“Make up an excuse.”
“Lying comes easier to some people, Ten.” No irony or malice, just a fact. And she was right. If I’m not careful, lying is my nature.
“Then meet me for coffee tomorrow.” The exhaustion shredding my voice must have sounded like desperation, but I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week. “Tell me when you have a break, and I’ll come pick you up.”
Silence again. I’d envisioned myself staying with April—yeah, right—so I didn’t have a reservation at a hotel. Another hassle waited, and the day was already ending on a sour note.
My driver, Sipho, was watching me through his open driver’s-side window, eager to see me give him our signal: a thumbs-up if he could drive away, a thumbs-down if he should wait.
When I gave Sipho the thumbs-down, I heard him click his teeth with disgust. “Eish! No woman wants the nice guy!” he called from his window, repeating his mantra from our ride.
When I’d told Sipho the story of how April left the States to teach and then broke up with me by telephone, he’d let out a shout, as if she’d shot me. A rich man like you, treated this way by a woman! Maybe he was merely angling for a tip, but he was my only friend that night.
I was getting mad, and so far anger had nothing to do with April and me. I hoped I wouldn’t have to scorch April in those flames. Neither of us would salvage anything from that.
“April, if you’re through with me, help me wrap my head around it.”
April touched my forehead, just above a bruise, and her touch extinguished my anger. “Where would we go?” she said. “If I get the days off.”
I stepped toward April and cradled her cheeks with my palms. Her chin sank against the heels of my hands. For a precious few seconds, she trusted me to hold her up.
I did not try to kiss her. Holding her face was enough.
“I know the perfect place,” I said.
Cape Town might be our last chance.
TWO
APRIL WAS ABLE to go with me Friday morning, and I didn’t mind a day’s wait. April was in her late twenties, but she was built like a nineteen-year-old, willowy and deceptively resilient. Most people she met underestimated her, including me.
We caught a flight at nine A.M., spent most of the trip talking about my most recent brush with death, and landed right after eleven with plenty of day left. It felt good to be a we again, even if only for a while. We were extra polite, careful with each other, not wanting to trip over any land mines too soon.
I was glad that November is summer in South Africa, because there was no fog to obscure the grand vision of Table Mountain’s flat summit. The coastal town is designed to worship the mountain. I’d booked us two cottages at a quaint Cape-Dutch bed-and-breakfast near Stellenbosch, but I wanted April to see the view from Table Mountain right away.
The summit of Table Mountain might be my favorite place in the world. In sufficient quantity or quality, beauty is an intoxicant. When I close my eyes and visualize a safe, meditative space, Table Mountain is where I go.
As our crowded cable car climbed alongside the majestic, craggy mountain that rose to the sky, life’s concerns shrank beneath us. The rock was riven with the lines showing how long the mountain predated us, and how long it would be standing after all of us were gone. Cape Town spilled across the green basin and coastline.
South Africa is beautiful.
The multilingual babble around us rose to an excited pitch as the Atlantic Ocean unfurled below us like a vivid dream through the cable car’s glass floor, the edge of the world. If beauty were evidence, the ocean in Cape Town could convince you that Heaven is a shade of blue.
April squeezed my hand, hard. It was the first time she had touched me on her own since I’d arrived at her doorstep. So far, so good.
“Thank you for this, Ten,” April said. “It’s like looking straight at God.”
I didn’t always speak April’s language where God was concerned, but I knew what she meant. “See the sand on those beaches?” I said, pointing out where the ocean licked the white sands of the shoreline below. “It’s soft as sugar. Barefoot never felt so good.”
My late lady friend Alice had given me South Africa like a box of chocolates, piece by piece—from jazz clubs to discos to wineries to shebeens in the poorest townships—flying me out to meet her without notice. Alice had been dead for years, which seemed impossible on the Table Mountain cable car. She had been a part of another man’s life.
April looked at me as if I were a charming stranger she wanted to get to know better. “We’ll have to go to the beach,” she said.
