Queens of All the Earth (18 page)

“Hey, do you mind leaving a couple euro for Hugo for this?” she said. “I’m completely out of change.”

“Have you ever been to Africa?” Miranda asked.

“Lived in South Africa a little while. Why?”

“How about Morocco?”

“Too many Americans,” Lenny said. “You’d probably like it. It’s a nice... safe place to go if you really want to visit Africa.”

“Do you know if there’s a good hostel there we could stay at?”

“I think I know someone,” said Lenny. “I don’t think he runs a place, but he knows whoever does, or something like that, and I’ve heard about it. Sounds nice. Your kind of nice.”

“Do you have his number?”

Once she convinced herself this needed to be done and calmed down enough to do it, Miranda realized there were only really three things to worry about. First: Find a place to stay. Next: Find a way to get there. Last: Get away from
here
. It was almost too easy.

Lenny stared at her. She had just said something.

“What?” Miranda said.

“I didn’t know you were into Africa,” Lenny repeated.

“Oh, yeah. Olivia’s always wanted to go.”

“Huh. I guess I thought she would have mentioned it sometime. Since it’s so close to here, you know.”

“Yeah. We can’t wait.”

Lenny laughed. “I can’t believe Olivia never asked me about Africa. You’d think she would, right?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, if you’d mentioned it earlier, I probably could have helped you out a lot more. But now I’ve got plans...”

“It’s okay.”

Lenny concentrated for a moment on untangling three socks from a bra.

“I know she’ll love it,” Lenny said with a smirk. “If you don’t come back changed after that place...” She shrugged, as if that was all that had to be said.

Lenny left that afternoon without saying goodbye, without leaving a note for Hugo, and, it was found out later, without paying half her bill. The only address she left was the editorial office of
Lonely Planisphere
. The magazine, it turned out, had been defunct for eighteen months.

“Lenny left this for a bottle of water,” Miranda said when she finally found Hugo a bit later, leaning over Sophie at the computer as she worked out how much the hostel had lost from the backup funds they kept for walk-outs. Miranda put down two euro of her own money.

Sophie’s eyes narrowed slightly, but Hugo still had his arm around her, and his thumb found its way up and then down again, fanning against her side. She bit her lip while he smiled away Miranda. So few people actually paid for the water they took that they’d stopped charging, Hugo explained. Miranda could take the euro back.

Miranda stood, staring at the coins, wondering whether it would be worse to leave them or worse to take them, but eventually she slid them back off the desk and into her pocket. She turned and slunked away, but
came back immediately when she remembered what she had actually wanted Hugo for.

“What’s your policy on terminating a stay early?” Miranda asked.

“What?” Sophie said.

“If I want to leave. Can I have my money back?”

Sophie shot daggers at her.

“No, sorry,” she said. “No cancellation after the booking is confirmed.”

Miranda sighed.

“Can’t you just give our room to someone else?”

“No cancellation.”

“But you
are
just going to give our room to someone else!”

Hugo shrugged and shot a glance up at Sophie. Rolling her eyes, Miranda stalked to the computers at the back of the common room, where she looked up Lenny’s friend’s friend’s friend’s hostel in Casablanca, Morocco, and then took notes on budget flight schedules.

“I’ve booked us a room in Casablanca, and a flight on Econair for tomorrow morning,” Miranda said to the back of Olivia’s book as she strode into their room. The book bobbed, which Miranda saw as a positive response until she realized Olivia was just turning a page.

“Great,” Olivia eventually said.

“Come on, don’t you want to go out and buy a guidebook to celebrate?”

“They’d all be in Spanish.”

“What the hell, maybe my leftover college Spanish isn’t as useless as I thought. It’ll be an adventure.” But Miranda felt the same rising fear she’d experienced when she’d first seen her little sister unresponsive in bed. At each step of Olivia’s improvement, there had been a little backslide before the plateau.

“I’m tired. I think I’ll read here,” said Olivia.

“Well, we need something to tell us where to go,” Miranda said. “But if you don’t feel well, you rest here. I’ll be back in a few.”

Miranda revolved out of the room. Her actions were mirrored by sleep-tousled Marc across the corridor. He grinned at her, noting the coincidence with a nod, which encouraged her to smile as well. Maybe it was waking up and looking so disheveled, but he seemed more welcoming and less flippant than he ever had before, even before opening his mouth. His wrist was wrapped neatly in an ACE bandage, and the pinched look was gone from his eyes.

“How are you doing?” Miranda said, a protective edge still lingering in her tone.

“Oh, this? Much better,” Marc replied, brandishing his bandaged arm. “I’m not sure what worked best—the bandage, the ice, the nap, or the meds—but I feel much better—about the world at large, as a matter of fact,” he said, slightly dreamily.

“You know, they sell much stronger stuff over-the-counter here than they do back in the States,” Miranda said suspiciously. “Well, I guess you know that, since it’s sort of the same in Peru, right?” She’d forgotten for a second that he wasn’t American like her.

Marc blinked.

“Oh, yes, of course,” he said after short consideration. “Where are you off to?”

“I’m looking for a bookstore,” she said. “Olivia doesn’t want to go out again.”

“A bookstore? I’ll come with you. I love bookstores. Just give me a minute.”

“Really, don’t you want to sleep it off a little—”

“I’ll only be a second,” said Marc. “Let me put on a clean shirt.”

