Private Lies (20 page)

"I really don't want to see them hurt," Maggie
said suddenly. She was the first to break the silence.

Eliot did not respond. She could barely see his face for
the darkness.

"Hurt?" he said finally. "No. Something
painless, quick and final."

Maggie felt a sudden chill and was strangely grateful that
it was impossible to see his expression.

THROUGH THE MESH window of the tent nearest to the fire,
they watched Maggie and Eliot sitting in the circle of light. The couple was
talking in low tones and it was impossible to hear their words. In another,
smaller circle, this one of artificial light, they could see Meade working on
the van.

Carol and Ken were kneeling on the cot that afforded the
best view of the couple by the fire. They were in Carol's tent, on Eliot's cot.

"They are certainly congenial," Carol whispered.

"They are always that," Ken replied, also in a
whisper. When they spoke they talked into each other's ears, kissing lightly as
they switched from ear to ear.

Suddenly the couple around the fire looked toward the tent,
then turned away.

"Do you think they can hear us?" Carol whispered.

"Not when we talk like this."

Ken kneeled behind her, legs spread so that his knees were
on either side of hers. He held her with his arms clasped in front of her body.

The couple continued to talk and made no move to leave the
fire.

"They are obviously enjoying each other's
company," Carol said.

"They always do."

"What do you suppose they're talking about?"

"Something that pertains to their work," Ken
said. "Maybe wildlife."

Ken unclasped his arms and began to massage Carol's
breasts.

"Maggie seemed very put out by your not coming to
dinner," Carol said.

"How else were we to get them to spend time together
alone? The more scarce we make ourselves, the better it will be for the
idea."

"Do you really think it can work?" Carol asked.
He accepted her doubts as a regular refrain. They also reflected his own, but
did not deter his optimism. Seeing Eliot and Maggie together near the fire,
sipping their brandy and talking in hushed whispers, was a good sign.

"It's getting harder and harder to show my
indifference, Ken. Even when we're in the van sitting together, I want to sneak
a pet."

"Me, too."

He kissed her on the neck and earlobes and she reached
behind him and stroked his penis, hardening under his trousers.

It was risky. He'd have to leave the tent through the back
flap, which she had unzipped, but that would expose him for a minisecond as he
moved back into his own tent through the opened back flap. If Eliot and Maggie
decided to leave the fire and moved too quickly, he might be spotted. There was
also the possibility that Meade might look up from his work and see him scurry
back to his own tent. That, of course, wouldn't be fatal, except that Meade did
not seem like the best candidate in the world to keep a secret.

"What about tomorrow?" Carol asked. "Do we
go with the others in the van?"

"Maybe in the morning. In the afternoon we can make
excuses," Ken said. He hadn't quite worked it out in his mind. Meade, of
course, was an obstacle to solitude, but it was a stroke of luck that he chose
to attend to the van after dinner.

Carol turned suddenly and guided Ken off the bed, embracing
him, undoing his pants, hugging him.

"Can you see them clearly?" she asked.

He bent from the shoulder and could still get a clear view
from where he stood.

"Good," she said, guiding his erect penis to her
mouth, starting to make love to him that way. "You keep watch."

He obeyed, watching the couple, but his mind was elsewhere
and he had all he could do to keep his breath coming in hard gasps. After a
while, she stopped and started to remove her slacks.

"I want you in me," she whispered.

At that moment, Ken saw the couple around the fire move and
stand up.

"My God, no," he said in a whispered shout.
"They're coming." He lifted his pants and moved quickly out of the
tent through the opened back flap. Before he could button his pants, he tripped
over one of the tent ropes and fell to the ground with a thud. Carol rushed out
to see what had happened, but he had gotten up and run across the space between
their tents just ahead of the oncoming couple's flashlight beams. Then he
jumped into his cot and pulled the blanket over his body, feigning sleep.

In the morning, all Ken could think of was the absurdity of
it. It was farce, all farce. But it did not in any way diminish his resolve.

"Are you feeling better?" Maggie asked as they
sat on the edges of their cots drinking the morning tea.

"Yes. Much better," he answered cheerfully,
searching her face for any sign that she had seen anything the night before.

