A Dancer's Guide to Africa

by Terez Mertes Rose

  Everyone claimed a seat. When Joshua took the spot next to Carmen, I hesitated. William looked at me, smiled and patted the seat next to him.

  Elated, I sat.

  After Henry had regaled the group with his story about the army-ant invasion that had powered right through his living room in October, leaving him homeless for a week, William angled himself my way.

  “That’s a new outfit,” he said.

  “It is,” I agreed.

  His eyes traveled slowly down the length of it and back to my face.

  “It looks very good.”

  “Thank you.” I managed to sound calm, matter-of-fact.

  “I keep meaning to ask. How’s your jaw these days?”

  Here, too, I kept my expression neutral, even though I wanted to laugh. There wasn’t a chance I was going to have any poorly timed issues about my jaw this time and ruin everything. “Good as new,” I told him.

  “Glad to hear.” He reached over for his beer but set the bottle back down before even taking a sip. “So… talk to Christophe lately?”

  This time I couldn’t not laugh. “Christophe who?” I nudged his thigh with mine.

  He grinned. “I think you are laughing at me.”

  “I am.”

  He reached over and gave my thigh a mock-reproving squeeze. His hand lingered for just a moment before he removed it. The gesture, the physical contact, stole my breath.

  “And meanwhile,” he said with great dignity, “I am simply setting up my social calendar, and we’d talked, earlier, about a group dinner.”

  “My apologies.”

  “Thank you. So, have you spoken to our friend?”

  “I have.”

  “And in conversation with Mr. Essono, did you two arrange dinner for the four of us?”

  “I did. We are scheduled to dine with him and Mireille on Tuesday night.”

  “Are you looking forward to it?”

  “Frankly I’m pretty caught up in what’s going on right here to give it much thought.”

  He smiled at me, gave my thigh another soft, lingering squeeze, and everything inside me turned to butter.

  “William,” Carmen called out. “What’s this I hear about you being roommate-less?”

  We looked up to see Henry and Carmen grinning at us. “Poor guy, all alone in that big room,” Henry said. “Dude, should we all show up and turn the room into party central, so you won’t be lonely?”

  “I think that’s what they made double bolts for,” William told him. “Or to protect against.”

  “Your own room. Oh boy,” Carmen said, and began to chuckle to herself.

  A discussion arose over what everyone thought of our luxury accommodations and whether Henry should try and fake out the administrators, pretending that he’d gone native. “How about I tell them my girlfriend at my post is pregnant, due any time, and I’ve decided to stay in Gabon to be with them?” Henry proposed.

  “That’s been done already,” someone else pointed out. “Twice.”

  “Two wives?” Henry asked. “Both pregnant. That been done?”

  “I think you’re good to go, there.”

  William stretched and made a great show of looking at his watch. “I think I’ll call it a night,” he said. “Anyone else ready to head back?”

  “You know, good idea.” I sprang right up, ignoring my largely untouched beer. “Want to be fresh for tomorrow’s sessions!”

  Two others, a married couple, joined us as well, which helped make it seem less obvious that I was intent on following William. I avoided looking at Carmen, who was doing her best to catch my attention so she could leer at me.

  On the walk back, I inhaled all the stimulus—the city nighttime activity, the warm breeze, the sound of music from different venues, the tang of the ocean in the air, the romance of a tropical night. I welcomed the chatter of the married couple, for whom it was just another night. The four of us made our way into the lobby, where they wished William and me a good night. Alone with him, I grew tongue-tied. My heart began to pound faster.

  William, too, seemed nervous. “Henry and I stopped by an artisans’ yard on our way into Libreville today,” he said. “I bought some really nice looking masks.”

  “Oh, really? That sounds great,” I stammered. “I’m looking for something like that to send home to family. Should I… Can I… come check them out?”

  “Sure!”

  “Like.. right now?” My heart was banging in my chest like a loose shutter in a storm.