Miranda retreated to the common room and stood between the kitchen tables, shifting from foot to foot. She tried to avoid looking in either direction, because Hugo anchored one end of the front hall, shuffling calculations on the reception laptop, and at the back of the room, Sophie
simmered at one of the guest computer stations.

The lilies were gone. Either they had expired quickly or Sophie had taken them home. All that remained was a damp brown circle on the sill where they used to sit. If it were spring, Sophie could have opened the window and put out a box where she could grow fresh flowers and watch them bloom through the grainy-streaked glass, yawning above stories of green leaves. Miranda grew red geraniums in her balcony garden at home, and she liked looking into her neighbors’ window gardens.

Five minutes later, Marc appeared in a black t-shirt and black jeans, looking slightly more combed. With the late-afternoon sunshine illuminating his gray-threaded black hair, he looked charming, and reminded her of what people seemed to see in Hugo. She remembered with a jolt that he had said he was becoming a priest. Every day, every hour, each new appearance he put in, he seemed more relaxed, more average, and less like a priest, as if his character were softening in the sun and sloughing off in waxy peels.

Did travel do that to people? Was it doing it to Olivia?

“We are ready to embark,” he said, beaming a manic grin at Miranda and swinging his arms, stopping himself with huge eyes just before clapping his hands together.

Miranda smiled tightly and looked to the door. They left.

In the cool noisiness of the shady street, Miranda felt the pressure in her chest lift. She looked around herself without a camera in hand and enjoyed what she saw. Now that she knew she’d be leaving shortly, she could finally enjoy being there. She let the late afternoon trickle of the crowd wash her gently down the street, and barely cared whether Marc kept up, except to see his grin and nod every so often when they passed something they both liked or found funny.

Miranda turned into a travel bookshop hidden in a nook between two larger buildings, but Marc stopped her at the door.

“Everything in here’s going to be in Spanish,” Marc said. “If you’re looking for something to read, I think there’s a bookstand with English paperbacks just around the corner.”

“I have something specific in mind,” Miranda said, sweeping to the back corner of the shop.

Marc followed with considerable curiosity. “The bookstand has some guides,” he said.

“Just Barcelona and Spain stuff,” Miranda said, entering the Africa section.

“Planning another trip already? Can’t you buy a guide when you get home?”

“We’re not going home,” said Miranda. “Well, we’re going home, but we’re leaving first. To Casablanca.”

“You got a few extra days off?”

“No, we’re leaving here early. Our flight is tomorrow morning.”

Marc’s face extended downward in a thoughtful frown, and he leaned against the bookshelf behind him. He stood and stared at her for several moments without making a comment.

Confused, Miranda turned back to her shelf and read through each title meticulously, even when she didn’t know what they meant. She had the crawly, damp sensation down the back of her scalp of covering something up.

“Is there something wrong?” said Marc. “I thought you were enjoying it here. Why the sudden urge to get away?”

“We’re not getting away from anything,” Miranda said quickly. “Olivia and I have always wanted to go to Africa.”

“Ah, it must have been Olivia’s plan. This doesn’t sound like you. Or maybe I read you wrong,” Marc said.

“What does that mean?” Miranda avoided Marc’s eyes by staring intently at a book she had just pulled down. Realizing she held it upside
down, she gave up and put it back on the shelf without ever determining what it was about.

Marc pushed himself upright again and shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter. I was just curious,” he said. “It just sounds like something—something Lenny would do. Did she talk you into it?”

“Lenny left a few hours ago,” Miranda said.

“Well that explains the silence.” Marc laughed weakly. “You two looked like you got along pretty well. Aren’t you upset she’s gone early?”

“We’re going, too, so it doesn’t really matter,” said Miranda. “Anyway, the week’s half over, and Olivia really wants to get out and see something different while she has the time. To tell the truth, so do I.” Miranda approached the counter with a pocket-sized map and guide to Casablanca written in fourth-grade-level Spanish.

“That sounds like a lot of fun,” Marc said blandly. “I can’t blame her, on her first trip out of the country. Isn’t that what she told me?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Miranda counted her change and paid in part with the money she’d taken back for Lenny’s water. She sailed out of the store and into Marc’s puzzled smile.

“How are you going to read that?” Marc asked, referring to the book she’d just bought.

“I knew a little Spanish back in college,” Miranda said. “It’s easier to remember how to read it than how to speak it. It’s enough to get directions at least.”

“Too bad. You could have practiced your speaking here,” Marc said, turning sharply to begin their march back to the hostel.

They walked slowly, and Miranda felt the shadows drop over her and onto the pavement. She remembered the last time she had felt her surroundings to be so magical. It was when she was twelve, drawing with colored chalk on the sidewalk in front of her house—giant crabs and
seascapes and smiling faces. The rumble of the thick chalk over pebbly concrete was like the earth quaking, and the flight of birds from the tree above was the flight of her hair in the summer breeze. Miranda brushed it aside with a wisp that escaped from behind her ear.

She thought of her sister as she had found her yesterday morning, curled around her book in a chair, asleep.

Olivia was changing. She felt it sometimes when she woke up and creaked her joints, and looked down the length of her body to the tips of her toes, and wondered,
When did this happen to me?
She thought it sometimes when she put down her book and looked around her and saw that everything was completely different.