“Yep. I’ll pick you up in the Landie and take you to the airstrip. Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do,” he says, before breaking off the connection.
I put my phone away and turn to the other two. “Bad news. We’re not flying today.”
Tom’s face darkens. “Why not?”
I point at the sky. “Guess. And sorry, but my contacts don’t go as high as that. Alan says tomorrow, same time, same place.”
Ranna sighs resignedly. “Probably just as well.” She swings the black backpack off her shoulder and puts away her camera. “What do we do now?”
“Don’t know about you two, but I’m going back to bed,” Tom says, annoyed. “So much for Africa not being for sissies. The rain isn’t so bad. Nothing compared to London.”
He waves and walks away. “See you tomorrow.”
“Bye,” Ranna says. “Enjoy your nap.”
She looks at her watch and turns to me. “Let’s go for a beer.”
“What’s the time?”
“Almost ten.”
“Why not?”
12
The rain steps up its fury as we get into the taxi. It streams down the buildings and the dala dalas as if someone has turned on a tap. People scatter through the ankle-deep muddy brown water, looking for shelter.
On a narrow pavement up ahead a man in a black suit aims to jump across a large puddle. A white Nissan pickup brakes sharply for a woman and her child and drenches him from head to toe. The suit steps into the road, cursing. Three of the words are familiar to me by now. Our taxi driver mumbles and steers around him. Ranna laughs, her camera capturing the moment.
At the turnoff to Hardings Ranna taps the driver on the shoulder. She’s changed her mind and signals for him to turn left. To her apartment.
“What’s up?”
“I’ll make breakfast. Unless you really want to go to Hardings. It will be dead quiet this time of the day.”
Five minutes later we stop in front of her place. I pay the driver while Ranna makes a dash for the front door, her backpack tucked under her shirt.
When I enter the musty room I avoid her eyes, afraid mine will reveal that I’ve been here before. I prop my backpack against the wall and stand around uneasily as she moves past me to switch on the air conditioner.
The double bed, the worn leather couch, the TV, and the thousands of books are all still there. I try to look at everything as if I’m seeing it for the first time. And in a way I am, now that I’m no longer worried about her.
There are large and small books, thick and thin ones, philosophy textbooks, detective novels, travelogues, sci-fi, and photo books. There seem to be even more than I recall. In the kitchen, even the salt, pepper, and other spices stand on stacks of books.
The couch is still being used as a bed. There is one empty mug on the floor, at the end where a pillow lies. A single white sheet is the only bedding. No sign of a duvet.
I notice there’s a time switch on the lamp next to the couch.
My eyes automatically travel to the sink in the bathroom that contained the bloody T-shirt. Today there’s nothing except the faint smell of bleach.
“Sit,” Ranna says in passing. “I forget you’re so polite that you’ll wait for an invitation.”
I follow her around instead. In the kitchen she takes two beers from the fridge, holds one briefly against her forehead and passes me the other one. Then she goes over to the couch and sits down with a contented sigh. She gives me a slightly embarrassed smile when I sit down next to her. I push the pillow into a corner and, for want of a coffee table, balance the beer on a stack of books. If the bottle leaves a stain, it will be one of many.
I point the beer at the disorganized library around us. If there is some order to how the books are stacked, I can’t see it. “How do you travel with all these books? Do you pack them every time you move? Or do you simply start a new collection?”
“They go along. All of them. They’re like my children. I’m on eight crates now. I use the same movers every time. I think they have a standing bet on how many crates it’ll be the next time.” She shakes her head. “My mother tells me to buy a Kindle, but I don’t know. There’s something about paper, you know? Stories and photos that can’t be removed or deleted. You should understand. When you’ve set something down in ink, it’s permanent. People quote it as the gospel truth. On paper you can live forever.”
She puts her beer on the floor, takes off her boots, and swings her legs up onto the couch. She leans back and pulls her left leg up under her chin. Her right foot comes to rest on my thigh.
My eyes take in the black hair without a trace of gray and the fine lines around her mouth. The soft light falling through the window behind her. The books. The walls.
Something isn’t right. Is it possible? Especially after what she has just said?
I move her foot out of the way, get up. Turn slowly. “But there are no . . .”
She runs her hands through her hair, tucks a few errant strands behind her ears. “I know.”
“Why not?”
Her face is calm, stripped of emotion. “I have enough trouble sleeping. When I’m here, I want to forget.”
“Not even of the good things? Like the woman and the cat? And what about living forever?”
“Well, living forever may not be for me.”
She picks up the beer and sips from it, and I know it’s the only answer I’ll get. She has nothing more to say on the matter.
I sit back down beside her. Drink my beer slowly and stare at the bare walls. Ranna the photographer’s walls are white and stark and empty.
I don’t know when it happens, but I fall asleep. Suddenly, like a child, without considering where I am.
I wake up from hands tracing the outlines of my body, touching me as if they want to touch me again. As if it matters what I think. What I feel. What’s under my skin.
Too afraid to open my eyes, I feel Ranna’s hands move cautiously to my neck. Across my face. The realization is overwhelming: Her hands are uncertain. Ranna’s confident, eight-photos-per-second hands are uncertain. Maybe even afraid.
I feel her lean forward. She kisses me slowly, as if I might break in two. Her mouth is soft and her breath smells of beer and peppermint.
“I know you’re awake.”
I keep my eyes closed, in case it’s a dream. “Says who?”
She laughs. “You’re holding your breath.”
I don’t tell her I’ve been doing it all along, since the first time we met, as if I still can’t believe my eyes.
When at last I look at her, I know she can see it. She sees everything.
She draws a breath and kisses me again. Harder this time. I’m wise enough to know it’s the end, and the beginning, of everything.
13
The next day I’m sitting at the open door of Lion Mining’s aging Puma chopper as it speeds away from Dar. We’re half an hour north of the city, on our way to Kibakwe, but already the damage from the rain is apparent. The grassy plains move past beneath my feet, one scene exactly like the next.
Water. More water.
I take a few photos for Instagram, signaling to Ranna to look at the devastation below, but she shakes her head and occupies herself with the Nikon. Tom ignores me as well.