“The very best.”
“When I first started the safaris, you know, there weren’t any lorries. The porters carried everything, and you had to cut your way through with a machete. There were grisly stories, too…about hunters and gun bearers being skewered or gored. One had his face taken off by the horn of a threatened buffalo. Another startled a lion up by Longonot and had his stomach ripped clean out. Everything was wilder, and the land was, too. Going out felt like gambling against a well-stacked deck.”
“You can’t really be wistful about gorings?” I smiled, and when he smiled back, the skin around his eyes creased and his lips curved higher on one side. I was beginning to be an expert on his face. I could have closed my eyes then and seen all of him just as clearly.
“The last time I went out, the client wanted four different kinds of wine at every meal. We had an icebox bumping along with us, too, and bearskin rugs.”
“I wouldn’t want any of that, just the stars, thank you very much.”
“That’s what I mean. If a client wants to be out in the bush, at least he should try and feel it. See it for what it really is. He wants the trophy, but what is it a sign of if he hasn’t even really been there?”
“Will you take me out sometime? I want to see it…before it’s all gone.”
“All right. I think you’d understand it.”
“I think I would, too.”
Galbraith’s pet serval cat came along looking for scraps or a good scratch. It rolled on the floor at Denys’s feet, revealing the pale spotted ruff along its belly. The fire was almost cold now, and the night was slipping away. Denys stood up and stretched broadly, and I spoke quickly, on pure instinct.
“Can I stay with you?”
“Is that a good idea?” I’d caught him by surprise. “I thought you and Tania were becoming friends.”
“I don’t see what one has got to do with the other.” It wasn’t the truth, but I didn’t know how to say what I really felt, that I wanted this night with him. One night, and then I would forget any hope of him for good. “We’re friends, too, aren’t we?”
His eyes met and held mine, and as blithe as I was being—or trying to be—I felt his look in my gut, turning everything inside out. I stood up. We were just a foot away from each other, and he reached out to touch my chin with the tip of his finger. Then, without answering me, he turned and walked down the hall towards his room. I followed him a few minutes later, and when I did, everything was so black I had to inch through the door he’d left open. I could feel the wooden boards under my bare feet, smooth and soundless, and how the cottony dark was like its own sort of animal all around me. Neither of us spoke or made a noise, but I sensed where he was and moved in that direction. Step by step I found him, feeling my way.
When I woke it was impossibly dark. Denys was next to me. His breath was still and even, and as my eyes adjusted, I could make out the long curve of his hip, one leg loosely thrown over the other. I had imagined our being together before—the crush of his arms and how he would taste—but I’d never worked out how it might be after, what we would say to each other, how it would change the way we were, or not. How stupid that was. I was in real trouble now, I realized.
He opened his eyes as I lay watching him. Everything stopped whirling for a moment and stood stock-still. He didn’t blink or look away, and when he reached to pull me beneath him his movements were slow and deliberate. The first time had been rushed, as if neither of us wanted a moment to breathe or consider what we were setting into motion. Now time stopped completely and we stopped with it. The house was quiet. The night beyond the window had hushed itself as well, and there was only the fact of our two bodies rippled with shadow. We pressed to get closer, to push through something—but even then, I didn’t think, This is the love that will change my life. I didn’t think, I don’t belong to myself any more. I only kissed him, dissolving, and it was done.
—