Night Of Knives

Chapter 6

"Medicine," she says. "They brought us medicine."

She and Jacob drink as much of the bitter tea as they can stand; then she applies the poultices to his and Diane's infected welts. She wonders if the herbs actually work or if they're just a totem for the placebo effect. Either way it's better than nothing.

She sits with her back against the wall of the cave. Jacob lies on his stomach beside her. They watch the shimmering curtain of the waterfall in companionable silence. After a while Veronica realizes that, placebo or no, she does feel more alert and less sickly. She feels almost like she has woken from three days of sleep.

Jacob echoes her thoughts: "I think I feel a little better."

Veronica looks down at herself. Her skin is caked with dust and mud. She wonders how much weight she has lost in the last few days. Her belly seems to have retreated into her body, leaving taut skin behind. She hasn't been this thin since her modelling days. Jacob's long body, folded into a crosslegged position beside her, has gone from skinny to outright gaunt. His hair and goatee are half mud.

At length she says to him, "You know, one thing you've never explained, why are you here?"

"I got kidnapped."

She gives him a look. "I mean Africa. Derek asked you to come, but why did you say yes?"

"I came for the waters."

She smiles and quotes back: "What waters? We're in the desert!"

"I was misinformed." He considers a moment. "He happened to call me at a weak moment."

"Weak how?"

"I turned thirty."

"Oh. Yeah. That can be weird." Veronica knows that all too well.

"And I had just broken up with my long-term girlfriend. We didn't even like each other any more, we were just staying together by default, you know? Momentum. That and neither of us wanted to have to look for someone new." Jacob shrugs. "We finally broke up and I suddenly realized I'd basically spent the last ten years watching movies and playing video games. Some other guys I graduated with, they moved to California, a couple of them are internet millionaires now. And I'm a lot smarter than them. I used to think that mattered, being smart. But it doesn't. Not if you never do anything with it. I had a good job, but what for, right? I realized had never actually done anything. Then Derek calls and says this is the land of opportunity. A whole continent leapfrogging land lines, new cell networks everywhere. And I figured, even if I miss the brass ring, at least I'll have gone and lived in Africa, right? At least I'll have done something more with my life than work and play World of Warcraft. So he found me a job at Telecom Uganda, at a mere eighty per cent pay cut. The grand plan was, I'd work there a year, figure the lay of the land, meet some funders, then we'd start a company here, try to build an empire." He shakes his head. "Now I just want to not die. How's that for perspective?"

"Yeah," Veronica agrees.

"I must sound like a jerk, eh? You came here to help starving AIDS orphans and here I am talking business opportunities."

"You don't sound like a jerk," Veronica said truthfully. "And honestly, I didn't really come here for the orphans. I came because my whole life went to shit. Basically this was as far away as I could find."

Jacob visibly decides not to ask for details. She likes him for it.

"I got divorced," she says eventually. "From a guy I should never have married in the first place."

Veronica falls silent. She doesn't want to talk about it. Even now, even here, the hurt is still too fresh, that she devoted seven years of her life to Danton, abandoned her career and let her whole life fall into orbit around his, only to be discarded like used Kleenex when she turned thirty. Now that they're over it's almost like those seven years never really happened, like she somehow jumped from twenty-four to thirty-one overnight. That Rip van Winkle feeling was part of why she came to Africa. To start her life over, leave all her mistakes behind.