The Layover

Travis Brandt was striding toward the hotel elevator in Dakar when the young Senegalese woman passed him going the other way. What he noticed at first was her unguarded exhaustion, not the fishnet hose or glittery sheen of her mascara or the way her gold-tinted hair was piled up in ringlets over her bronze forehead. Of course, he took in those things as well, including the sway of her hips. But what he mainly noticed was how her eyelids drooped.

He was exhausted himself, it being 2 a.m. He pushed the button for the fourth floor, desperate to reach the room the airport official had reluctantly granted him. By now, his wife had probably seen the text he sent from the airport: “Stuck for another night in purgatory. Got bumped off the flight. Sorry. No need to pick me up till 24 hours later.”

He probably should have called, but he didn’t want to deal with her conflicted emotions—the attempt to be understanding but, underneath it, the irritation that came from being abandoned with the kids for yet another night and, underneath that, the long-term smoldering frustration of having put her own career on hold ever since their first child was born.

He was not even supposed to be in this country, he thought. Anywhere else in the world, international transfers would simply veer down a transit hallway. If shifting to a second flight, you shouldn’t have to drag bags from the carousel, go through customs, and pay for a visa. And you shouldn’t have to go back through a check-in line with all the local passengers vying for a seat on the flight you were already supposed to have boarded.

“I was told in Côte d’Ivoire that there was time to transfer,” he insisted to the sleepy, sour-looking woman at the check-in desk, who shook her head and pointed him to a counter labeled “Service à la clientèle.”

“In Hong Kong they don’t do this,” he added, before he turned away. “Not in Frankfurt either … And why in the hell is the transit lounge chained?”

That had been his first clue. When he had deboarded from his arriving flight, following two hundred other passengers into Dakar’s international airport, he had seen chains on the transit doorway and his heart had plummeted. The whole airport felt like a trap, funneling travelers into customs regardless of their destination.

“It is not my fault I missed the U.S. flight,” he repeated to the stolid man at the customer service counter. “I’m asking for a bit of justice. Un petit peu. If my plane arrived on time, then it’s not my fault—so why should I have to pay for a hotel room now?”

*     *     *

Still fuming, he stepped inside the hotel elevator and punched the fourth-floor button, thinking Fuck Senegal. Even if he would be returning to an irritable wife, he was desperate for the comforts of his home. Proper air-conditioning, to begin with—and a respite from the thick wet air that had been pressing down on him in the muggy airport. And what about a Boulevard beer and Stephen Colbert on the TV?

But no. There was no recourse here. Just absurdity.

Lex non cogit ad impossibilia, he suddenly remembered from his law school training. That was the quote he had been trying to remember. “The law does not compel a man to do that which is impossible.” And if the law does not compel the impossible, then why does Senegal?

Only when the elevator started to close did he begin to let go of his lingering annoyance. Safe at last, he thought. No one talking in a foreign language or turning him into an easily duped version of himself. Just the promise of a long, hot shower and a king-size bed.

He grimaced, as a result, when the sliding door reopened and admitted a second person. To his surprise, it was the same young woman from the lobby, all traces of exhaustion erased. She stood erect on her six-inch heels, her face alight as if she had gotten terrific news.

“What floor?” he asked.

“Same one,” she sang.

The doors closed and the two of them rose side by side. He smelled the musky rose-petal odor of her and gazed at the warm, yellow-tipped toes that peeked out of her strap heels.

“Américain?” she asked.

“Yes … oui.”

“Ah, tu parles français?” she asked coyly.

“Non, non. Petit, seulement. How about you? Do you speak English?”

“Ah, oui. I know some words.”

Her fishnet hose were a bit tacky, and there was a disconcerting gap in her teeth. But she was awfully easy to look at, with her long legs and slender neck and little gold lamé dress settling smoothly on the roundness of her pert breasts. And that smile with its suggestion of a shared secret? What was she saying with that smile?

The elevator eased to a stop. The bell dinged and the doors slid open. Then, as he lifted his hand to indicate she should go first, she smiled even more warmly, asking, “Would you like a visitor tonight, Monsieur?”

*     *     *

Seven hours later, Travis steps onto the balcony of his fourth-floor room. The tropical sun is too bright and his eyes ache at the harsh whiteness of the beach below. Everything is over-exposed. After lifting a hand to his brow, it takes a minute to make out particulars, even in the shadows at the base of the hotel, where he recognizes some cast-plastic lounge chairs and a thatched bar and a bunch of immense yucca plants, their dusty gray spikes sprouting long stems that shoot up at odd angles with wilted blossoms.

