Page 27 of The Last Postcard

An automobile was roaring towards me, flashing silver in the sun, like nothing I had ever seen. Through the dust and the dazzle of the windscreen I saw a face; white teeth shining, a slick of dark hair, a bright eye, peering over smoked lenses. It was the face of an altar saint, surrounded by brilliant gold.

To this day, I can’t say what made me do it. Was it the glamour of that car, the heat and my hunger? Was it desperation? Or was it the pull of the future, a bolt of electricity lighting up all that was to come?

I don’t know. All I know is that when the beautiful, shining car came within ten feet of me, I met the eyes of the driver, and stepped into its path.

Part Two

Tangier

July 1978

Sam wrote for hours, by the light of the cheap little bedside lamp. Around him, he heard the house settle; stairs creaking, bedroom doors closing, lights being switched off. Outside the open window, night began to bloom. It seeped through the plaster walls, fluttered in the form of the tiny moths that found him, wedged in the corner of the room, the pen scratching at sheets of paper, the edge of his hand ink-stained a deep, ocean blue.

Eventually, he squeezed his burning eyes closed, easing out a crick in his neck. He had no idea what time it was. Not morning, but not far off either. Outside, the streets seemed utterly still, as if the hustlers and grifters had finally given up, and night had rolled down the hill to the beach, to disappear into the cool, grey sand.

Sam picked up the papers, covered on both sides with his spiky writing, and shuffled them into some kind of order. He smiled as he did it; how long had it been since he’d written a stack of pages like this? A year, two years. Not since college.

The stolen letter was the first chapter – he’d have to try and remember it at some point. This second chapter of … whatever it was he was writing, began with a heading, with the words Blood and Sand.

He put the pages to one side. Though he was tired, he didn’t want to stop. If he stopped, he might start thinking too hard about what he’d done, taking a stranger’s possessions from the Hotel Continental, pawing through them, writing about them, like a voyeur.

Inspiration, he told himself, that’s all this is. And anyway, A. L.’s long gone. Rubbing his face, he dipped the ink pen again, and turned over the sheet of paper he’d been writing on.

Pencil marks caught his eye, silvery in the dim light, like veins beneath skin. He blinked hard. Was he seeing things?

Words. There were words, scrawled across the page at a hasty angle, in pencil so faint it didn’t show on the other side of the paper. A drop of ink splattered from the pen and he swore. What if he’d ruined the page by writing on the other side, made it illegible? He dropped the pen into the ink bottle and held the page directly under the lamp to see.

Sure enough, blue ink had seeped through, making the letters difficult to decipher. Why hadn’t he been more careful? This page had been in the writing case the whole time, waiting for him, if he’d only been patient enough to look for it.

He turned the page this way and that, peering at the shining lead letters. Only when he brought it closer to his face did he see the top line:

A,

A what? An initial, an address? Was this a letter to A. L. – just like the one he had written in the café?

He sat back, eyeing the paper. He was burning with curiosity and yet this page – whatever it was – had never been intended for him. What if it contained something deeply personal?

Almost unintentionally, his eyes strayed back to the paper. It was no use; he had to know.

D Portuna, 28.7.28

A,

I am sorry.

One day, I hope you’ll understand.

*

He woke in a sweat at noon and pushed back the shutters, feeling as if he’d been running all night. Outside, the city was alive. He breathed it deep, tasting the bustle of the day, the tang of the sea, burning rubber, wet dust from washing. Leaving the window open, he went back to the tangled sheets and looked down at the writing case, open on the floor, surrounded by ink-scrawled papers. The pencil-written page lay on the top now. Rubbing his eyes, he picked up the stub of pencil from the case, wondering if it was the same one which had written that feverish note.

After a while, he fished around for a scrap piece of paper. Not the stuff from the writing case, he wasn’t making that mistake again. Instead, he found the airmail letter from his parents, clumsily folded. Such a grateful son, he thought as he smoothed it out and wrote on the back:

A. L. = A?

Alejandro del Potro?

Game – rules?