Chapter 20
Beauties and other sharks
I sit back down at the table opposite Britney, tensed for what she might want to discuss.
“Becka, go ask wardrobe if that glue will even work,” Britney says. She takes a long sip from her glass of diet soda and says to me, “Now, you appear to know an awful lot about sharks and such.”
“I guess so. They’re such amazing creatures!”
“Such amazing creatures,” she repeats, nodding. “Tell me about them, the ones down here in the Cape.”
I’m surprised by her interest, but also relieved. For a moment there, I thought she intended to grill me about Logan. I’m in safer waters talking about sharks.
“Well, in False Bay we mostly see great whites, and thresher sharks, the odd hammerhead or hound shark, and raggies — ragged-tooth sharks.”
She watches me intently, ignoring the catering staff who clear the table around us. “Tell me about the great whites — they look like beauties!”
“They are beautiful,” I say, pleased by her enthusiasm. Maybe I’ve misjudged her — she seems genuinely interested in hearing more. “Too many people misunderstand and fear them — Jaws and all that — but they’re the most perfectly designed predators on the planet.”
“The most perfectly designed predators?”
“Yes! For example, they’re grey on the top half of their bodies so that when they swim below their prey, they fade into the darker water and seabed. But they’re white underneath, so that if a seal swims under them and looks up, the shark fades to pale against the sun coming through the water.”
“Amazeballs! And they eat people?”
“Well, no. They eat Cape fur seals mostly. But from underneath, a surfer on a board looks a lot like a seal with flippers, so sometimes people get attacked. Honestly, humans are more of a danger to sharks than they are to us.”
“We’re more of a danger to them than they are to us.” She tuts and takes another sip of her drink. “And they’re an endangered species?”
“Not officially, but shark populations everywhere are under threat because of the practice of shark finning.”
She motions for me to explain, her eyes drinking in my every word.
“Finning is when fishermen catch sharks and slice off their dorsal fins.” I see Britney silently mouth the words dorsal fins. “And then they toss the sharks back into the water, where they can’t swim properly, and so they die from suffocation, or are eaten by other predators. The fins get dried and sent to the Far East, where they’re used a little in traditional medicine, but mostly to make shark fin soup.”
“What’s so special about that?”
“It’s obscenely expensive, so people order it at banquets to demonstrate how rich and successful they are. Shark populations are being decimated just so some fat cat in China can show how prosperous he is. It’s outrageous that a species which has been around for millions of years should now be threatened because of mere vanity!”
“Outrageous — because of mere vanity.”
“And the irony is that the fins have been found to have such high levels of toxic mercury, that it can’t be doing the people who eat it any good.”
“Serves them right!”
“And sharks are such slow growers, too. The males only reach maturity at about ten years, the females even later, so we don’t yet even know the full impact of killing off immature sharks. It makes me so mad!” I thump a fist on the table, nearly overturning Britney’s soda. “I’m sorry, I’m probably boring you. I know I get a little crazy about this, but I’m just passionate, you know,” I add, with an embarrassed laugh. “Not enough people get it.”
“I get it,” Britney says, patting the back of my hand reassuringly with one of hers and giving me a bright, super-white smile. “I’ve got you exactly. Oops, looks like they’re calling me, I’d better go. Thank you for telling me all about sharks, I just know that information is going to come in handy.”
“Sure, my pleasure,” I say to her departing form. I’m pleased — I might just have made another convert to shark conservation.
By the time the shoot wraps for the day, it’s almost eight in the evening and the light is dimming. The cast and crew piling into the vans and buses are tired, hungry and grumpy.
Logan slides the door of the VIP bus closed on Britney’s surprised face, saying, “I think I need to hear more about those sharks before I go swimming with them on Friday.”
Then he ambles slowly over to where Becka and I wait at the crew bus, climbs inside, and stretches out across the seats at the very back. Logan’s bodyguard, who’s scrambled out of the VIP transport, trots over to our bus, but when he boards, Logan gestures to him to sit up front. I stand in the aisle, uncertain.
“Romy,” Logan calls. “You’re still on company time. Come and confess — what’s the likelihood I’ll become human sushi for a shark?”
I laugh and pause to ask a favour of the driver before walking down to sit beside him, all the while studiously ignoring Becka’s raised eyebrows and just-what-is-going-on-here-girl? expression.
“Right, what would you like to know?” I ask him.
“What I’d really like to know, Romy, what I urgently need to know is, have you got anything tasty for me?” A smile stretches slowly across his face.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I am so hungry, Romy, haven’t you got a protein bar or some of that jerky stuff you guys have here?”
“You mean, biltong?”
“You have some?” he asks eagerly.
“I do not.”
“You’re a cruel woman, Romy. Pitiless.” He gives a deep, regretful sigh then pins me with his cobalt gaze and asks softly, “Do you have anything tasty to satisfy my appetite?”
I laugh, still not sure of the game between us.
Just then, as I’d arranged with the driver, the bus stops outside a general-store-cum-café on the outskirts of the village.
“I’ll be right back.” I move quickly to the front of the bus where the driver is already making an announcement.
