“You’d have to ask Chelsea. Those are her brothers and sisters,” Sue told Molly. Then Sue grabbed both sides of my face and leaned her face close in to mine. “You’re an international-date-line crosser. Everyone knows you whether they want to or not.”
“I do love crossing date lines,” I pointed out. “You never know what time it’s going to be.”
The notion that someone had to read a bio to know about my disaffection for any room-temperature liquids, my allergy to any wheat-based products, or my lust for ice, vodka, and lemons, was embarrassing. I felt stupid, but not as stupid as I would feel later that night.
Hannah pointed out that I had a huge bug bite on my forehead. “Ugh, I hope that’s not malaria,” she said, pouring herself a glass of champagne and then sauntering over to the front of the main deck overlooking the delta. “This place is magnificent.”
Simone and Shelly both came over to check out my forehead. Once Simone saw Shelly tending to me, she decided to sit down and check out our new vista. Sue had already made herself comfortable.
I went behind the bar and made myself a vodka on the rocks with a splash of bug spray, thinking the bug spray would be more effective if it was ingested into my system rather than being applied topically, and with my amazing luck, might even work retroactively. “Can you guys imagine if we had been alive during Prohibition?”
“We’d all be shot at gunpoint,” Sue replied.
On the leg of this trip, we decided Molly and I would share a room, Hannah and Sue would stay together, and Simone and Shelly would pair up. Rex would crash wherever there was extra room, which was code for with me, while Molly got shafted to a sleeping bag in someone else’s room. She was the youngest, so it was the right thing to do. And this way she wouldn’t fall out of bed again, which she had done several times in the last week.
Camp Vurumba was filled with true Africans. All the women were swathed in boldly printed African sarongs and three-foot-high head wraps. After taking in the scenery, we were prompted by Z to check into our villas, so that we could prepare for an afternoon ride to catch the sunset.
“I’m going to go to the gift shop,” Molly announced with a wink in my direction.
“Rex, do you want to come with me to check out my villa?”
I exaggerated the fact that I couldn’t carry any heavy bags because of my knee, and in his chivalrous way, he jumped to his feet to help me. My room was amazing and had a huge wraparound deck outside with unbelievable views overlooking the delta.
I went into my bathroom, changed my underwear, put the dirty pair into the safe, and locked it. If Rex was staying with me, I didn’t want him to see what I was capable of. Then we sat on the big bed that was facing the delta and opened a bottle of champagne and Rex filled up one of my ice packs for my knee. He told me how nice it was of us to invite him on this trip and that he was so relieved to be able to enjoy a safari without being in charge of one. I had my chest on his head, and we were both facing the water and watching the light, which was borderline hypnotic. It was our first official cuddle.
Neither Rex nor myself made a move. I thought it more practical to wait until that evening, anyway, so as not to cause a kerfuffle in the middle of the day by both of us reappearing for our afternoon ride in various stages of undress.
At least that was the way I saw it in hindsight. In reality, we were interrupted by a knock on the door, and it was Z telling us it was time to go.
We went on a sunset ride through the delta to check out the landscape before dinner. We met Z’s tracker, whose name was Sparks, and we drove for a bit until we stopped the jeep in a pond of lilies. The water was so placid and clear, we could see all the way to the bottom. There were different species of birds doing the same thing we were doing—sitting still and taking in the surroundings. It was a beautiful moment in a beautiful part of the world that took everyone’s breath away, including my own. It was silent for a moment too long, so I decided to ask the question that was on all of our minds.
“Is this where we get raped?”
Rex took this as an opportune time to describe to Z what kind of women he was dealing with and what to be prepared for. Z said he already loved us and that he had dealt with our kind before.
“Well, then, I shall say no more,” Rex told him.
This puzzled me. “Rex, you said you had never met anyone like us.”
“I never have!” he defended himself. “I swear on my mother’s life, I never have.”
“No, no, no,” Z said with a smile. “I speak wrong. My English is not perfect. I have never dealt with this kind of women before, but I like it.”
“Like it or love it?” I asked.
“I love it!” He smiled again. Z’s tracker didn’t speak a word of English but knew when it was time to smile. This was when I tackled both of them in the front seat.
In Botswana we weren’t required to get up until seven a.m., so unlike the previous eight days, we really let it rip that night. Z had a harmonica, and Sparks played what I think was a sitar.
I decided to make my move on Rex. I got up from the table after several cocktails and in the middle of the entertainment, announced I was going to bed. “Rex, let’s go.”
I walked toward my room, and when I didn’t see him following me, I walked back to the fire everyone had moved over to and repeated myself. “Rex, let’s go to bed.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I’m not going to bed with you.”
I hadn’t even contemplated the idea that Rex might not be attracted to me: I was in shock, but I told myself to keep moving. When one of the African female staffers saw me walking, she joined me to escort me over the bridge to my villa.
“Will you be needing anything in your villa?” she asked me.
I looked at her and at the laundry basket on her head. “Do you guys have any thriller porn?”
June 29, Friday
I woke up to Molly staring at me, smiling. “Herro.”
“Herro.” We’ve been saying hello like Asian people since we were very young.
“Do you remember telling Rex last night that you were a gasoline heiress?”
“Why is my hair in a French braid?” I asked her.
“I did that before you made your big exit last night. And that you once taped a bar stool to a paddle board because you were crossing the Nile and didn’t want to overexert yourself?”
My mortification was unparalleled. I’ve had many mornings where I’ve woken up knowing that something had gone terribly wrong the night before, but this was an entirely different level of shame.
“Was it as bad as I think?”
“It was pretty bad. I’ve never seen you like that.”
“Why do you think he rejected me?”
“Does it really matter, Chelsea?” she said, tilting her head to the side.
“Oh god. How am I going to face him?”
“You can face him,” Molly reassured me. “It’s just going to be humiliating.”
“Thank god you’re here, Ricky,” I told Molly. I call her Ricky whenever we’re alone because it’s my safe word, and she knows when I use it, I need her to stick close by.
I got up and walked over to the mirror, where I discovered the mosquito bite on my forehead had tripled in size. “I look like that boy from that Cher movie Mask. What was his name?”
“Rocky Dennis.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Well, you need to apologize.”
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“Chelsea, it’s not like we haven’t all made asses out of ourselves on this trip. Just don’t make a bigger deal about it than it is.”
She was right. There was no point in beating myself up over trying to have sex with a safari guide who rejected me.
I wrapped a bandana around my mosquito bump and we got our things together, then joined the group on the main deck, where we were meeting to be taken to our bush breakfast.
I locked eyes with Shelly, who was still wearing her pajamas that I ordered for her online from the AutoZone.
“Hi!” she bellowed. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Great,” I said, and walked directly over to Rex. “I want to apologize to everyone for my behavior last night, and Rex, to you especially. That was really gross and I’m really sorry. I hope you don’t think that I think that you’re a male hooker.”
“No worries at all,” he told me and patted me on the back like we were soldiers fighting together in Afghanistan.
Everyone else reverted back to their conversations regarding the night before. Apparently, after I had gone to bed, everyone stayed up until 1 a.m. listening to someone play the guitar—a whole night had taken place after my performance, so no one was as concerned with my behavior as I was.
I kept my distance from Rex that morning. Vurumba was a three-day camp, which meant we had two more nights to go, and I didn’t want him to think I was going to act like that again.
We got in the jeep with Z and Sparks. I sat down next to Simone, who was sitting in the first row behind the driver’s seat. She had an ice pack for me and propped my leg on her knee. “Do you need any lip balm?” she asked me.