  “Definitely,” he said.

  “Great!”

  Whew.

  As we walked down the hall, we both began to relax. “We bought other things, too,” William said. “I’ll have to pull out my wooden serpent to show you.”

  “Oh, now that’s one I haven’t heard before,” I commented dryly before I could judge its appropriateness.

  William stopped, frozen, and I wanted to kick myself. Then comprehension—and a blush—flooded his face as he began to laugh. He reached out and gave me an affectionate swat on the ass. “Bad girl. Bad, bad girl,” he said, shaking his head. “What are we going to do with you?”

  I had a hunch he’d come up with something. I certainly hoped so.

  Chapter 31

  William’s new masks, chalky white and rimmed in black, really were beautiful. Their large elongated faces, facial markings and abstract features demarked them as authentic Fang masks, the same kind that played such an influential role in twentieth-century modern art. William was ruffling through his duffel bag in search of his wooden serpent when the power flickered and went out. In the sudden darkness, we both paused and began to laugh. “Yep, luxury hotel or not, we’re still in Africa,” William said.

  “I can’t see you. Where are you?”

  “Here.”

  “Where’s here?” I groped around with my hands until I found him. “Is that you?”

  “No.”

  I laughed. “It sure feels like you.” My hands slid up the familiar route of his arms to his shoulders. My cheek brushed his, and that was all it took. His lips found my half-open mouth. A little animal sound of relief and pleasure escaped from the back of my throat.

  Several sensations raided my mind at once—the pleasurable shock of our hip-to-hip contact; the tang of beer lingering in his mouth; the lusciousness of the way he kissed. My arms twined around his neck, fingers digging into the soft pile of his hair. His hands glided over my silky trousers, my backside and waist until I felt so breathless and lightheaded, I sensed my legs might not be able to support me much longer.

  With a clicking sound, the lights came back on.

  We both blinked, disconcerted, aware that this was the moment to either pull back and make a joke, or continue to scale the wall that separated friend from lover.

  He pulled back.

  “Guillaume,” I whispered, holding on to him this time. In truth, clinging.

  He reached down with one hand and pried off a sandal. Straightening, he flung it like a Frisbee toward the light switch adjacent to the door. The rotating sandal clipped the switch and instantly cut the overhead light, returning us to semi-darkness. As I began laughing, he reached for me. “Where were we?” he murmured. Without waiting for a reply, his mouth covered mine again.

  Wall scaled.

  As he kissed me, he nudged me back toward the bed until it pressed against the back of my trembling legs. I fell back onto the mattress and he followed suit.

  I’d dreamed of feeling his weight on me ever since that Christmas Eve kiss. I’d spent sleepless nights wondering what would have happened if things had gone differently that night. But even that wouldn’t have been as perfect as this. There was something about waiting three and a half months for an experience to make you relish every bit of it. Which, apparently, included not rushing things. William was different from the others I’d been with; there would be nothing hasty or furtive here. Instead, his hand slid down my legs and back up in a way that communicated an equal sens
e of longing and hunger, but patience, too. Calculated deliberation. It drove me crazy. It was so much fun.

  A few minutes later he paused to prop himself up on his elbows. I reached up and began unbuttoning his shirt with shaking fingers. When the last few buttons resisted, I ripped the shirt open. A button flew and hit the lamp with a ping, making us both laugh. My silky top followed William’s shirt to the wayside. My bra.

  “William?” I whispered ten minutes later.

  “Yeah?” he whispered back.

  “I think my new slacks are getting wrinkled.”

  He rose to his elbows again and peered down at them. “We can’t let that happen.”

  “It would be a crime.”

  With a deft tug, he liberated the silk trousers and placed them with great care on the unused side of the bed. Neither of us commented when they slid off the bed and onto the floor a moment later. We were too busy liberating William’s jeans and getting right back to the business of discovering each other’s bodies.

  Mine. He’s mine.

