A World I Never Made (23 page)

“And you?” Abdullah asked. “Do you have a family?”

“I have a father,” Megan replied, wiping away with her hands the first tears she had shed in more than fifteen years. For the first time since she could remember, she had referred to the fact of her having a father without irony. Yes, she had a father.

“A father.”

As he said these two words, Megan could see sadness stealing the light from the pharmacist’s eyes, like a curtain being slowly drawn across them. She knew what he was thinking:
I was a father once.

“Yes,” she said.

“Perhaps you should go to him.”

“Maybe. I don’t know what to do:”

“My dear Megan, my offer stands:”

When Megan returned to her room at the Farah, she found two notes on her bed. The first was from the hotel manager:

With deep regret I am compelled to inform you that you must vacate your room by Friday, May 16. We have a long-standing booking for a United Nations conference which will require most of our rooms. I apologize for not informing you when you arrived, but we did not expect your stay with us to be as extended as it has been. The Hyatt, only two doors down, has a reputation for excellent service. If you would like, I will be happy to reserve a room for you there. With deepest appreciation.

The second was from Abdel al-Lahani:

I have unexpectedly returned for a few days. Shall we have dinner tomorrow night? I will meet you at the Farah bar at nine unless I hear from you to the contrary.

Over the last two weeks, Lahani had been urging her to stay at his place. She could have her own bedroom if she liked, he had said, and a room could be easily converted into a study for her. She had smiled and declined. Lahani was too rich and too powerful a man to be overseeing her life in that way. She had already taken and would in the future take other things from him, but not the roof over her head. She would not let him view himself as her keeper. The sixteenth was only two days away. Before settling into a long hot bath, she dialed the manager’s office and asked his assistant to book her a small suite at the Hyatt.

The next evening, her last at the Farah, she went down early to the bar, called the Oasis, located off the lobby at the rear of the hotel. She liked to sit by herself under the trellis of the bar’s patio at this time of day when the sun was about to set and it was bearable, sometimes pleasant, to be out of doors. The patio was bordered by a long reflecting pool on which floated paper lanterns lit by candles. Beyond the pool were the hotel’s formal gardens, and beyond them its tennis courts and swimming pool. As she sat waiting for her gin and tonic, she could hear above her head birds chirping in the branches of the leafy vine that twined itself over and around the trellis, and in the distance the muffled rhythmic thuds of a tennis match. She had placed her order at the bar on the way in and it was brought to her now by Elnardo, the handsome mulatto waiter who had, after a month of trying, finally stopped hitting on her and settled in to a half formal, half friendly relationship in which they bantered back and forth in French about the doings of Megan’s fellow guests. A four-month stay had earned her this extra amenity, one she enjoyed wherever she went and happened to stay long enough. Elnardo wore a pencil-thin mustache that went well with his broad smile and sly eyes. Perhaps forty or forty-five, in his white waist jacket and black bow tie, with his hip, Parisian French, he was the perfect player on a stage set to take full advantage of Casablanca’s colonial heritage.

“Bonsoir, mademoiselle,”
he said, tray in hand, placing her drink and a crisp cloth napkin on the table.

“Bonsoir,
Elnardo.”

“Are you waiting for someone?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I take an order?”

“No, he’ll order when he gets here:”

“Very well:”

“Are you prepared for the flood?”

“The flood?”

“Yes, of
les politiquement corrects.
”

“
Je ne sais
...”

“The UN conference coming in:”

“Not here, Madame:”

Megan smiled at Elnardo’s use of the more formal
Madame.
Perhaps he was concerned that Lahani, whose appearance on this very scene some three months ago had markedly dampened the suave waiter’s ardor, would appear now and be mistaken as to the nature of his attentions to the beautiful American.

“Yes, on Friday. For once I am ahead of you, Elnardo.”

“I’m surprised I have not been told:”

“I’ve been asked to leave to accommodate them:”

“Asked to leave?”

“Yes, but I’ll be back for drinks. I would miss our tête-à-têtes.”

“As would I, mademoiselle:”

A short time later, Megan watched as Lahani arrived, stopping at the captain’s podium to shake hands with the majordomo type there who was in charge of the prized patio seating. Probably handing him a hundred dollars. Banking it, as he would say, for the next time, when he actually needed a table. She was familiar by now with the way in which her new lover kept Casablanca—both its servant class and its society types—in his thrall. Wherever he went he was known and deferred to. It wasn’t just money, Megan reflected as she watched Lahani chat with the tuxedoed captain. Or merely movie-star looks, though he had both in spades. It was power; power made more, not less, palpable because it was forever in reserve, wielded when necessary with the lightest, the most unnerving, of touches. Dressed in a stylishly cut navy blue blazer and white lightweight flannel slacks, all eyes, certainly the women’s, were on Abdel al-Lahani as he took his leave of the waiter and headed toward Megan. He kissed Megan’s hand and told her in a whisper that she looked beautiful before sitting down. Elnardo, hovering nearby, appeared immediately and took Lahani’s order of Gray Goose on the rocks with a twist of lime.

“So,” Megan said, “what happened in Angola? Why have you returned so quickly?”

“The Americans changed their minds, or rather their bankers did:”

“Why?”

“The risk was high and the government wanted ninety-five percent of the profits:”

“Only ninety-five percent?”

