10
Ranna calls two days later. Two days during which I grow steadily angrier because I’ve let on how I feel about her.
At first I don’t want to take her calls, but I give up the fight after she’s left the fourth message of the morning and my phone promptly rings again. I push my laptop aside. The story can wait.
“Bloody hell, you’re stubborn,” I begin.
“Well, we must be made for each other then, because you don’t give up either—in spite of all the rumors about me. In spite of me.”
Her tone is light, but I suspect she’s working hard to keep it that way.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” she says softly when I fail to reply. My mind is locked on “made for each other.”
“How about a beer at Hardings? Things are a bit hectic at the moment, but next week is fine.”
“Alex. Don’t be like that. I’m sorry I didn’t call before. I had to clear my head. You know, sort out a few things. Sometimes I also have to think things through. Believe it or not.”
“What kind of things?” I run a frustrated hand through my hair, then get up and walk to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.
“Just things.”
“You see, Ranna, that’s the problem: there are so many things you don’t talk about. Like your near engagement. And I still don’t know how well you and Tom know each other.”
“Yes,” she answers simply.
“Yes what?”
“Yes to the beer at Hardings. See you tonight at six.”
She ends the call before I can tell her to go to hell.
Ranna arrives at Hardings before me. You’re ten minutes late, she indicates, pointing at her watch, smiling.
Ten minutes? I shake my head, annoyed. I tried to be even later, but before I knew it I was parking behind the bar.
Hardings is still fairly empty, with only three of the tables occupied.
Ranna gets up, inviting me to sit in the chair opposite her.
She’s the first woman I’ve ever met who’s tall enough to look my own six feet in the eye. Tonight her gaze is unwavering, though her hands betray her anxiety.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
“I nearly didn’t,” I lie.
She gestures again for me to take a seat, but stubbornly I remain standing. She looks down at her boots, which are surprisingly clean despite the rain that’s still coming down. When she looks up again, her eyes are glistening. She gives an embarrassed laugh and runs her hand through her hair.
“I would’ve deserved it, you know. If you hadn’t come.”
“Yes, you would’ve.”
She hesitates a moment, then places one hand on my shoulder and the other on my chest, almost as if she’s pushing me away while drawing me closer. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes?”
“Are you really going to make me beg?”
“Yes.” I stare at the bunch of office workers in the middle of Hardings, celebrating what seems like a birthday.
“Why?”
She sits down. I finally give in and sit down as well.
“Because I’m angry, Ranna.”
“And you want to restore the balance?”
“What balance?”
She raises the cheap whiskey tumbler and empties it. “My mother says that’s what my stepfather does when he forgets their wedding anniversary. She’s always late, no matter where they’re going. He gets her back by ‘forgetting’ their anniversary. She says he does it to show her she’s not the boss.”
“Sounds like a power struggle.”
“Maybe it is,” she agrees. “Sometimes I think that’s what every relationship is, except when the wife meekly accepts the role of cooking and cleaning and bearing children. Things like that.” She runs out of words.
“Are they still alive? Your parents?”
She toys with the empty glass. Shuffles her feet and parks her boots between mine. “Why are we talking about them here in Dar es Salaam, where it’s seventy-five degrees out there and tomorrow the rain may wash all of us away? New York is a long way from here. A lifetime away.”
She takes my hands in hers. “I’m sorry, Alex. Really.” She glances over her shoulder to see if anyone is watching, then leans across the table and kisses me gently, briefly, on my cheek.
“Alex. Please. I’m sorry.”
I move my hands over hers, wrapping my fingers around her slender wrists. I imagine I can feel the blood and whiskey pulse through the veins knotted across her hands like a river delta. The whiskey that, just like beer, can’t silence anything, no matter what people say. I wonder whether she knows it.
Clearly I’m not the only one with ghosts.
“Please,” she says again. “I don’t know what decent looks like anymore, but I know I want it. I want you.”
I’m at a loss for words. There’s a rush in my ears. Something kicking inside my chest. I bring her hands to my lips, but she hurriedly pulls them out of my grasp. Makes a fist.
“What? I thought . . .”
“Not here.”
“There’s hardly anyone here.” I try to make a joke. “You can’t already be ashamed of me.”
She shakes her head, laughs. “No, man. Maggie frowns on bad behavior in Hardings.” She gestures over her shoulder to the woman behind her waiting impatiently to take our order.
“Tell me what happened that night when you came in here bleeding.” I put down my knife and fork and push away the empty plate. Maggie’s chicken curry is a winner.
Ranna turns in her chair, resting her back against the wall. She scans the crowd almost nervously, chewing on her bottom lip. “It’s someone I once knew—slept with.” She corrects herself quickly, as if she has remembered she’s supposed to be honest.
“Slept with, or still sleeping with?” I want it to sound like a question, but it comes out wrong. Somehow the words have hardened into an accusation.
She clasps her fingers together. “Slept. Definitely. Totally. I promise.”
Her words come out in a rush, as I have come to know happens when she feels unsure.
I breathe more easily. When you write news stories, you know the value of the past tense. Of over. Murder. Drought. Kidnapping. War. Finished. Written off into the past tense and its lies, its euphemisms and misrepresentations, its seduction of perfection or despair—but still finished.
“What happened?”
She shrugs, as if the answer is obvious. “He didn’t want to hear . . . accept . . . that it’s over. I’ve been trying to get rid of him, but he won’t listen.”
I lean forward on the table, raising my voice so that she can hear me over the din in the bar. “Have you been to the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“What difference would it make?”
“He might stop bothering you.”
“Nothing could have stopped what happened.”
A waitress hurries past our table, her tray laden with empty beer bottles and glasses.
“You must report him. It’s important. The police can arrest him. Keep him away from you. Stop it from happening again.”
Future tense. The weight of possibility. Uncertainty.