Lost in Hotels (17 page)

“I always thought it was beneath a successful woman to want to cook, but to be honest with you, I find it really soothing and even fulfilling,” she says. “I mean, how many things in life can you work on and at the end of it you actually put it in your mouth and savor?”

“Well, I can think of a few things,” I say as I snuggle her in closer.

She slaps my hand away from the plate of bacon spread out on a paper towel blotted in oil.

“What can I do?” I ask as Catherine’s attention turns back to what looks like some sort of frittata on the burner nearest the bacon. Toast sits ready on small square plates as well as a pot of French press coffee that’s yet to be strained.

“You go sit over there, and I’ll be there in two seconds.”

Catherine has already set up a small seating area on the floor next to the terrace doors: a blanket lay out over the carpet with pillows tossed from the couch and a chunky candle she might have pulled from the bathroom. It somehow completes her entire fashionable breakfast scene.

“How do you take your coffee, David?” Catherine hollers from the kitchen.

“Strong and black, please.” I like that she knows how I take my coffee now.

“How do you take your coffee?” I yell back at her, wanting to know every detail of her morning ritual.

“A little milk, but not much. Why do you ask?” She peers out from the kitchen for the answer.

“Just want to know, that’s all.”

Catherine emerges from the kitchen with a tray full of breakfast that frames her face in a zigzag vapor. She eases it onto the floor and an aroma of coffee, toast, fruit, and bacon envelops me. She firmly plants a kiss on my face before she snuggles next to me on the blanket.

“Go ahead, eat; it’s going to get cold.”

“What about you, aren’t you going to join me? Oh, wow, this bacon is delicious. What’s on it?”

“A little maple syrup and some pepper. It’s in the magazine this month.”

“I mean, does life get better than this?”

“You mean the girls don’t cook for you in every port?”

“Ha-ha, very funny. Just you and my mom, actually,” I say, fully consumed by my food.

“Was your mom a good cook?” Catherine asks innocently.

“She actually was. She would make me eggs in toast every morning before school and let me pretend they were eyeballs.”

There’s a nurturing side to Catherine that I actually haven’t known since my mother passed away; she lingers with her stare to listen as I speak instead of looking away or getting lost in her own mind.

“When did your mother pass away?”

“She died two years after my parents divorced. She had lung cancer, and it was a truly agonizing six-month decline. In the end, I wished for her death. It was a very intense time for me. She died alone.”

As I look down at the food, I realize the conversation has taken me back to a place I rarely speak about, but it comes natural with Catherine. She takes my hand gently, but not so tight that the moment feels forced.

“And why did your parents’ divorce again?”

“Oh, you know how it goes. My father was a philanderer. We all kind of knew. It would creep up now and then as a kid; hints that I would catch in conversations between them. When I was at university, he got sloppier and finally found a woman he wanted for more than a night. It didn’t last long, either; he did the same thing to her.”

I take another slice of bacon that I eat with a wide, forced smile, somewhat surprised I confessed so much when I generally choose to avoid such a subject.

“Did he visit your mother while she was sick?”

“Let’s change the topic; this is still a hard subject for me. The fact is they’re both gone, and there’s really no reason to discuss it and replay the whole thing in my mind.”

“I’m sorry, I was just …”

“No, and I want you to know. It just feels treacherous to judge the dead. I do love my father; it’s just that his actions were so ghastly.”

Catherine rises to take the tray back to the kitchen, perhaps a reaction to my pulling away emotionally. She holds eye contact with me in a solemn stare, retreating to a soft and soothing smile that looks down at me from above, as my mom would have given me as a child.

“Do you want some more coffee? I can go grab you some.”

“Yes, please, that would be lovely.”

CHAPTER 5
LONDOLOZI

I
TELL MYSELF this is where it ends. This is where I stop before it goes too far. It will ruin my marriage and everyone, including David, when they find out about the incredible lie I’ve been living for almost six months. LA was supposed to be the end, the place where I told him I started seeing someone else or that I simply cannot continue this relationship. Then comes the long afternoons and lonely nights where I dream of him, his touch, and the endless conversations that leave me intertwined in emotion, unable to imagine my world without him. Then I tell myself just one more time, I’ll give myself one more hit, just one more plunge into this hedonist fantasy that our relationship has become.

Shortly after returning from LA, I learned
Rogue
would be cutting back on travel stories and limiting budgets for travel even for interviews. The news sent my heart to a full stop. While they promised it was only temporary, it immediately deflated any hope I had of being able to sneak a weekend away to be with David. I resorted to seeking out freelance assignments like this one I’ve taken with
Departures
, the private American Express member’s monthly. It’s normally a gig when you’re between magazines or building a résumé early on in your career, given the poor rates most publications pay and the amount of work you have go through to get an assignment.

And that is how I got here once more, this time packed into seat 32A on an eighteen-hour flight to Johannesburg, and using money that was tough to siphon from our monthly expenses and school savings. Freelance jobs like
Departures
pay a flat rate for a story, but reimburse for airfare and accommodations that are usually in some spectacular places. Being that it’s a freelance assignment, it means economy-class airfare, unless someone at the airline is kind enough to upgrade you, which in my case didn’t happen because the flight was full.

