The night was alive with the endless chirping of insects, the cries and calls of birds she didn’t recognize, and the deep lowing of a herd of wildebeest that must have been passing nearby. It wasn’t quiet. Her and Felix’s home—fuck, her home now—in West Hollywood was calmer. If there was a big cat skulking out there in the dark, she wasn’t going to hear it. Or them. She recalled the birds she would hear when she was a girl growing up in Westchester. In the mornings, when she would be waiting for the school bus, she would hear woodpeckers, phoebes, and mourning doves. She tried to convince herself that the birdsong here—the night song—should be no more frightening. But it was. Of course it was.
Maybe she’d hear the hyenas before they attacked. The creatures really had sounded like they were laughing that one evening when they’d been near the camp: the high-pitched giggles of maniacs in a mental hospital. That’s what she’d thought of. Even before Charlie Patton had told them all at breakfast the next morning that what they had heard had been hyenas, she’d known. She just had.
God, she really was a smarty-pants.
Her head was throbbing again, and she wondered how she had forgotten to stay ahead of the pain. She reached into her pocket and swallowed two more aspirin. It seemed like a lot of work to unscrew the canteen, so she didn’t bother to wash them down with water.
The fire was out now. How had she not noticed it become a smoldering pile of red and yellow embers, and then nothing?
There wasn’t a sound at the base of the tree, and she was glad that Reggie was keeping silent. God, to be down there alone in the dark? In the morning—and she was beginning to think they really might make it to the morning—she would have to ask him whether this was worse than Okinawa. She just had no idea.
She rubbed her hands aggressively over her arms, warming them, and blew on her fingers. She rested her head against the baobab trunk and fought the urge to close her eyes by looking up at the sky. And there it was: a shooting star. One second it was there, and then it was gone. Had she ever seen one before? She wasn’t sure that she had. But it felt like a gift, an answered prayer.
“Did you see that?” she asked in a stage whisper, hoping that Reggie had.
When there wasn’t an immediate response, she felt an acute spike of anxiety. Had he fallen asleep?
“Reggie?”
Again, nothing. Just the endless concert of the bugs and the birds and the wildebeest. He really must have dozed off, and the idea didn’t frighten her as much as she thought it would. A part of her was even a little relieved. They both desperately needed to rest. But, still, she would have to wake him up.
She looked at her watch. And then, in horror, she looked at it again. It was three fifteen in the morning. Somehow, she had conked out for roughly three hours and not fallen from the tree. That was why she hadn’t seen the last of their little fire disappear. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to sleep and not tumble from her branch, but she had. She really had. She’d slept for hours. Well, she was up now, and she better wake Reggie, too.
“Reggie!” This time it was more than a stage whisper. “Reggie, wake up!”
Still, there was only quiet below her. He wasn’t waking up, he wasn’t responding.
Which was when she felt a wave of dizziness and nausea welling up: he might be dead from a snake bite.
Or he might not even be there. A lot could happen in a couple of hours here. Hours? Good God, a lot could happen in a couple of seconds. Especially at night.
“Reggie: are you there?” Her voice had become a whimper that she didn’t recognize, a little girl’s plaintive cry to her father or mother. And, still, nothing.
She grabbed one of the tendon-like protrusions of bark on the trunk with her left hand and the branch above her head with her right. Then she leaned over and peered at the base of the tree where Reggie had been a few hours ago.
And she saw he was gone.
Still, she said his name once more, this time adding, Please.
But he wasn’t there. There was no question about it, none at all.
And, she understood, she was alone. She was absolutely and completely alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Terrance Dutton
But Sammy Davis Jr. and his spanking new wife, the Swedish actress May Britt （“War and Peace,” “The Hunters”）， weren’t the only interracial couple that caused heads to turn at the studio’s Christmas party. Terrance Dutton may not have been flouting “the norm”—this is Hollywood, after all, not Dutton’s “native” Memphis—but some guests were uncomfortable that his date was the Parisian ingenue Juliette Fournier, known for her alabaster skin.