“Yes. They knew they weren’t dealing with one of the big boys and thought they could hold a gun to their heads. The bank said no:”

“What was Luanda like?”

“A backwater:”

“Did they pay your fee?”

“Yes, of course:”

“Good, you can afford dinner. I’m starving.”

Lahani smiled and then nodded to Elnardo as the waiter placed his drink on the table and left.

“Where would you like to eat?”

“You decide:”

“I have something to tell you first. I hope you won’t be offended:”

Megan, instantly alert, did not reply. In the three months she had known Lahani, he had not once by word or gesture made himself even the slightest bit vulnerable. He was possessive of her in the way that all powerful men are possessive of their women, but he was never jealous, never weak. It was weakness that was exploitable, that turned men into fools. She had no diabolical plan to exploit Lahani, nor had she any of her other lovers. But by their need they seemed to beg for it and she accommodated them whenever she could, which was most of the time. Thus she was able to travel first class and stay in suites in the best hotels in the world. She remained silent, but so did Lahani.

“I’m listening,” she said finally.

“I know that you are pregnant:”

This was a shock to Megan, a complete shock. But she knew better than to lose her composure. If Lahani was to be beholden to her in some way, then she did not want to squander the newly acquired chips she held with an emotional outburst, the kind of reaction that in the games that men and women played would enable him to too quickly start regaining lost ground.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“I have been worried lately for your safety. Carrières Thomas is a very dangerous place. I had you watched while I was away this time. You were seen going into the women’s clinic. When I was told I became worried. I thought you might be ill. I never dreamed you were pregnant. I know the owners of the clinic. I prevailed upon them to give me a copy of your chart. I am to be a father, but I am sorry I learned of it this way, sorry to have to tell you of this ... this invasion:”

Megan took a breath and then a sip from her drink, assessing this information at a rapid rate, as if it were necessary to do so for a reason that was specific and important but that she could not put her finger on.

I bad you watched. I know the owners. Your chart.

“I’m surprised, Del,” she said, “but I’m not upset:”

“You’re positive?”

“Yes. You were worried about me:”

“I was. It all seems so cloak-and-dagger, but I was hoping you see it that way.”

Megan finished her drink, baby’s first gin, remaining silent. Silence, she knew, was a reaction, but much less open to interpretation than anything she might say at this moment. In her heart there was a strange mix of fear and anger, but her instincts, honed over twelve years of dealing with men in every stage of their development, in every European capital, told her that it was imperative not to give voice to either.

“Of course I will pay for everything,” said Lahani,“and acknowledge the child:”

Acknowledge the child?
Megan thought. But all she said was,“Let’s talk about that later, Del. Right now I’m starving:”

~22~

MOROCCO, MAY 15, 2003

Megan awoke alone just before dawn in Lahani’s custom-made king-size bed. Moonlight flooded into the room through the French doors that dominated the far wall, moonlight so bright that the shadows of the doors’ diamond-patterned mullions were cast in sharp contrast on the room’s large expanse of white-carpeted floor. The gossamer curtains that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the doors were billowing gently into the room in the night breeze. Megan had placed her shoulder bag on the sill of one of these windows before putting on one of Lahani’s silk shirts and getting into bed with him when they arrived after their late dinner. She lay for a few seconds and watched the ceiling fan above the bed spin slowly. The sex was so good, she was certain, that he would never guess that it was to be their last. She rose and went to her bag for a cigarette. Lahani had been absent in the middle of the night before, sometimes working in his study, sometimes leaving her a note to say he had left on a business trip and would call on his return. As she lit her cigarette, she was hoping it was the latter this time. She would never have to see him again. The acting she had been doing for the past hours would be over. And she would have control of the child. Complete control.

As she smoked, voices drifted into the bedroom from somewhere in the apartment. Naked and feeling suddenly vulnerable, she found Lahani’s shirt on the floor next to the bed and put it on. One of the voices was Lahani’s. The other she could not make out until she remembered the forceful, oddly sing-song Arabic of Mohammed as he spoke to the three young men in the Carrières Thomas souk courtyard a few weeks ago. She took the tape recorder from her bag, turned it on, and slipped it into the monogrammed front pocket of Lahani’s pure white, beautifully tailored shirt, stepping silently into the long hall that led from the rear of the apartment, where the bedrooms were located, to the living room and kitchen area. Before the corridor ended she stopped to listen. The voices, definitely those of Lahani and Mohammed, were much clearer now. Breathing slowly, calmly, remaining in the shadows of the hall, she peered into the living room where she saw Lahani and his stocky driver sitting across from each other in brocaded wing chairs, a small inlaid table with glasses of water on it between them. Their faces were illuminated by a shaft of moonlight from the slightly ajar door to the balcony behind them. They talked quietly for some five minutes, Mohammed leaning forward at one point and seeming to repeat several times the same questioning phrase. From outside, the call to morning prayer could now be heard, piped here as almost everywhere in Casablanca through loudspeakers, but nevertheless strangely beautiful and compelling. Megan watched as the two men stood and faced east then went through the ritual of bowing, standing again, prostration, sitting, and finally prostration again, reciting the prayers of
salat
as they did. When they were done, they exchanged
inshallahs
and kisses on each cheek and then Mohammed left and Abdel went out to the balcony.