Vamp Until Ready by James Magruder

Author:James Magruder [Magruder, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rattling Good Yarns Press

Judy woke up under a mosquito net on a single futon—raised from the floor, she hoped—with no memory of having disembarked from the matatu the night before. Before she drew the curtains and looked, she listened, as composers do, and she was in Africa to be a composer, to the morning. The air was alive with yips, crows, bleats, squawks, thrums, buzzings, and an amplified, staccato bellow in a strange language. Underneath it all was a crisp, incessant swish she couldn’t identify.

Upon parting the netting, she spotted a stool next to the bed on which was placed a glass of juice topped by a curiously webbed skirt. Upon inspection, she concluded its edge was weighted down with metal beads as an insect deterrent. Judy stood, stretched, and sure enough, from the corners of her eyes, she sensed some creatures scuttling for the ceiling.

She was alone in a man’s apartment, in Africa. What was the protocol? There was nothing to do but drink the juice—a tart, tongue-curling flavor—and signal her host with an over-exuberant yawn. She waited and took in the bright egg yolk hue of the stucco walls. She’d noticed from the matatu ride that colors were far more intense in Africa.

At the lack of response, Judy dragged her bags across the red-tiled floor a couple of times. Then she opened and shut the clumsily hewn top drawer in a hardwood dresser, the third and final piece of furniture in the room. Finally, worried that Emil might have abandoned her, she clocked her passport in her jacket hanging from a nail in the wall, coughed loudly, and pushed open the door. There was no knob.

Just two feet from her, so close that the door grazed his foot, Emil, in a red dressing gown and rope sandals, looked up from a newspaper. The sun angled a slab of light across his neck and chest. Now she was in a man’s quarters, a man with thick lashes and dark brown knees and slender ankles. How had she gotten into her nightgown? Who had provided the juice? Where had he slept? Had she been drugged?

“Mango? Guava? Papaya?” she said, with a wild sweep of her empty glass.

“Good morning, Judy.”

“Good morning. Delicious.”

She meant the juice, not him. Well, not entirely him. He dominated the small space from one of those weirdly overstuffed love seats covered in cranberry velvet, or velveteen. There was a table, two mismatched chairs, another stool, a standing lamp, and a low, hi-fi console like her parents had, with slots for records, and woven acoustic cloth covering the speakers. Emil’s copy of Johnny Mathis’s Greatest Hits confused her. He didn’t belong here. She remembered the time Dave told her Johnny Mathis was gay, and she told Dave he was Black, revelations that had left them both speechless.

“It is passion fruit.”

Oh Jesus, she thought, of course, and embarrassed herself again by saying, without euphemism, that she needed to go to the toilet.

Emil said something, and a bent woman with a headscarf and matching apron appeared from nowhere.

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