Lost in Hotels (21 page)

“Good morning, Catherine. Good night’s sleep, I hope?” Duarte says, looking more handsome this day than the last, his beard, and wavy blond hair groomed.

“Yes, wonderful, actually. I could hear the lioness all night.”

“Good memory. Yes, we all did, actually, until around three o’clock when she stopped or moved along the riverbed where sound doesn’t travel as well.”

“Do you think the cub is still with her?” I ask.

“Well, he would have been fine as long as she was calling. After the interruption, it’s anyone’s guess. But before we head out, did you want to grab a bite of food?”

“No, I’m not much of a morning eater, so let’s be on our way, as I don’t want to hold you guys up.”

“Well, it’s just you in the truck again, so there’s no problem, really. Also, I wanted to let you know that Tamaryn checked with the Joburg office, and all flights were on time from London yesterday. There was no word from David. But communication is very slow in the bush, so perhaps something kept him back in London?”

“Yes, perhaps. His work is very busy, so who’s to tell, really.”

“So let’s be on our way and see if we can track down some of those male lions. Also, there was a rhino spotted nearby last night, so we’ll try to see if we can catch up with her.”

With an unyielding gusto, the truck roars away from the lodge and temporarily from all my angst and sadness. The morning air is alive; the naive precursor of a harsh day for all that inhabits this magical place and may likely face its death.

It’s a short drive before we arrive to our first idle of the truck—a family of twenty or so elephants are en route to the local riverbed. The agitated bull is the first to trumpet our arrival. He turns to face us and puffs his ears with a siren that startles even Duarte, if I’m to read his hand placed tightly on the ignition key. The bull’s front foot kicks up a plume of sand visible in our headlights as he jolts forward and then to the side as if to test our vigilance. He trumpets again, and suddenly Duarte flips on the motor and speeds a few yards up sending the bull after us just a few steps and then retreating to the rest of his family and away from our truck.

“That was a testy one,” Duarte whispers.

“Do they ever actually hit your vehicle?” I ask.

“Not only will they hit your truck, they will trample you and everyone inside it without hesitation.” Duarte continues, “It’s a new bull for the group, and he’s just proving to the ladies that he won’t take any shit.”

We linger on the elephants for a good while, trailing them as they round the path leading to the river with its own share of toothed demons, but also the elephants’ source of replenishment. The younger elephants emerge from the shadows of their mothers and cautiously test the water before indulging in a sunrise drink. Stillness lingers everywhere as if life isn’t quite ready to take a breath from the daunting night and all its deadly dangers.

“Should we try to find that rhino?” Duarte asks while restarting the motor and pulling away. The elephants barely even notice our departure. My eyes linger on the moms and their doting stare under those long eyelashes and gentle gaze that never seem to leave their children. It makes me think of my child, long removed from my own watch as I sit in this otherworldly place doing that which I now regret having done.

We drive endlessly without seeing much more than another grouping of impala that shudder with an ominous noise negated by their delicate appearance each time we pass. Duarte seems frustrated and stops the vehicle in the middle of the road. Nogo jumps from his seat and looks at the tracks in the dirt that pace down the road.

“It’s the brothers; I can count four different paws.” He continues up the road, “And I also see the older paw prints from a young cub that’s probably with our lioness.”

Nogo looks farther down the road as Duarte turns shaking his head.

“That’s not a good sign for your cub,” Duarte says in a soothing tone, diminished from his matter-of-fact ways of the previous evening.

“But unfortunately, we need to get you back to camp to meet everyone for breakfast. We’ve already been late two days in a row, and I don’t want Tamaryn to get angry with Nogo.”

Nogo looks up from the road and returns to the truck, leaving his scattering of tracks in lieu of Americans who hardly need another meal, and me, who will sit through it counting the minutes until this entire experience is behind me.

