer, setting my suitcase down beside my feet.
“Of course, of course it is.” Those rushed words again.
“You would tell me, wouldn’t you? If something was wrong? If you and John—”
She flinched. “No, no. It’s all fine. Really. You’ve just surprised me, that’s all.” She smiled, though there was an edge in her voice—something sharp, steely.
But then her shoulders seemed to relax, her smile became less tight, and for the first time, she seemed to notice me: from the new bouffant-style hairdo, held into place by a generous amount of hair spray—although it had already begun to frizz in the heat, I noted sourly—to the dark, belted shirtdress that had cost as much as one month’s rent. It was a far cry from our college days, I knew, but conscious of the fact that I would be seeing Alice for the first time in more than a year, I had wanted it to be evident how well I had done since those days—not in a gloating fashion, the way that other girls behaved around one another, passively flaunting their success only in order to make the others green with envy. No, I wanted to show Alice just how much our days and nights spent together at college had meant, how all our dreaming of the future had not just been a fanciful way to pass the time. I had meant it, every single word. That was what I wanted to show her. That I had never lied, not about any of it, despite what had happened between us.
“You look well, Lucy,” she observed, though I thought it sounded as though it were a concession, as though the words had left her lips despite, rather than for, something.
“So do you,” I replied, eager to match her compliment—whether easily given or not—although I suspected we both knew the words were offered out of politeness.
She smiled again, that same inward smile I had witnessed often during those first few days of college, when she had been so shy and uncertain of herself. Toward the end of our four years, she had shed almost every one of those diminishing attributes, and yet here they were again, reemerging one by one. “I would offer you tea,” she said, as though anxious to cover any patches of silence, “but John’s forgot the bottle of gas again, I’m afraid. I won’t be able to boil any water until he brings home another one. But why don’t I show you to the sitting room. Then I can fix us another sort of drink,” she suggested, reaching for my suitcase.
I stopped her, insisting that she let me carry it, fearful that she would buckle under its weight. I looked at her shoulders as she turned, the thin material of her robe doing nothing to hide the two jagged points underneath. I took in the sharp hollows of her cheeks, the bony elbows, the way her hands seemed to shake, almost imperceptibly, but still there.
“I can’t quite believe how long it’s been,” I said, following her down the hallway. As we walked, I noted that almost every inch of the apartment was filled, so that it was nearly impossible to walk without tripping over the leg of a chair or the pouf of a cushion. Not even the walls were safe, I soon discovered, as on top of the layers of paint sat an additional one made up of various bric-a-brac. Plates seemed to be of a particular fascination, I noted. Silver, copper, china, some of them painted, some of them bare—there seemed to be no real pattern that I could decipher, row upon row of them affixed to the brightly colored walls.
“I know,” she replied at last. “Bennington feels like a lifetime ago.”
We moved into the sitting room, and I placed my suitcase down beside my feet, onto the carpet. A few seconds passed, both of us looking around the room, as if the way to reconnect, to find our way back to each other again, to that time, was hiding somewhere in its crevices, in the foreign city of Tangier.
“I’ll just go and fetch us those drinks,” she said, making her way determinedly to the edge of the room.
“Thank you, Alice.” I reached out my hand to touch hers. At my gesture, she flinched, the small movement pressing against my skin. “Alice, are you sure everything is all right?” I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.
At first, she would not look at me, but then slowly she lifted her thin, hollowed face, her eyes still shining and bright. “Of course, Lucy.” She moved quickly away, back toward the hallway. “Everything is wonderful.”
Later, I reflected on the fact that she had not mentioned the accident.
But then, neither had I.
I SPENT SEVERAL MOMENTS IN THE BATHROOM, a towel pressed against my face, willing the color to disappear from my cheeks. When I emerged, my hair still matted to my face with sweat, I discovered a stack of pink, overly starched towels in front of the door, a few scalloped soaps sitting on top, and the sound of Alice, singing from the kitchen.
I left the towels, following the lyrics and smiling to myself as I walked through the hallway, my hands attempting to push my hair back into place. She was singing a song I recognized from the radio. The girls in my most recent boardinghouse had gone in together on a cream-and-gold-colored Silvertone, at first taking turns keeping it in their respective rooms, more to show it off than anything else, until it had at last ended up downstairs, largely forgotten, becoming a permanent fixture of the common area.
I hummed the melody. “I see you haven’t improved your singing,” I teased, my voice raised just a note or two, so that she could hear me more easily.