It’s an odd assortment of travelers in the mid-plane en route from JFK to JoBurg. A mix of dapper African men in business suits who seem uncomfortable sitting next to their wives in traditional headdress, and American couples in their most casual of fleece, clinching their iPads, streaming flashing images that keeps the top of the cabin in permanent northern lights.

There’s a refueling stop in Senegal on this flight, when at about eight hours after boarding, a flight attendant awakens me to realize I actually did the unthinkable and crossing halfway around the world to continue the affair I never should have begun in the first place.

“Ma’am, you’ll have to raise your seatback to its upright position.” She says in a soft voice while leaning across me to lift the window shade that lets in a blinding sunshine.

“I’m sorry, how long is the stop?”

“It’s around forty-five minutes; we just stay on the plane and then continue as soon as refueling is concluded,” her South African accent intones.

The preparation for landing feels as though you’re at the end of your journey, only to land, linger, and then begin the whole takeoff ritual again. It’s here, midway to South Africa that I want to fake an illness or stand up and scream. I know that upon takeoff I’m well past my halfway point on this journey and fast approaching the point of no return. But this is really the last time, even if I’ve tried before.

I’d managed three long months since the weekend in LA that brought us so close that I swore before both of us were irrevocably destroyed I would cut it off. I’d managed to get through the first few days, but by the end of the first week, I could do little to resist the urge of replying to his e-mails. Even in correspondence, he’s able to rapture my heart like a schoolgirl waiting on the endless love letters from a late-day postman. He’s able to lay out his daily rituals and things like running into an old university friend or disappointment in people at work that carry me away and back to him all over again. It doesn’t take long before the e-mails are no longer enough as we evolve in a texted banter that inevitably turns sexual and ends up on Skype behind a locked office or a bathroom door and staring into his eyes and willing to do anything to have just a day more with him in the flesh.

Then there is my reality that I free fall back down into at home. The daily routine of cleaning house, grocery shopping after a ten-hour day, and making sure I get those daily hours with Billy after I’m home to read a Grimm’s classic together or work on our drawing journal that takes us both away. I tell Matt he should use the time to do something for himself, whether it’s enrolling in a carpentry class or taking up karate, as he’s always wanted. All I crave is for a bit of conversation or experiences from him that include places outside of this apartment. Instead, Matt gets lost in his nightly television shows and always plans for the next day of nursery school and errands that inevitably looks exactly like the one before.

From Senegal, it’s another numbing eight hours before the plane drops below the murky cloud cover to reveal an arid bush landscape dotted by soot-blowing smokestacks rising from humble stone buildings, clustered denser and denser as we approach the city. Joburg is urban and vertical, a Western capital, at least visually. I sit and feel this steel bird turn up her chin and land her underbelly with a gentle thud along the smooth landing strip so far from home.

Staring at the landing strip, I allow my mind to wander and imagine what a married life with David might look like, a more evolved existence with a man who gets me emotionally, physically, and intellectually. However, I usually don’t get much farther than picturing myself waiting for him to come home from work or a business trip, as I realize he simply wouldn’t be satisfied with a steady, consistent, somewhat boring family life where you don’t go to glamorous dinner parties, fabulous hotels, or fashionable restaurants night after night.

The customs line in South Africa is different from other countries; an X-ray thermometer watches for those traveling with possible undetected viruses and makes even a healthy person wonder what happens if such a thing is detected. This is the point in my travels that fills me with regret; inward-pointed daggers insist that I never should have come on this trip to further this elaborate lie that’s going to end in compound heartbreak. The proud faces of the African civil servants don’t catch my inner doubt as they stamp my passport and declare me fit to enter and continue with this cycle of infidelity and moral lawlessness that despite all my will, I cannot quit.

Then the gates open to the madness that is an African airport. Legitimate drivers stand among tourist wranglers who look to make a penny off any service you’ll go along with while simply making your way through the terminal. I try to face the annoyance with a patient mind; it takes all my will to remember the cruel life so many of these locals endure among the brutal townships of JoBurg.

“Ma’am, let me help you with that,” says a young boy of no more than twenty with a metal-speckled smile. He rushes toward me and grabs the handle of my roller bag.

“Thank you, but I’m only connecting to another flight.”

“Which one? Let me help you to the gate. I will find it for you.”

A simple no is eagerly taken in these parts, and I hold a firm grip and force my way deeper into the chaos that is no more than a few steps from the customs area.

“Actually, there is my driver right there.” I gesture to a man holding a handwritten sign with my name accompanied by the words Federal Air that will take me onto Sabi Sands and Londolozi.

“Are you Catherine Klein?” he asks.

“Yes, that’s me.” The young boy yields abruptly.

“Here, let me take your bag. We have quite a walk in front of us.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind carrying it.”

“No, please, I am happy to help. Where are you coming from, my lady?”

“I’m in from New York.”