Good. She was making plans for us. “Definitely.”
April’s smile made me light-headed. When her face came close to mine, I savored the smell of her. I had only two days with her, and I wanted them to count. Most tourists headed straight for the view of the water. Outcroppings of rocks surrounded us, and a colorful souvenir shop waited to help us buy back our memories when it was time to go.
A blinding glint of sunlight deified April. Her thin braids were dozens of gentle fingers fanning across her chin and jaw, framing the dimples that had called to my eyes when I first saw her in front of the Hollywood division police station with her reporter’s notebook. She was a princess.
“Wait,” I said, and I took her picture. I’m not a big photo collector, but I already knew I would want to keep that picture of April, even if it might be hard to look at one day soon.
April squealed, gone from the camera’s frame. “Ten, what’s that?”
She pointed. Brown fur blurred between two boulders. An animal about the size and shape of a mole skittered away on short legs, hiding.
“They’re rock dassies,” I said. “They rule the kingdom up here. Don’t get too close. They can bite, and they might be rabid.”
I remember asking Alice about the rock dassies, and she had looked as bored, too. “They’re closely related to elephants, believe it or not,” I said, just like Alice had told me.
“They’re so adorable! Like gophers . . . or giant squirrels!” She laughed.
“They’re not so adorable when you see their teeth. Wait—don’t feed them.” But April had already fished a snack bag out of her purse. She sprinkled Goldfish on the ground, making clicking noises. The rock dassie’s head popped out from behind the rock.
“Take a step away, April. He’ll come to the food. Don’t get too close.”
Five rock dassies from five directions were making their way toward April. To me they looked like an attack party, but April was holding her breath, watching their approach with wide, childlike eyes. The animals didn’t walk in a straight line—they took a few cautious steps toward her, then zigzagged in another direction before walking toward April again. Like me, maybe.
“Hey, precious baby . . . ,” April said, and I wished she were talking to me. “You’re a sweet little boo, aren’t you, huh?” I wondered if anyone else, in the history of the world, had ever been jealous of a rock dassie.
I instantly thought of him as Goofy. Goofy inched within a foot of her. Grinning wide, April froze like a statue as she waited. I made a mental scan of the area around us, just in case I would need something to beat Goofy away with. A rock would do the job.
Goofy realized that April wasn’t a threat, so he raised the cracker with practiced paws and started munching—Thanks, doll, you got any peanut butter to top this off?
“Ten, look!” April said. “He’s so cute! Can you take a picture of us?”
Goofy did not push my Cute button. Every instinct told me to shoo him away.
“That’s great!” I said anyway, and snapped the photo.
The other furballs in Goofy’s crew renewed their advance, their tiny legs scuttling toward April and her bright orange crackers. A lot of people would have jumped up to run for cover, but April didn’t move from where she knelt in their path. I opened my mouth to warn April to back away, but I was stopped by her grin.
I snapped another pho
to to try to capture April’s face—a barely harnessed joy that you rarely see in adults. A quiet thought surfaced: April would make a great mother.
Until that day on the mountain, I’d never had that thought about anyone.
When you go to South Africa, don’t expect to find Africa right away.
The first time I landed in Johannesburg, the rows of glass-paneled skyscrapers made me think I was back in L.A. Johannesburg is hamburger stands, malls, and movie theaters—more bland than L.A., actually, but you get the idea. Considering my exotic visions of Zulu warriors wrapped in zebra pelts, and lions roaming the savannahs, Jo’burg was a letdown. Cape Town feels eerily like San Francisco at first glance, down to the wineries and nightclubs, but its character feels less American than Jo’burg, more English influenced with colonial B and Bs.
April and I hung out on Long Street, where the Cape-Dutch Victorian buildings and wrought-iron balconies made me feel like I was in Europe, especially the south of France. South Africa offers wealth and poverty with equal zeal, and much of Cape Town is a playground for the rich. Even on Long Street, it’s strange how few black faces you see—usually it’s white and Indian South Africans, or tourists from the world over. Apartheid might have ended in 1994, but the average black South African remains a long way from the mountaintop.
