seven years Veronica spent money without knowing or caring where it came from, had her bed made and most of her meals prepared by servants, lived in a world where inconveniences are outsourced. It made her lazier, weaker, more selfish, less understanding, shade by incremental shade. She didn't even notice it happening until she was suddenly expelled from that world. Now when she looks at herself she hardly sees the girl she used to be at all. Though maybe she's come back a little in the last two weeks. Maybe that's the only good thing to have come out of the Congo.
When she was twenty-four the world seemed so full of opportunity, a cornucopia of possibilities. Now Veronica feels like she only has one or two chances left to get her life right. If Africa doesn't work out, she doesn't know what she'll do. She supposes that's why Derek made such an impression on her, even though she hardly knew him. It wasn't just that he was dashing and handsome, there was something about him that hinted at an opportunity to get things right at last, some fairytale notion of falling in love, for real this time, and living happily ever after.
Her cell phone rings. She looks at it, doesn't recognize the number, answers.
"Veronica? How are you?"
"Oh, hi," she says, surprised, recognizing Jacob's faintly nasal voice. "Fine. You?"
"Pretty good. You busy?"
"Not really."
"Want to come over? I've got something you might be interested in."
She hesitates, not sure if she wants to see Jacob and be reminded of Derek. "I'm kind of stranded today. No driver."
"No problem. I'll send mine."
After a pause she says, "OK. Sure." She can't hide in her house forever.
Jacob's driver is a quiet, bespectacled middle-aged man with a pot belly named Henry. His vehicle is a sightly dented but clean Toyota. Veronica wishes she had a driver of her own. During her marriage she travelled everywhere in luxury automobiles. Danton had a Jaguar and a chauffeur, a Ferrari, a Lamborghini. He loved driving hyperpowered sports cars, and so did she, it was one of the few things they had in common.
Their route takes them through downtown Kampala's densely packed warren of shops, hotels, banks and government buildings, all perched on the most central of the city's seven hills. The Sheraton Hotel looms atop this hill. On the other side of downtown they pass the concrete-walled complex of the US Embassy: the workplace, if Prester was right, of the person ultimately responsible for what happened to them in the Congo, a traitor conspiring with terrorists for his or her own gain.
Then along the Jinja highway and through the vast shantytown that surrounds Kampala, thousands of tiny, misshapen wooden huts leaning drunkenly on one another, their tin roofs patched with garbage bags and weighed down by rocks. Children play soccer on narrow, uneven dirt roads, women sell food from cloths laid out on the muddy ground, men sit or lean in the shade, doing nothing, as if waiting for a messiah to come. When Veronica first came here it seemed an abyss of misery, but witnessing the Congo's real wretchedness has opened her eyes to its merits. Most shantytown inhabitants do not live in interminable suffering. Some do - refugees, AIDS orphans - but most are just poor. Very poor, desperately poor, and with little hope of ever being wealthier, but it's still much better than life in the Congo.
The New City complex stands on a hill above the shantytown like a mirage in a desert. Henry continues past this gleaming, modern shopping mall into a leafy and exclusive suburb. Jacob lives in an apartment complex that wouldn't look out of place in the West, except for its guardpost and barbed-wire fences tastefully hidden by bushes and trees. His askaris look at her curiously. They've probably never seen such a dire-looking mzungu woman before. It isn't until she's at the door to Jacob's apartment that she begins to wonder why he invited her.
Chapter 15
Jacob says, "These are all of Derek's phone calls."
He looks from the computer screen to Veronica. Her expression is hard to read; the half-healed cuts on her once-perfect face make her look like an extra in a zombie movie. Jacob supposes he still resembles an acne-scarred teenager himself. At least his goatee conceals the worst of the damage.
He wishes he'd cleaned up his apartment a little before she came over. It's a nice enough place, two bedrooms all to himself, but it isn't really ready for guests.