by Vendela Vida
“They were wearing a badge?” she says.
“Yes, but that was just a front.”
“Have you been to the police?”
“Yes,” you say. “They gave me another backpack that wasn’t mine to replace my backpack. I mean, they thought they were giving me the right backpack. Or maybe they didn’t think that. Anyway, I got the wrong backpack back. So now I have someone else’s backpack and passport.”
“Why would the police give you someone else’s backpack?”
“I don’t know,” you say. “Maybe they were in on it.”
“In on it with whom?”
“With the hotel.”
“You’re saying the Casablanca police and the Golden Tulip were in cahoots to steal your backpack.”
It sounds ludicrous coming from her mouth.
“Yes,” you say, suddenly less certain of anything, of everything.
“Can I see your ID?” she says.
“That’s the thing: I don’t have any ID. I just have this other backpack and passport, which I left at the hotel for safekeeping.”
“But why would you have someone else’s backpack and passport?”
“Because the police gave it to me.”
“Can I see the police report?” she says. “With your name on it.”
“I don’t have a police report.”
“You don’t have a police report,” she says in disbelief.
“I have a document from them,” you say. “With a red stamp from the police chief.”
“Can I see it?” she asks.
You reach into your skirt pocket and extract the paper and unfold it.
It’s blank.
You turn it over.
The other side is blank.
You feel your ears pop and widen, as though your sense of hearing will help you locate the document.
“I think I left it. I left the document at the hotel,” you say, speaking slowly, trying to calm yourself down.
“And it has your name on it?”
“Yes,” you lie, because you cannot believe you’re in a situation where you have nothing with your own name on it.
“Can you get that document and bring it back here?” She is speaking to you like a child. Susan Sontag is speaking to you like a child.
“Yes,” you say. “I’ll get the police document and I’ll bring it here.”
“Bring it tomorrow,” she says. “In the meantime, do you want to tell me whose passport and backpack they gave you? They were American, I assume?”
“Yes, she’s American,” you say.
“Her name?” she says.
You panic. If you give up Sabine Alyse’s name you will have nothing.
You decide to lie because you have no choice: “I don’t remember. I’ll have to go back to the hotel and get that too,” you say.
She looks at you skeptically, taking in your features for the first time. You imagine her describing you to someone else, perhaps the police, the ambassador, the secretary of state, the president. He will be so disappointed.
“You said you’re staying at the Golden Tulip?” she says.
“Yes,” you lie. “The Golden Tulip. I’ll be there until this all gets resolved.”
She scribbles something on a paper in front of her, a paper you cannot see. You imagine it’s a list of suspicious persons, people she and the president are disappointed in.
“What time will you be back here tomorrow? What time can we expect to see you?”
“First thing,” you say. You know you need to be agreeable. She suspects you of something and you need to be agreeable.
“Nine A.M.,” she says.
“Perfect,” you say.
“I’ll take down your name so we’re sure to have the appointment booked. What was your name again?”
She says this so casually that you know she suspects you, that she’s trying to trap you. You give the name of a woman who helped you at the baggage store in Florida. You noted her name on the receipt. “Megan Willis,” you say. It’s the only name that comes to mind. Megan Willis is the one who suggested you purchase the basic black backpack, and that, when you really think about it, was the first true mistake. This all started with Megan Willis.
You walk casually out of the embassy door, and once you’ve exited you move quickly. Fuck, you think. This latest lie will be yet another thing you will have to explain when you return. You have no money to take a cab or bus, so once again you must walk. You wind through streets and pass through a small square where several policemen wearing dark black vests surround two groups of people. In the center of one circle is a woman; in the center of the other a man. The woman is crying and she’s pointing at the man, and though you can’t understand what she’s saying, you know some sort of violation occurred. She gesticulates, using her hands to show the way the man fondled her rear. Two policemen are listening to the woman and another is holding the man by his arm. You watch and then, as though reminded that you too are a woman, you move on.
As you continue to walk to your hotel, you think of how fortuitous it was that Sabine Alyse didn’t cancel her credit cards. And then you wonder why a woman who has a AAA card in her wallet and shops at J.Crew and strikes you as a fairly together woman wouldn’t cancel her credit cards when she discovered her backpack with her wallet and passport were missing. You got the backpack this morning, so she’s been missing it for at least that long. You canceled your cards within an hour. You contemplate what might have prevented her from making the calls you made to Vipul and Christy. Maybe Sabine is somewhere where she can’t make calls. She’s been kidnapped. You picture her blindfolded. She could be dead. And what if the embassy knows she’s dead? What if the embassy finds you, and her backpack on you? Wouldn’t they assume you did it? Wouldn’t they assume at the very least that you stole her possessions?
No. No. This is madness. She’s not dead. And you have a document proving the police gave you her possessions. The document is everything. And it’s back in the hotel.
As you approach the Regency you see a line of people formed as though they’re protesters, but they’re not shouting anything; they’re just staring. It’s the prince, you think. He must be at the Regency.