As we round the bend, the lodge comes into sight. Once more, the familiar welcoming procession lines the circle outside the lodge and the black faces chime with a smile even at this early hour. As we approach, I realize a new group must have arrived at the lodge. I see a genteel older couple standing at the stairs next to a tall and elegantly familiar man with jet-black hair and a smart blazer with its lapel pulled high under a chunky knit scarf that blows behind him with the wind.

As the truck stops, I forgo the pleasantries and towels and make my way to the man, who with a single shift in weight from his right to left leg, drains all the hurt and loss I have felt in the last day. It is replaced with complete and utter exultation upon seeing those familiar arctic blue eyes that pierce through my hurt and anger among his fogged breath and making his pink lips even rosier against his fair skin.

“David? David, is that you?” I yell out, as if disbelieving what my mind attempts to process in front of me.

“Catherine, my dear, get over here.”

My eyes and heart cannot believe that it is he and this is not some sort of dream. He pulls my hand and I grab his sleeve with my other. I remove his soft calfskin glove, touch that familiar flesh of his inner palm, and hold it against my own. His smell returns as I touch his warm hand to my lips. He looks at me, and I realize I have collapsed into a sea of tears despite my smiling face and concentrated expression, trying not to interrupt their conversation at hand.

“Catherine, are you all right? You’re flush. My dear, are you crying?” David pulls me in front of him and wraps his arms around me.

“No, I’m just so happy to see you. I’m so terribly happy to see you.”

“Babe, I’m so sorry. It ended up that my ticket was booked on the wrong day, and it was impossible to change,” he says as his brow furls. “Unless I was willing to sit ten hours in coach. I hope you don’t mind, I just wasn’t in the mood to do that after the week I had.”

“We rode almost twenty hours in coach from Atlanta, so you’re not going to get very much sympathy from us, mister,” the motherly woman says as she grabs her husband by the arm in a torque of seasoned affection.

“But I have to tell you, it’s so little that we see each other that I was tempted to just rough it.”

His hands grip me tighter, and his body envelops me in a warm cocoon that makes all my pain and fear slip away, as well as any thought of ever being able to walk away from this man.

I would trade decades off my life for one moment with David; his scent makes everything else in my world seem secondary. I thought I would never know what it is to touch him again, to feel his hand on me, and know the stare of his eyes into mine. There is no turning back in this moment. Paralyzed in love, I cannot imagine for a second not having him in my life.

“So what’s the plan, exactly?” David ejects me from my thoughts. “Is it breakfast time or the time we go on the road to look at animals?”

“Actually, I believe they are just coming from the drive, so you can freshen up and then meet everyone back in the lodge,” says the older woman again, lending her guidance even though she’s barely just arrived.

“I really would like to change shirts and get sorted, do you mind?” David asks as if there was anything else I wish to do in this moment, be near him flesh to flesh.

“So, we are going to the room and will be down in a few minutes,” I insert, pulling him away before even finishing the sentence.

A guide joins us on the short walk to our room despite it being safely daylight out. The accompaniment simply prolongs my agony of us being so far apart, not conjoined to chase away the inner fears that filled my night and had me believe all was over between us.

The guide remains on the walkway as we make our way to the door, me first and then pulling David in behind me.

Then the world stops and outside can be anywhere and everywhere at the same time. I tuck my hand under his shirt and feel his skin that’s warm from the soft lining. I snuggle my nose under his collar, collecting the concentrated scent of which I simply cannot get enough. He nudges my head with his, tipping me up as our lips meet and mine devours his lower lip and my tongue ventures to touch his top teeth and have just a little bit more of him. My tears amplify when he interrupts our kissing.

“My dear, look at you,” he says. “I hope you can forgive me for being a day late. I tried calling you, even at your work to leave you word that I wouldn’t make it in time. It’s virtually impossible to get a hold of people out here; even the reservation personnel were helpless.”

His words send a jolt through me as he backs away and moves closer to the window that still frames a panorama of mist blanketing the bush.

“Did you talk to my assistant?” I ask casually that disguises the urgency.

