You've said yourself every trip's been better than a wedding. You hate weddings."
"I'd rather get married than eat pocho again."
"Fair point," Judy concedes, and everyone chuckles.
"It's really not that bad if it's prepared correctly," Susan protests, but she too is smiling.
Silence falls, and with it, the almost-cheerful mood darkens again.
Eventually Tom says to Susan, "What's your story then, pocho-eater? What are you doing in Africa?"
"Me?" Susan looks around awkwardly, discomfited by their collective attention. "Not half so romantic as yours. I used to be an actress. Not a very good one, I don't think. I went to all the right courses, did a few little roles in provincial tours, a few film walk-ons, but it never really happened for me. Fame. Success." She shrugs. "Then five years ago I came to Kenya for what was supposed to be two weeks, to help teach local theatre groups how to put on AIDS awareness plays. The slums there, the way people live, I'd never seen anything like it. I'd never even imagined. And it's so unnecessary. The waste. The fucking waste of it all. Their government stealing their money, and the money that's supposed to go to them, just outright stealing it plain as day, thieves and murderers, killing their people in a dozen different ways, and all of them propped up by our governments, our aid organizations, we're helping to kill them too." Susan glares at Michael and Diane as if they are personally responsible for Africa's poverty. Then she seems to come to herself, and her face softens again, her voice becomes shy and hesitant. "I've been here ever since. Working at places I can believe in. Refugee camps, mostly. The aid industry mostly makes Africa worse. But in the camps I can make a difference."
"Did the people at the camp know you were coming to see the gorillas?" Derek asks.
Susan considers. "I told a few. The authorities must already know we're all missing, they took our passport details when we entered the park."
Derek nods as if that wasn't quite what he was asking.
"How long have you been in Africa?" Tom asks Derek.
Derek too looks a little uncomfortable answering questions. "Almost a year now."
"You were in the service, you said? You've seen action?"
"Yeah. In Bosnia. I was a so-called peacekeeper. Ten years ago now. Private security, since. Iraq a couple years ago, working for Blackwater. Then Thailand before I came here. Beaches and girls. Probably should have stayed."
"What you should have stayed in was university." Jacob turns to the others. "This guy was supposed to do a triple major in politics, philosophy and economics, while I did computer engineering. We were going to found a startup once we graduated. The dot-com boom was just starting. We would have been millionaires. But loser-boy here had to go and change his major to drugs and girls."
Derek smiles and quotes, "Never let your schooling get in the way of your education. So I dropped out."
Jacob clears his throat skeptically.
"No, I did. How many times have I told you this? You can check U of T's records. I officially withdrew a whole day before they would have expelled me."
"And then you joined the army and went to Bosnia? Why?" Veronica asks, trying to ignore her increasing intestinal discomfort.
Derek says, as if it is all the answer the question requires, "I was twenty-one."
A hush falls over the cave. Nobody seems to have anything else to say. Veronica tries not to think about the slithering uneasiness in her belly, or about how many things could go wrong with their ransoming. She tries to think back to happier times. But those were too long ago to come into focus. She can't tear her mind away from being afraid; every time she tries to distract herself there is a sudden reminder: the tightness of her ankle chain, a groan from Diane, and Veronica gasps weakly as she remembers where she is, and her stomach writhes and twists anew. She feels like she is slowly sliding into a dark whirlpool that will swallow her whole.
"I'm sick," she mutters. There is no longer any denying it. Her guts are lurching and roiling with illness, she can't hold out much longer. She rises weakly to her feet. "Shit. Fuck. I'm sick."
"What is it?" Derek asks, concerned.
"Just a stomach bug," she insists. "I've got to … I'm sorry."
She grabs the empty pocho bucket and stumbles as far away as possible; only twenty feet, thanks to the chain. The others look studiously away