Thirty Girls

SHE STEPPED OUT of the plane and over the accordion hinge of the walkway to continue up the tunneled ramp. One always felt altered after a flight. There was the pleasant fatigue of no sleep and one’s nerves closer to the surface as if a layer of self had peeled off and gotten lost in transit. The change was only on the surface, but the surface was where one encountered the world. Her surface was ready for the new things that would happen in this new place, ready for anything different from what she’d known.

There was a soggy tobacco smell at the gate and loose rugs with long rolls no one had bothered to smooth out. She stood in a line of crumpled people holding their carry-ons and inching forward to wooden tables where clerks slowly stamped passports after a sliding look from the picture to the face.

She was finally away. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt the expansion, the air humid, the door opening, dawn light reflected off a hammered linoleum floor as she descended an old-fashioned staircase to the black carousel empty of baggage. There was a long row of bureaux de change with one short counter after another empty and behind them a large plate-glass window with palm trees being eaten by a white sky. Lackadaisical drivers were leaning on the hoods of their cars, half glancing around for a fare. Dark-haired men strolled in short sleeve shirts, women in thin dresses moved slowly. Everything mercifully said, This is not home.

The first time she saw him he flew.

They were in Lana’s driveway, unloading alabaster lamps she’d had copied on Biashara Street when a white Toyota truck pulled up and a young man with shoulder length hair opened the door. He leapt over the roof of the truck and landed in a bowl of dust.

Lana gave him a big greeting, embracing him as an old friend, as she embraced everyone. She stepped back to study him, hands on his shoulders. He had on a dirty white hat with a zebra band around the crown. Nice, she said, flicking the brim. Jane, come meet Harry.

Jane set down her crate. Harry, Jane, said Lana. Jane, Harry.

Cheers, Harry said in a flat tone. His chin drew in and he regarded Jane with a strange stoniness, as if she were an intruder who ought to explain herself. The impulse to explain herself was an urge Jane Wood struggled to ignore, so getting a look like that unnerved her. At least that was how she explained the unnerved feeling.

My friend from America, Lana said. She looked back and forth between them. Her bright gaze took in things quickly and let them go, just as fast.

Harry leaned forward and kissed Jane’s cheek, surprising her. Karibu, he said.

The phone rang inside the cottage and Lana dove to get it, swerving past the crates crowding the foyer.

We’re going for sundowners, she called over her shoulder. You must come.

With Lana, there was always a must.

A short time later Jane found herself crammed in the back seat of a dented station wagon driven by a paint-spattered neighbor of Lana’s named Yuri. They were headed to the top of the Ngong Hills.

The suburb of Karen flickered by. Its dirt driveways and high concrete walls topped with curling barbed wire hid the airy houses Jane had seen with their long shaded verandas and scratchy lawns. Abruptly the station wagon came to a sort of empty highway, drove on it for a while, then tilted off up a steep rutted road, laboring at a tipped angle. At the top they righted themselves over a lip and arrived at a wide sloping field of tall grass which dropped sharply to a vast smoky savannah banked in the distance with low gray hills.

Striped cloths were spread on the ground and Jane noticed the sunset behind too was striped with grimy clouds. Lana unpacked a hamper and poured vodka and orange juice from a thermos and they drank from dented silver flutes while watching the sky and leaning on each other. A warm wind blew up from the valley.

Jane knew none of them save Lana and even she was a recent acquaintance, met a year before in London on a film set Lana was decorating. If Jane was ever in Kenya, she must come visit. When the possibility actually arose, Jane found Lana and discovered how many guests and strangers took Lana up on her invitation. She was a tall striking girl with a cushioned mouth and flashing eyes. She was also a splendid recliner, as she was demonstrating now, surveying the scene before her like an Oriental odalisque, radiating enjoyment. Her pillow at the moment was a large American man named Don who appeared to be relishing his position of support despite an awkward pose requiring that he brace an arm against a nearby rock. His unwrinkled khaki pants and new white running shoes extended off the blanket into the dry grass. Lana was telling him about a project she had set up where students looked after orphaned wild animals. She must take him there tomorrow, she said, patting his red and white striped shirt, as if knowing money were packed in his chest. Yuri had brought along a dimpled girl in army boots. Jane thought she heard her say she was pre-med, which was surprising. Yuri and Harry were talking about flying. They paraglided here, at a spot farther down the escarpment where the updraft was better. The French fellow wearing a bandana was a photographer named Pierre. Pierre was also staying at Lana’s, on the couch in the living room. His low-lidded eyes regarded everything with amusement. He was snapping pictures of the army-boot girl who seemed not self-conscious in the least.

