Read Online You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers - Free Book Online Page B

he said.
                "Where do you want to go?" asked the agent, a stately woman in cosmic blue.
                "We are not sure," Hand said, in English. "We want to see our options. Do you have that kind of in-for-ma-tion? All of the avail-a-ble flights?"
                This is when Hand started speaking with a Senegalese accent, without contractions and with breaks between syllables. It was almost a British accent, but then a slower version, with him nodding a lot. Some kind of caveman British accent thing? I think so. Why does he do that? Soon I will ask him.
                "Sir, where is it you want to go?" she asked. She too thought we were assholes.
                "We want to see all of the options and then to choose from them," he said.
                The woman stared.
                "You have to tell me where you want to go." Her English was good, her forehead high and tranquil.
                "Can you not first show us the flights out?"
                "No. I cannot."
                We thanked her and walked out --
                "Hello!" said a new man. "I see you at hotel. I also stay at the hotel. Mister has been in accident! [Now looking closely at me, too closely, examining like a med student] Mister is a toughman! You two party guys out for good time! So how long you in Dakar I know!"
                -- and back to the hotel and straight to one of the two auto-rental desks. We'd go back to the airport, book a flight out, and then see basically all of Senegal, by car, this afternoon. At the counter, a round and broad-smiling man. We asked for a small car. He dispatched an assistant to get one.
                At the other rental desk, across the lobby delta, a man dressed for tennis was berating a different, smaller, clerk. The tennis-man was smoking and talking loudly and making a show of being amazed at the prices. He was speaking English and sounded American and looked it. His socks were white and Van Horned up around his calves. We hid behind our backpacks.
                With Hand watching for the car, I went into the hotel's business center to get on the web and check on flights out. A huge middle-aged Senegalese man was using the computer; there were three women around him waiting for a turn. But the man saw me and motioned me to come, that he was almost done. I smiled, trying to indicate, having no French, that he should stay and I could come back later, any time. He waved again, emphatically.
                I stepped over and smiled, hoping he'd give me English. He gave me French.
                "Sorry," I said. "No parlez pat francais. Mon frer --" I said, gesturing somewhere toward the door, in a way intended to mean that I had a friend who spoke French, an old friend -- from kindergarten! from birth! -- but he was out in the lobby waiting for a Taurus. I'm not sure if it came across.
                "English then," he said heartily. "These are my wives," he said, waving his hand over the three women surrounding him, all very pretty, all very tall. I half-laughed, in an attempt to split the difference between disbelief and courtesy. Three wives? Really? In the blush of the moment, I had to act impressed by him and respectful of them, without getting whiplash. The wives were smirking and talking to each other. They were dressed magnificently, one in the yellow of a rose, one in a rich and ancient orange, the third in a late-evening blue -- three queens sitting on folding tables around an eight-year-old Macintosh SE being tapped at by their much older and heavy-sweating husband.
                "It will be just a moment," he said. "Where are you from? Let me guess. Texas."
                I lied. "Right! How'd you know?" I gave myself a slight twang.
                "Ah, Texas. I love Texas. I have been to