CHAPTER TWO
JAKE
†
WHEN I PUSHED THE door open to my apartment, it took a hell of a shove to clear the mail that had collected on the other side of the door. So much for the mail forwarding service for which I’d paid a hundred bucks. No wonder my mom never got anything sent to her house. I made a mental note to call them and demand a refund.
There was very little in the pile that was worth keeping. Far too many circulars and the same junk letters sent over and over again. No, I didn’t want a new credit card, and no, I didn’t care about a low-cost cable package. Just seeing the amount of wasted paper on my doormat was enough to make me wonder why I was back home at all. I sorted out the recyclable materials from those that couldn’t be redeemed thanks to the polymers used in their production.
If only people really knew the cost.
It was a little after ten in the morning in the middle of July when I arrived back home after a twelve-hour flight from London. Before that, I’d endured a grueling thirteen hours on a plane from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport.
Fuck, I was dog-tired.
While the sun was streaming through the window, all I wanted to do was sleep, but there was very little hope of that. I’d gotten used to jet lag over the years, and I’d even managed to master the art of the power nap waiting around between too many flights to even remember. Thank God for first class lounges.
Even so, I couldn’t rest with the noise of the traffic going past my window.
So, I put a load of laundry in the washer and sat at the kitchen table going through my mail. It was then that I saw the fancy envelope I knew could only have come from a wedding invitation. When I opened it and saw it was from none other than my high-school buddy and best friend, Brandon, I couldn’t help but grin.
So, Brandon was all grown up and getting hitched. It made me think about how it seemed like only a year ago when we graduated and now, here we were, nearly twenty-eight and settling down. Or, at least, Brandon was. He and Clea had been dating for three years, and she seemed like the only girl who could tame him.
The invitation made me think a little about the crazy times we’d had when we were in high school and later when we went to college. We studied completely different subjects and lived at opposite ends of the campus, but we met up for beers almost every weekend and far too many weeknights, too, usually when we were due to submit assignments.
Those days were nearly seven years ago, and I wondered where all the time had gone. We were free-spirited and, while I’d continued in that vein after getting my degree, Brandon had settled into a steady job at a law firm, and that’s where he met Clea.
I couldn’t blame him for falling for her. From what I remembered from the times we met up for drinks over the last three years, she was a stunning redhead with an incredible figure.
We must’ve seen each other no more than twice. I shook my head. I’d spent far too much time away from home, my friends and my family. It was an adventure, don’t get me wrong, but when I turned the invitation over and over in my hands, I wondered why there was something in me that almost felt like envy.
Maybe I was beginning to want what Brandon had. A nice wife, a permanent home, a job that didn’t take me all over the world at the click of my boss’s fingers.
Wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home.
The words of the classic song had been my mantra for so long and now, I felt the urge to hang my hat up for good.
Until then, though, I had to check in with the office. I checked my watch again. Eleven. Everyone at the magazine would be hard at work. I needed to call them. First, though, I needed to charge my phone and take a hot shower. I still smelled like the jungle, I was sure of that.
There’s no shortage of hot water in Thailand, of course. Quite the opposite, in fact. There were times when I would have given my right arm to brush my teeth under icy cold water. Instead, the only cold water was bottled, and in a fridge. Anything that came out of the tap was always guaranteed to be warm, at the very least. But, there was something about being in my own shower again, able to switch the water to cool any time I liked.
It was strange to be showering inside a cubicle, too. I’d spent so many years outside, standing under the spout of a hose in a ramshackle village, naked as the day I was born, as villagers would come and point at me and laugh at the color of my skin.
The tan I thought impressive was nothing to the beautiful, swarthy skin of the Thai people. Over time, though, I ditched the sunscreen and spent most of my days shirtless. So, I developed a deep tan I knew would fade back here in Nebraska, no matter how much of a summer we were having.
It was strange to call the office from home when I didn’t have to worry about the time difference. They were pleased to hear I’d returned safely, they said, and were looking forward to meeting me in a couple of days in order for us to plan the next trip. They’d been looking at cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the conditions the employees had to work in. Many of them were children.
“What we want are more of the hard-hitting images you’re so famous for, Jake,” Marshall ordered.
Marshall Pitt was the chief editor of Woke magazine and the man responsible for my many trips around the world in the last few years. “You know what we want. The faces. The hardships. Plenty of captains in the background with big sticks, waiting to hit people who step out of line or stop working for a second. You know the score.”
“Sure,” I sighed. And, as he spoke, my mind drifted away. Just a year ago I would have been thrilled beyond words to travel to such a dangerous area at the very heart of Africa to expose the cruel treatment of young children that we, here in the West, relied on for such things as faster cars and flashier cell phones. It was a noble cause, after all, and yet, I couldn’t put my finger on why it was I felt reason to refuse the offer.
It was crazy to turn Marshall down, of course. He paid very well for my photographs, and even after I went off grid now and again, thanks to poor communication methods in the wilderness, he always ensured he had someone check in with me as much as possible. He was a good guy, but he was a businessman at the end of the day. He wanted my work, and he knew I could deliver the goods.
But the thought of going back into the wilderness for another project that would take at least a year of my life to complete, left me feeling empty. It wasn’t just taking the shots, after all. It was flying out to a god-forsaken land where, of course, those involved in the exploitation were relatively concealed.
It was weeks of staying in someone’s house as a guest or, if I was really lucky, a small hotel with modest amenities. It was having painful injections for weeks before leaving and, even then, still contracting the kinds of diseases that would leave me bedridden, sometimes for weeks.
It was taking plenty of cash so I could bribe officials, hoteliers, waiters and even kids to give me the information I needed to get an interview or even a phone call with someone on the inside, someone who could take me where I needed to go in order to get the best shots. It had always been a thrill for me and an exciting ride, doing the kind of things I could never tell my mom about because she’d simply worry too much.
The problem wasn’t that I was getting too old, of course. I wasn’t even twenty-eight until October, nearly three months away. I was in my prime, both physically and in my job, and there was nothing stopping me from taking this next assignment.
But as Marshall talked to me as I stood in my kitchen in clean boxer shorts, I couldn’t help but look over at the invitation to my best friend’s wedding and wonder whether the next chapter of my life involved the kinds of things that most other men my age were doing.
So I managed to hold Marshall off for a while. He was disappointed. He wanted me to be the one to take on this assignment, and we made a deal that I’d take the next couple of months off so I could have my first official vacation pretty much since I’d left college, and then we’d talk.
In the meantime, if he wanted to send a rookie or anyone else to the DRC, then I was fine with that. It was not as if I needed the money. I had plenty of that having lived off Woke’s expenses for most of the time and being paid handsomely for the kind of photos I’ve taken over the years.
But, I needed a break and felt good for having given myself a bit of breathing space. So, before I went to lie down on the bed to catch some desperately-needed sleep, I replied to Brandon and Clea’s wedding invitation.
I’d be happy to attend, I wrote, before sliding the card into the envelope they’d provided.
Brandon had offered me an extra guest to the event. So, as I lay on the bed, my eyes heavy, I wondered which of the more than willing single women I knew I should invite to come to Hawaii with me for a few days in early September.
A few came to mind, but none stood out enough for me to want to pick up the phone and extend the invite.
In the end, I decided against asking anyone. I would go alone.