My Friend Anna

by Rachel DeLoache Williams

  No, no, I assured him, that was only a block—it would not stay on my account.

  The duress in my voice must have registered. Instead of belaboring the fine points, he asked how much money I’d need to get safely out of Morocco. If it had been possible, I’d have hugged him through the phone. He raised my spending limit, and I hung up.

  I fought back tears as we left the back room, swallowing hard to contain my emotions. I was furious to be there alone, to be put in that position, to be cleaning up Anna’s mess.

  Re-entering the bookshop, I was surprised to see Anna and Jesse walking toward the cash register. Another car from the hotel must have dropped them off. They looked relieved to have found me, but they didn’t seem overly concerned or even apologetic. Regardless, it was too late. The damage had already been done: the museum employee had run my card again, and this time the transaction went through.

  The three of us walked back to the van in silence. It’s a wonder I didn’t explode.

  * * *

  All of this happened before we’d even had lunch. I don’t remember the conversation that followed, how it was decided we’d go to the medina, who suggested the restaurant or knew how to find it. Our driver stopped on the edge of the labyrinth, let us out, and agreed to wait.

  It was the first time we’d ventured into the souk without a guide. I was irritable and impatient. We wound our way through narrow alleys, dodging speeding motorbikes and the aggressive heckling of pushy vendors, on a search for the Places des Épices.

  By the time we reached Nomad, a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Rahba Lakdima spice square, it was late afternoon. The lunch crowd had already come and gone, and the place was nearly empty. We sat alone in the open air, quieter than usual. I was too shaken up to talk about what had happened. On the verge of sobbing, I ordered vegetables on a bed of couscous even though I wasn’t hungry. All I wanted to do was return to the hotel and add up the charges on my credit card.

  On our way back to the van, we got lost. We walked in circles, passing the same scenes again and again. Anna and Jesse took turns choosing which way to go. I trailed behind them, barely holding it together, ready to collapse into a heap of self-pity and despair.

  Just before panic set in, the knot untangled. Anna managed to call our driver. He found us on the edge of a busy street, and we set off for the hotel one last time.

  At La Mamounia’s front gates, as usual, security guards used mirrors on long rods to check our vehicle’s undercarriage for signs of anything sinister. That afternoon, they appeared to move in slow motion. As soon as we were out of the van, I strode to the front desk, where I collected my corporate card and asked why, according to Amex, the block on my personal card had gone through as an actual charge, rather than as a temporary hold. Hadn’t the hotel said that my card wouldn’t be charged? What was the definition of a “block” anyway? Was it just a euphemism for a temporary charge?

  The front-desk clerk explained that a credit for the same amount would appear in my account; it was just a preauthorization, a formality, only temporary. I couldn’t understand his logic or why he was speaking in such vague code. After a few minutes of talking in circles, I was physically and emotionally spent, and returned to our villa with both of my credit cards.

  Anna had ordered a bottle of rosé and was pacing around our private pool, modeling one of her new bespoke dresses. Its white linen was sheer, revealing her black thong underneath. A glass of wine occupied one hand, a cigarette the other. I walked right past her and went straight to our room.

  I sat cross-legged on the bed and focused on my laptop. I made an Excel sheet tabulating the expenses I’d incurred relating to our trip, beginning with four one-way flights. On the morning we were scheduled to leave from New York, Anna had been stuck in meetings and our flights still hadn’t been booked. Pledging to wire reimbursement within a week’s time, she’d asked for my help. So I’d purchased the tickets. (One-way only, rather than round-trip, in order to maximize flexibility, she had said.) Then there were the restaurant charges, clothing from the souk, and our visit to Villa Oasis. I didn’t factor in the hotel, since that block was, apparently, only temporary.

  I took a screenshot of the itemization and sent an email to Anna, as she’d requested, including my bank account information so that she could wire reimbursement:

  Hi Anna,

  The total amount is $9,424.52

  Let me know if you need anything else.

