“We’re in an awkward position, thrown together, and I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me. You’ve saved my life. I just don’t want you to misunderstand, that’s all.”
“I’m not misunderstanding anything.”
Jennifer stood up. A single room had been a big mistake, she realized now.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
“Jen, I just”—he looked off when he spoke—”I’m sorry, I
“
“Kirk, it’s okay,” she soothed. She kept herself from reaching out and touching his cheek. “I’d better take a shower,” she finally said.
In the small bathroom, she turned on the shower, buried her head in a thick bath towel, and let herself cry, knowing that it would calm her down. She didn’t bother to lock the door. She wasn’t afraid of Kirk. Of all people, she knew she could trust him.
She took a long shower, washed her hair, then went ahead and washed her panties and bra and hung them on the curtain rod. When she returned to the bedroom, she had wrapped up her hair in a bath towel and was wearing her red flannel nightgown. She’d thought about putting on her shirt and jeans again but decided against it. There wouldn’t be a problem. Besides, after dinner, she wanted to get into bed and go right to sleep.
“Dinner is being served,” he told her, pointing to the tray.
“Thank you,” she said. “Where did this come from?”
“I told the desk we were on our honeymoon and I wanted to serve you dinner in bed. And they sent up the tray.” He lifted a bottle of champagne from a plastic ice bucket and held it up with a flourish. “And this,” he added.
“Kirk, you’ve got class,” she said, impressed.
“You think so?”
“I know so. You’re an all-right guy.”
“An all-right kid, you mean.”
“We’re friends, remember?”
“Right!” He sat down on the edge of his bed.
“Hey,” she cocked her head, smiling out from under the towel turban, “come sit with me. Let’s talk. I’ve told you about Tom. Now it’s your turn. Tell me about your girlfriends.”
“Which one?”
“Well, let’s start with the most recent.” She bit into her hamburger, then took a sip of the champagne while Kirk told her about Peggy. They had gone to school together, but that Christmas she had announced her engagement to someone in law school, a guy she had met the summer before.
“She was your great love?”
“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t date much in high school. We lived outside of town; there were always too many chores to do. Then when I got to college, Peggy and I hit it off right away and went together pretty much all the time until last summer. When she came back after Labor Day, it was all over between us.” He shrugged his shoulders and went back to his hamburger.
“Well, don’t worry. You’re a good-looking guy, and there’ll be plenty of others.”
“You think so?” he asked.
“Of course there will be.”
“No, I mean, do you really think that I’m good-looking?”
Jennifer glanced at him as she drained her glass. The champagne had had an effect. She felt relaxed for the first time that day, warm, and even safe. Impulsively, she reached over and touched his cheek with her hand, drawing her fingers down the length of his jaw. Fleetingly, she imagined what it would be like to make love to him, and then she pulled her thoughts under control and simply said, “Yes, you are a good-looking man.” She paused. “But I think you should let your hair grow out a little. And now I’m going to sleep.”
Kirk picked up the tray, and Jennifer crawled under the blankets and put her head down on the pillow. Her hair was still wrapped up in the towel and she knew she should comb it out, but she was too tired to even move.
Kirk leaned over, tucked the blankets up to her neck, then reached out and shut off the bedside lamp. Before he stepped away, he leaned down and kissed her softly on her cheek.
Jennifer smiled and mumbled thank you, and then she was asleep.
Much later, she woke up and saw Kirk standing by the windows in his white boxer shorts. She thought what a great body he had and then fell asleep again.
When Jennifer woke next, it was daylight. She turned over and saw that Kirk’s bed was empty and she was alone in the room. She jumped out of bed at once and went to the windows, peeking out from behind the heavy curtains. Kirk’s Audi was still parked where they had left it.
Jennifer sighed. What had she thought? That he would leave her there in the middle of nowhere?
She spotted Kirk then, jogging across the lot. He had been out running, that was all. She sighed and watched him slow down and walk by a station wagon that had just pulled into the motel. It was only when the driver lowered the front window to speak to Kirk that Jennifer realized who it was. Kirk was telling him something, pointing across the parking lot, but Jennifer had fallen away from the second-floor windows, fully comprehending what had happened. Kirk Callahan, the young man she had allowed herself to trust, had led Simon McCord to her.
He ran. Clutching the fist-sized piece of quartzite in his hand, he scampered down the bank and headed for the muddy river. The others were close behind. They had found the body of the female, and now they were after him, following his scent through the underbrush, following his footsteps in the soft soil.
He ran for his life. They would kill him, just as he had killed the female. He did not know why he had killed her. She would not come with him. But other women in tribes near the river had not come with him, and he had not hurt them.
Yet her refusal had enraged him, and without thinking, he had swung the quartzite at her, its sharp point piercing her neck, spraying blood in his face. He could taste her blood on his lips, in his mouth.
He reached the river and dove into the deep water, letting the swift tide carry him farther downstream. There were rhinos in the water, and crocodiles, too, sleeping up on the banks and in the shade of acacia trees. The sleeping crocs frightened him, but he feared more the band of men running along the muddy riverbank.
If he didn’t bother the animals, he was safe. The river widened at the next bend, then swept away to the horizon. He did not know where the river flowed, but once, when he was younger, his grandfather had stood on the high cliffs behind their campsite and told him of lands beyond the grassland where elephants were as plentiful as raindrops and where berry bushes and yarrow plants grew beyond one’s dreams.
He would have to leave this valley, he thought, catching hold of a bamboo limb and swinging up to perch on it. There were too many others living together in the valley of the honeycombs. He would be killed if he returned; the males of the woman’s clan knew him. They would kill another member of his family, sweep down into their camp that night and slaughter one of the women for what he had done to the clan.
He knew that her people thought of him and his kind as nothing more than monkeys to be killed, their heads smashed with rocks so the sweet-smelling meat of their skulls could be scooped out with fingers, their eyes sucked like shellfish; and then, later, her men would heat the thighs and arms of their enemies’ dead bodies over the campsite fire and linger in the shade with no pain from hunger.
Her people kept his kind away from the grasslands, away from the berry bushes on the far side of the river. Still, he and his cousins crept across the river after sunset, slipping by the sleeping crocodiles to steal the honey or to find the patches of yarrow and take away the white flowers in the dead of night. Her people said these fruits and berries belonged to them, to all the cave people who lived high up on the steep cliffs, and they drove off his people, kept him and his cousins from the lush vegetables. They fought his people off from the water holes where the bushbucks lingered, where they could trap and snare a zebra or giraffe, kill it with blows from their axes.