The Blue Hour by Douglas Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

with a look of fatigued resignation on his face—ignored the protestations of Mr. Charm.
    â€œ Où allez-vous ? ” he asked Paul.
    â€œ Vous connaissez l’hôtel Les Trois Chameaux ?”
    â€œ Bien sûr. Ça vous coûtera environ trente dirhams .”
    Thirty dirhams. An honest man.
    â€œ D’accord, ” Paul said and we loaded our bags into his truck. As we drove off we ran into a small flotilla of geese and chickens, herded alongside the city walls by a man in a white djellaba and skullcap. The driver honked his horn in a short, nonchalant manner, indicating that the shepherd should get his livestock out of the way. Nearby was a man wheeling a barrel filled with unrefined cotton. And—this was hallucinatory—a fellow sitting in front of a basket, intoning a tune on a reedy instrument as a python ascended upward from the straw hoop.
    Paul could see me taking this all in. The taxi followed a route along the walls of Essaouira; walls that looked like fortifications from some medieval bulwark.
    â€œIt gets even stranger,” Paul said, clearly at home amidst the vivid chaos.
    We hugged the road adjacent to the wall for another minute, then turned under a narrow archway and down a back alley, notable for its blue walls and the tiny lanes that branched off it. At the end was a doorway, also painted a deep blue. This was the entrance to our hotel. Les Trois Chameaux. The Three Camels. The lobby was dark, shadowy, austere. An elderly man was asleep behind the reception desk. He was dressed for a day out at the races: a flowery shirt, a gold chain with the Moroccan star heaving up and down with his snores, gold rings on his fingers, heavy dark sunglasses hiding his eyes.
    I looked around. Old Moroccan furnishings—all heavy wood and once-luxuriant brushed velvet upholstery—now dust-ridden and showing serious signs of neglect. There was a loud 1920s railway station clock hanging next to the reception area that counted off each passing second with an ominous click. And there was a half-starved cat on top of the counter, eyeing us warily.
    As we approached, Paul took the initiative, at first whispering “Monsieur,” then raising his voice several decibels with each additional attempt. When this proved pointless, I tapped the hotel bell near the open guest register. Its loud clang jolted the man back to life, the shock on his face coupled with bemusement, as if he didn’t know where he was. As he tried to adjust his gaze on us, Paul said, “Sorry to have woken you so abruptly. But we did try—”
    â€œYou have a reservation?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œName?”
    Paul gave him this information. The man stood up and, using the index finger on each hand, spun the register around toward him. He peered at today’s page, rifled back through several pages, shaking his head, muttering to himself.
    â€œYou have no reservation,” he finally said.
    â€œBut I made one,” Paul said.
    â€œYou received confirmation from us?”
    â€œOf course. I made it on the internet.”
    â€œYou have a copy of the confirmation?”
    Paul looked sheepish. “Forgot to print it,” he whispered to me.
    â€œSurely if you went online,” I said, “you’d find it.”
    â€œI think I deleted it.”
    I stopped myself from saying, “Not again.” Paul was always clearing out his files and frequently removing essential correspondence that he needed to hold on to.
    â€œ Mais il vous reste bien des chambres, non? ” I asked the guy behind the desk.
    â€œ Oui et non. ”
    He now picked up an ancient house phone—the sort that seemed to belong in some movie set during the German occupation—and started speaking Arabic in a loud, fractious voice. This was something I was beginning to notice: how Arabic was often a language declaimed in a stentorian manner, making it seem aggressive, swaggering, bordering on the