“That’s quite a flight, isn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Have you been on safari before?” he says as the crowds yield to empty linoleum floors and the endless ramps and people movers of the outer airport.

“No, this is my first time, actually.”

“You have a wonderful treat in front of you. Londolozi is an incredible place.”

“Yes, the pictures look incredible.”

“And the Steyn family, they are very well known in South Africa, you know?”

“You mean the owners?” I reply, trying my best to keep up in my deconstructed hiking boots.

“Yes, the current owner’s grandfather was one of the most famous men in the bush,” he says with a disjointed accent. “He made very important documentaries about the lions around the family’s farm where you go.”

“Yes, I think I read a bit about that,” I reply, even though this is the first I’ve heard of the Steyns other than to coordinate the booking.

“And then Madiba, you know we call Nelson Mandela, our former president, Madiba, yes?”

“Oh, yes, yes I do.”

“Well, when he was finally released under de Klerk, he went to stay with the Steyn family in his first days outside of prison. Madiba recuperated there, breathed the free air, and watched the animals. It is at Londolozi that he dreamed of what would become of South Africa.”

I feel like there is more to know from my tender as he drops me off in a kitschy safari-themed waiting lounge where clusters of older Americans gather around
CNN
on the television and eat from a table spread of morning pastries. A light rain falls on the window outside as a series of propeller planes, one smaller than the other, dots the tarmac. I barely have time to get out of my seat before I hear my name called. I am rolled out of the waiting area and onto the airfields where I am led to a plane in full gusto. My hair fights the wind, and I pull out my puffy jacket and climb into the rear of the four-seat plane.

I was expecting other passengers or maybe even David to surprise me on the flight, but alas, I am alone at the rear of the plane with two pilots hidden in the forward cockpit. The the door next to me is slammed shut, and I am left with just my thoughts. The pilot looks behind and then at his co-pilot, just for a glance, as if something was said between them. He gives a thumbs-up, and the plane shimmies to a roll along the tarmac and onto the runway. I think of Matt and Billy at home, and what they’re likely doing at this early hour while I get farther lost from them this time, somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

The rain intensifies with the crescendo of the plane’s baritone rumble as it approaches the end of the runway and comes to a full stop on a patch of gravel. The distance from New York feels overwhelming as I think of entire days passing in Billy’s life without me; it’s yet another plane ride that will simply take me farther away from the life I once knew. A lull in the engine sends the plane down the airstrip as if released by a slingshot. It propels faster and faster as the horizon shoots by, and the pilot pulls on the throttle and the plane lifts into the air. A horizon of smoke plumes rising from tented villages expands until the clouds intervene and a pause of gray erupts into a clear sun-filled blue sky.

My eyes close and thoughts drift upon arriving at Londolozi. I’ll do a quick run-through of the property as well as an interview with one of the original family members before meeting up with David, who should arrive in the evening.

A mountain range outside my window seems to divide urban Africa from the wild bush as the cloud cover yields to an arid landscape of yellowish-brown shrubbery uninterrupted by man or roads or development of any kind. My eyes comb the land to see elephants or giraffes roaming through the bush, but from even this low altitude you truly just see the infinite vegetation and endless horizon.

In the distance a landing strip appears, forged from the dirt and dotted with a thatched hut where a lone truck sits. The plane circles with an abrupt tilt that offers a closer view of the airstrip and two rangers who watch our steep descent and wobbly landing. The plane circles back at the end of the runway to meet two men who sit atop a vintage Land Rover. The plane’s engine comes to an idle and the hatch door is opened. I see a thick hand with a veiny, ebony-sheen arm, followed by a youthful face with flawless skin and an equaled smile. He reaches into the plane and meets my own.

“Welcome to Londolozi,” he says with a husky voice and an African accent that vibrates high and low.

“Thank you, what an arrival,” I reply, as my hand gets lost in his. I jump from the cabin and onto the fragrant land that smells a dusty mix of sage and eucalyptus that is Africa.

“Catherine, I am Nogo, and I am your trekker during your visit at Londolozi,” he yells above the engine noise. “Over there is Duarte, he will be your game driver. If there is anything you need during your stay, please feel free to let us know, and we will take care of it for you.”

“Thank you,” I say as he strips me of my carry-on and loads it into the back of a glossy Land Rover with three rows of seating that rise in height toward the back.

“I am Duarte, lovely to meet you, Catherine.”

Duarte is a brutish South African with an unabashed accent and fluffy blond hair that he shoves to the back of his head after every other gust of wind. His face, hidden behind a scratchy beard and a glazed stare, seems to see only the land in front of him.

“Catherine, we will be taking care of you while you are here at Londolozi. It is a very special place. You will always remember it. In fact, I am a bit jealous of those who come here and get to see it for the first time all over again. Each morning, we will come to wake you up at five-thirty, and we will go on a sunrise drive before breakfast. The rest of the day is for you to spend as you choose. Then, in the late afternoon, you will meet us in the main lodge at four o’clock for an evening drive that precedes dinner.”