The past is hard to overcome.
But South Africa was celebrating while April and I were there; in 2010, it would be hosting the first World Cup ever held in Africa. In Soweto, especially, soccer madness had been everywhere, a rainbow of colors for teams like the Swallows and the Pirates. Stadiums were being built in ten South African cities, including Cape Town. The brand-new Green Point Stadium had views of Table Mountain and the ocean, majesty to suit the coming battles among nations.
When Alice took me to Cape Town the first time, it was two years after Nelson Mandela had been elected president after twenty-seven years at nearby Robben Island prison—and the energy felt similar when I returned with April thirteen years later. But there was one major difference: Now, instead of just the colorful South African liberation flag, street vendors sold American flags, too.
“Hey—Obama!” a man called from a passing bicycle that afternoon as April and I walked down Long Street, where black Africans, backpackers, and bohemians congregated. Even in the midst of soccer euphoria, I was a star in my black Barack Obama T-shirt.
Grins flashed at me. Laughing children ran up to me. Women young and old gave me hugs. Strangers honked their horns as they drove past. A vacationing couple from Germany begged me to pose for a picture with them while April and I shared bemused smiles.
It was 2008, only three days after the November election that changed American history. Our American accents triggered excited conversations about American politics. The phrase “president-elect Barack Obama” sounded odd, dreamlike. There was a world party going on, and I felt lucky to witness how important the election was outside America’s borders.
Cape Town made us smile a lot, just as I had hoped. My swagger was back.
I was such a good catch, it boggled my mind.
Who else would fly from another country to try to win back his girlfriend after the way she’d cut things off? Shit, that girl would be crazy to walk away from me! Bruised or not, my face made most women lose their concentration.
On top of that, I might have at least a quarter-million-dollar settlement waiting for me at home—since an amoral studio exec named Lynda Jewell wanted my sexual harassment suit against her to go away. And I could put a few sentences together, too? April had better claim me back while she could, before I was out running wild.
To seal the deal, I chose the Nyoni’s Kraal on Long Street.
Kraal means a small rural village in southern Africa, but in Afrikaans, a kraal is a pen for livestock. That may be all we need to know to understand the history of race relations in the region. The South African brother who owns Nyoni’s grew up poor and built his business from nothing. Now it’s one of Cape Town’s most popular eateries, with room for hundreds.
Nyoni’s Kraal had a faux thatched ceiling, African-inspired brass lamps shaped like masks, and mock crocodiles hanging on warmly colored stone walls. A prominent South African flag bore the black-and-gold triangle and stripes of green, white, red, and blue. The employees wore traditional dashikis. Our round-faced waitress, Nobanzi, wore a thin beaded headband and a wide beaded bracelet with colors that entranced my eyes. Xhosa, I guessed.
I ordered a 1999 Klein Constantia sauvignon blanc, and April couldn’t hide how impressed she was by my knowledge of wine. I had my mojo back!
We joked about ordering mopane worms and chicken feet as appetizers, but we ended up with marinated snoek, a long, bony, saltwater fish I thought she would like. For my entrée, I ordered the kingklip, an eellike local fish with firm white meat. April ordered African roast chicken. Heaven. For the first five minutes after our food arrived, we forgot about talking and enjoyed the taste of Africa.
“Mrs. Kunene might have a job for you,” April said.
“A job?” I said, sampling my bread. “She doesn’t know me.”
April shrugged. “She asked about you last night, so I told her you’re an actor and bodyguard in Hollywood. When I said we were going to Cape Town, she told me her sister-in-law runs an orphanage near here, in a township called . . . Lango?”
“Langa,” I corrected her.
“Langa. An American actress is visiting, but they’re worried they might not have reliable security. Mrs. Kunene thought I should ask you, since we would be here.”