The beach beyond has a few people on it: a Senegalese waiter strolling and a tanned Westerner gesturing from the shade of a faded umbrella. Three fair-haired white kids dance in the incoming waves. But the yard below his balcony is completely empty.

Still exhausted and still not reconciled to his forced layover, Travis stares straight down at the dusty yard in a kind of stupor until he is surprised by a slow movement—something extending itself out of the matted yucca along the edge of the yard. He looks closely and feels goosebumps. What is emerging is a giant reptile. It is so large that, at first, he thinks it must be a crocodile. But no, it is covered with wrinkly skin instead of armor-like plates.

Suddenly, he hears a startled exclamation, the sort of muffled shriek a woman might make when seeing something hideous, so he turns to the sound, one balcony away. There, a young African woman in a robe is hiding her face against the chest of her male companion, a muscular European in boxer shorts and an unbuttoned shirt. The fellow looks to be twenty-five or twenty-six. He is sleek and tanned, and he murmurs, “Viens voir papa, ma jeune fille” as he swallows her in his arms. He chuckles and strokes her glossy hair, grinning down at the giant reptile. Then his free hand slides to her ribs and pokes, causing her to shriek again. She pushes away, scolding in mock anger, and that is when Travis realizes who she actually is—the woman he let into his room at 2 a.m last night.

*     *     *

When that young woman had stepped off the elevator and asked if he wanted a guest, Travis had hesitated, having never received such a blatant offer. He was in such a bad state he could hardly comprehend what she requested. Alarms rang. His heart pounded. Then, as if a switch had flicked, he thought, Why not?

As he unlocked the door to his room, he felt his pulse thundering, terrified that someone would come down the hallway holding a video recorder. He had an irrational fear that he would turn on the lights and find his wife sitting on the bed.

He had tried to explain this trip to his wife two weeks ago, and she had looked at him dully as he described the contracts he was being told to negotiate. He understood. He was not excited himself. And he was sorry to be leaving right when the children started the summer holidays. But it would have been nice if she acknowledged that his work paid for the kids to go to art camp, not to mention the top-of-the-line espresso machine that glistened between them on the granite-topped kitchen island.

He was afraid his wife would be seated on the hotel bed and would shout: “So this is what I get after all the years of supporting you?!” But nothing of the sort happened, and once his unexpected visitor was safely ensconced, he began to relax. He stood and stared. She stared back, smiling enigmatically.

“You’re very pretty,” he said. “Très jolie.”

She kept smiling but a little less effervescently, as if she was having to work at it. She pointed to the bathroom and asked “S’il vous plaît?”

He could hear her running water, occasionally making little splashing noises. He took off his shoes, which were filmed with dust. He began to remove his slacks then pulled them back on. When he turned to the closet mirror, he wondered if he had made a huge mistake. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark bags underneath. His blond hair was matted, exposing his receding hairline.

I don’t know a thing about this woman, Travis thought, except that she wanders around hotels at 2 a.m. Is she going to suck my cock or rob me?

The thought of a blowjob excited him, despite his worries. He felt a wriggle in his underpants—until he wondered who else this stranger had visited in the earlier hours of the evening. One of those well-pressed bulging businessmen he had seen on the flight into Dakar? Or some worn-out truck driver who had splurged on a decent hotel room?

What if she had a disease?

A condom, he thought. But he didn’t have one. He hated the idea anyway. He hadn’t used one since the first year of marriage when his wife forgot her birth control pills. The few times he had tried, he had felt as if he was making love with boots on.

The woman would probably have her own condoms, he realized—which made him feel safer but less excited.

She would want money, too, which made him even less excited. How much was the going rate?

What is your deal? he asked himself. You are a thirty-eight-year-old with a suburban home and kids. Not some college playboy.

Then, just as quickly, he rationalized: It’s not my fault. She was the one who initiated this. And if the idiots at the airport had just unlocked the transit lounge, none of this would be happening.

The woman opened the bathroom door, wearing a robe. She stood in the warm light, her legs and arms glowing golden brown against the white terrycloth. She smiled again—that vibrant, enigmatic smile—then asked, “What would you like, Monsieur? What will make you happy ce soir? Only $80 for your pleasure.”

