The Blue Hour by Douglas Kennedy

Author:Douglas Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

SIXTEEN

AS SOON AS Ben Hassan uttered his threat, the temptation arose to toss the contents of my wineglass in his face. For several edgy moments I had to keep the glass fixed to the table and under control. Ben Hassan worked out what I was stopping myself from doing. He raised a finger, saying, “If you create havoc here—and shame me in public—there will be ramifications.”

“You’re a gangster.”

“That is an interpretation. As is the fact that I am your only friend here.”

“A ‘friend’ who tricked my husband.”

“Your husband is the architect of his own despair. He approached me. He begged for a way back to his daughter. I gave it to him.”

“While achieving payback at the same time.”

“He knew how much I would be charging him for the money. He accepted the sum. He knew that he would have to return to Morocco to sign the papers—and yes, now you know the real reason why you came to Morocco this summer. He accepted that too. I did warn him that finding a way back into Samira’s heart would be challenging; that she grew up haunted by the absence of her father and the way he never once contacted her. She herself must have written Paul at least once a year until she was twenty-five. Even after that terrible rupture with her mother, she still held on to the naive hope that, somehow, he was going to be the good father and rescue her from her immense loneliness. In short, he was fully aware that, by trying to reengage with his exceptionally messy past, he was walking right back into a compromised and precarious situation. But he still chose to head across the Atlantic and into my open arms. And you, innocent you, who knows all about absentee fathers and men who are in endless negotiation with their various conflicted selves . . . you should now lose the maternal protectiveness that you cloak Paul in and let him play the adult for a change. But you can’t do that, can you? Which is why you want to dash that glass in my face—and, in doing so, earn my displeasure . . . which, as I think you can sense by now, is not a wise thing to court.”

“Because you might smash my fingers? Or maybe I’ll suffer the same fate meted out to Faiza’s father and brothers?”

“I don’t remember alluding to any fate being ‘meted’ out to them.”

“But they are no longer with us, right?”

“I never said that.”

“Because I didn’t ask it before. But I’m asking it now.”

“Why don’t you ask Faiza about all that? Because that’s where you’re heading now, aren’t you? In fact, let me expedite matters for you and give you her address in Ouarzazate.”

“Oh, you’re a mind reader, are you?”

“Actually I am. I know you are simply someone who can’t walk away, even if it means following the man who betrayed you into the vortex.”

He pulled out a notebook and an elegant silver pen, then scribbled away for a few moments before tearing the page out and handing it to me.

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