I’d been to Cape Town’s townships before, including Langa and an even poorer township called Crossroads. Alice took me to see an amazing children’s orchestra playing in a shebeen built of drab brick and entombed in razor wire. The area looked like Fallujah. But a music teacher invited neighborhood children to play instruments, and they took up scales instead of trouble. I heard those kids play a blast of Duke Ellington bright enough to light up the block. Anyone who heard it had no choice but to smile. Jazz is everywhere in Cape Town, even in the ’hood. I wondered if the bar was still there, if the band still played its sweet, silky songs.
“We only have a couple days here,” I said. “When’s she going?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Who’s the actress?”
“Sofia . . . Maitlin?” April said casually, as if she’d never heard of last year’s Oscar-winning best supporting actress. “Mrs. Kunene gave me a number for her assistant, or whatever.”
April was downplaying it. For some reason she didn’t want me to take the job. When I held out my hand, April reluctantly pulled a slip of paper out of her purse. The name Rachel Wentz was written on the scrap she gave me, with the number for the Twelve Apostles Hotel.
Definitely legit. Rachel Wentz was Maitlin’s manager, not her assistant. A manager is a professional who hobnobs with the upper echelons of Hollywood to manage your career—an assistant gets your coffee. Big difference. Having a license to call Sofia Maitlin’s manager was reason enough to take the job. I’m an actor first, and access is everything. After being fired from my series, I was out of circulation.
But I’m no fool. “I came to Cape Town to spend time with you,” I said, slipping the paper in my back pocket. “I didn’t come to work.”
“I told her you probably couldn’t do it,” April said, relieved. But her face brooded, suddenly dangerous. “You get hurt so much, Ten. Like you’re . . . punishing yourself.”
Here it comes, I thought. April didn’t mention Serena’s name, but her ghost was suddenly at our table. I first met April after a friend of mine was murdered, and we had recently passed the one-year anniversary of Serena’s death. I clamped back the rage and sadness always simmering near the surface; I wanted my thoughts clear for the new tragedy unfolding.
Slowly, April continued, “The lengths you go to when you’re on these cases feels . . . self-destructive—like you want to hurt yourself. That scares me, Ten. When you too
k the T. D. Jackson case, I started to think you’re chasing something else. That maybe you’re looking for something you can’t fix by finding the bad guys. Forgiveness, maybe.”
The suspicion that April might be right only made me angrier. “Or, maybe I’m just good at solving fucking cases.”
“I know you’re good at it—you’re great at it—but I think it’s about more than that for you. You put yourself in reckless situations, and then you have trouble moving past them. I see these patterns in your history, Ten.”
April sounded like she had just finished a course on me, with charts and graphs. The phrase your history hurt. “Haven’t I shown you that I’m not that man anymore?” I said softly.
April was my first monogamous relationship, my first true girlfriend. I literally don’t know how many women I’ve had sex with—I stopped counting long ago, when I passed three hundred. In my twenties and early thirties, when acting work was dry, I spent years as a professional “escort,” servicing wealthy women in Hollywood and overseas. I racked up a big body count.
Not long before I took April to Cape Town, my past mistakes caught up with me. A powerful female studio executive tricked me into a meeting and started taking off her clothes, offering me money for sex. Lynda Jewell knew about my history, and found me through my agent when my face started showing up on TV. She’d offered me a lot of zeroes to forget, but like they say, money can’t buy love. The damage between me and April had been done.
April still couldn’t look me in the eye. “This isn’t about your past.”
“What, then?” I said, my voice rising, as close to shouting as I came. “You’ve never had your ribs cracked, so you don’t know how patronizing it is to say I like getting hurt. Did you pull that out of a college psych book? Or is it some Dr. Phil bullshit?”
A black African couple at the table beside us glanced over to see what the ruckus was. The moon-faced young woman in sunflower yellow was holding her date’s hand, but he looked bored. The woman’s forlorn eyes begged us to show a better example of courtship.
From Cape Town with Love Page 2