"That's good," she said.

He paused for a moment, then said casually, "How was
it by the fire last night?"

"Oh, lovely."

"I got up to go to the loo and saw you and Eliot
sitting there deep in conversation. It looked nice. You both seemed
contented."

"We were."

"Wonderful of him to have this kind of an interest, to
dedicate himself to such a cause. He was right about Africa. He's quite a
guy."

He watched her as he spoke.

"Yes, he is," she said, her eyes touching his
then drifting away.

"We're lucky. Don't you feel safe in his hands?"

"Yes, I do."

"Man knows his Africa."

"Yes, he does."

"You looked good together out there by the fire.
Very..." He searched for a word. "Belonging."

She appeared somewhat puzzled, then put her cup down.

"Today we'll see elephants," Maggie said,
standing up.

"Sounds great."

Had he detected something in Maggie that he hadn't seen
before? He wasn't sure. Yet there was a definite difference. She seemed less
intimate, as if she were withdrawing from him. He was surprised at being
disturbed by this observation since it was exactly the result he wanted their
relationship to have. Withdraw from him. Be drawn to Eliot.

Meade left breakfast early to get the van ready, and Maggie
asked Eliot if he couldn't load up her camera, leaving Carol and Ken alone in
the mess tent sipping their coffee. Maggie wasn't very good with mechanical
things and Eliot had a knack.

"I think we're making headway," Ken said.

"Based upon what?" Carol asked.

He had expected her question, but wasn't quite certain how
to answer it.

"A feeling," Ken said. From where he sat in the
mess tent, he could see Eliot working on Maggie's camera in the entrance to his
and Maggie's tent. Eliot spoke as he concentrated on loading the film into her
camera. But his words could not be heard from that distance. Ken saw Maggie
smile, then look toward the mess tent. She turned away and her smile
disappeared. "It's an attitude that seems to be developing," he
continued. "Especially when they're together. Don't you see it?"

"I'm afraid I don't," Carol said. "And I
find it curious the way Eliot prods me on the subject of you."

"Me?" It puzzled him.

She lowered her voice. "He wants me to show more
friendship toward you."

"He's still on that, is he?"

Ken was certain he knew what that was all about. Eliot was
as infatuated as Maggie on the idea of their being the happy foursome,
"couple friends." That, Ken and Carol both felt, would be a detriment
to the plan. The idea was to make them two twosomes, not a congenial foursome.

"Maybe we should show more outward affection,"
Carol said. "Show them the way."

"Like role models."

"Yes," she agreed. "Sort of monkey see,
monkey do."

She looked into his eyes and started to laugh, which
escalated, and for some time she couldn't stop laughing.

"Must be some joke," Maggie said, coming into the
tent and pouring another cup of coffee. Eliot followed her. "How about
letting us in on it, Carol?"

"I'll save it for the right moment," she said,
calming herself.

"Anyway, I'm glad to see you two enjoying
yourselves," Maggie said.

There it was again, that urge to make them one big happy
family.

They loaded up with binoculars and cameras and got into the
van and began the long drive over the wide plains. They followed the
well-rutted road, skirting the rocks and dry river bed. From time to time Meade
stopped the van to peer into the hard dirt of the road, looking for animal
signs.

At one such stop, Meade looked at the ground and muttered,
"Leopard. Toughest bugger to find out here." He peered into the
surrounding plain and headed for a low hollow, moving the van slowly as he
squinted ahead then into the road looking for signs, then faster as was
appropriate to the hunt.

The four of them poked their heads out of the roof portals
as the van moved forward across the rolling plain in search of the elusive
animal. They held on tight to the handles on the van's roof, cameras bouncing
on their neck straps, as Meade hit the gas and the tires gripped the dry grass
to make its own track.

The motion of the van and the tight quarters of the middle
portal pressed Ken's body toward Carol at every sway and there were times when
one side of the van was higher than the other and they were pressed together
like glued parts.

Suddenly Eliot banged his knuckles in a tattoo on the
rooftop and Meade stopped the Rover.

"We stop now we'll lose him," Meade said.

