Zara's Safari

Chapter 17

Two Sundays ago at exactly this time my life was going a little something like this;

I was sprawled out on Clay’s bed- he was on the floor, I can still remember the exact moment he went down, it was just after doing that Spice Girls impersonation. My head was throbbing like someone was using it as a chopping board. My mouth felt and tasted like a kitty litter box and my feet hurt so badly that I assumed someone had come inside in the middle of the night and used them as a pinboard and then set them on fire. My phone was beeping, which was causing my ear drums to shatter, sending shards of cartilage into my brain that got lodged   in my speech center, so that when I opened my mouth to try and communicate, I forgot all the words.

Tiny polaroid snap shots started coming back to me through the cloudy thick haze of awfulness.

Clay and I on the bar.

Clay and I on the table.

Clay and I on that statue that we really shouldn’t have tried to climb, not to mention that fountain that wasn’t a good place to swim, but was a good place to find spare change in.

All I had wanted to do was close my eyes and go back to sleep- wish the world away and stay unconscious for as long as humanly possible. The seconds were passing too slowly and I wished they would speed up…

But now the seconds were passing too fast. I wanted them to slow down. Because right now, every second counted. Every moment with Riaan, every look, every smile and every small touch. It all meant so much to me that I didn’t want to blink in case I missed one.

Funny that isn’t it, how we still wish we could bend time to our will, even though we know it cannot be changed.  But it’s about how we live those precious seconds that make the difference. Wow, that was deep! It seems like staring death in the face tends to make one more philosophical, I was a regular spiritual Guru right now. The Zara of a few days ago would never have been able to think that this.

We walked together down the hill and back in the direction of the lodge. Have you ever watched a Ping-Pong match?  The way the ball moves so quickly- at lightening speed- between the two players, how they react and respond instantly and how that keeps the ball in perpetual back and forth motion.

That was what this walk was like. It was punctuated with sideways glances, little smiles and the odd chuckle. It was as if we were hitting a ball back and forth; I would serve up a smile to him, and he would return mine with another one. By the end of the walk I felt drunk on the loaded looks-almost giddy. A feeling had settled into the pit of my stomach, it had moved in and taken up residence, pitched a tent and hung up a big sign that read “I like him. I really, really liked him.”

Once I had taken the two Malaria pills and Riaan was satisfied that I wasn’t going to get sick and die, we sat down outside on a bench together.

“So what do I have to do today?” It was already midday and I hadn’t done any work.

“Nothing. No work for you today- I told your aunt you needed a day to recover. And it’s my day off, so we both have nothing to do.”

But something was nagging at me- I did have something to do that day.

“I need to apologies to my aunt,”

“I didn’t tell her about the car crash, as far as she knows that never happened. All she thinks happened last night was that you got very upset over the tape- that’s’ all.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling such a swell of happiness at this protective gesture.

I found my aunt sitting on a chair on the porch reading, she had her own house on the property, not a dormitory. It was an old colonial style house that had been build over a hundred years ago, with it’s wooden floors, pressed ceilings and that large wrap around veranda. Stepping into it always felt like stepping back in time- I remember that from when I was young.