“Yes, here I am,” you say, overly out of breath from your simple dash across the room. “It took us forever to get home.”
“Really?” she says. “You should have come with me. I’ve been back here for over an hour. At least. This is maybe the fifth time I’ve tried your room.”
You ask if anything’s wrong.
“Wrong? No, not at all. Oh, I see. Because I called so much. No, I just really wanted to get a drink, and you’re the only person I could think of.”
“Thank you.” You say this flatly, facetiously. You say it like you’re talking to an old friend.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, I thought you’d be up for a drink and we could talk a little.”
You look at the bedside clock: 11:13 P.M.
“Sure. Where do you want to go?”
“Go?” she says. “I can’t go anywhere. I already said good night to the guys.”
You realize she means her bodyguards.
“Right, of course,” you say. There’s so much you have to learn.
“But what if you met me in the tenth-floor lounge?”
The Regency. You should never go back there again. There’s a chance that by now Sabine Alyse’s credit cards have been traced, there’s a chance the manager will recognize you.
You remember that you have the wig. “Okay,” you say.
“Great. I’ll see you in five minutes, Reeves,” she says, and before you can say anything else, she hangs up.
You go to the bathroom and put your wig on in front of the mirror. You look exhausted. You are exhausted. Your sides for the next day are on the desk. Your pick-up time the next morning is at 7 A.M. Tomorrow is a complicated day, you’ve been told: they’re shooting a scene outside, in traffic. You vow to yourself to be in bed by midnight. The famous American actress must understand — she has to work tomorrow, too.
You exit your hotel and cross the narrow street to the Regency. You touch your wig and take a deep breath before entering. No one you recognize and no one who would recognize you is in the lobby. You take the elevator to the tenth floor. You remove the wig before the doors open and place it behind a pot that holds a small tree with long fronds, just outside the entrance to the lounge.
The famous American actress is sitting in the lounge wearing flannel pajamas with pastel-colored hippopotamuses all over them. Pink, lavender, and baby-blue hippopotamuses.
“Don’t laugh,” she instructs you, by way of greeting. “I know they’re ridiculous but they’re comfortable. My boyfriend never lets me wear them at home, so I have no choice but to wear them here.”
You want to say, You do have a choice to not wear pajamas at all in public since most people don’t and that Moroccan bartender there could take a photo of you and it would be all over the Internet in about thirty seconds, but you refrain. You suddenly have empathy for the pale practical secretary; this actress needs supervision.
The bartender comes over. He’s the same one from yesterday. You half expect him to pull out his phone, take a photo, and run away, out of the hotel and into the night and onto the Web.
“What do you want to drink? I’m having a G and T,” she says.
“Sounds good. Same. La même,” you say to the bartender.
“Why’d it take you so long to get back from the set?” the famous American actress asks you.
You explain that the young sisters needed a ride home, and they didn’t know directions.
“Their parents weren’t on set?” she says.
“I guess not.”
“Wow,” she says. “That’s amazing. When I was young, my dad was there at every film I shot.”
“The girls told me their parents didn’t really believe they were in a movie with you.”
“I posed with them, so I guess they’ll have some proof. Sweet girls. Wonder if they’ll make it.”
Your drinks arrive quickly, as though they were made before you ordered. You consider that is a possibility.
You tell the famous American actress you think it might be hard for them to make it in Morocco.
“I thought that before I came,” she says, and sips her drink through a small black straw, “but do you know what I found out?”
“No,” you say.
“There’s a huge film school in Morocco! And guess who supports it?”
You tell her you have heard about the school, but you don’t know who supports it.
“You don’t know?”
You shake your head.
“All these big names. Martin Scorsese and people like that helped start it or they fund it or something like that.”
You say wow.
“Wow is right,” she says. “That’s why they can film A Different Door here. They have such a great Moroccan crew. That was half the reason they were able to shoot it here — they didn’t have to bring hardly fucking anybody over. Except for me, my secretary, the bodyguards, and Ivy, my stand-in who abandoned me.”
“I heard she fell in love with someone who worked at the hotel in Marrakech.” You feel the gin and tonic going to your head.
“At the hotel in Marrakech? You think she fell in love with someone there?” She cackles.
Again: the bizarre laugh.
Again: the question you don’t know how to answer. “That’s what the producers in the van were talking about,” you say.
“She fell in love with the fucking director! Who’s fucking married! And she’s fucking married!”
“Shit,” you say, and this amuses her.
“Fucking shit is right,” she says. Then she summons the bartender and orders two more gin and tonics. You consider stopping her, reminding her that you have to go to sleep soon and she probably does too. But the truth is you are enjoying all this — the tenth-floor lounge, the drinks, the conversation. When you’re with the actress, the life you left at home seems unreal, almost as though the events of the last few months didn’t happen.
“So, anyway,” she says, after the bartender leaves, “thank God you were here. Because Ivy, who I will admit could be a bit dramatic. . well, she had to go. I’m sure if she recovers she’ll be able to work with me again. She’s been my stand-in on, like, nine or ten movies now. She’s trying to act, and has had small parts. Nice girl, pretty girl. So tell me about you,” the famous American actress says, as though she’s exhausted talking about Ivy. “What’s your story?”
You laugh nervously. You sound like someone else.
“What’s the story of why you’re here?” she continues. “Why the fuck are you in Morocco?” She suddenly looks very drunk.
“I left my husband and I wanted to get away.”
“A spa day wasn’t enough?” She laughs at her own joke.
“I don’t ever think I’ve ever done a spa day, but no, not enough for what he did.”
“You should see your face right now. You look like you’ve been injected with venom or something.”
“That’s how I feel about my marriage,” you say.
“So you came to Casablanca of all places?”
You nod. “Even here didn’t seem far enough away.” The alcohol is making you more honest than you want to be in her presence.
“And you were just going to stay in Casablanca until. . until you were offered a role as a stand-in for a movie?”
You tell her about your backpack being stolen at the Golden Tulip.
“Tell me the whole story,” she says, and genuinely seems to want to hear it.
You tell her all about the Golden Tulip, about the backpack, the embassy, and Sabine Alyse, how the police asked for your grandfather’s name. You haven’t talked this much in a week. When you’re done recounting the events of the last few days, she shakes her head. This is the response you want. You’re afraid of the cackling.