*     *     *

The lizard is out of its hiding place in the yucca, and even though it is four floors below him, it is so large that Travis can see the flicker of its rope-like tongue. He can see its cautious exploration, snuffling further into the sunlit dust then halting. It is a repulsive thing, long-snouted and wrinkled, turgid on its stumpy legs. It has claws, too, that splay out in the dust like black spikes.

The Frenchman on the balcony imitates a snake, hissing in the ear of his companion, getting her to tussle. She is clearly happy to be teased, happy to be beautiful and intimate and fun.

“Faut faire gaffe au serpent,” he says, speaking in a low windy voice and sliding his arm up and around her torso, turning the fingers into the cocked head of a snake. She bats his hand away and giggles, twisting until she turns far enough to look down the wall to where Travis is watching. Then she goes still.

“Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas?” asks the Frenchman, but she is quick to reassure, “Rien.” And she starts to nibble on the guy’s ear, looking right over his shoulder into the eyes of Travis as if to say, “Hey, who’s the happy one now?”

*     *     *

He had been awkward with her last night, trembling with anticipation. He had felt equal measures of desire and disgust as she knelt naked by the bedside, unzipping his pants. What delight her tongue brought him, and how wrong it seemed. So wrong that he went limp again and had to be brought back to stiffness.

He had closed his eyes so as not to see what she was doing. And afterward, while she lay beside him, still naked, he kept his eyes closed as he let his hand slide over the silky contours of her body.

“Monsieur,” she murmured, “may I stay the night?”

Here’s the thing. Although his quiet fingers were drinking her in—slipping down into the cups of her body and lingering—and though his senses were singing with all this illicit pleasure, in his mind he was still on guard against the woman’s foreignness, still afraid that she might be in league with all the others who had made him feel like a fool this night—the indifferent airport official, the taxi driver who smiled too widely after they settled on a price, the haughty hotel clerk who didn’t want to accept an airline voucher.

He was so tired that he didn’t even trust his ability to discern. What if she was setting him up? What if she was lulling him into a trusting, sleepy state so that she could rifle through his bags?

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he murmured, rolling away from her.

“Half-price,” she said, “if I can just sleep here. I cannot go home. My family will not take me.”

He knew he should be sympathetic, but her confession made him annoyed. Why was everyone so needy on this continent? He could imagine the enraged mother throwing dishes, the father ready to slap the girl. He sensed the desperation behind her decision to follow him into the elevator, then to his room. She must be younger than he thought, and that made him even more leery.

This is not my problem, he told himself.

*     *     *

The giant reptile—a monitor lizard, Travis guesses—has gone rigid, still as a cement yard ornament. However, now there is a movement in the shadows nearer to the building, and Travis realizes a toddler is bear-walking out into the open, wearing rumpled shorts and playing with a push-toy of some sort—a yellow truck. The little bare-chested child must be a son of one of the hotel staff, judging from the way he plays so absentmindedly, unsupervised and alone on the undeveloped perimeter of the garden.

The toddler moves out of the shadows toward a sunny patch next to the yucca, stooped over with hands and feet on the ground. His eyes are down, fixed on the yellow toy. Travis thinks he can hear the hum of a make-believe engine. And still the lizard stays where it is, out in the open, motionless.

The brown barren ground, the spiky yucca, the alert reptile, all suggest a scene straight from the Discovery Channel. In fact, Travis believes he has seen a show about these strange monsters, and in that show the commentator explained that there was a slow-onset stupefaction once a prey was bitten. People used to think the befuddlement was due to a toxic mix of bacteria in the mouths of the lizards, but scientists had proven that, in fact, the creatures were venomous—that they had a whole row of poison glands and this poison had a delayed impact because it did not get shot into deep fang punctures, instead oozing into torn-open wounds.

This is all he thinks as the toddler moves closer to the lizard, head down. But now the young man and woman on the other balcony also notice the child. She screams, calling out in a language Travis doesn’t understand. The Frenchman shouts along with her—“Enfant! Gare au lézard!”

Travis is jangled by it all. Their reactions seem overblown. Surely the lizard is not going to attack a human right there on the grounds of the hotel. Plus, he is bothered that the couple are so brazen about being together, the woman especially. She is finding the protection she had wanted but in the arms of another man—a younger, handsomer, more playful man—and even though Travis doesn’t want that role, seeing her with this “guardian” makes him feel small now, and impotent.

