Vendela Vida - The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

You have to force yourself to slow down as you tear off pieces from the baguette that accompanied your omelet, which has already disappeared.

Soon you are so full, so good; you lie down on the bed. But the moment you do you are fully alert, your toes pointed. You tell yourself you are exhausted and need to sleep. You tell yourself that if you’re not asleep in ten minutes you can get up.

When you wake you see it’s 3:14 P.M. You’ve been asleep two hours. Now, with your mind rested, the reality of what you’ve done settles in: you’ve taken someone else’s credit card and passport. You have shaken hands firmly with the police chief, accepting his not-above-the-table offer.

What have you done? This is a major crime. This is a State Department issue. What will they do to you?

You need to get to the embassy. You will explain. You were afraid of not taking what the police were offering you; it was of paramount importance that you get out of the Golden Tulip, that the hotel and the police might have been in on the scheme together. Your life was in danger.

The embassy will forgive you. You’re sure everyone there will forgive you.

You shower and douse yourself with the small bottles of shampoo and conditioner and soap provided by the hotel. The fragrance is strong, herbal, unisex. As you towel off you notice that you smell like someone else, and it’s not entirely unpleasant. You take note of the two white bathrobes hanging on either side of the bathtub. Their belts are tied loosely around their midsections as though a very thin person is inside each of them. You carry one bathrobe to the closet and hang it where you won’t have to see it.

You dress in the most presentable outfit you have packed, a pleated skirt and a silk blouse and a light scarf. It’s a combination you’ve never worn before. You bought the skirt because you wanted something demure for your trip, something you could imagine wearing when touring mosques.

The document from the police chief is lying flat on the desk. You will need to show the document to the embassy. You need proof that the police gave you Sabine Alyse’s passport and credit card, that you didn’t steal them. The document is everything. You can’t lose it. In fact, you should make copies. You will go to the business center and make copies.

In the lobby you ask the long-haired woman who checked you in where the business center is, and she points you down a corridor to her left. You pass a currency-exchange booth, where another woman is working behind glass. The existence of the currency-exchange booth reminds you that you have no money, and no ability to access cash. You only have a credit card and no pin number.

You enter the business center and find the copier. The copier requires a prepaid card, so you return to the long-haired woman at reception.

You tell her you would like to use the copier and she asks how many copies you’d like to make and you tell her two. She casually hands you a card that allows you to use the Xerox machine. “Is it okay if I charge the copies to your room?” she asks.

“That’s fine,” you say casually, with the air of someone who has a choice.

You make your way back to the business center, again passing the currency-exchange booth, where the woman working behind the glass is now licking her fingers, counting money, as though to taunt you. An hour ago it was food that you desired, food that made you greedy; now it is the sight of money that makes you want a lot of it. You avert your gaze.

Inside the business center, you place the document the police chief gave you in the Xerox machine and make one copy to test it before making more. The paper that comes out is blank; you didn’t place the original facedown. You take the blank piece of paper that the copier slides out of the machine (not unlike the way money slides out of an ATM, you can’t help noticing) and fold it and place it in the pocket of your pleated skirt. You want to hide your mistake from. . whom? You start over. You place the police document facedown on the machine, which emits a strange, stovelike smell.

The door to the business center is thrown open, and startles you. It’s a businessman, probably in his thirties. Maybe French.

“Excusez-moi,” he says.

“It’s okay,” you say. He sits down at a computer station and places his cell phone beside him. It’s the latest incarnation of the iPhone, and almost instantaneously it starts to ring. The man glances at who’s calling. A woman’s face appears on the phone. She’s holding a child. You can see this much from your vantage point. The ring is a techno beat you’ve heard on radio stations you pass over while driving, the kind of thing played at a disco at three in the morning. But instead of answering the phone, or turning it off, he lets it ring until the call goes to voice mail.

A second later the ringing starts again, and the iPhone flashes the same photo of the woman with child. Again, the Frenchman takes a look at his phone, ignores the call, and without turning off the ringer, returns his attention to the computer.

The sound is driving you mad. The business center is the size of a small bathroom and the phone must be set on the highest volume. You’re tempted to grab the phone, answer the call, and tell the woman calling, the woman who is most likely his wife and the mother of his child, that her husband is calmly ignoring her urgent calls.

You exit the business center feeling brittle and claustrophobic and you return to the lobby. Through the glass doors at the front of the hotel you see a mass of people in black, bathed in bright lights and surrounded by complicated-looking machines. If you were anywhere but a hotel in Casablanca you would think a movie was being filmed. You walk closer. You see cameras and trolleys. A movie is being filmed. You stop and stare for a moment, and while standing, squinting, you’re approached by a man in an expensive-looking suit who introduces himself as the manager of the hotel. He welcomes you to the hotel and asks your name.

“Sabine Alyse,” you say. You are proud of your lack of hesitation. You haven’t slept much in thirty hours, fifty hours — you’re too tired to do the math and you know that doing the math will make you more tired. But you’ve remembered your new fake name.

“I am so very sorry for the disturbance,” the manager says. You are momentarily taken aback — is he apologizing for what happened at the other hotel, the Golden Tulip?

He continues. “They are shooting a film here in front of the hotel. It’s a Moroccan film company, very respected, but we did not anticipate. .”

He searches for the words. You have no idea what he’s about to say. You stare at his mouth.

“We did not know that the film crew would be dressed so shay-billy.”

“Shay-billy?” you say.

“Yes, with their pants hanging down on their hips and their hair not combed. .”

“Oh, shabbily,” you say. “They’re dressed shabbily.”

You are merely repeating what he said, and correcting the pronunciation in the process, but he takes your utterance to mean that you are in agreement: the film crew is a disgrace.

You don’t think you have ever worn a pleated skirt and a tailored long-sleeved blouse and scarf before, but you decide at this moment that you will do so more often. Usually the way you dress is not so different from the way the film crew is dressed, but now you see that the world — as represented by this manager at the Regency Hotel in Casablanca — sees you and treats you differently when you dress like this and apply makeup to cover the ridges of your skin. You are apologized to for things that don’t merit an apology.

“We are trying to ask them to dress more appropriately for a hotel such as ours,” the manager says, “but in the meantime I apologize for the inconvenience. Please let me know if I can be of help to you.”