“Last stop before Cape Town, if anyone wants to buy any food or smokes,” he says.
I hop off the bus and run to the café to place my order. While waiting, I walk around the store, examining the shelves packed with an eccentric assortment of wares — fishing rods, packets of fudge, dangling mobiles made from seashells, jars of marinated mussels, and a strong-smelling type of dried fish called bokkom. A corner of the store stocks a selection of movie DVDs for rental, and in the window is a poster of Logan. Beast: Sun. Release the tiger within!
Ten minutes later I return to the bus with my contraband in a brown paper bag.
“These,” I say, giving Logan the large greaseproof packet filled with steaming hot, golden chips doused in salt and vinegar, “are what is known locally as slap chips.”
“Fries! You are a good woman, Romy. And a merciful one,” he says, already cramming the hot potato into his mouth. He groans and rolls his eyes in pleasure.
“Do you two need to get a room?” I motion to him and the chips.
He grins and eats several more.
“Wonderful,” he says, looking straight into my eyes.
Flustered, I drop my gaze. The bus lurches into motion, and I pull a bottle of beer out of the paper bag.
Logan’s grin widens. “They sold you that?”
“We can buy and drink alcohol when we’re eighteen here,” I explain.
“Nice.”
“But we can only drive when we’re eighteen, too.”
“You’ve got to admire the lawmakers who think it’s a good idea for those two things to coincide,” he says, laughing.
Logan has a great laugh. Every time he laughs, somewhere a unicorn is born.
“So can I have it?” He tries to take the beer, but I hold it out of reach.
“You get this” — I tap the cool, green glass where tiny droplets of condensation bead — “if and when you can pronounce the word slap correctly. Slap, spelt S.L.A.P.”
“Slap,” he says at once, rhyming the word with “clap.”
“No, sslupp.”
“Slurp.” He’s beginning to sound desperate.
Watching his lips move in slow exaggeration of the sounds, I have to hold myself back from leaning over to kiss the stray grains of salt off them.
“It rhymes with pup, not burp. S-l-uhh-p,” I say.
“Slup?”
“Very good!”
I twist the cap off the beer bottle, hand it over, and watch how his Adam’s apple moves when he swallows deeply.
“There was a poster of you in the window of the shop back there.” I gesture back to the village we’ve left behind. “Weird that even in a remote little place like this you’re famous.”
“Yeah, there’s no escaping the Beast,” he says, with something like regret in his voice.
Not sure how to reply, I tuck into my own packet of chips, though they taste nowhere near as good as watching him eat his. Finally, he licks salt off his fingers, downs the last of his beer, and sighs.
“Okay, so now that you’re fed, what did you want to know about sharks?” I ask.
“Nothing, really. I’m sure I’ll find out lots on Friday.”
“But … you said that’s why you wanted to come on this bus.”
“I lied.” He rests his head against the seat, closes his eyes, and yawns.
“Why?”
“Cilla and Britney talk a whole lot of nonversation. Besides” — he opens one eye to peer at me — “I need my PA. I must have her.”
My breath hitches. “What for?”
He pauses for a long moment before replying. “Forbidden food, obviously. And music — you have an iPod, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
“We could share yours.”
I get it out my bag and offer him the choice of music.
“Y’all have some good music on here, Romy, but also some strange stuff. I’ve just got to try this Whalesong Lullaby.”
I move up close to him and give him one earbud, plugging the other into my ear. And we drive back through the deepening African night like that, listening to the otherworldly songs of whales calling to each other across vast oceans. Before long, Logan dozes off. His head rests on my shoulder, and our arms, sides, and legs touch in a dozen points of heat and awareness.
Without moving anything except my eyes — I don’t want to jostle him off me — I look down at his face. His hair has fallen over one eye again. My fingers itch to push it back, to comb through his hair to the back of his neck, but I’m very aware of who all might have eyes on us. Anyone in this bus might carry tales back to Cilla, so I keep my hands folded in my lap, prim as a nun, and whenever anyone glances our way, I shrug my other shoulder, slide my eyes in Logan’s direction, and make a “stars — whatcha gonna do?” sort of face.
But I do allow myself to breathe deeply. No one can see that, and Logan smells great — kind of sweaty, but in a good way.
I could happily sit like this for a few more weeks, but all too soon the bus slows to take the exit from the highway. When we stop at a brightly lit intersection of traffic lights, I look out of the window. Straight into the eyes of Britney Vaux.
The VIP minibus is idling alongside us in the next lane, and Britney — barely two metres away from us — spots Logan’s head on my shoulder. Her mouth drops open in shock, and her eyes fill with outrage. Oh, crap.
I tug at the earbuds, point at Logan, twist my mouth, and roll my eyes — trying, with this frantic mime show, to convey that his head is only so close to mine because of the listening arrangement. Glaring at me with eyes narrowed to slits and lips pulled into a thin line, she touches a forefinger to her chest, points with a backwards V at her own two eyes, and then points back at me.
The bus rolls into motion, and I can no longer see her. But her warning stills rings in my ears, as loud as if she’d shouted it: “I’ve got my eyes on you!”