“I’m not sure who I talked to, actually. They asked if I was your husband and I said no.” He takes an excruciatingly long pause and turns to me. “But then I thought, maybe she means boyfriend? They passed my call from one nonresponsive, flippant person to the next, and then I sort of just gave up.”

The closer David comes to my real world, the more I sense the impending doom of this situation. I know there are but two choices in this: one is to stay and continue this hedonist fantasy until the truth prevails, or cut it off cold here and now. Having endured an entire night believing he was gone from my life, I am tempted to tell him the truth. I can’t imagine suffering the previous night twice, even if that means forfeiting all that could have been until the very end.

“I just want to talk to you and feel your touch,” I say, pulling him from the window and back to me.

“Sometimes, I feel as if you’re only half interested in this, and other times, I feel as though it means everything in the world to you,” he says questioningly.

“I’m here now. Last night I lay here thinking you weren’t coming, that maybe you had met someone else.”

“Do you think I’m the kind of guy who would do that to you … that I would simply not show up?” he says with a truthful gaze.

“No, well, I don’t know. People are always unpredictable when they lose interest in someone; I didn’t know how you would behave. You don’t really know how people will act until it’s actually happening, and it’s ultimately much more awful than you could ever have imagined. The aftermath of relationships is always such an ugly place.”

“Well, let me assure you, there will be a proper discussion, regardless if you want it or not, when and if things aren’t working. And anyway, why would I toss it all in the bag, we are getting along quite nice, I think, or not?”

“No … yes, of course. I just want you to know that you mean a lot to me, and I don’t want that to go away.”

“I feel the exact same way, Catherine. Do you think I would travel all this way to be with someone I wasn’t keen on?”

“I hear you. It’s just, no matter what, you must promise me that no matter what happens, you’ll talk it through with me and not just vanish from my life.”

“You’re not going to get rid of me that easily, I can assure you of that, Catherine.”

I begin unbuttoning his shirt, craving him even closer to me. I can sense his sincerity growing with my vulnerability, which I camouflage in passion as I pull off his shirt and throw it to the ground. He kicks off his shoes as I unbutton his snug jeans from around his waist, tugging them with my hands while grabbing the inseam of his white boxers that slowly leaves him standing in front of me nude. He looks as though drawn by Michelangelo, his broad shoulders taper down his back to a narrow waist with its veins that tuck around the side of his prominent hipbones that I kiss once on each side.

As he stands in front of me, his dick is swollen and elongated under its fleshy covering like some sort of Italian god carved of marble. His perfection is irresistible. My lips make their way down his thighs and his muscular hamstrings where the furry black hair thickens toward his prominent kneecaps that protrude out above his muscular calves. I look up at his body, his dick now fully erect and tilting up toward his abdomen, pulling him forward enough to reveal an underside of coarse, rosy skin. The hair thickens as it intersects his perfect front and rear body, and he pulls me up with a single tug and our faces once again meet.

There is compassion to David that I haven’t seen before; perhaps he’s reacting to my sadness, as he slowly erases my fears. Then that incredible dance ensues; he pulls me through the doorway and onto the terrace where an outdoor shower sits concealed behind a small plunge pool. His upright body and protruding manhood makes no notice of perhaps those able to see in from beyond, and he takes me in tow thoroughly in awe of his immodesty. He turns on the water and tucks his head under the spout that erupts with piercing cold water.

The sun warms the flesh as splatters of coldness dot my naked body. My nipples awaken to full arousal, and I drop to my knees. David pulls me back up by my arms, into the air, and onto the railing, that surrounds the small stone shower. My legs straddle the side with wood prone to splintering as I perilously dangle from the edge and all insecurity falls far away. The cold water pours down my body, and I forget that I am anything but the most desired object in his world. David says nothing; he simply drops to his knees and between my legs, allowing the water to roll off my body and into his warm mouth that he spills back on and inside me. The sensation is almost surreal, sending me arching in ecstasy as I hear the trumpet of elephants in the close background.