Night falls quickly on the plains of the Serengeti. Once the sun goes down, the clear, dry air barely scatters the waning daylight, and the day shifts into night with alarming rapidity. The nocturnal animals of the African plains come out to feed, and any sensible human being retreats to the safe light of the fires.
It's debatable whether you could call the collection of anthropologists, archaeologists, students, paid diggers, and assorted hangers-on around Amboseli Gorge "sensible", but they nonetheless gather around the fire as the sun goes down. Perhaps it's just because that's where the parties are.
Monica doesn't attend the parties. Instead, she heads back for her tent, her mind still on today's finds. Amboseli Gorge doesn't have the kind of secrets that would make an anthropologist famous, but it yields up consistently interesting finds to the patient and diligent, and Monica definitely qualifies in both regards. Besides, she doesn't want to be famous. She's happy with a life of quiet, anonymous respect from her peers. She doesn't publish, she refuses to do interviews, and she enjoys fieldwork so much she hasn't left Africa in over twenty years.
That's what she tells everyone, anyway. It's true enough, in its own way, but she knows it's a half-truth at best.
She's not really thinking about that, though. She's thinking about picking up tomorrow where she left off, about a promising patch of ground perhaps a few inches across, and she doesn't really notice the raucous noises of the younger scientists. There'll be plenty of time to notice them early tomorrow morning when she's prodding the hung-over ones (which will be most of them--without movies or television, liquor and casual sex provide most of the evening entertainments) to get to work under the African sun.
Monica arrives back at her tent and briefly considers writing up her findings for the day, but they're not expecting more gas for the generator until tomorrow afternoon, and she strongly suspects that firing up her computer would cause the whole thing to sputter and die after a matter of minutes. Besides, she's exhausted. She shucks off her dusty clothes, thinks about taking a shower but decides to let it slide until morning, and prepares to crawl into bed.
"Professor Sekowsky?" Monica tenses a little in embarrassment as she hears Fritz's voice behind her at the entrance to her tent. Not because of her nudity--Monica has done enough fieldwork over the years, under conditions as rough as this and far, far worse, that she no longer has any particular taboos about that. Besides, even though decades of field work have kept her fairly fit for her age, she's under no illusions that Fritz has any great prurient desires for a forty-seven year old woman, not when there are younger and drunker girls out by the fire.
No, Monica is embarrassed because she'd already taken out the pair of handcuffs. She holds them in her right hand, preparing to clip them around her left wrist, and even in the dim light of the distant fires, the gleaming metal stands out. "I have a tendency to sleepwalk," she says in answer to the unasked question, the half-truth slipping out with practiced ease. "Not so bad in an apartment, but a very bad habit when you're out in the middle of the African wilderness." Not that she'd know. She hasn't had an apartment in over twenty years now.
Fritz blinks a moment, but decides not to get inquisitive. "Oh," he says, then falls silent for a moment. Then, as if rebooting, he starts up at the beginning again. "Um, Professor Sekowsky?"
"I'm not your professor, Fritz," she says, but she's smiling. She knows that she comes off as something of an authority figure on the dig, particularly for the younger men and women who are a bit too used to responding to older people as teachers and mentors. It's even a role she enjoys, in some ways, but she's a bit too laid back to really want to be the boss. She prefers to think of her job as showing these new kids the ropes of fieldwork, instead of treating them like students. "Call me Monica. Doctor Sekowsky if you really want to be formal, but I think that under the circumstances, it's a bit late for that." She gestures at her body without a trace of self-consciousness.
"Sorry, um, ma'am." Fritz is obviously a bit more self-conscious about looking at her body than she is about displaying it. "I was just wondering if, um, you wanted to join the party."
"Thanks," she says, "but I don't drink. Don't like being hung over at the start of the working day." That half-truth is even easier to say than the previous ones, but then again, she's had more practice with it. In fact, she doesn't trust anything that clouds her judgment. Sleep, liquor, drugs...she knows that when she relaxes too much, when her head gets a little too fuzzy, it's just a little bit too easy to put one foot in front of the other and start walking. She's not sure how difficult it would be to stop, but she decided long ago that it was best not to find out the hard way.
"Oh. Um, okay." She can tell that Fritz is blushing, even though she can't see it. She wonders if perhaps he's got a bit of a crush on her, if he prefers an older woman with streaks of gray in her black hair to the young blondes fresh out of college. But she's not in the mood to find out. Not tonight. Repeating the lies, being caught with the handcuffs, all of it has sent Monica's mind down a path she doesn't like to travel often, and it's killed any romance that might be in the moment. If there is any, which isn't guaranteed. "Good night, Prof--Monica."
"Night, Fritz," Monica says kindly. He turns and leaves, slightly dejected, and she hopes the young man isn't hurt by the lack of an offer to stay. If he is, she'll make it up to him in the morning. And perhaps the evening as well, if she's not imagining things.
She clips the handcuffs around her wrist, locking the other manacle to the frame of her camp bed. The key is within easy reach--she's never seemed to have any worries about unlocking it in her sleep, although she has woken up some mornings to find she's dragged the bed several feet. She shivers. Even half a world away and some twenty years later, the call still has some power. She wonders for a moment if she shouldn't call Fritz back. Tonight isn't going to be a good night to be alone.
Even as she leans back into the pillow, she knows she'll have the dream again.
*****
"Come on," Monica shouted over the strains of Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer', "get that in your stomach! It's not like you've got to be up early to study!"
"No," Laura shouted back conversationally, "I've just got to get up early and start job hunting! We're out of college, now, girl! Forced out into the harsh, cruel world with nothing but a sheepskin to protect us!" She tossed back the shot of vodka and spluttered a bit, causing a round of laughs from the rest of the group. Monica didn't even know who half of them were. The epic celebration had grown far beyond the seven graduates and snared relatives, friends, friends of friends, well-wishers, and casual acquaintances looking to scam a free drink or two.
It had mostly been Cillian's idea. "My student visa expires once I graduate," he'd said. "So before I head back to Dublin, let's have one last big pub crawl to celebrate!"
"What's a pub crawl?" William had asked. He only knew Cillian through David, which was to say not very well, because David was studying for his bar exam. Tonight was actually the first time Monica had seen him in about three months.
She'd been about to explain that it was the British equivalent of 'bar-hopping' when Cillian had chimed in with his own, much more entertaining explanation. "A pub crawl," Cillian had said, "is a fine old Irish tradition, which the English and the Scottish basically stole from us because they're a bunch of bastards. You go from pub to pub to pub until you're so drunk you can't walk anymore, then you fall down in the street and puke." Monica giggled at the memory of the manic expression on his face. "It's more fun than it sounds."
