Juma drove us for over an hour into the heart of Tanzania, jostling us over brush and gullies that were never intended as roads. He stopped in the shadow of a small grove. “We wait here,” he announced, and he pulled a blue-checked blanket from the jeep and spread it over the grass for us to sit on.
The plains faded purple at the edge of the horizon, and the sky overhead was the color blue the word had been invented for. I stretched out on my back. Beside me, Alex lay propped up on one elbow so that he could watch me. That was another thing I’d had to get used to in his presence—the focused attention. He would stare at me as if he was taking in every movement, every subtle change. When I told him it made me uncomfortable, he had shrugged.
“Can you honestly tell me you don’t notice the way I look?” he had said, and of course, I’d laughed at the idea. “Well, I can’t keep from noticing you, either.”
His eyes started slowly at my hairline and traveled down the bridge of my nose, my cheeks, my neck, and my shoulders. He left a physical warmth in his wake, as if he’d actually touched me. “Do you ever miss Maine?” he asked.
I blinked into the sun. “Not so much. I’ve been atUCLAsince I was seventeen.” I paused, thinking of how much of the explanation I had avoided. Although Alex had told me the truth about his family, I had yet to let him in on my own secrets. In the past weeks I had thought a hundred times about telling him, but two things had stopped me. First, the moment was never right. And second, I was still afraid I would scare him away.
The sun filtered through the penny-size leaves of the tree we were sitting beneath, casting a shadow of lace across Alex’s legs. If I told him and he ran in the other direction, so be it; I had been convincing myself all along that this fling couldn’t amount to anything. After all, what was he going to do when the filming ended? Fly back to L.A. with someone like me on his arm, and announce to his glittering friends that I was the woman of his dreams?
“Alex . . .” I said hesitantly. “Do you remember me telling you that my parents owned a bakery?”
It wasallI had told him, really, when pressed for details about myself. It was the only safe thing I could say. Alex nodded, lifting his face to the sun. “You helped make meringues,” he said.
I swallowed. “I also helped pick my mother up off the floor every time she passed out.” I kept my eyes trained on Alex’s face so I’d know exactly when the impact of my words had hit. “She was a drunk,” I said. “A southern belle to the last, but a drunk.”
He was looking at me now, but I couldn’t read his expression. “What about your father?”
I shrugged. “He told me to take care of her.”
His hand came toward me very slowly and cupped my cheek, and his skin beside mine was hotter even than my shame. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“Why did you tellme?” I whispered.
Alex gathered me up in his arms and held me so tightly I couldn’t separate his heartbeat from my own. “Because we’re two of a kind,” he said. “You were made to take care of me, and I’m going to take care of you.”
I struggled at the thought of that, but then I sank into the comfort he was offering. It was nice not having to be the one in control, for a little while. It was nice to be the one who was protected, instead of the one who’d been protecting everyone else.
We both sat up quickly at the sound of thunder. But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and suddenly Juma appeared at our sides with a pair of binoculars. “Over there,” he said, pointing, and what was a gray cloud on the horizon crystallized into flesh and blood.
Each elephant moved deliberately, one heavy footstep dragging into the next. Their skin seemed older than parchment, their tired eyes blinking in the dust. From time to time one would raise its trunk and trumpet, a high, heralding two-step scale.
Minutes later came a group of giraffes, their ears brushing softly against the low white clouds. I could hear Alex draw in his breath as one broke from the pack to step in our direction, its legs buckling gently at the knees and straightening, stiltlike, long yards away. The giraffe was the color of Caribbean sand, dotted with spots on its back and neck. It reached its face into the tree above us and began to taste the leaves.
Then the elephants began to trumpet fiercely and band together in a vaudeville shuffle; the giraffes marched knock-kneed across the plain.
When the only thing I could sense was the whistle of the tall grass, I heard the unmistakable roar of a lion.
He moved with the lazy grace of a victor, and his mane stood away from his face like a ring of fire. Several paces behind him was a lioness, thinner, sleeker, standing in his shadow. She lifted her eyes, a ghostly sea green, and bared her teeth without making a sound. Alex’s hand squeezed mine.
The lions stayed only long enough to sniff our scent on the air. They moved silently across the plain, now shoulder to shoulder. I wondered if these animals mated for life. The wind parted for them and they disappeared as quietly as they came. I stared for a moment at the spot where they had stood, trying to envision how a creature so beautiful could, in the space of a moment, draw blood.
“Let’s stay here,” Alex said quietly. “Let’s just build a hut on the edge of this plain and watch the lions cut across our backyard.”
I smiled at him. “Okay,” I said. “You can accept your Oscar via satellite.”
We picked up our blanket and crawled into the back of the jeep.
Alex’s leg pressed against mine from hip to ankle. Juma turned on the ignition and began to bump us over the pitted ground toward home.
AT THE SET, JOHN HAD LEFT US A JEEP AND A PICNIC BASKET WITH fried chicken and fresh bread. Alex and I sat in companionable silence for half an hour outside the tent with the setting sun melting into the edges of our collars and heating the ground between us. It was early September, and it was beastly hot. “You know what I miss?” I said.
“About Maine?” Alex shook his head. “I miss the seasons. I miss the snow.” I closed my eyes, trying, in this broiling heat, to imagine my fingertips blue with the cold, my eyelashes catching the first flakes of winter.
“One of my houses is in Colorado,” Alex said. “Near Aspen. We’ll go this winter. I’ll take you to see snow.”
I turned to him. I wondered if I would be with him this winter. My mind flickered back to that lion, striding silently through the bristling grass, his lioness following. “Yes,” I said. “I’d like that.”
