Page 15 of The Rival in South Africa
“Well, they are very enterprising little buggers.” He held up the torn toiletry bag from the far corner of the cabin. Something under the loveseat caught his eye, and he dropped to his knees to investigate. I huffed and went to the washroom to wring out the flannel.
“Uh, Nikki? Are you on medicine?”
I paused in wringing the cloth out. “Yeah. Antimalarials. Why?”
The curtain shifted, and Alex came in, holding a medicine pack that was clearly not my antimalarials. “I think you may have had a hand in reducing the monkey population by one or two monkeys.”
I grabbed the pink disc from Alex. Yup, my birth control pills; all gone except for four of the seven placebo pills.
“There are still a few left,” Alex said helpfully.
“Those are the placebos.” I fiddled with the pack, running my finger over some bite marks in the packaging. “Thank you anyway.”
Well, some monkey out there was going to have a weird menstrual cycle. And mine might go wacky for a bit. At least I wasn’t dating anyone. There was no boyfriend to return to after a week away, and then have to explain that we’d have to use an alternative form of protection because a monkey had eaten my contraception.
“Right. Well.” He shifted a step back. “I’ll keep gathering your things.”
When I stepped out of the washroom, there was a sizable pile of my toiletries on the bed. I ducked back in and grabbed the trash bin before plunking myself down and sorting the items out. The toothpaste was split, and Alex had had to clean minty-fresh paste off the carpet. Trash. Small vial of perfume with cap missing: keep, and possibly suffer from having too much perfume accidentally sprayed in my toiletry bag.
Alex went into the washroom and returned with the damp cloth. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, gesturing at the desk, a laugh escaping from his mouth. “One of the monkeys took great indignation with something and pissed on the desk.”
“What? Oh my god.” I put my hands to my mouth in horror. Those buggers. Thankfully, Alex was bent over laughing too hard to be horrified.
“I can clean it up,” I offered.
“No, it’s fine.” He shooed me back to my pile of monkey food and chuckled as he turned to the puddle of piss. “Never let it be said I wouldn’t do anything for you, Nikki.”
SIX
Dinner was another fabulous evening.Alex and I had sat at one of the big family tables, drinking wine with four people from one of the other Jeeps: two brothers from Germany, Meino and Ernst, who ran a blog calledTwo Traveling Bratwurstsand another couple from the States, Conrad and Rowena. Rowena wrote for freelance travel magazines. We laughed a lot, talking about travels and adventures. They were bubbly and enthusiastic, regaling us with stories of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and what they hoped would be their next adventure: tickets on the SpaceX passenger flight.
“So,” Conrad said, leaning back in his chair, “how long have you two been a couple?” His finger waggled between Alex and me.
“Oh, no. We aren’t a couple,” Alex clarified.
I let out a nervous chuckle. “No, no. We kissed once when we were teenagers, and Alex didn’t like it very much. We are definitely not a couple.”
“You didn’t like it very much?” one of the German brothers asked. After two glasses of wine, I couldn’t remember which brother was which. But the way this one’s eyebrows rose and he looked Alex over, I could guess where his thoughts ran.
“Not like that,” I chided. “Alex is straight.”
The brother jabbed an invisible knife into his heart and groaned while Alex’s ears turned strawberry.
“Sorry to disappoint, Ernst,” Alex said, laughing.
Conrad’s wife, Rowena, pulled me to the side as the conversation shifted.
“I noticed you have quite the camera with you.”
I nodded. “Yes, it’s an intense setup.”
She dug into her bag. “I’m only carrying around this little camera. It’s nothing as professional as yours.” She pulled a small Nikon point-and-shoot camera out of her bag. “Would you be willing to take a look at my pictures? I think I screwed my settings up.”
We flipped through her pictures on the screen, and I got acquainted with the buttons.
Rowena shook her head sadly. “This technology is just a bit beyond my skill set.”
