The Lioness(54)

“I keep expecting to see headlights. Or hear a Land Rover’s engine. I fear I’ll let down my guard and there they’ll be,” she said.

“Or a truck full of rangers. Imagine that instead.”

She considered repeating back to him what he had just said to her: It’s a big area. Two people don’t leave much of a footprint here. But that would have been contrary and mean. And so instead she murmured, “I like that idea.”

“You’ll tell me if you need something?”

“Yes, but I have a canteen and aspirin and this pistol. What more could I possibly want?” She looked at the weapon in her hand. She had the safety on, but he had showed her how to flip it off and fire it. “You know,” she told him, “I can’t believe I could hit anything with this thing. The gun. I’m literally half blind.”

“Not true. You have one eye that’s in excellent shape. And a lot of people close one eye when aiming anyway. Besides…”

“Besides what?”

“You’ll be firing, if you need to, at very short range. When the leopard has smelled us and is about to leap.”

“Leopards have great hearing and great eyesight. But the canine predators have a much better sense of smell than the big cats.”

“May I ask you something?”

She waited.

“Pardon my French, but how the fuck do you know that fun fact?”

“I read it in a safari guide on the flight from L.A. to New York. I’ve always been a smarty-pants.” She recalled how Felix had teased her about that guide, making her laugh out loud on the plane, and when that memory came to her, it was accompanied by another spasm of grief. A literal spasm. She shuddered. It had been happening off and on all day as they walked, whenever she remembered her husband. She thought of their first kiss and their last kiss, and the last one pained her because it had been passionless and rote: a kiss before sleep in their tent last night, their lips barely touching. Last night she had yet to become, at least in her mind, Margot Macomber, because she had not yet witnessed Felix sniveling in the Serengeti dust. So why had their kisses grown listless of late? She had known that Felix had his issues with his father and she knew there was no friendship he would not try to exploit to further his career—and, she supposed, hers. But she had loved him. She loved him because he was wounded in ways that she wasn’t, and she had loved him because of the things that they shared: movies and books and Irish Coffee at Tom Bergin’s on Wilshire on Sunday afternoons. She supposed that if he hadn’t died today, if somehow they had both managed to survive this nightmare, eventually she would have gotten past his behavior this morning and loved him the way she once had. There were so many worse things than being scared. She thought of the African novelist Muema had mentioned, Chinua Achebe, and the novel he had encouraged her to read instead of Hemingway. She doubted the plot was in any way reminiscent of her marriage at the end or the direness of her plight right now—either would be too much of a coincidence—but the title haunted her for both reasons: Things Fall Apart. Yes, they did. It was inevitable. Nothing lasts. Just…nothing.

“Carmen?”

“Yes?”

“Just making sure you were okay. You’d gotten awfully quiet up there.”

“I was just thinking.”

“About Felix?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Most of today I’ve been in shock, and the pain of his death has been dulled. Or my head hurt, and that was all I was aware of. Or I just kept moving forward, as sick as I felt, trying to get away from the Land Rover. Watching the sun. Watching for things that wanted to kill me. Animals. A jeep or lorry filled with kidnappers. But then I would remember Felix was dead, and I’d have these tremors. They were almost like seizures.”

“Go on.”

“I think I prefer it when I’m not in shock, and the waves are just battering me. I feel better about myself when I’m really, really overwhelmed by the loss. When it’s physical. When it’s uncomfortable. When I want to tear at my clothes.”

“You shouldn’t ever feel bad about yourself, Carmen.”

“I just suppose I’d be a better person if I were inconsolable. If I were hysterical.”

“Someday you’ll play a grieving widow, and you’ll use all of this. Besides…”

“Besides what?”

“Your body and mind are too focused on trying to survive right now to mourn. Grief? It’s a luxury.”

She knew he had more experience with death than anyone she had ever met. She wasn’t sure if he was correct about her specifically, but she knew she would nevertheless use his logic through the long night ahead to help rationalize her behavior.



* * *



.?.?.

There was a mini-golf course on Sepulveda with the usual sorts of obstacles: a waterfall, a windmill, and a hippo. But it also had a model of the Eiffel Tower on one hole and a twelve-foot-high fantasy castle anchoring another: pink bricks, yellow flags, and petunias lining the twenty-foot fairway to the palace entrance.

And that hole had a moat, and it was the moat that mattered if you were playing. The fairway narrowed like an hourglass, and the trick was to putt perfectly straight through the center. If you missed, your ball ricocheted back to the tee; if you tapped it too hard, you’d wind up in the drink.