But as you get closer and make your way through the line, you see filming is now taking place at the entrance to the hotel. You explain to a guard that you’re a guest at the Regency, and he informs you that you’ll have to wait a few minutes before you can enter. He apologizes.
You move closer to the entrance of the hotel and join other guests who are watching the filming. You are vibrating, almost jogging in place. You need to find that piece of paper with the red stamp. But instead you are forced to watch the filming of a movie.
The scene being shot involves a woman on an old bicycle as she rides up to the front entrance of the hotel and disembarks. Then she does it again. And a third time. Lights are adjusted. Cameras are pulled forward and back on a trolley.
You find yourself enjoying this. Its repetitions are soothing. And now you are sure the document is on the desk, in your room, where you left it. It’s in the Regency, and all is safe within the Regency. The director says, “Cut!”
After the woman disembarks for the fourth time, she takes off what you realize is a long, dark black wig with bangs. Beneath the wig her hair is brown, like yours, and pulled back into a tight bun. You recognize her. She’s the young woman you saw emerging from the hotel elevator when you first checked in. You had no idea she was a movie star. She doesn’t look like a movie star. She looks like you: same height, same plain face. She disappears into the hotel and the bike is rolled out of view, back where it came from. Seconds later, another young woman is on the bike.
The cameras start rolling but now it is this other woman with black hair who is on the bike, cycling up to the front of the hotel. She disembarks. You see that this woman resembles a famous American actress. And then it hits you: this is a famous American actress. Her face has been on the covers of so many magazine
s, and yet, even at this distance you can tell she’s more beautiful, more delicate, more bizarrely perfect in real life.
She retreats and a crew member walks the bicycle out of sight. A minute later she rides up again. Everyone on set is more focused, more engaged now that it’s the famous American actress on the bicycle.
She does three takes and on the fourth take her foot falls off the pedal and the pedal spins and she laughs. A makeup woman wearing a short, brush-filled apron, rushes out and uses a wet wipe on the famous American actress’s leg, removing any grease. Another woman who is so elaborately dressed you guess she must be from the costume department emerges from the side of the set and adjusts the right fold at the bottom of the movie star’s pedal pushers. A crew member walks the bike back to the starting point. Then the movie star rides up to the front of the hotel again and this time doesn’t send the pedal spinning. When the scene is finished, she raises her hands in the victory sign—she can ride a bike without messing up a scene! The crew around her claps, and she gives an exaggerated and theatrical bow.
You have read a few magazine profiles about this famous American actress and now you think that they haven’t done her justice. In real life she is more beautiful, yes, but also very human, very funny. She is capable of making fun of herself, of her mistakes on set, and the crew applauds this. You haven’t been on any movie sets before, but you are fairly positive that everyone on this set is in awe of the famous American actress, and everyone likes her more than they expected to. There’s an earnestness in the way they surround her afterward. The director approaches and puts his arm around her in a fatherly way.
Filming appears to be done for now, at this location at least. The famous American actress is ushered into the Regency, but a transformation has occurred: she’s no longer a girl biking up to the entrance of a hotel; she’s an American movie star once more, and now she’s surrounded by two men who, if you’re not mistaken, must be her bodyguards. They whisk her past the onlookers in the lobby and into an elevator that is miraculously waiting. Is there a third bodyguard inside who timed it so that the doors would open just when she appeared? The swiftness with which she enters the lobby and is lifted up to what is surely the best room is so well orchestrated it makes everything that happened on the film set look like it was done by amateurs—shabbily dressed amateurs.
You take the next elevator to your room. You can picture the document on the desk. You made copies and brought them back to your room, right? You cannot remember the order of the settings of the day’s events: embassy, business center, police station, Golden Tulip, Regency. They’re just images on a scattered deck of cards.
A bottle of champagne sits in a bucket of ice on your desk. You read the card, which is addressed to Sabine. “Wishing you a pleasant stay,” the card says. “Warmly, your grateful manager.”
You search the desk for the document. It’s not on the desk. It’s not near the desk, under the desk. You throw the comforter from the bed. You open and close the curtains. You look behind the television, in the closets, in your suitcase. It’s not in the room.
You sit in the desk chair defeated. You eye the champagne. You want a glass to calm your nerves. You struggle with the cork. There’s something wrong. You turn the cork toward you and study it. You pull at it and it hits you in the chest and the champagne follows, dampening your blouse and skirt.
“Jesus!” you say aloud. You hold your hand to your chest. You feel like you’ve been shot. Your hands are sticky and your clothes are wet. You can smell the dried rose scent of the champagne on your scarf, and you untangle it from your neck. Your blouse clings to your skin as you take it off, and you unzip your skirt and let it drop to the floor. You rummage through your suitcase for whatever is available and easy. You pull on a dull, wrinkled T-shirt, some black spandex exercise pants.
You try to think. A phone rings in the room next to yours. You remember the man and his annoying cell phone ring at the business center. That’s where you left the original. It must still be there. You slide on your sneakers and pick up your key card.
