Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
Ash
“That’s a fucking lion,” I whispered, pointing at the animal slowly walking up to the watering hole now only meters away from us. It was a little past sunset, that time when the light was at its softest. It would be dark soon and there was a fucking lion drinking at the watering hole, and, oh , another lion, yes, here comes another one . . . An entire pride of lions was now having a sunset drink at their favorite drinking hole. Don’t get me wrong: I like lions. I like watching them from the comfort of a game vehicle, though.
“Okay, let’s head back to the vehicle.” Bongani turned and started walking back. He didn’t need to ask me twice; I was more than happy to climb back into the vehicle and get away from this watering hole where we were not at the top of the food chain.
I slapped my arm as a mosquito bit me. Another one got my neck and then another one. “Great,” I moaned, briefly looking up at Max, who was smiling at me. I looked away as fast as I could. Mosquitoes had always come for me. If there was a group of us, I was the one that they gravitated towards. Max used to joke that it was because I had the sweetest blood. It had been cute at the time he’d said it, but that was not in the middle of Botswana, near a watering hole, at night when the sheer number of mosquitoes was such that I was sure I could be well and truly exsanguinated by the end of this ordeal. I slapped myself on the cheek this time as another one got me.
“Crap!” I jumped up and down and flapped my shirt frantically. “They’re in my shirt!” But the more I flapped it, the more the vampirical opportunists saw it as a free invitation to go inside. “Oh my God!” I slapped my thigh next and then my ass as the little bastards somehow wiggled their way inside my shirt.
When we were finally back at the vehicle, Bongani passed me a blanket and I wrapped my entire body in it and sat on the floor, huddled in a corner. But even then, I could hear them circling like mini bloodsucking vultures.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked through a little gap in the blanket I’d made for my mouth. “Or are we going to end up sleeping here tonight?”
“We are due back from this drive in an hour, so when we don’t arrive another vehicle will come for us, because each car has a satellite tracker, which will not have been affected by the storm.”
“An hour,” I moaned, and then yelped as a mosquito bit my lip. Bastards!
“I’m sure it will only take them forty minutes to get here, so we’ll be on our way soon.”
I screwed my face up, marveling at this man’s concept of “soon.” Mind you, these trackers did sit in the bush for days on end watching animals. This was probably his version of the blink of an eye. I closed all the gaps in the blanket and hunkered down for the next hour and a bit, determined not to be bitten again, and determined not to have to talk to Max again either. It worked for a while, until my bladder began objecting to this situation.
“I need the toilet.” I was relieved when Max said it first. “Anyone else?”
“Me too,” I quickly said, sticking my head out from under the blanket like a tortoise.
“No, I’ve trained myself not to need it for long periods of time,” Bongani said, and I smiled to myself. Of course he had.
“You’ll have to go behind the vehicle, no other place,” he added.
“Behind the . . . That’s all well and good for you guys, men, but it’s a little different when you’re a woman, if you get my drift.” In fact, it was very different. The difficulty of peeing as a woman on a game drive was an age-old dilemma that had given rise to some rather odd inventions, like the “ShePee”, a device women could use to pee standing up, or so the inventors claimed. I’d tried it once and had only managed to pee down my entire leg.
“There’s a small rock over there that could give you some privacy, but we would have to all go with you, with the gun.”
“Both of you?”
“Can’t leave anyone here in the vehicle alone.”
“So this is a group activity,” I said to myself, and sighed. “I’ll just go behind the vehicle, then.” There would be no privacy behind the small rock, in fact, there was probably more privacy behind the car.
“Do you want to go first?” Max asked.
“No, feel free,” I said, and slunk my head back under the blanket again.
“Jump over the wet mud onto the dry part,” Bongani pointed out, “or you’ll get stuck again.”
I heard Max jump, and there was a squelch as he hit the ground, which was probably unavoidable at this stage. I tried not to focus on what came next, though, but that was also unavoidable. I heard a zipper and then the inevitable pee sound. I shook my head. This so embarrassing! Sharing our pee sounds with each other felt so weirdly intimate and I didn’t like it one little bit. I hadn’t seen my ex-boyfriend in thirteen years, and now we were basically going to the toilet together. I cringed.
I jumped up when Max had climbed back in. “My turn.” Bongani passed me some tissues and an antibacterial wipe for my hands. I climbed up onto the edge of the vehicle and tried to figure out where to jump, hoping my legs wouldn’t plunge into the mud. They did, but luckily it was only to ankle depth. I walked round to the back of the vehicle, still wrapped in the blanket.
“Eyes to the front,” I said to Max warningly.
“I would never dream of looking,” he said.
“And make some noises, so you don’t listen to the sounds of me peeing.”
He laughed. “What kind of noises?”
“Have a conversation or something,” I insisted as I worked my shorts down to my ankles and tried to get into a “comfortable” squatting position. This was ridiculous—almost farcical—and if I wasn’t concentrating so hard on balancing, I might have laughed at this situation.
“What would you like me to talk about?” Max asked, and my bladder felt as if it was going to pop like a balloon, but I refused to pee until there was at least a conversation drowning out some of the inevitable noise.
“Something. Anything. Just talk,” I said desperately.
“Uh, okay . . .” He paused for the longest time and I felt as if I might explode. “It’s hard.”
“God, don’t talk to me about hard right now.”
“Sorry, um . . . Okay . . .”
“Talk! For heaven’s sake, say something.” I was clenching my entire body and the second the first syllable came out of his mouth, I finally let go.
“Do you know that Ash and I used to date? Well, it was more than date, actually. We used to—”
“What the hell, Max?” I stopped peeing as fast as I could. “I said talk, not that .”
I heard a laugh now, an unfamiliar one. It was Bongani.
“What?” I asked, peeing just a little.
“That makes so much sense now.”
“What makes sense?”
“You two.”
“What about us?” I wasn’t enjoying this line of questioning, but at least it was giving me a chance to empty my bladder, a few words at a time.
“The way you act weirdly around each other. I get it now.”
“Oh my God, that’s ridiculous. We don’t act weirdly around each oth—” I stopped talking when both Bongani and Max chuckled.
“Maybe Max acts weirdly around me, but I’m totally fine with all of this. Why wouldn’t I be fine with having my ex-boyfriend join me for work, not to mention mutual toileting, when I haven’t seen him in thirteen—Crap!” A mosquito had made a beeline for my ass and had bitten me.
“You okay?” Max asked.
“Mosquitoes in places I would rather they not be!” I said, pulling up my pants as quickly as I could. “Stranded with lions, having conversations I really would rather not be having, practically being eaten alive—this evening could not be going better if—Shit. Shit! Oh my God!” I winced a few more times as another three or four little assholes managed to sink their evil claws into me.
This was an actual nightmare. I was living in my own African nightmare. Screw African dreams, because this was not that!