Free Red Jacket by Pamela; Mordecai

there’s anything you’d like me to do, sir?”
    He doesn’t tell her she’s taken a load off his mind with the news that Grace won’t be around until Friday evening. If she is coming back late on Friday, there is little chance of her meeting Mona until Saturday, even if she is staying at The Xooana. With luck, they will be together only briefly then.
    â€œNo, Celia. I think everything is under control. And honestly, I’m fine, but I have to run. I’ve got papers to read before Council. Will you take care of this?” He points with his chin to the remnants of lunch.
    She nods.
    â€œThanks very much. I’ll be in Garvey. See you at two.”

JIMMY

9
    Father John Kelly, S.J.
    In August 1974 James Nathaniel Atule enters the Society of Jesus with one other Mabulian novice, Simeon Lubonli, a slender, nervous fellow with a huge appetite that’s no threat to his svelte physique. As Simeon dispatches food the first day, he jokes that they will hereafter live according to LHB and LSB — L’Heure des Blancs et Les Saisons des Blancs . Jimmy raises an eyebrow. Colours of time and season, white, black, or otherwise, matter not; nobody thinks he’ll be here long.
    His smiling countryman throws another buck-naked mango seed into the trash.
    Simeon doesn’t know how truly he speaks. Nila died in January of the previous year. Cold, or more precisely, snow, White Winter’s pretty instrument, killed her. He still craves her, the comfort of her body, the compass of loving her, the promise of making children with her. He misses the family they almost had. Sometimes he thinks God has punished him for committing the gravest sin. He worshipped Nila.
    He knows he is self-willed — not selfish, just stubborn. And full of drama, so as a child his sisters called him “star de cinéma.” The only son and next-to-last child, longed for after four girls, the thirteen pounds of him nearly killed his mother, Makda. She was his first love and after her, Mapome, his father’s mother. Enchanted in his cradle basket, he poked at their eyes and noses, at their mouths, opening and closing, making noises. Hugged to their warm bodies, he sniffed them. His nose remembers the perfume of the neroli oil with which they anointed themselves each morning, a scent that swelled with the sun and the day’s exertions. He also loved his four big sisters, and Angélique, la petite, when she came. Why not? They all fussed round him as if he were a prince, not the least bit jealous of the extravagant attention bestowed on him.
    So, long before coming of age, he’d been pleased to exercise his right as the only son to do what he chose and get what he wanted. Then while he was at boarding school in Benke, the demons danced in and Mapome upped and died. The relentless mutiny of adolescence in his body and the tumult of puberty rites jostled him past that, but his future was not to be tranquil. He’d raced through the American University in Cairo, taking three years instead of four, and then joined his father’s business as a buyer. He revelled in the travel, using his native French and English and picking up a little Italian and Spanish.
    He thrived in his job, and business was booming.
    At this juncture, his parents decided that he could support a family and should start one. He’d allowed them to find him a wife, and they set about choosing a suitable mate. His father’s grandfather had converted to Catholicism, so the woman must be Catholic. The ceremony would take place in the cathedral in Benke, but the celebrations afterwards would be according to the customs of the Mnkete clan, both families bearing the cost. No expense would be spared. He’d have preferred not to marry just then. He thirsted for the world — the flesh too but the world more — and even a bit, the devil. But it had been decided that this was an auspicious time, and anyway, eventually