The Prisoner's Wife by Gerard Macdonald

Author:Gerard Macdonald
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

19

FES, MOROCCO, 27 MAY 2004

As the sun rose over Africa, Shawn was woken by Danielle’s fingers on his lips. She was perched on the edge of his bed, wearing his T-shirt, her fever gone.

“You were crying in your sleep,” she said. “Saying, over and over, that you want, I don’t know what. So, tell me, what is it you want?”

He brought himself back to her, to the room of reality.

“What do I want? Come on. You know what I want.”

“You Americans. Always now—you want it now—”

“Since I met you, actually.”

She laughed. Her fingers on his lips, her voice a whisper, she said, “You have to wait. I will come to your bed. Not now. Not today. But soon.”

No mention of the night’s events. Of walking in her sleep.

“Now, Shawn,” she said, “out of bed. Shower. Shave. We’re meeting Younis.”

* * *

She sat watching Shawn as he used a shaver. Years back, in Vietnam, he’d had a hell of a time shaving. Tough beard, tender skin, and no power in the DMZ. Since then, he’d gone electric, hadn’t used a blade.

“Before you met your husband?” he said. “You never talk about that.”

Danielle looked up from a hand mirror. “Relationships?”

“Must have had some.”

Lip gloss in hand, she shook her head. “Plain girls don’t.”

Shawn switched off the shaver. “You were plain?”

“According to Maman. So competitive, that woman—beyond belief. For a time, you know, I hated her. Later, of course, she becomes a person to be pitied.” She finished her Evian and tossed the bottle away. “Living in a world of her own, Maman. Hoping to make it as an actress, to work again—with Chabrol, maybe.” She was silent a moment, then said, “After thirty, for a woman, it’s hard. The camera, you know. It is not kind.”

Shawn swapped shoes for sneakers. “Your father?”

“Papa?” She stopped, trying out what she was about to say. “God, he was so good-looking. I think, now, he didn’t like women. Disappointed, having a daughter. When we were in Paris, he used to point out pretty men—never women. My mother said that meant he was faithful to her.” She laughed. “I thought it meant something else.”

Shawn took the pistol from his toilet bag and checked the loading. “Politics?”

“For Papa? Of the right, of course. Extreme right. Algérie française, imprison the leftists, deport the Arabs—les beurs, he called them.”

“And you?”

“Naturally, the opposite. What can you do, with a father like that? Only react. I was a soixante-huitarde, a girl of ’sixty-eight, years too late.” She began painting clear polish on her nails. “Then Papa left home. I saw him only if he didn’t have to meet Maman—if I was in Provence, or Morocco. If I was here with Benoit—”

“Benoit?”

“My surrogate father. Benoit, he was—I guess now they’d call him a radical lawyer. He defended prisoners. Moroccans. He paid the price.”

“He’s dead?”

“He is.” She made her fingers a pistol. “Assassinated.” Danielle paused, then said, “This morning we meet a man who”—she made quote marks in the air—“worked with him. Younis. Another so-called radical.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.