The sky dimmed and the air chilled and they packed up. They took the bumpy road back to Nairobi as it darkened. Harry sat slumped in the back seat beside Jane. She learned his last name was O’Day. He asked her what she was doing here.

What indeed, she thought. Writing a story. Getting away. She could say all that.

Seeing the world, she said.

She’s taking us to Uganda, Lana shouted back over Édith Piaf’s voice warbling out of the dashboard. Her long bare legs were draped over Don’s lap and extended out the window. After drinks everyone was feeling jolly.

Jane told Harry she was there to write a story on the children kidnapped by the LRA in northern Uganda. Lana had matter-of-factly said she’d go with her and that morning Pierre asked if he might come, too. He was in between assignments—there was no famine or war to cover at the moment—and he wanted to try shooting some video, not what he usually did. He mostly shot stills.

It’s not really my subject, she said. At all.

What’s your subject?

Desire.

It sounded totally pretentious, but what the hell.

And death.

Death should fit, he said mildly.

Death always fits. She smiled.

They both faced forward. In the front seat Lana was whispering in Don’s ear. Jane saw her tongue come out and lick it.

Things are hectic in Uganda, Harry said.

Have you been?

Not yet.

We haven’t exactly figured out how we’re getting there.

I am working on it, Lana said. I might have a possible driver.

Good, Jane said and a for a moment felt a pang of homesickness, which was odd since she did not want to be home in the least. She wanted to be as far away from back there as possible. Clutching at straws, she said.

You’ll figure it out, Harry said. You look like the kind of person who does.

She turned her squished neck to him to see if he meant it. Jane was sufficiently bewildered by what kind of person she was, so it was always arresting when someone, particularly a stranger, summed her up. His face, very close, had a sort of Aztec look to it, with flat cheeks and straight forehead and pointed chin. Jane couldn’t tell how old he was. There was no worry on his face. He was young. His expression was, if not earnest, still not cynical.

What do you do with yourself? she said.

Little of this, little of that.

She laughed. What at the moment?

I’m thinking about going to Sudan to look after some cows.

Really?

He shrugged. Maybe. Did anyone ever tell you you have a very old voice?

Voice?

The sound of it, he said. It’s nice.

Watch out! Lana screamed. The car jerked and swerved. Gasps of alarm rose from the passengers.

Not to worry, Yuri said in a calm voice, straightening the wheel which he steered with one hand. I saw the little bugger. He was trying to get hit.

Lana Eberhardt rented a cottage off the Langata Road. It was green with a rumpled roof where furry hyraxes nested and screeched through the night. In the three days that Jane had been in Nairobi, she had learned the cottage served as a crucial landing place in the constellation of the drifting populace.

Plans were made for dinner. Pierre got into a Jeep for the liquor run. He was tall and slow-moving, as if his attractiveness to women did not require he ever rush. This manner, combined with a French accent, made everything he said sound both frivolous and direct. Don drove off taking Lana in a shiny white rental car to some people called the Aspreys to see if they’d caught fish over the weekend. Their phone was out. Some time later they returned with a large cooler stocked with fish. The Aspreys themselves followed eventually, a short swarthy man and a woman in a shiny green wrapped affair with a plain face who carried herself with such flair and confidence she looked positively radiant. They had with them a beautiful freckled woman named Babette who someone said worked in an orphanage in the Kibera slum. She was dressed blandly in shorts and T-shirt and was all the more beautiful because of it. Other guests trickled in: a man named Joss Hall biting on a cigar and his wife Marina in a long Mexican skirt. There was a silent unshaven journalist whose name Jane didn’t catch. Harry O’Day had gone and not returned. Someone said he was sorting out job prospects. Pierre arrived with the liquor and a curly-headed blond woman with a fur vest and bare arms. He spent the evening leaning close to her with merry eyes. At eleven everyone finally sat down to dinner and more people appeared and wedged chairs in. A couple could be heard out in the garden shouting at each other, and Joss Hall came striding out of the shadows, with his head low, as if avoiding blows. Jane found herself glancing toward the doorway to see if that person Harry might reappear, but he did not walk in.