shooting somebody when you were going to shoot them anyway.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Gray.
“Nope. I know about laws. I make them.”
“Is there anything you don’t know about?”
“Not that I know about.” He added, “Except. I don’t know about you.”
Whenever he turned the conversation to her, Gray got inexplicably nervous. They sat in silence again.
“Hitler—” she ventured.
“Hmm?”
“He killed six million Jews.”
Charles looked up. “No shit,” he said noncommittally.
“Not in battles. In factories.”
“Huh,” said Charles.
Gray watched his face. “What do you think of that project?”
“Well,” said Charles, snuffing out his cigarette on the arm of his chair. “Seems like a real—waste of time, anyway.” He shot Gray a shrug.
Gray looked back at him in stony silence until she couldn’t take it anymore and started to laugh.
“I missed the joke,” said Charles.
“You are the joke! You’ve been trying to impress me, haven’t you?”
“How’s that?”
“You think if you’re blasé about six million Jews that’s going to impress me.”
“You figure that’s what Adolf was trying to do?” he said gruffly, looking away. “Impress little Eva?”
“Seriously, Charles, you want me to admire that, don’t you? I mean, that’s twisted, even horrid, but it’s sweet, too. Quaint.” Gray kept chuckling in her hammock. Charles rose brusquely from his chair. Errol knew these moments—Gray could be nasty in a light, lovely way, and she could turn a situation on a dime. Surprise, Charles Corgie.
“I’m going to bed,” he said coldly. “So are you.” He towered over her hammock, giving her a moment of nervousness Gray for once richly deserved. She stopped laughing.
“Where?”
“In my house.”
“Maybe I’ll stay outside.”
“No, you won’t. You’re a god now, Miss Kaiser, and you’ll sleep in Olympus with the rest of us.”
Gray got up cautiously from her hammock. “I’m sorry, I—”
“On the floor,” he assured her. “Believe me, it will give me far more pleasure to have you up half the night beady-eyed with worry than to do what you will worry about.” With that he blew out the lamp perfunctorily and strode inside, throwing her a hard, leathery skin for a blanket. “Good night, dear,” said Charles, crawling inside his own soft bed stuffed with feathers and pulling the warm, woolly skin over his head.
As it happened, Gray was up half the night. While Charles Corgie’s thrashing and mumbling on the bed did keep her on edge, Gray’s real problem was far more prosaic: she did not know what gods did with honey wine once they were through with it.
When Gray told this story it was very funny. She could get tablefuls of international guests rolling on the floor. On the floor of that stilted African cabin, however, Errol imagined she had not been so amused. She couldn’t sleep. The ladder was pulled up from the ground and she didn’t know how to replace it, nor whether there were too many natives about for such a mortal safari. And the situation was not, of course, improving. She’d enjoyed the wine and had drunk her share; Gray’s abdomen gradually billowed higher, until—a magic moment in Gray Kaiser’s life—she cared nothing for power and reserve; her fantasies slipped from huge tribal celebrations in her honor and lines of obsequious good-looking men at her feet to ordinary indoor plumbing. Love, humor, and courage fell away. Money and fame, art and human history fell away. World War II and six million Jews fell away. Even, at last, remaining aloof with Lieutenant Charles Corgie fell away, and Gray found herself numbly climbing up off the floor and standing by his bedside at four in the morning.
“Charles—” she said softly. “Lieutenant—”
He only grunted and turned away. She put a hand on his shoulder. Charles sprang upright and in a single motion had a rifle pointed a few inches from Gray’s chest. His eyes were completely open and alert.
“Don’t shoot!” Corgie’s rifle had very nearly taken care of Gray’s problem abruptly.
Charles did not put down the gun. He said something in garbled Masai that Gray didn’t understand.
“Please,” she said in a small voice. “I need your help.”
Slowly he lowered the gun as he recognized her by the moonlight coming through the window. “If you were thinking you could get this gun—”
“No!”
Charles looked at her more closely. “Come here.” He reached up and touched her cheek, then inspected his fingers. “No shit. You’re crying.”
Gray looked down. Tears fell on the bed frame.
Charles put the rifle aside and pulled her over to sit beside him. Her sharp shoulders were drawn to her head; she looked narrow. Charles put his hand on her cheek, turning her head to face him. “Having nightmares about terrible Charlie Corgie, who doesn’t care about six million Jews?”
Gray shook her head and looked away again.
“You miss Mommy and Daddy?”
“Don’t make fun of me,” said Gray, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
Charles pulled the hair from her eyes strand by strand and tucked it behind her ear. “What’s the trouble?”
“It’s stupid.”
Charles waited patiently.
“All this god business,” she went on. “You didn’t tell me what to do—” She stamped her foot and looked at the ceiling. “I’m not usually shy! Charles, I need the bathroom! I have for hours!”
It must have been hard not to laugh, but according to Gray he didn’t; he barely smiled. Charles cocked his head. His eyes were as warm and soft as they were going to get in the hard cool light of the moon. “That isn’t stupid, Miss Anthropologist. You’re new to your field or you’d know better. For a god, taking a leak is a serious business. You have to be careful. Quiet.” He led Gray to a corner, where she slid down a pole to the foliage below. When she returned Charles lifted her back up. He wasn’t a massive man but could pull her whole weight with obvious ease. When she was up, Charles kept hold of her hand a moment, then with a funny annoyance let go and told her to get back to sleep. As she was settling back down on the slats this time, again with irritation, he tossed her his feather pillow before turning his back on her with a grunt and wrapping his arms fondly around the muzzle of his gun.
I’ve decided what to do with you,” said Charles cheerfully the next morning. He was shaving, with a sheet of polished aluminum from the siding of his airplane propped up for a mirror.
“Oh?” asked Gray warily, still groggy and on the floor.
“Yes.” Charles raised his chin in the air to sweep the razor underneath. “I’ve decided to let you go.”
The blade made a sheer scraping sound that raised the hair on Gray’s arms. “I did not come here,” said Gray, “to go.”
“You shouldn’t have come here at all,” said Charles. “You made a mistake. Usually when we make mistakes, that’s