Free The Blue Hour by Douglas Kennedy Page B

the Moroccan passport makes it difficult to actually live or work anywhere else.”
    â€œSo you’ve never lived in England or the States?” I said, completely amazed by her English.
    â€œThat’s my dream—to find my way to New York or London,” she said with a shy smile. “But with the exception of France, I’ve never been out of Morocco.”
    â€œThen how on earth did you get so good at my language?”
    â€œI studied it at university. I watched all the American and British films and television shows that I could. I read many novels.”
    â€œWhat’s your favorite American novel?”
    â€œI really liked The Catcher in the Rye  . . . not that I completely understood it.”
    â€œWhat didn’t you understand?”
    â€œAll the local New York references. I tried looking many of them up. What’s that place he goes to see the Christmas show?”
    â€œRadio City Music Hall.”
    â€œThe dancers are acting out . . . what do they call the birth of your savior?”
    I found myself laughing.
    â€œIt’s called the Nativity, and the dancers dressed up like people from the Holy Land are called the Rockettes.”
    â€œIs there a French word for ‘Rockettes’?” she asked.
    â€œNo, the Rockettes are truly beyond translation.”
    I told her about having first learned French in Canada, and how I was here with my artist husband this summer and was very determined to rejuvenate my French in four weeks.
    â€œBut you speak it well already,” she said.
    â€œYou’re being far too kind.”
    â€œI’m being accurate—though a foreign language is one you must continue to work at, otherwise it does fade from memory.”
    She asked me how I’d found my way to Essaouira. She was interested to know about Paul’s time in Morocco over thirty years ago, and where we lived in the States, and might Buffalo be a place that she would like?
    â€œBuffalo is not what one would call a particularly cosmopolitan or elegant city.”
    â€œBut you live there.”
    Now it was my turn to blush.
    â€œWhere you end up may not be where you wished to live,” I said.
    Shutting her eyes for a moment, she bowed her head and nodded agreement.
    â€œSo, if I wanted to regain fluency in French in a month, how many hours a week would I need?” I asked.
    â€œThat depends on your schedule.”
    â€œI have no schedule here. No obligations, no commitments, no pressing engagements. And you?”
    â€œI teach at what you would call ‘lower school.’ Children between the ages of six and nine. But I am free from five o’clock onward every afternoon.”
    â€œIf I were to suggest two hours a day . . .”
    â€œCould you afford three hours?” she asked.
    â€œWhat would you charge per hour?”
    Now she turned an even deeper shade of crimson.
    â€œYou don’t have to be shy about this,” I said. “It’s just money—and it’s best to get these things settled at the beginning.”
    God, how American I sounded. Cards on the table. Name your price and let’s talk.
    After a moment or two she said, “Would seventy-five dirhams per hour be too much?”
    Seventy-five dirhams was around ten dollars. Immediately I said, “I think that’s too little.”
    â€œBut I don’t want to ask for more.”
    â€œBut I want to offer more. Would you accept one hundred and twenty-five dirhams per hour?’
    She looked shocked. “That’s almost two thousand dirhams a week.”
    â€œTrust me, if it was not affordable for me I would tell you.”
    â€œOkay, then.” She looked away but now with a small smile on her face. “Where shall we do the lessons?”
    â€œI have a suite upstairs. I’ll have to check with my husband—but I think that should be fine.”
    â€œAnd if I may ask . . . what do