  I hesitated before signing off:

  —Thank you so much.

  I took a deep breath. Sending the email provided some relief: the ball was no longer in my court. Anna now had the information necessary to get repayment underway, and I was almost done with the whole experience. I felt a burst of energy, the slaphappy mania you get when you’ve not slept or you’ve come through a stressful event. I joined Anna and Jesse by the pool. I told Anna I’d sent her an email outlining the grand total of what she owed me. She smiled without batting an eye.

  “I’ll wire $10,000 on Monday,” she promised, “to make sure all expenses are covered.”

  My mood lifted further. When Anna handed me a glass of rosé, I took it from her gratefully. We finished the bottle, I changed into a dress—one like Anna had on, but in black—and we went to Le Marocain, the hotel’s Moroccan restaurant, for our last dinner in Marrakech.

  The riad-style restaurant was situated in the gardens near the hotel’s main building. We sat on the terrace, next to a lily pond, surrounded by candlelit lanterns, at the same table where we’d eaten on the first night of our trip. It felt like an appropriate ending. While we waited for our food, Anna pecked at her phone. She looked pleased, almost giddy, glowing with self-satisfaction. Andalusian music floated through the air as a trio of musicians waltzed from table to table, offering each of their songs like an intoxicating dram. The trip had been tumultuous, to say the least, but as the three of us sat there on our final night, the mood was pleasant and calm. We talked about Anna and Jesse’s plan to depart the next day for Kasbah Tamadot, Sir Richard Branson’s hotel in the High Atlas Mountains where we’d all had lunch the day before.

  After dinner, I gathered my belongings while Anna finished a cigarette in the courtyard and Jesse went to his room. Packing was soothing: finding, folding, and stacking. It allowed me to re-establish a feeling of control.

  “You should have all of these,” piped Anna, back inside and holding an armful of clothing. “I don’t think I’ll really be wearing them again.” She handed me the garments she’d picked out in the medina, including a red jumpsuit and gauzy black frocks, all but the two dresses she’d had custom-made. I crumpled them into my suitcase. I didn’t like or want the dresses, but there was something in Anna’s eyes that I couldn’t refuse. I thanked her for the gift. She beamed.

  My departure was early the next morning, but in my mind I had already left. Bag: packed. Alarm: set. Car: booked. I clung to my mental checklist, thumbing each of its tasks like beads on a rosary. The more organized I felt, the better I would sleep. Anna’s presence threatened my efficiency. Finally, I changed into my pajamas, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. Anna’s back was to me as I turned down the covers on my side. Gently, I lifted a long pillow and placed it between us on the king-size bed as a barrier. I hoped to leave before she awoke.

  Chapter 2

  New York, New York

  * * *

  Marrakech was a long way from Knoxville, Tennessee, where I was raised, the eldest of three children. Neither of my parents was from the state, but they attended graduate school in Knoxville and returned to raise a family, attracted by the city’s livability and its proximity to my mom’s parents, who lived just over the mountains, in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

  My siblings and I were taught the importance of good manners from an early age—that they were an essential way of demonstrating consideration and respect for others. It didn’t matter if it was a relative or the lady making milkshakes at Long’s Drug Store: through polit
eness we acknowledged another person’s dignity.

  Our parents wanted us to work hard and follow our passions, and they gave us the tools to do it. They energetically supported us in our pursuits but also gave us the space to find our own way. They didn’t seem terribly focused on the mistakes we made because they wanted us to meet tough challenges with excitement rather than a fear of failure. I know now that I was quite fortunate. I had been given the strength and confidence to follow my dreams and I believed there was at least a kernel of goodness in every person.

  * * *

  New York entered my mind’s eye through stories my dad told. Being from Brooklyn defined him. I pictured the city like the grainy, black-and-white photographs he’d taken when he lived there, street scenes of panhandlers and vagabonds, friends and strangers. In some ways, it was the thing that made my dad feel other—that and his Jewishness, which in our house didn’t mean much except that we got presents on both Hanukkah and Christmas. But to the society around us, it seemed a distinction worth noting. When I said a word with too much of an East Tennessee twang, he’d jokingly fine me a quarter. (Movie “thee-AY-ter” got me every time.) He was irreverent and loud and loved a good laugh, and I identified his way of being as symptomatic of his Brooklyn-ness.

