Forever And A Baby

He drifted from her briefly. “And, given your plan, how could Omar be thinking of his line?”

She studied him, sensing an undercurrent. He stared over the stern and the dock at the water, and she studied his profile. A nose that reminded her of his first cousin, Keziah. Black hair. Lean face. Was it his chin that made her think of Omar? He’d gotten a great spill of dark beauty from their mutual ancestor, Nudar, and the Cape Verde sailor her daughter had married.

He’s handsome. He’s very handsome.

Anger curled inside her, stalking her, and pounced. It ran with the wine in her veins. The missed rendezvous with Omar. His near-insistence that she keep looking. The anger shredded her hesitation and doubt, and she turned off her internal calculator, lost the numbers of days since she’d left Nantucket and the other tabulated days with their uncertain meanings. Her line, a matrilineal line. Nudar’s line. Ben Hall was part of that.

“Recommend yourself to me.” No more surreptitiously studying strange men or offering herself in a way meant to bring rejection. On the deck of a defunct trawler, in an old sweater and torn chinos, she became Cleopatra, Mata Hari, Scheherazade, Isis, every powerful woman and goddess of myth and legend and history. She owned her power to seduce, to invite a proposition, to reject it if she chose. To accept what was worthy.

She asked, “Why do you want to do this?”

Ben straightened a little, suddenly farther away. He brought his glass to his lips. Drank half. Held the glass. “I would enjoy it. I think you would, too.”

She winced, felt the expression on her face, the drawing back of her shoulders. “That’s the best you can do?”

He refilled her glass, and she heard the wine fall in. “I’ve known Omar my whole life,” he said. “In some ways—” unsteady “—I’m in his debt. And you want a baby.” He paused. Stopped. Murmured, “Hard to talk about.” A brief silence. “In February, I was in the Aïr Mountains with a Tuareg family I know. The boys are teenagers. They go into the mines and come out covered with uranium dust.”

“Instead of indigo.” She drank wine, and the rich velvet in her mouth and throat nourished the legend inside her, invoking her as a tribal queen who would choose the finest of the young men to continue her line. He’d be ritually sacrificed at the end of the year, and she could choose another…Her fancy drifted away, back to the Tuareg who wore uranium dust instead of indigo.

Ben might not have heard her comment, or maybe he thought it too obvious to mention. The Tuareg were the blue men of the desert, the nomads of the southern Sahara, whose wealth was their robes. No water for soaking huge garments, so they pounded the indigo dye into the cloth until it shimmered, rich purple-blue, and their garments stained their skin as well. Some of them were light as the Berbers. Some black. The women danced the guedra; some called it a trance dance, others a love dance.

She and Keziah had wondered if Nudar could have been one of them, living in Algeria back then, captured by another tribe, sold in Morocco….

“I’d lived there for a year, working,” he said. Quiet. “Two men employed by Omar came to find me. But the government doesn’t like westerners near the mines. I received a message from Agadez, the nearest town. Omar’s men wanted to know could I meet them? I hesitated. Might not be allowed to return. But what Omar wanted had to be important. I went. Met his men at their camp. ‘Omar asks you to please come to him.’ I came to Nantucket, and Omar told me about your plan—”

“His plan.”

“Your mutual plan. He asked me to look out for you.”

She heard the unspoken. This silliness had taken him from where he preferred to be, from an injustice and a tragedy that must be observed and told and, if possible, stopped. The teenage boys should be building their herds—but the Tuareg herds she’d seen were scanty, a few goats. She said, “What qualifies you? To look after me?”

Even in the dark, his embarrassment was there. In silence.

She read his mind, his memory. No. He had been just a boy then, in the Sudan. Surely he didn’t imagine he could have done anything to stop what had happened. Though…

She tried to lose interest and instead pictured him in the desert, not as a boy but a man. She drank more wine and saw him with a press pass, entering countries on journalist’s visas, speaking with foreign soldiers, photographing a revolt. A smile, her mouth misbehaving. “You still haven’t recommended yourself to me.”

“In my spare time, when I’m not interviewing courteous but dangerous men or taking notes on the screams of prisoners undergoing torture, I perform the duties of leading my family of three women and twenty-nine children and teenagers, some of whom have married each other and given me grandchildren. The tents of my family are working laboratories. While I’m away from home, carrying salt across the Sahara in camel caravans, my wives and daughters remain behind in their tents, sewing patches for the hole in the ozone layer. As we cross the desert, pausing only to pray and eat, my sons and I study the problem of cold fusion. I own nineteen camels, six tents and four Humvees. Finally, from living a life of devotion, I have discovered how to make a woman have an orgasm during every sexual encounter.”

“I’m sorry he brought you here for this. It was trivial.” Her father popped into her mind. She’d seen him earlier. Been sure of it. The incident that afternoon seemed far away.

“Babies are never trivial.”

“So I’d better get pregnant and have one, considering that you went to all this trouble?”

“You misunderstand me.”

“Where does sleeping with another man’s wife fit into your piety and devotion?”

His teeth scraped his bottom lip. He reached for his wine-glass and lifted it. “To your keen insight.”

“A heretic?” she murmured.

He gazed at the water, where it faded to black and vanished.

Dru dropped the topic. She loathed being asked about her religious beliefs—or discussing them. But she knew the world in which he moved. Faith was assumed in dress and actions, sometimes ordained by law. She asked another question for the second time, a different way. “What’s in this for you?”

“You really don’t remember our marriage in the Sudan. With the Rashaida.”

“What are you talking about? No, I don’t remember.” She rolled her eyes. “And there’s plenty I do remember. Do I have to ask again?”

What was in it for him.

“Fulfillment of desire.”

“For a one-night stand.” She didn’t know how he’d gotten closer, their knees almost touching.

“For things you can’t imagine.” His black lashes hid his eyes.

She reached for the bottle, but he roused himself and poured. Sipping, she examined the label. A twenty-five dollar bottle of wine. “You want to sleep with Omar’s wife. That must be it.”

“I want you to have my baby.”

Of all the lies, this was the greatest. “It wouldn’t be. Let’s get that out of the way. This is the end of your contact with me, Omar and the baby. This is a one-night stand. For all intents and purposes, I’m using birth control. Nothing will happen. Except sex.”

“Is this your time?”

“Let me paint another picture. I am the queen of a matriarchal society. You will briefly enjoy a position as my consort.”

“Many positions.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Then,” she finished, “you go. Forever. You still haven’t said what’s in this for you.”

“I’m trying to help. Omar is a second father to me.” He paused, expressionless. The wine made her see Ben looking for himself in her eyes. “Omar wants a child,” he said. “He wants you to have a child. I’m a sperm donor.”

“You took two hundred and eighteen days to volunteer.” She hadn’t meant to speak in numbers, had meant to erase them.

He had to notice.

Black eyes like Omar’s, like Nudar’s. Horsetail lashes, long, thick and black. He wasn’t drunk and she was. His eyes spoke. “Sometime I will tell you about those 218 days.”

Her shoulders trembled. The fabric of their pants touched. She wondered who he was inside. She wanted badly to know. And that was dangerous.

He’d abandoned his wine.

“What did you think?” she asked. “What did you think when he told you his plan?”

His head swiveled. Saw her. “That he has more faith in twelve billion dollars than I would.” Faith that money would hold her.