Their cumulative yelling seems to work, at least somewhat, because the child sits and looks up. He puts a hand to his brow.

At the same moment, the huge lizard takes two gliding steps, narrowing the gap from ten feet to seven, and when it freezes, the young Frenchman begins to shout more urgently, “Dégage!” His companion shrieks a single whip-like word in unison: “Moytul, moytul, moytul!”

*     *     *

Even Travis has to admit that this scenario is starting to look like potential disaster, but he stares downward in exasperation. Although the woman is with another man now, he doesn’t like the attention they are drawing from the staff worker at the thatched bar or the couple who are looking back from under a beach umbrella.

Where are the child’s parents? Travis thinks. Why aren’t they taking care of their own kid?

He is tired of all the things that seem out of order here, just like they were last week while working in Côte d’Ivoire: the broken doorknobs and out-of-order ATMs, the slow room service and long pauses for goats in the road. As his company’s attorney, he had been sent to Côte d’Ivoire to help a sister company think through legal issues with a growing system of cell-phone towers. Although he had not wanted to come, he had obeyed. After all, he wouldn’t get promotions by dragging his feet. So … for six long days, he had stayed in a poorly managed hotel with a useless air conditioner and a bedspread that smelled like spoiled milk. Jet-lagged and fuzzy-headed, he had sat in a sweltering conference room, trying to stay focused as he explained why leases for new towers should be for at least ten years.

The only one who seemed at all enthused about his presentations was a twenty-something fellow who acted as translator; and eventually it became apparent why this young man was so effusive. Having built a bridge of flattery, he waylaid Travis in the men’s room to ask, as a “frère,” whether he would make a donation to help with an imminent wedding—a wedding that would apparently involve hosting a whole village for three days and nights.

After that awkward urinal confab, the rebuffed translator had become aloof, converting each presentation into rapid-fire colloquial French and making Travis feel ignored, like a mannequin in a closed-down shop. Desperate to hold the group’s waning attention, Travis had stressed that prices would shoot up as soon as a tower lease expired—that they had better stay vigilant because competitors would try to outbid them, taking over the best sites. However, one workshop participant explained, through the smug-looking translator, that getting sites for towers was not a problem in the capital of Côte d’Ivoire since everyone needed income.

For all his supposed expertise, Travis realized he was not really that helpful or even interesting. And this made him so angry that he decided right then, forget all the shit about cross-cultural adaptation. If they want to do things their way, let them. Let them set up cities with cell towers in every backyard. Let them go on selling cell-phone minutes through car windows at intersections.

*     *     *

The only place that had not made Travis feel estranged during the past week was, paradoxically, his hotel room. In the evenings there was no one next to him, reminding him of his essential cluelessness. Only there, in his hotel room, was he able to restore some of his lagging confidence—that is, until he got stuck with this extra night in Dakar and was implored by a young woman who had slipped into his room and shed her clothes, putting out her hands, beggar style.

“Une nuit,” she had pleaded. “S’il vous plaît. I am so fatiguée. Then I will find another place, I promise.”

She was almost twenty years younger than him, he realized. Without her fishnet hose or heels or gold dress, she became less experienced or sophisticated, and he could see her for the eighteen- or nineteen-year-old she probably was. Her eyes upset him. That’s because they were the sensitive, cautious eyes of someone afraid to appear so young and unguarded.

Just one night, she said—“Une nuit.” And she made it clear, through pantomime, that she could sleep on the floor. If he would let her stay, she would even give him another turn in the morning.

 But the more she wheedled and gestured, the more Travis realized that he had not only cheated on his wife; he had cheated with a girl—someone who was not yet in charge of her own life. He was afraid of a growing sense of responsibility. And remorse.

He shook his head and held out her clothes. As she began to cry, he opened his wallet and gave her more money. Now she had more than enough to stay in her own room—a full $100. Even if she was duping him, he didn’t care. He had not bargained for any of this.

She explained, as best she could, that they did not allow girls like her to rent rooms here. She could come and go but not stay.

“Par pitié,” she implored. She wanted to be somewhere safe—with someone. Her parents said they would never take her back. All this she said in broken English—as he ushered her to the door and practically shoved her into the hallway.

*     *     *

The toddler is still looking up at the fourth-floor balconies, confused, when the lizard takes another step, freezing six feet from its possible prey. Watching the predator is a bit like watching a car race and anticipating a wreck, maybe hoping for it. Travis feels a stab of guilt.

