Free The Blue Hour by Douglas Kennedy

existence.”
    Paul kept so much about his life before me in a room marked off-limits. And there was a part of me that was jealous about his past. Jealous of the women who had known him intimately before me. No man had ever pleasured me the way he had, so I didn’t like to think there were others who’d felt what I’d felt when he was inside me. Yet thinking all this here, now, I couldn’t help but feel ridiculous. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. As stupid as wandering off down that murky alleyway.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I whispered.
    â€œDon’t be sorry. Just try to be happy.”
    â€œI am happy.”
    â€œThat’s good to hear,” he said, kissing me.
    â€œHungry?” I asked.
    â€œFamished.”
    â€œMe too.”
    â€œThere’s no way I’m going downstairs dressed like this.”
    â€œBut the outside world beckons. And do you really think anyone will care that you’ve gone native?”
    â€œI’ll care.”
    â€œI won’t,” I said. “And that must count for something.”
    â€œIt does—but I am still waiting for my clothes.”
    â€œIsn’t there a movie where someone says, ‘Come with me to the Casbah’?”
    â€œCharles Boyer to Hedy Lamarr in Algiers .”
    â€œSo come with me to the Casbah.”
    â€œThey don’t call it the Casbah here. They call it the souk.”
    â€œWhat’s the difference between a casbah and a souk?”
    â€œMystery,” he said.

SEVEN

    A PITILESS SUN overhead. The sky cloudless, a hard cobalt blue. But down here, in Essaouira, everyone except us seemed to be oblivious to the punishing heat. A heat so intense that the unpaved ground beneath our feet felt nearly molten.
    The souk at midday. A backstreet labyrinth of stalls and shops and hidden alleyways containing more back streets, more spindly precincts where every sort of merchant was plying his trade. The sense of human density was extraordinary. So too was the prismatic concentration of color. The piles of auburn, maroon, crimson, scarlet, chestnut, sorrel, even chartreuse spices along an entire alleyway, displayed side by side, fashioned into almost minaret-style anthills; the contrasting aquamarine, ultramarine, turquoise, and lapis lazuli in the intricately designed tiles on display by a vendor who had created a mosaic on the ground, which the passing crowd seemed to effortlessly dodge; the searing reds of the butcher meats on display, hanging limbs and fatty flanks, dripping blood, around which flies congregated in mercenary clusters.
    The burned-yellow, sea-green, ocher, jet-white, electric-pink, salmon-pink bales of fabrics. The stalls selling intricately patterned leather goods in every shade of brown, tan, khaki. Then there was the melding of aromas, some enticing, some extreme. Fetid sewage interplaying with the redolence of the spice market; the pungent tang of the salted sea overhanging the flower stalls; the brewing mint tea at every curbside stand we passed.
    Add to this the souk’s crazed acoustics. Loudspeakers blaring French and Moroccan pop music. Hawkers shouting everywhere. Merchants beckoning us forward, blurting out, “ Venez, venez !” At least two competing muezzins—the men who cried Koranic prayers in distended voices—intoning high-noon prayers from a pair of strategically located minarets. The lawn-mower chop of motorbikes and scooters, their drivers beeping manically as they negotiated the dirt-surfaced potholed terrain, dodging stands piled high with van Gogh–ish oranges and mangoes, and vegetable stalls where the tomatoes were primary in their redness. And here was a man trying to reach for my hand and pull me over to a corner of the souk where soaps in many hues—ivory, copper, scorched cream, ebony—formed a geometric sculpture several feet high.
    Even with the Atlantic nearby the air was still so parched, so arid, that after twenty minutes of