Now she understood how Sachiv had felt, when he had skulked out of her hotel bedroom, like a tortured dog.
No. This was different. Alex would have wanted her to do whatever it took to get back to him. Even the thing she did. An unfaithful wife coming home was better than a coffin. She had betrayed him in order not to be lost to him, and she would tell him everything, almost, from luring Gabriel into the tent, to feeling him up and hiding the keys—everything except the sex. And this deceit would be fair, and kinder than hurting Alex for the sake of a clear conscience.
She reached out, quietly, and found the bundle of keys nestling in the corner of the tent, but she no longer sought escape. Gabriel suffered, and his suffering entranced her. He didn’t deserve abandonment, of any kind, or the same fate she would have endured had he driven off. She was not a murderess, not cruel enough to run off and leave him in another great vacuum. During the night the jeep had seemed to be the solution, but where would it have taken her, when she knew neither her south, nor her east, nor from which direction they had come? Within half a kilometer she would have been lost, which was the same as being dead. So even now there could be no dawn break. Gabriel was her only way out.
The pale blue of the canvas was visible now, and reassuring. Somehow she slept.
She woke when Gabriel sat up, and crawled, naked, out of the tent. It was cold. She pulled the sleeping-bag around her and put her head through the gap. Sunlight was tiptoeing over the dunes, and the desert, so menacing hours before, had taken on a chummy aspect, its Humpty Dumpty hills marked with jagged shade. Gabriel was standing by a dead branch, a stream of urine giving it a sharp drink. Thea admired him: square shoulders, perfect butt, long legs. What a beauty. What a mess. She retreated into the tent, giddy and weak with relief.
In the creeping daylight, his strange words amounted mostly to those of a haunted man, more disengaged than unhinged. A railway carriage unshackled, left behind, no longer wanted, but still on the tracks. She wondered at what exact point his life had swerved off course. Was it the gift abandoned, like a foundling child, left on a doorstep where no one could pick it up because it belonged to someone else? In abandoning it, he had surely discarded a part of his own soul, which in turn had discarded him.
She heard a sort of roar, a bellow—inhuman. She held her phone away to look at it. Was that where it had come from? The roar of rocks, of space, and Gabriel leaping in. She could see him floating down, arms adrift, like a skydiver. A skydiver without a parachute; a climber without ropes. Another roar came up from the depths of the cave—
She woke, startled. A nightmare. No cave, only canvas. Yet she could hear it still, the gasp of the abyss, as if the earth were inhaling a cherished son. The Majlis al-Jinn was calling him.
Gabriel hadn’t returned to the tent. It was deadly quiet outside. Thea swiveled around again to look out. What was he up to? More shamanic circles? She stepped out and straightened up. No sign of him. Her head jerked—left, right, back.
Dunes.
Sand.
Curves.
Jesus. How long had she been asleep?
“Gabriel? . . . Gabriel!”
Fuck.
She dived into the tent, grabbed his shirt and scrambled out. Where the hell was he now? She looked inside the jeep and under it, turned around, calling him. The desert mocked her little voice, which didn’t echo or carry, but stayed in her throat and in their crater. Her body rattling, she headed for the highest crest and struggled up its flank, feet sinking, sand shifting, as she twisted in every direction looking for any speck of movement. The sands sighed and whimpered. He had wandered off, the bastard, abandoned her to nowhere. Frying. Dying. Family. Foolish! Breathless, she came to the top of the rise, her head spinning, but saw only hills and crevasses stretching—
Against the flesh-colored sands, Gabriel was camouflaged, except for his dark hair, which made a black dash over to the left where, in a slight depression, he was crouching, defecating.
Thea turned away and made to go down the slope, but her legs gave up and she sank onto the sand. A sob escaped, and another. Reprieved, again. Safe, again. Tears flowed, until a hand on her shoulder made her yelp.
“What’s a man gotta do to get a bit of privacy around here?”
Thea laughed—an involuntary burst of gratitude. He was there. There. She would be spared the frying dying and loved him for it.
“Hey,” he said, sitting down. “What’s the matter?”
Quirky grin, clear eyes—this was Gabriel proper. Tour guide Gabriel. Naked, gorgeous Gabriel.
“I thought you’d wandered off.”
He pulled a face. “Wandered off?” He looked down at his body. “I’d be a piece of bacon under a grill.”
“I panicked. After last night . . .”
He pulled her close. She yielded. “Last night,” he said, “was . . . unexpected.”
“It really threw me.”
“Me too.” With his chin, he pushed back the shirt and kissed her shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
He glanced at his erection. “What do you think?”
“I mean last night. You scared me.”
“I scared myself.”
“Why were you reciting those verses? What was that about?”
He stopped kissing her. “Verses?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“I remember being seduced.”
Her shoulders sagged. “The sex. Of course. You only remember the sex.”
“I won’t tell.” His hand lingered on her knee.
“You were ambling, rambling.”
His fingers moved along her leg. “I sleepwalk sometimes.” Nibbling her collarbone, he pushed the shirt fully off her. “Terrible bloody sleepwalker.”
“You