  I felt this more than thought it. The non-thought continued, making me deliciously, recklessly uninhibited, as my hands moved down his back, the smooth curve of his ass, greedily claiming anything I could reach. My legs curled around his and clung, like an octopus in a primal mating ritual. His hand edged down, past the barriers of my silk panties, touching me where I’d grown swollen and slippery. I gasped, an oh! of pleasure that seemed to galvanize him.

  We had a game going on. Gentle followed by animal. Followed by slow, stretchy movements, like ballet, except that you didn’t use your mouth in ballet. He loved contorting my limbs and I loved draping myself over him for maximum skin contact. He was like a master choreographer, intuiting where the slow adagio movement fit in, and when to ramp things up. His timing was impeccable; he waited until I was seconds from orgasm (number three) before slipping inside me. I’d thought climaxing at the same time was something that only happened in movies and romance novels. Nope. As I felt something in me spiral out of control, William clutched me and gasped out my name, shudders shaking his body. He didn’t let go for a long time afterward. Neither did I.

  Hours later, following round three, I slipped away to use the bathroom. Upon my return I stopped to study William, visible in the moonlight filtering through the windows. He was lying in bed, watching me from under heavy-lidded eyes. “Why are you smiling?” he asked.

  I took a few running steps and leapt back into bed. He gave a big whoof as I thudded against him. “Because I’m very happy.” I burrowed beneath the sheets to make contact with his skin. “Because it’s been a good second year, but I think I like the ending the most.”

  “Oh, but it hasn’t ended yet,” he said, sliding his arms around me.

  “You mean it gets better?”

  His arms tightened. “Stick with me and we’ll find out together.”

  “Okay.”

  I slung my leg over his thighs and rooted around on his chest for the best place to rest my head. When I found that position where we interlocked perfectly, it seemed to complete some sort of magic circle of security. Sleepiness hit me like an anvil and all became quiet and unutterably safe.

  Until, at some later point, it became not so safe.

  It was my bwiti initiation, though I didn’t remember agreeing to one. They were feeding me iboga and had been for a long time. I knew, without looking, that they’d streaked white paint on my forehead, just like the slashes of white paint that bisected their own dark faces.

  More iboga. One brought over an entire branch while another grabbed hold of my injured jaw. “No,” I cried, but the minute I opened my mouth to speak, they got it in.

  Villagers had filled the hotel room. I looked around at them and the world spun. The tunnel reappeared, even though I wasn’t dancing. This time I stepped into it and let it take me to that other place.

  Somewhere Else.

  All around me, landscape I’d never seen before. A plateau punctuated by sparse, brambly bushes and pale green lighting, like Omaha skies just before a tornado. A very old place, its edges eroded and stripped of all moisture. More like the moon than earth. It was so foreign, it scared me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, I was in a less foreign place. A Catholic church. A cathedral.

  The interior was breathtaking. Above me, a buttressed ceiling soared stories high. A long line of priests, robed in snowy white and gold vestments, had lined up behind a casket. The interior was dim, but from on high, stained glass windows cast beams of colored light down the massive grey stone walls. One priest carried incense, its brass cage dangling from a pendulous chain, swirls of the smoke rising. A pipe organ swelled out an opening hymn and the procession began. The movement jostled me and I realized I was the person in the casket. The iboga dose had failed, been too much, and I’d died. I could see through the lid, and see everyone’s somber faces. I wanted to call out, but I couldn’t speak because I was dead, and that was it. Finished, c’est fini, forever and ever, and what would my family say when they learned I’d died? My parents, Russell, Alison. The cry of anguish when Alison found out, which I’d heard, because when you’re dead you can see and hear everything, everywhere. You are The Ancestors now. I saw the way Ally sank to her knees and gave an unearthly howl, before screaming, “Fi! No! Please no!” It pierced me so deep, hurt so much to see, which meant I wasn’t dead, because to hurt this bad meant you were still alive.

