I did only once."
Derek smiles. "Because DeShawn nearly beat the living shit out of you."
"Discretion is often the better part of comedy."
Veronica interrupts their repartee. "You two went to high school together?"
Jacob nods. "Twenty years I've known this guy. High school, university, now here. His fault I'm here in the first place. Talked me into an eighty percent pay cut to work for some friend of a friend of his. I still can't believe I actually signed up."
"Sure, it's all my fault," Derek says darkly. "Salesman of the century, that's me. Sand to the Bedouin, Africa to Canadians."
"I want my money back. You'll hear from my lawyers."
"What? Why? I promised you exotic adventure. If this doesn't qualify I don't know what does."
Jacob snorts. "Teach me a lesson. Jungle accommodation with a waterfall and a sunset view, you said. The company of beautiful women. A long walk through lovely rainforest with expert guides, culminating with quaint local rituals involving big fucking whips and machetes. Yep, definitely should have read the fine print."
Their humour is forced, but everyone manages a smile.
"No, really, my own fault I'm here," Jacob says bitterly. He takes a deep and shuddering breath. "I keep thinking maybe this is a dream, and when I wake up tomorrow we'll be back in the park, or maybe in Kampala, and I'll say, hey, guess what, you'll never believe this dream I just had."
"Yeah." Veronica knows the feeling.
"These last few weeks already, most mornings I wake up and can't believe I'm in Africa in the first place. That was already surreal. This is even crazier. It's like I'm playing a video game inside a dream or something."
"You've just been here a few weeks?" Susan asks.
Jacob nods.
"Me too," Veronica says softly. "Just a month."
Judy asks her, "You came as a tourist?"
Veronica shakes her head. "I was working with this HIV research group."
"We were supposed to fly home tomorrow," Diane says. "They took our tickets. It isn't fair. We're philanthropists. We would have been home tomorrow."
Veronica sympathizes. She too probably would have been going home soon. Her month in Kampala has taught her that Africa isn't for her: too foreign, too chaotic, too poor, too intense. She was probably just weeks away from leaving. It doesn't seem fair that now she is trapped in this awful place instead.
Michael says angrily, "I grew up poor, you know. I paid my own way through college. Now we give money to churches, orphanages, ministries all over the world. There are dozens of African children who rely on us to survive. Hundreds. We travel all over the world to inspect our good works and make sure our money isn't wasted. That's why we were here. We don't deserve this. We just don't deserve it."
Susan looks like she wants to say something, but doesn't.
Jacob shrugs. "It's like Clint Eastwood says. Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."
"We would have been home tomorrow," Diane repeats, as if she can make it come true by saying it often enough.
Judy says, "You never think it will happen to you, do you? You always think this is the kind of thing that happens to other people. We're just tourists. Uganda was so lovely. We travel every year, never had a moment's trouble before."
"We should have gotten married," Tom says, very seriously.
Judy half-laughs, half-sobs. "You've been saying that for fourteen years."
He takes her hand gently. "We get out of this, darling, first thing, I'm going to make an honest women of you at last."
"Fourteen years?" Veronica asks.
Tom explains: "It's been a very long engagement. Like that French film with whatshername from Amelie. I used to be a coal miner, up near Leeds, Jude here was a hairdresser. A month after we started going out, we were both sacked, on the same day. Fourteen years ago next month. The very next day we put our heads and bank balances together, started a delivery service. Nowadays we've got eleven vans, forty employees, it's a real going concern. But starting up shop was such a bloody bother we never found time to officially get married."
As Veronica listens, she begins to feel a slippery looseness deep in her guts, a faint cramp. She swallows nervously. Just a little dyspepsia, she tells herself. You ate too much too fast. That water you drank was clean. You can't be sick. Not now.
"Every year we talk about it," Judy says, "and every year we decide we'd rather spend the time and money travelling."
Tom rolls his eyes. "She decides."
"Come on, love.