that.”
“I have many questions,” Iris said.
6. The Codukukwane Hotel
R ay wanted this to be quick. He had other things to do with what was left of his Saturday. This wasn’t his normal sort of work, anyway. He was filling in. He didn’t mind doing it but he wanted it over with quickly. It was a simple enough assignment. He was taking attendance, in essence.
He breathed on the front lenses of his binoculars, then wiped them clean with a tissue. He raised the binoculars and got a hard focus on the ridgeline of the low red hill above the donga where the Codukukwane Hotel dumped and occasionally burned its trash. His situation was perfect. His exit route back to the VW parked at the closest corner of the parking lot was a short straight line. He felt like reminding somebody that there were things he was very good at. This site was tricky. Here was a hotel stuck out all by itself in raw bush ten miles from Gaborone. The hotel proper, laid out flat against the road, was a thatched, one-story unpainted cement structure like a couple of boxcars set end to end. In its shadow, spaced irregularly around the back patio, were nine dank rondavels, or as the staff insisted on calling them, chalets. The site would be getting trickily active shortly.
His cover was perfect. The hotel was to his west. He was deep to the rear of it, behind a block of vacant utility sheds, backed by the main shed and nicely masked eastward by a bracket of clothesline loaded with freshly hung laundry, bed linen for the most part. I’m hidden, he thought. He liked being hidden, the moment, the act. He could admit it. Also he was well outside the fun zone developing around the patio and he should be long gone before the braai and the disco joy got too unrestrained. The hill he was studying was two hundred yards farther to his east. Parting the sheets anywhere gave him safe quick vantages of the rendezvous point histargets thought was so secluded, somewhere toward the end of the highest terrace on the hill, where it dipped and made a shallow pocket. The sun was where it should be, in their eyes instead of his. He loved Iris. She was on his mind too much. It was a problem. Being obsessed with someone you had been married to for seventeen years was probably a first. He needed her to recede a little, was all.
He scanned the red rock and parched brush below the hill ridge until he found the hollow brake of sickle bush he wanted. His group was there, assembling in the blaze of noon. He was supposed to confirm attendee identities, one in particular. But his eyes began to burn and interfere. He had an odd impulse. He knew this group was doomed to go nowhere. It was in the cards. And his stupid impulse was to let them know, so they could all do something else. They were known. Stupidly he wanted to tell them. He needed a pause, was all.
Ray paused. The thing to do was calm down and realize that the problem with his eyes was something local, from something local. He clenched his lids shut four times, slowly. There must be something in the vicinity he was missing. He could be reacting to something chemical in the laundry drying all around him, a residue, fumes. Otherwise it made no sense.
He got up. This was too much crouching. He moved to a different point in the line of sheets and crouched again. He was safe here for now. But drunks or guys who found the men’s occupied could conceivably wander down into his bailiwick for relief, later. Or a dog could materialize because there was no goddamned control over dogs in Botswana or any part of Africa that he was aware of, none, the idea was in Africa’s future.
He tried the binoculars again, but his eyes were still tearing. He put the glasses down, cocked his fists, and dug at his eyes with the backs of his wrists. Don’t forget how good for you bananas are, Iris had said to him at breakfast. The bananas were for potassium, but why had she said it that way? Was there an unstated annex on the order of Remember
“I have many questions,” Iris said.
6. The Codukukwane Hotel
R ay wanted this to be quick. He had other things to do with what was left of his Saturday. This wasn’t his normal sort of work, anyway. He was filling in. He didn’t mind doing it but he wanted it over with quickly. It was a simple enough assignment. He was taking attendance, in essence.
He breathed on the front lenses of his binoculars, then wiped them clean with a tissue. He raised the binoculars and got a hard focus on the ridgeline of the low red hill above the donga where the Codukukwane Hotel dumped and occasionally burned its trash. His situation was perfect. His exit route back to the VW parked at the closest corner of the parking lot was a short straight line. He felt like reminding somebody that there were things he was very good at. This site was tricky. Here was a hotel stuck out all by itself in raw bush ten miles from Gaborone. The hotel proper, laid out flat against the road, was a thatched, one-story unpainted cement structure like a couple of boxcars set end to end. In its shadow, spaced irregularly around the back patio, were nine dank rondavels, or as the staff insisted on calling them, chalets. The site would be getting trickily active shortly.
His cover was perfect. The hotel was to his west. He was deep to the rear of it, behind a block of vacant utility sheds, backed by the main shed and nicely masked eastward by a bracket of clothesline loaded with freshly hung laundry, bed linen for the most part. I’m hidden, he thought. He liked being hidden, the moment, the act. He could admit it. Also he was well outside the fun zone developing around the patio and he should be long gone before the braai and the disco joy got too unrestrained. The hill he was studying was two hundred yards farther to his east. Parting the sheets anywhere gave him safe quick vantages of the rendezvous point histargets thought was so secluded, somewhere toward the end of the highest terrace on the hill, where it dipped and made a shallow pocket. The sun was where it should be, in their eyes instead of his. He loved Iris. She was on his mind too much. It was a problem. Being obsessed with someone you had been married to for seventeen years was probably a first. He needed her to recede a little, was all.
He scanned the red rock and parched brush below the hill ridge until he found the hollow brake of sickle bush he wanted. His group was there, assembling in the blaze of noon. He was supposed to confirm attendee identities, one in particular. But his eyes began to burn and interfere. He had an odd impulse. He knew this group was doomed to go nowhere. It was in the cards. And his stupid impulse was to let them know, so they could all do something else. They were known. Stupidly he wanted to tell them. He needed a pause, was all.
Ray paused. The thing to do was calm down and realize that the problem with his eyes was something local, from something local. He clenched his lids shut four times, slowly. There must be something in the vicinity he was missing. He could be reacting to something chemical in the laundry drying all around him, a residue, fumes. Otherwise it made no sense.
He got up. This was too much crouching. He moved to a different point in the line of sheets and crouched again. He was safe here for now. But drunks or guys who found the men’s occupied could conceivably wander down into his bailiwick for relief, later. Or a dog could materialize because there was no goddamned control over dogs in Botswana or any part of Africa that he was aware of, none, the idea was in Africa’s future.
He tried the binoculars again, but his eyes were still tearing. He put the glasses down, cocked his fists, and dug at his eyes with the backs of his wrists. Don’t forget how good for you bananas are, Iris had said to him at breakfast. The bananas were for potassium, but why had she said it that way? Was there an unstated annex on the order of Remember
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