  I struggled against the coffin lid, crying out that I wanted my family, I needed to be alive for them, that this was all wrong. No one heard me.

  “No!” I tried to scream again. “Noooo!”

  “Fi. Fiona. I’m here. You’re safe.”

  My eyes flew open to find William, hunched protectively over me. We were in his bed and I was alive.

  My heart was slamming against my chest. I clutched at him, stunned to realize it had only been a dream. It had seemed so real. Even now, the scenario clung to me, terrible in its inference and intensity. I was panting, as if I’d been running.

  William went and fetched me water. I gulped it down, and gradually the dream and its hold started to recede. “I feel so stupid,” I mumbled. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  He ignored the apology. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  I drew a steadying breath and shared what I could remember.

  “Ally thought I’d died. It was terrible, watching her take the news.” It was as if I’d actually seen Alison wail in grief, and it had been so pure, so feral, it was agony. Her grief had been mine. No surprise; we were sisters, almost twins. Grudges changed none of that. I began to cry again, helpless against the onslaught.

  William held my hand until I calmed down and was able to tell him the rest of the dream, the bizarre landscape, the bwiti ceremony-but-not.

  “Whoa, that’s insane,” William said once I’d finished. “Did you take your Aralen last night or something?”

  In spite of the heaviness that still hung over me, I laughed. “No.”

  “I guess it’s something else you’re trying to process, subconsciously.”

  Of course it was. Family aside, it was Célèste’s request to me.

  I fell abruptly silent, a silence that stretched out.

  “What is it?” William asked.

  I hesitated a moment longer, dreading even thinking about it. “It’s something to do with Célèste’s dance circle. Something I need to figure out on my own. I’m sorry, that’s all I can say right now.”

  I could tell William didn’t like this, but he seemed to understand. “When you’re ready, know that I’m here for you,” he said.

  A deep sense of gratitude welled up in me. “Thank you,” I said, and took his hand. The warmth of it, the way his hand instinctively curled around mine, strong and warm, made me feel dizzy with happiness.

  Sometimes when taking big, big risks, you won big.

  This was big.

  I learned a lot at the conference over the next f
ew days. I learned how my hand could stay within the confines of William’s for an hour and never cramp; how it was possible to appear engrossed in what the speaker was saying, while William’s hand wandered under my shirt, caressing my back. I learned that standing too close to him in the hallway and grazing my lips against his neck produced a frozen, deer-in-the-headlights look in his eye; that I only needed a few hours of sleep each night; and that quiet, serious William had a passionate, insatiable side that drove me wild.

  A few informative bits sank in, about reverse culture shock, tips on job-hunting, and final close-of-service procedures, but it took Carmen to jolt me back to full awareness. After lunch break on day two, she and Joshua strolled back into the meeting room together, dressed in identical African outfits, red and gold-patterned drawstring pants with matching tunic tops. Carmen had slicked her hair back and tucked it into a ponytail. They looked like twins. Joshua took in my shocked expression and smiled. “She liked my other outfit so much, we went to the market and hunted down these,” he explained.

  As Joshua began telling another volunteer how to find the shop, I studied Carmen. “That’s a man’s outfit,” I told her.

  “I know.” She grinned. “I like it.”

  “What are they going to say back home?”

  “Who cares? And as it turns out, I’m staying.”

  “You mean here in Libreville after the conference ends?”

  “No. As in, I’m staying in Gabon a third year.”

  “Carmen!” I cried. “Since when?”

  “Since Chuck and I talked yesterday. I’ve been invited to serve as next year’s volunteer leader for education.”

  “When were you going to tell me?!”

  “Maybe I’ve been trying to get your attention and you’ve been a tiny bit preoccupied?”

  “Okay, fine. But… What about Daniel?”

  Carmen grimaced. “Gotta make that call today. It’s over between us.”

  “Carmen! What the hell?!”