Fiona stared around the table. “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t realize. I just saw you and that meant I didn’t see anyone else. I’m so sorry. But, yes, I’d love—”
“Don’t be sorry, please,” Katie insisted. “Like I said, you didn’t know. This is my fiancé, David Hill. Why don’t you sit here, where David was sitting?”
“Perfect,” said David when Fiona was settled, and then he snapped a second photo. Fiona thanked Katie profusely when she stood, clearly not wanting to overstay her welcome, but Katie told her it was nothing and thanked her, in turn, for watching her movies.
When the woman was back at her table, Eva said, “Katie, that was lovely of you. Very gracious.”
Katie shrugged. “It took thirty seconds.”
“God, you’ll all have so much fun in Africa,” Judy told them. “No interlopers. No one is going to want you to pose for pictures.”
“No, we’ll be the interlopers,” said Katie. “We’ll be the ones interrupting other animals while they’re going about their lives.”
David had finished his drink and crunched down hard on a remaining ice cube. “Just want to make sure, Eva. The Congo. In your opinion, could it have any effect on our trip?”
Judy sighed. “David, I have no idea what kinds of papers your father pushes or what he does in personnel. But it seems to me he has you all worked up over nothing. Stop focusing on the fighting in the Congo and start focusing instead on the image of a bunch of giraffes watching you light a cigarette. Or that moment when your guide smashes on the brakes of your Land Rover, because there in the tall grass is a lioness with a couple of her cubs. Or the idea of stopping at some overlook by a river because all of those things you thought were just gray boulders are, in fact, hippopotamuses. There’s nothing like Africa. I don’t miss America in the slightest when I’m there. The dirty martini at the Fairview in Nairobi is just this civilized”—and here she raised her glass—“but the next day, you can be staring at an elephant the size of the bungalow I have here at the Chateau. I love it.”
“And the coffee plantation?” David asked.
Judy sat up straight on her stool and said in an accent that Terrance supposed was meant to sound Danish, “I had a farm in Africa.”
Katie looked back and forth at everyone around the table, her face concerned. “Judy, did you and Blair sell the plantation?” Blair was her British husband.
Judy laughed. “No, of course not. I was trying—I guess rather badly—to mimic Isak Dinesen.”
“That’s the opening sentence of her memoir,” Eva elaborated.
Katie looked embarrassed, and David kissed her on her cheek. “I’ll get you a copy tomorrow. It’ll be fun for you to read before we head out.”
Eva clinked her glass against Judy’s. “Your accent wasn’t bad at all.”
“Thank you.”
“？‘Plantation,’？” Terrance said, trying out the word as if he had never said it out loud before. But, of course, he had. As a child and a teenager. His great grandparents had been slaves on a…plantation.
“It’s not like that,” Judy said, as if she had read his mind. “Ours isn’t, anyway.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” Terrance agreed.
Eva nodded. “Terrance, I can’t tell you what you will feel in Kenya or Tanganyika—as a Black man. It’s not my place. And I only know you by reputation. But I am always happier there than I am in America. Just like Judy.”
“Hear, hear,” Judy said.
Terrance gazed for a moment into the flickering candle. “There are parts of this country I will never set foot in again. Never,” he told them. He said it calmly, wistfully. He wasn’t angry; it was just a fact of his life. If anything, it made him sad.
“You have no idea the way people attacked Terrance after Tender Madness,” Katie recalled ruefully.
“You, too,” David reminded her. “It’s not like that whole press junket was a picnic for you, either.”
“No, it wasn’t. But I experienced nothing compared to Terrance,” Katie corrected him. “I know some people thought it wasn’t a particularly savvy career move on my part, but no one threatened me or harassed me the way they did Terrance.”
“And the kiss never even made it into the final print,” Terrance said, and he shook his head.
“So, there was an actual kiss?” asked Eva.