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By Root 222 0

whiskey and coke. And I tell you now it feels good. New blood in my veins. Then I have another, a double. I swivel the stool and study the rest of the bar, mostly American and European businessmen, a few tourists who have wandered from their safari. The local girls slink the dance floor, a feline knowledge for those men wanting a rented woman in a rented room. When they sit on the stool next to mine and lean over for me to light their cigarettes, I show them the picture and ask if they have met a Peter Cornell. Or a Dominic Toon. They shake their heads and rest their palms on my thigh. I lift them off and say more no thank yous. But I sit at the bar and allow myself to be pitched sex by the prostitutes because it saves me walking the dance floor and flashing the photo.

One woman, early forties, shaved head and violet lipstick, watches the younger women come and go, then saunters over. Her tease is ordering a bottle of beer and biting the top off with her gold teeth. Then she puts the bottle between her drooping breasts, squashes them together and offers me a sip. I say no and again show the picture. She snatches the beer from her bosom and takes a quick gulp. ‘An English boy?’ she shouts above the shuddering sound system. ‘Maybe a week ago.’ She looks at Billy K more closely. ‘Yes. He was here.’

I ask her who with and she rubs her thumb and forefingers together. I put $20 in her hand.

‘One of the younger girls. But I don’t think she here tonight.’

‘Where could I find her?’ I enquire, peeling off another $20 note.

‘You know Kenyan girl very beautiful. Well, sometime the man fall in love, take his woman on holiday. Maybe go to the beach, maybe come back in a week, a month. Sometimes never.’

I ask her name.

‘I forgot,’ she says. I put another $20 in her open palm. ‘Kemi.’

Then I drink some more. I ask the barman about Kemi and for $10 he confirms she’s not here. No other women come over to ply their wares, and I actually feel rejected. Alone. At closing time I approach a woman with braids that hang to the small of her back. I pay her to take me to a hotel. I pay her to take me to a hotel because I’m too drunk to see the exit sign. Or hail a taxi. I have no confession to make here. The $50 I give her is to put me into bed and leave.

The problem with drinking is not being drunk. It’s being hungover. Paranoid. Waking in the weight of morning with an eggshell chest. For a while I sit on the edge of the bed and look at my hands. It takes some time to remember what country I’m in, and why. Then I go downstairs for breakfast. When the waiter says cooked or continental I turn and walk out on to the street. Rather the company of beggars and touts selling bogus safaris than restaurant clatter, or the four walls of my room closing in.

I let myself be hassled and snagged by the street kids, give them all the coins in my pocket, then tuck my wallet into my underwear. I wonder what parent would desert their child, have them tramp the streets hungry with outstretched hands. Then I see a dog watching me from a second floor window, and I know.

I walk on. Men ask to ‘change money, change money’. Buses pump out diesel fumes and African dance music so loud the speakers distort. I’m pushed along the road like a branch in a river, happy to have no thought where I should put the next step. I run aground in a market place, stalls of fruit and fish, butchers with pigs and cows strung up on steel hooks. I buy two bottles of coke from a kiosk and gulp them down without taking a breath.

Then I see him.

I see him buying a bunch of bananas from a fruit stall. He has a wispy beard. He wears a blue baseball cap. My stomach turns, like I’ve just leaped from a plane without a parachute. Can it really be this easy? I shadow him between tables of watermelon and guava. He turns and glances back, but pays no mind to another foreigner haggling for fruit.

Then while I’m paying for a bag of oranges he slips down a side street. I give the stallholder $5 and say keep the change. And the oranges.

Away from the market the narrow lanes are very quiet.