  My Grandma Marilyn lived in New York, and we’d visit her once a year or so. We came at Hanukkah, when the northern cold was bitter and numbing. I dressed for the weather, in an excessively colorful poofy jacket, earmuffs, and mittens. I wanted people on the street to understand that I belonged. I snuck a shy glance at each passing stranger, smiling when our eyes met, the way we did in the South. It would be a long time before I learned that New Yorkers played it much cooler than that.

  The summer after my freshman year at Kenyon College, I got an internship in New York at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. I moved into the spare bedroom in Grandma Marilyn’s apartment, unpacked my new “work clothes” into the closet and drawers she’d cleared out for me, and began my professional life in the city.

  Planned Parenthood was a bold choice for my first summer away from Knoxville. In my East Tennessee high school, there was a vocational track with a course in teen parenting. There was even a child-care center, where teenage parents could leave their babies for the school day. Young parents were not an anomaly—the abstinence-based sex “education” taught in our lifetime-wellness class made that clear.

  “Raise your hand if you’re a virgin,” said the educator in one of the classes I attended. She came from an outside Christian-based organization and was brought in by the school to teach this portion of the health curriculum. “Okay, now raise your hand if you’re a second-time virgin.” This meant that you had already lost your virginity, but having seen the error of your ways, you had repented and declared your virginity anew, presumably until marriage. We looked around and shifted uncomfortably in our seats. Some girls exchanged knowing glances. Others raised their eyebrows and sat up straighter in their chairs, perhaps thinking good posture was evidence of purity. A two-day program consisting of a graphic PowerPoint presentation and several interactive exercises taught us that sex before marriage inevitably led to heartbreak, irreversible physical damage, and diminished human worth. The abstinence pitch centered on saving the prize of your “diamond zone” (an invisible area that starts at your neck, goes out to include your breasts and mid-region, and concludes at your crotch) for your future husband. You saved your diamond until you got a diamond (wedding ring).

  Accepting an internship at Planned Parenthood was an act of rebellion in my mind against ineffective parochial constraints like abstinence-based sex education. And coming to New York offered a glimpse of how life could be in a city so much bigger—in size and worldview—than where I was from.

  That summer proved revelatory. By the end of it, I had an intensified respect for people who worked tirelessly for organizations whose means were insufficient and whose successes were always measured against how much remained to be done. Public health wasn’t the profession in which I wanted to build my career, but New York was the place for me.

  For the summer after my sophomore year, I landed an internship at a creative agency called Art + Commerce, which the entertainment management company IMG had recently acquired.

  My college boyfriend, Jeremy, wanted to pursue work in the New York restaurant industry, so he and I moved into an apartment together along with two of his best friends from home, Matt and Corey. We lived in a studio just north of Union Square that had been converted into a two-bedroom apartment. After a week or so in the kitchen of a busy restaurant, my boyfriend changed his mind, left the city to join his family on vacation in Croatia, and then returned home to Los Angeles. I was left to live with Matt and Corey.

  Matt and Corey were magnetic, attractive, and relentlessly social. By day, Matt interned for Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Corey worked as one of the shirtless models that used to greet customers inside Abercrombie & Fitch stores. By night—and I mean late at night—they promoted for clubs. I spent those months tagging along like a little sister, during what I came to call my summer of “models and bottles.”

  Out with the boys, I thought everyone seemed taller and more mature than I was. I didn’t have fancy “going out” clothes. I attended college in Ohio, where we wore mismatched clothes from American Apparel, oversize tank tops, boots, and flannel. That summer, I wore mostly vintage and thrift-store finds, and a short dress I’d sewn myself from a brown paisley fabric. I tried not to let it shake my confidence, but I knew that my baby face and off-brand shoes were to blame if we ever got turned away from a door.