The elevator ride is interminable. It seems to stop at every floor to let in another hotel guest. The guests are inevitably well dressed, and carry suitcases or purses of fine leather. The purses are bright-colored citron or red; gold Chanel or Hermès logos dangle from their zippers.
You should never have bought a simple black backpack. You should have picked a fluorescent knockoff Hermès bag with metallic charms hanging from its multiple zippers. Then the thief would never have been able to walk out of the hotel so casually, the black unisex backpack flung over his shoulder.
You exit the elevator and go straight to the business center. You lift up the top of the copier. No paper is inside. You check the mouth of the machine for the copy.
Nothing. You never pressed copy. Or did you? You made one copy but it was blank. You turned over the police report. The man with the phone distracted you. And you left. Now the police report is gone.
You flee the business center; the door slams behind you.
You approach reception, and the long-haired woman standing behind the desk says, “Are you looking for the fitness center?”
“No,” you say, confused, until you understand that the only possible explanation for your attire is that you’re going to work out.
“Actually,” you say, because saying that word calms you down, makes you not—you hope—come across as frantic as you feel. “By mistake I left a very important document in the copy machine earlier today, and now it’s not there.”
“You are sure you left it there?”
“Yes,” you say. “Has anyone turned anything in?”
“I don’t think so,” the long-haired woman says. She rummages below the reception desk. “Nothing here.”
She calls over to a short-haired woman working one computer down from her. The short-haired woman looks at the desk area around her and shrugs.
“No,” says the long-haired woman. “Nothing’s been turned in.”
“Is there a lost and found?” you ask.
“A what?”
“A place that people put things that are lost? So other guests can find them?”
“This is that place,” says the woman.
“What about housekeeping?” you say. “Do they clean the business center?”
“Yes, but they shouldn’t take anything.” Before you have to ask her to do so, she calls housekeeping. You feel she’s on your side.
She speaks in Arabic and waits. She moves the phone away from her mouth. “They’re checking,” she tells you.
You wait for two minutes while they check.
She speaks into the phone and hangs up.
“No, nothing,” she says.
You go back into the business center and look at each computer station. You peer under the lid of the photocopier: nothing.
You pass by the woman working at the currency-exchange booth. You have an idea.
You approach the glass window. “Have you seen anyone come out of the business center carrying papers this afternoon?”
“Pardonnez-moi?” she says, leaning in closer to the glass.
You repeat yourself, speaking louder.
“You are asking me if anyone left the business center carrying papers?”
“Yes,” you say.
“Everyone leaves the business center carrying papers. That is where they print their papers.”
You have never liked the currency-exchange woman and now you actively loathe her.
You decide to find the manager. He knows you and will understand your predicament.
You walk to the front of the hotel, where he is in conversation with the sloppily dressed crew member again. He does not look pleased. The crew member looks more shabbily dressed now than he did earlier.
You stand near them, lingering. The manager must feel your gaze because he looks up.
“The fitness center is that way,” he says, and points.
“Thank you,” y
ou say. “I actually need help with something else.”
“One moment, please,” he says, and continues a heated negotiation with the crew member.
“You cannot film in the lobby on Monday,” the manager says. “We have a very important conference checking in on Monday and your film crew cannot be the first thing they see when they enter the Regency.”
The crew member starts to protest.
“You can do it Tuesday, but not Monday,” the manager says. “We will have explained the situation and the relaxed dress code to our guests by then.”
The conversation ends and it’s your turn.
“Thank you for the champagne,” you say.
He stares at you, evidently not recognizing you in your spandex.
“You had champagne sent to my room.”
“Oh, yes,” he says. He seems to be questioning why he bothered.
“I have a bit of a situation,” you say. “My belongings were stolen at the Golden Tulip yesterday. I was originally supposed to stay there.”
“You were going to stay there instead of here?” He questions your judgment, your taste, your budget. Your wrinkled and faded gym attire isn’t helping.
“Yes, and my backpack was stolen and I went to the police station and they gave me a report with a red stamp. A very important red stamp. I went to make copies in the business center and I must have left it behind because I don’t have it now. I’m so tired. I just arrived yesterday and so much has happened . . .”
“You are looking for a piece of paper?” he says.
“Yes.”
“What is your name again?”
You give him Sabine’s name.
“If we find a piece of paper with your name on it, we will call you immediately,” he tells you.
Back in your room you check the champagne bottle to see if there’s anything left. A quarter of the bottle. You fill your glass and finish it quickly.
Your thoughts become slower, more orderly. You lied to the embassy woman. You told her you were Megan Willis. You told her you had a document from the police, but now you don’t. It seems impossible to go back to the embassy without your own identification, with only the possessions of Sabine Alyse. And having given Susan Sontag a fabricated name. But without the embassy what can you do? You cannot return to the police station: when the police chief pressed his warted thumb into your thumb you knew he was saying that you were to never see each other again. You doubt he will defend you if you return to the station. You will have to continue to be Sabine Alyse, here at the Regency. You will have to eat here, charge everything to the room. But how long will that last? How long before Sabine Alyse’s credit-card charges are traced to you?