Free Impossible Odds by Jessica Buchanan, Erik Landemalm, Anthony Flacco Page B

other hand, it seems natural for the males of most species to try to court a little bit. I think a courteous female lets a man puff out his chest once in a while. It’s true in the jungle and true here at the watering hole—a man is mostly following genetic orders when he does that. Boring sometimes, but no real threat. I figured he had his DNA and I had mine.
    Orik kept going. “I know you have Niagara Falls in America but this is just as impressive, maybe more! Yesterday morning I got to take one of these small microflights over these amazing falls, and then on the way back we saw elephants crossing the Zambezi River just below us. It was unbelievable. Nothing but fantastic!”
    I got it, then. He wasn’t bragging. He was sharing something important that happened to him. Not only that, it only happened to him because he got himself down to Africa and did the work that took him to that spot in the first place. He was telling me about a source of true joy in his life.
    We had come across each other at a time when I felt a personal emptiness, romantically, but I also believed my current situation had no room for love. Up until then I was even managing to take pride in my sacrifice of that. The problem, of course, was theinescapable drive for intimate companionship. As much as I liked my local friends, even cherished some of them, there was always that wall of lighthearted conversation we didn’t cross. There were definite lines of closeness we didn’t traverse, either. Or maybe I should say there was a line of closeness out there somewhere, and I hadn’t crossed it yet.
    But right then time was sliding by. Orik was such good company, I found myself waiting for him to say or do something to break the spell. It never happened. If somebody had given him a dossier on me and prepped him before going to the club that night, he couldn’t have done a better job of saying so many of the things I didn’t even know I was waiting to hear.
    Still, on that first night after a random encounter, it was going to take a lot more than that to pry me out of my shell. When Orik asked for my phone number I told him I didn’t feel comfortable giving it out yet. Instead of arguing, he said he understood.
    “Let me give you mine,” he said with an easy smile. He took out a slip of paper and jotted down something, then handed it to me. Over his phone number he’d written the name:
    “Erik Landemalm.”
    What? I thought. His name is Erik ? I’ve been calling him “Orik” all evening and he never said a word! Is he too polite to mention it? Or did the combination of loud music and our different accents blur the distinction? Or does he think I’m an idiot? If he does, he sure isn’t showing it.
    We talked a little more, private small talk that doesn’t mean anything more than the feeling of closeness it allows. Soon afterward my friend Evan decided to be responsible for his own ride home. Now we only had two other cats to herd; Jen had run into a man her age and hit it off with her new acquaintance as strongly as I’d been struck by mine. (Proof: They were inseparable after that night and later got married.)
    When the four of us left the club and began to make our wayback to my old car, Jen realized she’d left something behind, and she and her new friend went back to get it, leaving me to wait outside alone with Erik-not-Orik.
    Well, I thought, if there’s a rude awakening coming with this guy, it’s probably going to show up while we’re alone out here. But his attention had been caught by a fellow in a wheelchair who was begging on the street. Erik walked over without hesitation and gave the man several hundred Kenyan shillings. The amount is only worth a few U.S. dollars, but those dollars had real buying power to secure him several good meals. Erik seemed spontaneous about it, very offhand, and didn’t try to come back for some sort of approval from me. It really looked like more of a knee-jerk reaction on his part. Something