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Amélie introduced herself as a housewife who suspected her husband of infidelity. The hair stylist was a middle-aged woman in her forties, with unshaven armpits, and a thick, tightly laced waist. A wide belt pushed the folds of her flesh upward toward her breasts, and down in the direction of her hips. Thus encumbered, she was sparing of her movements, but bossed her clients around. “Come on, Mrs. Martin, are you going to complain until you’re blue in the face? Your grandson will come visit you. Mark my word.”
    She dispensed clever advice. The old bags expressed their opinions. The beauty parlor came to life with memories, stratagems to keep the straying husband. Everyone agreed as to male fickleness. Amélie left the shop feeling comforted.
    The following week she’d go to the other beauty parlor. There she posed as a secretary who lived in hope of her employer’s marriage proposal. The place, however, always startled her, suggesting a cushy bordello with its pink curtains, black-lacquered table-tops, and gilded brass wall sconces. Teetering on spike-heeled pumps, the young assistants, covered by see-through smocks, aped the icy, formal airs of the wellborn, while the older hair stylists exchanged mocking remarks with overdressed clients. The advice Amélie got was to be a bit less naive. She’d sail out of there, her hair teased and blown, looking for all the world like a soufflé.
    Her affair with David, though fruitful in opportunities to exercise her special gifts, seemed to have dampened her imagination instead of stimulating it. No longer did she lie joyously. Hard-pressed, she made do with approximations that cut her to the quick. “You’re in a slump!” she’d say to herself, mourning the good old days when her fibs provided the safety valves required by her imagination. Reduced to the function of alibis, they had been stripped of their panache, not to mention their subversive charm. They were part and parcel of her conjugal duties, a proof of her good manners, like a bread-and-butter note. There was no fun in it any longer.
    F riday, 1 P.M. David prevailed to have Amélie occupy a window seat, as though her introduction to Morocco was to begin on the Orly runway. “At last,”he sighed with relief, getting into his seat. They were leaving Paris, where Amélie remained reserved, circumspect as soon as he broached the subject of the future. He couldn’t hold this against her. How could she possibly react any other way a few streets away from her children and husband?
    Beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, everything could change. He would feel stronger, like a conquering hero. On his home ground he could convince her. The magic quality of the city, the lavish wedding feast to which he was taking her this very evening should prove irresistible.
    The scent of cologne-saturated washcloths spread throughout the airplane. Amélie listening gleefully to the light clatter of the safety belt buckles being snapped shut, the slamming of the luggage racks overhead. Traveling delighted her, freeing her of the burden of time. Time became relative: fast at the ticket counter, drawn-out and slow in the lounge at the gate. During the flight it seemed regulated by a stopwatch, revealing its disconcerting reliance on convention by the jet lag following arrival.
    The flight to Marrakech was nonstop. Too bad. She also liked ports of call. Thus discovered by pure chance, the world was made to order for her. Every bit of it was tamed: its waiting rooms, its runways. She deciphered the alphabet of the customs placards. With the universe shrinking she expanded.
    Ensconced in her seat next to David, Amélie was babbling happily, like a child on a school holiday, celebrating the promising start of what her husband thought was “a professional symposium.”
    David interrupted her chatter:
    —When I see your lips moving, all I think of is how much I want you.
    —Let’s check it out . . . , she said, gauging the lump rising in his