"Never mind," Eliot said. "Look at
that."

A strange large bird was standing in the middle of the
plain no more than twenty yards from them. He seemed disfigured, his neck
puffed to immense proportions over his beaked head, which twitched and croaked
out a strange squawking sound.

"It's a kori bustard," Eliot said.

"What's he doing?" Maggie asked from where she
stood behind them.

Carol turned to her. "Sending out the signal,"
she said.

"What signal?" Maggie asked.

"The one that's as old as time. Come and get
fucked," Carol said.

Such talk worried Ken. He caught her eye and tossed out a
brief glance of rebuke. Meade grunted out a cracked laugh.

"Where's the lady?" Maggie asked, scouring the
plain.

They all concentrated on scanning the horizon looking for the
lady bird. This kori bustard wasn't expending all that effort to puff himself
up for nothing. Then Eliot pointed.

"Thar she blows."

A female bustard, he supposed, made her way cautiously over
the plain, stopping, listening, moving again as the male beat out his tune, his
carriage stiff and bloated with inflated desire.

"Way of the world," Carol said. "His call is
making her sexy."

"Seems to be the pervasive activity of Africa," Ken said, chuckling. "All so natural and without inhibitions. Wonder if
it has its effect on people, too."

Carol and Ken exchanged glances but made no comment.

They watched as the female moved forward, responding to the
squawk, the male's show-off appearance, and the instinct of her sex.

"Obviously turned her on," Carol said, her leg
caressing Ken's unseen from anyone else's vantage above the roof of the van.
Meade, who might have seen if he had turned, was seated in the driver's seat
also concentrating on watching the show through the windshield.

Ken, despite knowing what Carol was trying to do, found
himself physically responding to the suggestive power in both the sight of the
courting birds and Carol's touch. He felt the tingle in his crotch and the
beginning of an erection. But it was not without a sense of personal embarrassment.
They're only birds for crissakes, he thought.

Cameras were unleashed, lenses at the ready, as the female
moved slowly toward her lecherous bird-man. Soon she was closing the gap.

"Sock it to her," Carol whispered through
clenched teeth, her camera poised.

Ken pretended to be taking a picture, but mostly he was
watching Eliot from the corner of his eye, observing what he assumed was
consternation. Was Carol going too far, exhibiting a side of her that Eliot
might never have seen, that private wild side of her that she had apparently
revealed to Ken alone? He would hate to have to confront a backlash, just when
things seemed to be moving along. Or so he assumed.

Finally the female bird reached the bloated bustard,
turning her bottom to him. She was quickly taken. It was all over in seconds.
Finished, she moved away from the male, who continued to stay where he was,
still puffed and squawking.

"Damned fine show," Ken said.

"Different," Maggie acknowledged.

"Not much," Carol said. "Just in style and
configuration."

"He's still out there," Maggie observed.
"Still puffed up."

"For some there's never enough," Carol said.

Eliot tapped the roof of the van and Meade started up again
across the plains. But he seemed to have lost all his enthusiasm for tracking
the leopard.

"Worked for me," Ken said as he walked with Carol
from the van back to their respective tents. Maggie and Eliot took their time
about leaving the van, gathering up their film.

"Me, too," Carol acknowledged. "But, then,
we don't need that kind of stimulation."

"You really pushed it," Ken murmured. She turned
to search his face.

"We have to move this forward," she said.

She was right, of course. There was an element of time to
be considered. When he had first conceived this idea he hadn't thought much about
time. Only the doing of what had to be done. The process of using the very
potent power of suggestion. But, of course, the goal all along was time.

"You think it had any effect?" Carol asked.

"On them or us?" Ken asked, smiling shyly, before
each disappeared into their tents.

They had covered lots of miles that morning, had seen some
elephants and two cheetahs. They had waited for the cheetahs to make a kill,
but the two cats didn't oblige, preferring instead to play around the van,
jumping on its roof and pawing its tires like curious and harmless kittens.

On their return, Ken had ordered a shower. When the boy
came to tell him it was ready, Ken undressed and went through the backflap of
the main tent into the john tent, through to the makeshift shower stall above
which the tank had been loaded with hot water.