Mists of the Serengeti(85)

“What are you doing?” I asked, as he got up and covered me with another blanket from the car. He was kneeling on the ground, fussing around, when all I wanted was for him to come back to me.

“Covering your feet.” He cupped my heel and ran his finger down my sole until my toes wiggled. “You have traitorous feet. Tomorrow, they’ll carry you away from me, but tonight they’re mine.” He kissed the tops of my feet softly. “Do they know the way back, Rodel? Do they know that if they ever walk these fields again, they belong to me? Because I will claim them. Make no mistake about that.”

“And I claim you.” I pulled him to me and looped my arms around his neck. “If you’re ever in England. And not just your feet. I claim all of you. This, and this, and this, and this.” I took inventory of his firm, bronzed body. It would have been funny if we weren’t both aching inside.

“I think you missed a spot.” He rolled over onto his back and took me with him. “This right here.” He placed my hand over his heart.

“Yes. This right here.” I lay my head on my favorite spot and closed my eyes.

A chorus of frogs croaked around us, the waterfall cascaded over moss-slicked rocks, but all I heard that last night in Africa, as stars hung suspended above us, was the drumbeat of his heart. Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack.





THE SKY WAS low and somber the next morning, as we drove to the airport, the squeak of wipers un-blurring the world every now and then. A fine drizzle fell around us as we turned in to the drop-off area.

There are moments that remain frozen in time—every sound, every color, every breath, crystallized into vivid shards of memory. Sitting in the idling car with Jack, outside the departures terminal, was one of them. Suitcases clattered over concrete slabs. The smell of diesel hung heavy in the air. Backpackers got off shuttle buses with colorful decals stuck to their luggage.

I conquered Mount Kilimanjaro

Kili—19,340 feet

A sea of faces moved through the doors, under the bright yellow letters of the departures building.

Jack and I watched silently. It was easier to focus on something outside of us. All the combinations, of all the letters, could not form a single word for what we wanted to say. We were circles and spirals and heart beats, rolled up into a glorious mess. We were a bundle of memories parked briefly in the drop-off zone.

“Don’t come inside.” I took my bag from Jack when we stepped out. “Please.” My eyes pleaded with him. “I never learned to cry gracefully, like they do in the movies—with perfect, luminous tears rolling down my cheeks. I look like a withered crabapple when I cry.”

“Rodel.” He crushed me to him, my name falling from his lips in a hoarse whisper. Another car slid into the spot behind us, its hazard lights flashing rhythmically like the ticking of a clock.

Jack’s arms tightened around me. “It’s like a piece of me is being ripped away again. First Lily, now you. And yet . . .” His voice softened as he gazed me. “I wouldn’t change a single thing. I would do it over and over again.”

We said goodbye in the language of ghosts, with unspoken words and haunted longings, oblivious to everything and everyone around us.

“Kiss me hard, then let me go,” I said, when the touch of his hand became suddenly unbearable in its tenderness.

I felt the movement of his breath before our lips touched. My heart throbbed at the sweet, savage sensation of his mouth. It was like running without air—breathless and beautiful. I clung to him for a soul-bursting moment, before wrenching myself away and stumbling toward the building. I paused for a beat as the sliding doors opened.

Turn around, Rodel, a part of me screamed.

Don’t look back, the other part countered.

I turned. Because I couldn’t help it. Because Jack honked.

He was sitting in the car, his palm splayed against the window in a frozen goodbye. Our eyes met through the droplets of water that clung to the glass like little pearls of silver. I retraced my steps, wheeling my bag behind me until I was standing beside his car. Then I lifted my hand and placed my fingers against his. The glass was wet and cold between us, but something warm and powerful hummed in my veins. When I removed my hand, my palm print was etched on the damp window, just like Lily’s had been. As our gazes locked, I could feel the connection throbbing between Jack and me through that window. And it was enough. To know, and to have known.

I smiled.

A corner of his mouth tilted up in a way that made my heart skid.

I held on to that image as I walked through the sliding doors and checked in to my flight. As the plane took off, I watched the cars and buildings get smaller and smaller: the pastures where cows grazed, the fields of corn, the mud huts thatched with sheets of corrugated iron. And then the clouds were floating below us like spools of lambs’ wool. I reached into my handbag for the little parcel that Goma had asked me to open on the plane. It was a lace handkerchief, tied into a pouch with a jute string. I was almost done opening it when I looked out of the window and caught my breath.

Kilimanjaro rose through the clouds, like a bride of the Gods, its ice-capped peaks glistening like a crown of majestic crystals. Silver mists swirled around the summit, changing and shifting under the rays of the sun. There was something delicate and poignant in the fleeting, moving play of light—the kind of beauty that only transient things can hold.