Free Emerald City by Jennifer Egan

cries Jann, “that’s it!”
    They look again. Bernadette looks and sees it, too, feels the others see it. In the way the light falls, there is something; in the girl’s restless hands, her sad mouth. A stillness falls. She is more than a skinny young girl on a beach; she is any young girl, sad and longhaired, watching a frail line of horizon. The camera clicks. Then the moment passes.
    Alice leans down and scratches at her knee. Bernadette looks at Jann and sees him smiling.
    “Bingo,” he says.
    In town the wind blows, filling the air with dust and tissue candy wrappers. There are lots of widows in Lamu, old squat women who clutch their dark veils against the wind. In the market square they hunch beside baskets of dried fruit, seeds, purple grain. The air smells burned.
    The group is staying in an old two-story hotel near the waterfront—the sort of place that conjures up piano players and rough men toasting their motherlands. It reminds Bernadette of the hotel in New Orleans where she spent her honeymoon. Like that hotel, this place has ceiling fans. Last night she lay in bed and watched hers spin.
    After dinner, Alice tells of how she was discovered. It happened at the shopping mall, she says. All the girls walked through. You had to bring snapshots. She had one of herself riding on her brother’s shoulders. The two other models look bored with the story.
    Bernadette lights a cigarette. She turns to Jann, who is flipping through a magazine. “What does this remind you of?” she says.
    He looks up, his blond eyebrows raised. He is gentle and brawny, like a Viking from a children’s book.
    “What does what remind me of?” he says.
    “This. All of us.”
    Jann seems confused, so she goes on. “Have you noticed how no one really likes each other?” she says. “We’re like a family.”
    He is amused. He takes a long drink of beer and runs his hands through his hair. “Speak for yourself.”
    Bernadette laughs and then stops. “What’s holding us together?” she asks.
    “That’s easy,” says Jann, leaning so far back in his chair that the cheap wood creaks. “That’s a no-brainer.”
    “Humor me,” says Bernadette.
    He leans forward, resting his elbows on the oilcloth tabletop. The wind carries snaking bits of music in from the narrow streets. The models have wandered away, and the room is filled with people so black their skin shines blue in the light.
    “We’re on a fashion shoot,” he says.
    He rolls a matchstick between his palms and then waves at the waiter for two more beers. Flies settle on the table’s edge. He looks at Bernadette. “To getting those shots,” he says, raising his beer. He sounds uneasy. Bernadette drinks from her bottle, letting her head fall back. Her neck is long and white. Jann watches her throat move as she swallows.
    “To the hand that feeds us,” she says.
    Now the girls gallop over. They want to go dancing someplace. In Mombasa there was a discotheque filled with young African whores who danced languidly and waited for business to arrive. The girls were fascinated.
    “Not in Lamu,” says Jann. “Remember, there aren’t even cars.”
    Alice yawns openly, like a cat. Her teeth catch the light. She leans down and rests her head on Jann’s shoulder. In a helpless, teenage way she has adored him from the start.
    “I’m sleepy,” she says.
    Jann glances at Bernadette and pulls the girl into his lap. He runs a palm over her soft hair, and she relaxes against him. Her long legs scatter toward the floor. All of them are silent. The girl squirms and moves her head. At this hour two months ago, she would be kissing her father good night. She climbs to her feet. “Well,” she says, looking from Jann to Bernadette, “see you tomorrow.”
    She wanders in search of the other two, who have left her behind.
    “Poor kid,” says Jann.
    As they watch her go, Bernadette reaches under the table and touches him, softly at first, then more boldly. It’s amazing, she