  Even though I wanted to be included, going out every night could sometimes be tedious. On occasion, I’d do an experiment to entertain myself. I’d speak to strangers with an exaggerated Southern drawl and gauge their reactions. When I used a slower cadence, people would hang on my every word. Jokes were funnier. Stories were sharper. The only trouble was the inevitable disappointment—or, worse, disinterest—when I returned to my usual way of speaking. I suppose, to varying degrees, we all try on different identities in college, on the path to finding our own.

  My internship with Art + Commerce was eye-opening. In addition to supporting photography agents who represented industry legends like Annie Leibovitz and Steven Meisel, I helped orchestrate photo shoots with the agency’s in-house production team. My responsibilities on the shoots were mostly menial—organizing contact lists, sourcing supplies, picking up coffee—but I was working behind the scenes to create pictures like those I’d admired in magazines for as long as I could remember. In the process, I discovered my passion for production, and fell in love with the fast-paced and glamorous world of photography.

  * * *

  I studied in Paris during the spring semester of my junior year and turned twenty-one the month I arrived. It was the first time I had traveled abroad on my own. My friends had all chosen to study in other places, like Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, and Jaipur, so I had to find a roommate. Through the grapevine, I arranged to live with a friend of a friend, a girl who’d gone to high school at Harvard-Westlake, in Los Angeles, with my Kenyon roommate Kate. We lived on the Left Bank of the Seine, in the Latin Quarter, a stone’s throw from Notre-Dame. In our little apartment, the living room doubled as my bedroom and the pullout couch was my bed. I got to know Paris as it turned from winter to spring, all while studying photography, the history of haute couture, drawing, and French. It was magical.

  Toward the end of my time abroad, I considered my plans for the summer. I had my heart set on interning within the photo department of a magazine. Vanity Fair was the dream.

  From my Paris apartment, I scanned the magazine’s masthead and found the name of a woman listed as the senior photography producer. Then I looked online to see how Condé Nast formatted their email addresses: firstname_lastname@condenast.com. It was worth a shot.

  “Dear Ms. MacLeod,” my note began. I described my experience at Art + Commerce, exp
ressed my fangirl enthusiasm for Vanity Fair, and ended by saying that “I would give my left hand to work in the photo department, but [would] also [be] willing to try something totally new!”

  Kathryn MacLeod emailed her response a couple of hours later. “Hi, thank you for your email,” she said. “I quite like your letter, let me check on this for you . . . I’m not so involved with the internship process at V.F. I will see who is and recommend you—I promise your left hand can remain intact.”

  At the time, this felt like the most miraculous thing that had ever happened to me. I was giddy to have received a response. A few days later, I was granted a phone interview. The call from Kathryn’s assistant, Leslie, came as I was walking past the Pompidou Center on my way home from an early class. Caught off guard, I stopped on the edge of a plaza in the shadow of the hulking modern art museum and sat on the ground.

  Unfortunately, the full-time internships were already filled, Leslie explained. I was disappointed, but I had always known an internship was a long shot. I was pleased to have made it as far as I did, and managed to secure an internship in the photo department at Harper’s Bazaar instead.

  During my final semester of college, I went to a dinner in the dean’s house at Kenyon. The chairman of the school’s board of trustees was seated to my right. He had seen my senior art exhibition in the college’s gallery space earlier in the day, which led him to ask about my plans post-graduation. I described my past internships in New York and told him I’d like to find something along the same lines.

  “If you could work for any publication, which would it be?” he asked.

  “Vanity Fair,” I answered, without hesitation.

  “Oh, Graydon is a friend of mine,” he said. “I’d be glad to put you in touch.” Graydon Carter was the magazine’s editor in chief. This offer felt too good to be true. “Send me an email a week before you move to the city,” he went on, “and I’ll connect you to set up a meeting.”