Rex was floored when we all arrived on the deck in time, except Hannah, who in a surprising twist, somehow had reduced her normal thirty to seventy-five minutes of being late to only twenty. She was bunking with Sue, who was helpful in getting Hannah up on time along with putting her to bed when her slurring turned into screaming or crying.
“Who would have thought being on black people’s soil would have the reverse effect on being late?” Sue mused out loud.
They provided us with scones and coffee, which was disappointingly the best food we had on the entire trip.
“Do you girls want a Bloody Mary for the ride?” Rex asked.
“Sure,” we all said in unison.
I knew then that my feelings for Rex were stronger and more serious than I had first suspected. I dreamed of quitting my television career, moving to South Africa, buying an existing reserve, and living life wrangling baboons. Rex and I would settle down—after I convinced him he didn’t want children—and he would teach me how to herd buffalo, impala (pronounced “impaahla”), and littleneck clams.
I would eventually learn how to cook the meat, open up my own three-star Michelin restaurant on the reserve, and finally get back to my true passion: waitressing. I’ve always suspected that the reason I was so terrible and miserable at waiting tables was because I had had no other options. Now, with a little money saved and a bunch of uncashed traveler’s checks I had put aside as a nest egg, I could finally give people the service they truly deserved. This was especially important since my name would be on the restaurant door. I’d call it Chelsea… Later.
Simone looked at us drinking the Bloody Marys with a stink eye, which was not so different from her squinty eye, except for the additional eye roll at the end. She clearly wanted to take on the role of the responsible one who wasn’t willing to lose her credibility with Rex or Life. “I don’t need a Bloody Mary at six a.m.”
“But it’s not 6 a.m., it’s ten ’til,” Shelly calmly corrected her. “Technically, it’s still nighttime.” Shelly has a very soothing tone of voice when she’s trying to encourage someone to drink.
Rex told us that perhaps we were the first functioning alcoholic women he had ever met, and it became a mantra he repeated for the next four mornings when we continued to rise at 5:30 a.m. and start our day with Bloody Marys.
“ ‘Functioning alcoholics’ wouldn’t be the precise term, Rex,” Simone corrected him. “It’s more like ‘professional alcoholics.’ ” Simone was spot-on, and although she doesn’t drink as frequently or as much as the rest of us, she was able to keep up at a pace that I found as distrustful as her wardrobe choices.
I corrected her. “I would refer to myself, personally, as a first-generation alcoholic. My parents weren’t drinkers, and since it seems I have indeed taken to the drink, I am choosing not to procreate in order to not pass this gene on. Kind of like an environmentalist,” I told Rex, as he picked me up and put me in the jeep so I wouldn’t twist my knee.
“I brought you some ice today,” he told me.
I looked back at the other girls and winked. Game on, I mouthed.
It was thirty minutes into our morning ride, as the sun started to rise and my body and face started to lather, that I came to the realization that what I had mistaken for sunblock was actually shampoo. I was now completely covered in suds while sitting in an open-air Land Rover wearing an army belt and a bandana wrapped around my head like Jon Bon Jovi.
We sneakily pulled up to a watering hole and saw some more hippos and our first elephants. With our experience from the day before, we realized the importance of whispering when close to the animals and were on our best behavior. I took this valuable time to wipe the foam off my body with my excess layers of clothing and spare bandana.
I thought it time to redeem myself in Rex’s eyes, what with the prior day’s embarrassing tiger misunderstanding. I wanted to seem like I had been paying attention, so I pointed at the dirt road and asked, “Are those leopard prints right there, Rex? Or cougar?”
“No, Chelsea, those are elephant prints,” he answered with a sigh. “Do you see the size and roundness of them? Way too big for a leopard.”
Sue chimed in to defend me. “Rex, in all honesty, the leopard could have been wearing bell-bottoms.”
“That’s very funny, Sue,” Rex replied without laughing, “but as I’ve told Chelsea several times, there are no cougars in Africa. Or tigers. Tigers are in China.”
“Well, Rex… like I’ve told you several times,” I said, trying to not let the truck’s inability to drive smoothly over a bumpy dirt road make me spill my third Bloody Mary, “if the tigers hail from China, then I guess I’ll never see one.” I had known Rex for a total of two days, so there was no way I had told him anything several times—except that I believed the vitamins from the Bloody Marys were acting as human growth hormones in helping my knee to heal.
Not much later we saw actual leopard prints that made me think of my dog, Chunk, and how quickly he would be eaten if Air Emirates had allowed him to fly to Africa. I imagined him in his own first-class cabin, sitting upright with a cloth napkin tucked into his own bandana, which he chooses to wear as a kerchief around his neck, wearing earbuds as he watches Eat Pray Love and orders a second helping of baba ghanoush.
“I wish Chunk was here to see this.”
“If Chunk was here, he would be dead by now,” Hannah declared.
“Who’s Chuck?” Rex asked. As if I would name my dog Chuck. Sometimes I found Rex to be so stupid.
“It’s Chunk, like chunky peanut butter. Chunk. He’s my dog. He’s amazing and he’s dignified. He’s got more dignity in one of his paws than Shakira does in her entire left hip.”
“Yeah, he’d be dead out here,” Rex confirmed.
“Then again,” Hannah said, her tone heavily dripping with sarcasm, “if you were here to keep an eye on him, Chelsea, I’m sure he would be safe.” Then she laughed hysterically, which sounded like the sound that comes over the intercom in grade school right before a fire drill. She turned to Rex. “Chelsea has lost her dog on every trip she’s ever taken him on.” This was a lie.
Even if this was true, why this would be an opportune moment to bring up the way I’ve raised Chunk is beyond my comprehension. Losing dogs is like losing children; it’s not ideal but it happens—on an almost daily basis. I don’t think of losing a child or dog as bad parenting or neglect so much as “taking a break.” The important thing to remember is if the pet or child in question happens to materialize in a reasonable amount of time, then what is the point of reliving such a painful memory?
“I don’t bring up your mother’s death, Hannah. Do I?”
“My mother isn’t dead,” she calmly retorted.
“Well, mine is, and I don’t bring that up,” I replied.
“Chelsea,” Simone interrupted. “Shut it down.” Then she turned to Rex. “Rex, can you name all the animals we saw today?” she prodded him, while nodding at us with her own stamp of self-approval.
“ImPAHla, jarAFF, vildabeast,” he repeated.
“Can you please repeat the last one again, slowly?” Simone requested, smiling devilishly, while we continued to spill alcohol all over each other.
This was only our second day of safari, and our drinking had taken a turn none of us had expected or been prepared for. We would start off with Bloody Marys, work our way through mimosas, and then move on to champagne midafternoon, until we came back to our lodges for what turned into group massages where I would end up with one eye glued shut while the baboons raped each other outside our villas and then stole my Ace bandages.