Free The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy Page A

wood surface of the desk. Pulling his khaki safari hat onto his head, he sat down, peered out at the rooftops in the immediate distance, and then began his intricate, architectural rendering of them. I stood inside, watching him for a good ten minutes, marvelling at the precision and intensity of his vision, the amazing sense of line that he maintained, the way he seemed oblivious to everything but the work at hand, the ferocious discipline that rose up within him as he drew. All I could feel was a strange rush of love for this very talented, off-kilter man.
    I drifted back inside and set up my own little workspace: my laptop, a very nice Moleskine journal bought before my departure and an old Sheaffer fountain pen which belonged to my dad. It was red with the sort of chrome trim that recalled the fins on a vintage Chevy. Dad always kept it filled with red ink, a source of dry amusement to my mother. ‘Your whole damn life is about the accumulation of red ink,’ she said on more than one occasion. But Dad once explained to me that he loved that colour for the richness of its imprint:
    â€˜It really does look like you’ve been writing in blood.’
    Before I was able to make the first crimson entry in my notebook, the phone by the bed jumped into life. I answered it to hear the guy at the front desk telling me:
    â€˜Your French professor is downstairs.’
    Monsieur Picard clearly worked fast, as I’d only asked him to find me a teacher yesterday.
    Before I went downstairs to meet her, Paul said:
    â€˜Whoever is going to be giving you the lessons will need the work. Don’t let her charge you any more than seventy-five dirhams an hour.’
    â€˜But that’s only nine dollars.’
    â€˜It’s great money here, trust me.’
    When I entered the lobby I saw a demure young woman waiting by the reception desk. Though she was wearing the hijab, a headscarf that allowed her full face to be seen, she was nonetheless dressed in blue jeans and a floral blouse that – while it completely hid her décolletage – wouldn’t have been out of place in a 1960s commune. A touch of retro hippy chic. You could tell immediately that this was a young woman who was very much caught between disparate worlds.
    When she accepted my outstretched hand the softness of her grip and the dampness of her palm hinted that she was anxious about this meeting. I tried to put her at her ease, motioning to two dusty armchairs in a corner of the lobby where we could talk undisturbed and asking the guy behind the desk to bring us two mint teas. She was intensely shy and seemed keen to please. Her name was Soraya. She was a Berber from the extreme south of the country, deep within the Sahara. Soraya was just twenty-nine and a teacher at a local school. Through gentle probing I discovered that she’d studied at the university in Marrakesh and even did a year in France. When she couldn’t get her visa extended she had to return home. Languages were her passion. In addition to her native Arabic and French she had mastered English and was working on Spanish now.
    â€˜But the Moroccan passport makes it difficult to actually live or work anywhere else,’ she told me.
    â€˜So you’ve never lived in England or the States?’ I said, completely amazed by her English which we occasionally slipped into, despite agreeing on an ‘all-French rule’ at the outset.
    â€˜That’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€˜Then how on earth did you get so good at my language?’
    â€˜I studied it at university. I watched all the American and British films and television shows that I could. I read many novels . . .’
    â€˜What’s your favourite American novel?’
    â€˜I really liked
The Catcher in the Rye
. . . Holden Caulfield was my hero