The Lioness(80)

“My father…” David began, and then he stopped. Terrance realized Katie’s fiancé was a little drunk. Was he catching himself before saying something he shouldn’t?

“Go on,” said Judy.

“Nothing,” he said. He motioned at his drink. “I forgot what I was going to say.”

The woman with the camera found a flashcube in her bag and held it up for the others at her table as if it were a gold nugget she’d panned in a river. Terrance watched her stand and approach their high-top. They all stopped talking at her arrival. There was an awkward beat where no one said anything, and then the woman opened her mouth and a tornado of words emerged, one long, sweet run-on sentence that she delivered without, it seemed, ever inhaling for breath.

“My name is Fiona Furst and I am writhing in guilt—really, I can’t believe I’m doing this—because I am interrupting you all, but, Miss Barstow, my family has seen most of your movies, I think, really, most of them, maybe all of them. And we are so happy you’re going to be married, and you have no idea what it would mean to my daughters to have a photo of you, but I’d only take it if you said it was okay and you didn’t mind.” Terrance couldn’t quite place her accent, despite the ample evidence she had offered, but something about it said Upper Midwest. He thought of his own family in Chicago.

Instantly, Katie said, “Of course. Would you like to be in it?”

Fiona Furst’s eyes went wide, and for a second Terrance thought her knees were going to buckle. But then she nodded. “Oh, my God,” she said, “oh, my God, yes, yes!” Her reaction sounded almost sexual, and Terrance had to look down at the burnished mahogany of the tabletop to keep a straight face. When he looked up, David was climbing carefully off the barstool and offering to take the picture of the woman and his fiancée. Fiona wasn’t sure, it seemed, whether to lean into Katie, and so Katie leaned into her, and there was that smile and the flashcube went off, and David started to return the woman’s camera. But Katie stilled his arm and said to Fiona, “You probably couldn’t tell from where you were seated, but with me are Terrance Dutton and Judy Caponigro, who you’ve also seen in movies, I am quite sure, and Eva Monley, who’s worked on some films I’d wager you loved a lot. Would you like a picture of all of us?”

Fiona stared around the table. “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t realize. I just saw you and that meant I didn’t see anyone else. I’m so sorry. But, yes, I’d love—”

“Don’t be sorry, please,” Katie insisted. “Like I said, you didn’t know. This is my fiancé, David Hill. Why don’t you sit here, where David was sitting?”

“Perfect,” said David when Fiona was settled, and then he snapped a second photo. Fiona thanked Katie profusely when she stood, clearly not wanting to overstay her welcome, but Katie told her it was nothing and thanked her, in turn, for watching her movies.

When the woman was back at her table, Eva said, “Katie, that was lovely of you. Very gracious.”

Katie shrugged. “It took thirty seconds.”

“God, you’ll all have so much fun in Africa,” Judy told them. “No interlopers. No one is going to want you to pose for pictures.”

“No, we’ll be the interlopers,” said Katie. “We’ll be the ones interrupting other animals while they’re going about their lives.”

David had finished his drink and crunched down hard on a remaining ice cube. “Just want to make sure, Eva. The Congo. In your opinion, could it have any effect on our trip?”

Judy sighed. “David, I have no idea what kinds of papers your father pushes or what he does in personnel. But it seems to me he has you all worked up over nothing. Stop focusing on the fighting in the Congo and start focusing instead on the image of a bunch of giraffes watching you light a cigarette. Or that moment when your guide smashes on the brakes of your Land Rover, because there in the tall grass is a lioness with a couple of her cubs. Or the idea of stopping at some overlook by a river because all of those things you thought were just gray boulders are, in fact, hippopotamuses. There’s nothing like Africa. I don’t miss America in the slightest when I’m there. The dirty martini at the Fairview in Nairobi is just this civilized”—and here she raised her glass—“but the next day, you can be staring at an elephant the size of the bungalow I have here at the Chateau. I love it.”

“And the coffee plantation?” David asked.

Judy sat up straight on her stool and said in an accent that Terrance supposed was meant to sound Danish, “I had a farm in Africa.”

Katie looked back and forth at everyone around the table, her face concerned. “Judy, did you and Blair sell the plantation?” Blair was her British husband.

Judy laughed. “No, of course not. I was trying—I guess rather badly—to mimic Isak Dinesen.”

“That’s the opening sentence of her memoir,” Eva elaborated.

Katie looked embarrassed, and David kissed her on her cheek. “I’ll get you a copy tomorrow. It’ll be fun for you to read before we head out.”

Eva clinked her glass against Judy’s. “Your accent wasn’t bad at all.”

“Thank you.”

“?‘Plantation,’?” Terrance said, trying out the word as if he had never said it out loud before. But, of course, he had. As a child and a teenager. His great grandparents had been slaves on a…plantation.