From Cape Town with Love (2 page)

I wished they were. I understood the rules with cops. There were no rules at all now.

Interrogation scene

http://www.simonandschuster.com/multimedia?video=87313457001

April Forrest's eyes widened. “Ten . . . what happened to your face?”

In the bosom of beauty, ugly comes as a shock. The swelling and bruises across my face made me look like I'd just been attacked by a prison gang. Might as well have been—although it was just one man. In the swamp.

When April left Los Angeles to teach in South Africa for six months, she'd left me, too. We had passed the one-year milestone right before she changed her mind about us, and an ocean and ten thousand miles had suddenly seemed like a small toll to see her again. I wanted to know what had scared her off—but maybe it was written all over my face.

“Long story,” I said. “I tried, but I couldn't find flowers this late. May I come in?”

Apparently,
long story
wasn't enough to get the door open any wider. April was lithe and fine, with skin the color of ginger.

She was living in a tiny cinder-block house on a street of modest but well-kept homes in a middle-class section of Soweto, outside Johannesburg. In the bright light from the porch, I saw her jaw shift with uncertainty. Her delicate chin and gently swaying braids, adorned with regal
white beads at the ends, reminded me of why some men could be driven to beg.

Two or three loose dogs I'd seen outside the gate were barking at me from the unlighted street. Two yipped harmlessly, but one sounded like thunder. A week before, I'd killed a German shepherd in the Florida swamp. The memory of the dog's last yelp, and his master's last labored breath, still iced my blood.

“You look like you almost got murdered, Ten. What happened?”

“The T. D. Jackson case.” My investigation into the death of football star T. D. Jackson had taken me places that were hard to put into words. Dad had told me that an LAPD officer who had been through my ordeal might have been considered like an OIS, Officer Involved Shooting, and sent to counseling. “Like I said, April . . . long story.”

April's look told me that I was failing my first test since our breakup. In her place,
I
might close the door on me. Dying hope flashed hot in my chest. I knew it then: I shouldn't have come to see April without calling her first, like my father and Chela told me before I left.

“Ten, I can't . . . I'm not alone.”

She's already with somebody else?
A foreign rage tightened the back of my neck. I didn't know if I was more pissed at her for moving on, or at myself for flying across the world to witness her new life up close.

When an older woman appeared behind April in the doorway, I wanted to hug her. April was boarding, so she was living with her hostess! The woman looked about fifty-five, but her skin was so smooth that she might have been ten or fifteen years older. Bright silver hair framed her forehead beneath her colorful head scarf. The slope of her nose and sharp cheekbones reminded me of Alice. Beauty, timeless. Another woman. A different time. Despite the severity of her frown, the stranger's face forced me to stare.

“I'm sorry it's so late, Mrs. Kunene,” April apologized. A faint living-room light was on, but the woman might have been asleep. It was ten
P.M.
in Johannesburg, late for an unannounced visitor. I hadn't thought about the hour when I jumped into the taxi at the airport and told the driver to go to the address April had given me. A lot had changed since the last time I was in South Africa.

The streets were so dark, I had no idea how the driver found his way.

“This is my friend Tennyson. From the U.S.”

April said
friend
as if it was the whole story. I could barely smile for her hostess—not that a smile would have helped my face. Mrs. Kunene looked like she was trying to decide if she should call the police right then, or wait for me to look at her the wrong way.

After a twenty-two-hour flight via Amsterdam, I couldn't fake pleasantries with a hostile stranger. “Come away with me for a long weekend,” I said into April's ear, not quite a whisper. I'd planned a more elegant approach, but the sight of April's face had drained my memory. My palms were damp, like my virgin friends used to say in high school.

April touched her ear, coaxing away a strand of hair. “Ten . . . slow down . . .”

A broad-shouldered man with snowy white hair appeared next, wearing only his slacks, roused from bed. Mr. Kunene might be my father's age, but his motion was agile and his face was as smooth as his wife's.

“April, this man is your friend?” he said. “He looks like a
tsotsi!”

I admired his lyrical accent despite the insult: He'd just said I looked like a gangster.

April planted her foot in the doorway to keep the door from slamming in my face. Her foot was as firm as her voice was gentle: “Yes, yes, he's a good friend. It's all right.”

“Is he drunk?” Mrs. Kunene called, stepping back. The rolled r's in the woman's accent were music. She made
drunk
sound like a state to aspire to.

“Sir and madam, I am not drunk,” I said. “Please accept my apologies for stopping by so late. I have to talk to April right away.” When they heard my reasonableness, and my American accent, some of the alarm left their eyes.

I pointed out the gate, where the tattered taxi that had brought me waited, a dingy gray VW Citi Golf that had once been white. One of the back taillights was missing, and the other glowed dimly. The driver sat inside, awaiting my verdict. The yipping dogs still barked, but the larger one had moved on. April saw the taxi and realized delays were costing me.

“I'll be right here on the porch,” April said to her hosts, and slipped outside before they could object. The white curtains fluttered at the window as they watched us.

On the porch, I had an impulse to pull April close—but I followed her lead and kept a two-foot distance. If I tried to touch her and she flinched away, no words would rescue us.

“Sorry, but she's a minister,” April explained, hushed. “They're strict with boarders.”

Good. I hoped they ran the house like a damn nunnery. “I need a face-to-face conversation with you,” I said.

April's eyes fell away, and my throat burned. A month ago, April would have fussed over my bruises, planting her soft lips on mine.

“Let me take you somewhere beautiful,” I said. “Don't we deserve time, April?”

“Yes, but . . . I'm working until Saturday.”

“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.

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.