Then he looks back to the young Senegalese woman in her white bathrobe, who is leaning over the balcony railing, both arms pleading, palms sweeping the air as if trying to shoo the scenario away. One breast slips from her robe as she screams, “Moytul, moytul,” and something about the intensity of her instinctual response makes him think of his wife back in the suburbs of Chicago, makes him remember how she raced at a loose dog that sneaked into their backyard—a German Shepherd that had squeezed through a break in the picket fence then planted itself next to the sandbox, barking at their children.

Marla had yanked open the glass sliding door, pulling so hard that it recoiled. She had galloped across the wooden deck and leapt onto the lawn, not slowing a bit as she sprinted right into the dog, kicking and punching and screaming so fiercely that the animal could hardly get squared up to pass back through the gap in the fence.

Remembering that magnificent ferocity, Travis feels something strange give way inside himself, as if some fanged creature has shaken loose. He rouses himself. Shouting isn’t enough. There is only one removable object within reach—a glass ashtray on a side table—and without thinking, he snatches it up and flings it toward the lizard.

Oh my God, Travis thinks, as the ashtray plummets downward. What if I hit the kid?

Fortunately, the throwing action itself is enough to frighten the toddler, who scurries back toward the building. And though the lizard takes a step in pursuit, the ashtray thuds into the dirt, causing the creature to jump sideways and spin. It halts there, looking over its shoulder toward where the boy has disappeared. Then it scuttles toward its hideout in the yucca, tail whipping.

“Très bien,” shouts the Frenchman from the next balcony, turning with an admiring smile. “Beau lancer!”

The Senegalese woman smiles too, in that near-sick way that comes after someone has almost fainted. “Thank you, thank you,” she says. She has tucked her breast back into her robe, and she seems appealing in a more mature, more poised way.

“It’s nothing,” he says, aware that he had almost stood by.

“But you made the difference,” she replies.

The Frenchman is puzzled. Travis can see that he is wondering why the girl is speaking to an American so familiarly. As the young man puts an arm around her waist and murmurs, Travis feels a new fondness toward the Senegalese girl that has nothing to do with her sleek skin or ample hips. He does not want to feel any more of the shame that made it hard to sleep last night. He does not want to picture her as he last saw her—sliding down the hallway wall, half-squatting in her gold dress and staring up at the ceiling—staring up at the white particle-board tiles with wet eyes, as if she can see right through them into the vast emptiness of outer space.

Though the adrenaline is wearing off and though he can feel a returning wave of exhaustion, he smiles across the gap. “I am glad you found a home,” he says.

The Frenchman peers back suspiciously. “Comment ça?” he asks.

“Pardon,” says Travis, “Je parle only a little French. Un petit peu.”

The girl says something reassuring and her companion nods, so Travis waves goodbye. “I’ll leave you alone.” He is going to add “Au revoir” or “Adieu,” but neither seems quite right. Then, because he remembers another expression from his limited college French, he calls out “Bonne chance.”

*     *     *

Travis does not realize, as he returns to his rumpled bed and succumbs to a heavy, drug-like sleep, that this feeling of well-being will not last. In a few hours, he will wake disoriented. He will slump down to the ground floor for a breakfast that is half a day late. Then he will wander onto the empty hotel beach, where he will feel forlorn as he stands on the glaring sand in khaki shorts and a wrinkled golf shirt, pinned down by midday sunlight.

There is no way for him to know as he drifts to sleep, that when he is down there on the beach, gazing toward the city center, a crowd of forty or fifty local youth will rush from between shops, dressed in swimsuits, then dash into the nearby waves. Separated from them by the hotel’s chain-link fence, he will watch as the girls shriek and high-step in the surf and the boys wallow into the waves then climb onto each other’s shoulders to do flips. When they pull each other into big milling groups, splashing and shouting, Travis will stand alone and be struck, at last, by a sober thought he had been avoiding ever since arriving in Senegal: Maybe I am someone I would not want to meet.

TIM BASCOM

Tim Bascom is the author of two prize-winning memoirs about years spent in East Africa as a youth. His essays have been selected for the anthologies Best Creative Nonfiction and Best American Travel Writing. His short fiction has appeared in journals such as Zone 3, Front Range Review, and Briar Cliff Review. Bascom directs the Kansas Book Festival.