Elmore Leonard: Djibouti

When the hotel phone rang she picked up and said, "Xavier?"

"Miss Dara? Yeah, this is Xavier. How you doin?"

"Not bad," Dara said. "Yeah, I remember you now, the tall colored man? Why don't you stop by for a drink?"

"I could do that," Xavier said, "it don't put you out none."

"Where are you?"

"Still at the dock. A man's been waitin here to search Buster. Now he wants me to go to the U.S. Embassy with him. I could be a while."

"Tell them whatever he wants to know," Dara said. "I did. I worked three whole days, got through all twelve hours and now I'm taking the rest of the day off, drinking champagne in my underwear."

"Do I get to see that?"

She said, "It's too bad you're an old man."

"You either cheeky or horny," Xavier said, "talkin to me like that. I get to the hotel, you want to make a bet on what happens?" XAVIER ARRIVED WITH EVERYTHING they had on the boat. They talked, having fun getting back together. Once they got around to sitting next to each other, the laptop on the dining table, Dara in her bra and shorts, they watched Buster leaving Djibouti on the way to the gulf. Dara had shot this from the concrete pier.

"For now, this is how we open."

"You got the boys swimmin for the loot drowned?"

"It comes later."

"Wouldn't be a bad way to open. Droppin the money bags and missin the deck. You got your audience glued to the screen."

"We could open on the cooch dancers," Dara said, "you want to get creative. We see it as we shot it, leaving Djibouti, and decide how to move scenes around."

Now they were watching Dara aboard, shooting straight ahead from the deck, Buster's bow in the foreground rising as the sea rolled beneath her to come down in the trough.

"The first couple of days," Dara said, "I expected the next wave would swamp us."

"You didn't get sick."

"You saw how I looked."

"Till you learned Buster's ways. Lookit how you held the camera steady." Xavier said, "Where's Billy Wynn? You kept him in the picture, didn't you?"

"He's coming up abaft. Here, Pegaso blowing past us, a hundred yards off our port bow."

"Man, you the little sailor, ain't you?"

They watched the sailboat on the screen coursing past them.

"You don't have him comin about, goin back to Djibouti?"

"We don't see Helene," Dara said. "We thought he'd left her."

"Then changed his mind," Xavier said, "and was goin back to get her."

"I could speculate in voice-over why he turned around," Dara said, "but Billy's not what this is about. Or Helene."

"You mean what you thought at the time," Xavier said. "We don't see them again till comin on two weeks."

"Ten days," Dara said. "Billy with his elephant gun."

"Man, he put on a show, didn't he?"

"That's when Idris joined us on the Buster."

"I like all that," Xavier said. "Things happenin."

"We leave Billy flying past-"

"We don't see him come about?"

"Forget Billy, he's somewhere ahead of us now. I'll say Pegaso is vulnerable in a hostile sea and we hope to run into Billy again sometime soon."

"I see Billy comin on as star of the movie."

"What about Jama?"

"He's good, but he's the bad guy."

"Jama shot five people at one time, but I don't have it on film. None of the things he did."

"Girl, he's still the bad guy."

"I don't know how I'm going to work that."

"We see the bodies comin out of the house," Xavier said. "Then cut to us in our deck chairs sippin wine and chewin on khat. I noticed you favor it."

"I'd like it a lot better," Dara said, "if there was another way to do it. Chewing leaves to get a buzz-"

"Fucked with your sensibilities, didn't it? You been thinkin, what if you crumbled up the leaves and smoked it. Would that work?"

"Would it?" Dara said. THE FOOTAGE ON THE screen showed pinpoints of light dotting the Somali coast. Dusk now, a lamp hung from the foremast to throw a dreary light on the open deck, the Buster plowing ahead.

"What you gonna talk about here?"

"Hoping we run into pirates. I'll list the countries with warships out here hoping the same thing, and cut to…Here it is, the guided missile cruiser, CG-66, coming up on us with that blinding spotlight."

"Like it's gonna eat us up," Xavier said, "or want to board us. Man, it's big. All that gray metal risin over us. You tell who you are and ask 'em over for a drink."

"First I got on the bullhorn," Dara said, "and told them to identify themselves."

"They got a kick out of that, the Buster givin 'em orders. You tell who you are and the captain knows you from your films. He called them 'docs.' A word you never use."

"I don't care for 'docs.' I think we were delaying the ship from being somewhere. I like the clip, though, tracking over the sailors looking down at us."

"Close on six hundred feet of cruiser slidin alongside. They want to know what we doin," Xavier said. "You tell 'em through the bullhorn, 'We makin a movie about pirates.' What you think we doin. I thought the PA voice would say somethin about the task force out here in harm's way to protect shipping and run off the pirates. They love to use 'harm's way.' You see the steward mates? They wonderin what's this tall-ass nigga doin with that hot white chick? Out in the middle of the ocean. I bet they still talkin about it. 'Man, he's got the deal.'" XAVIER WOULD PLAY WITH the Sony, the big camcorder, the days nothing they wanted appeared on the sea, the Buster still bearing east, Xavier shooting life aboard the Buster. Dara frying fish would look up to see Xavier with the Sony on her. He'd say for home movies he'd watch on his TV. Dara on deck in a canvas chair against the wheelhouse, the boat drifting, it didn't matter, Dara looking fine in her shorts and T-shirt that said Laissez les bons temps rouler across the front. Blond hair curling out of her do-rag, a cowboy bandana. She'd look up at him through her shades and shake her head.

He said, "You documentin pirates-we ever see any-and I'm documentin Dara Barr makin herself famous. They gonna say, 'Why, this Dara Barr's just a girl,' I show anybody my footage. I shoot you starin at me and lookin away. Certain times." Xavier sitting with his back against the foremast, long brown legs stretching out of his trunks, no supporter, sometimes seeing the shape of his donkey lying beneath shiny green satin. Xavier LeBo believed was he ten years younger, they'd be letting good times roll all over this boat. See if they could manage in the hammock.

They watched themselves on the Buster now.

"Four-hour watches," Xavier said, "means the one on deck can look at the hammock but not get in it. You can't see all the way around the way the hammock curls up on you." Xavier slept on deck during her watch to see if she stayed awake. Dara would say to him-Xavier sneaking over to see if her eyes were open-"Jesus, will you go to sleep."

So Xavier tried sleeping below when he was off and would lie awake waiting to hear Dara scream at a shape coming out of the dark. When she did yell into the hatch, "Boats coming up on us…"

Xavier, in the bow, jumped up ducking his head.

"They in sight?"

"Not yet. I hear them, three boats." WHEN XAVIER WOULD WATCH Women of Bosnia with Dara and look over to see her staring at her work on the screen, she'd be chewing gum in time to the women speaking. On the beat. No hurry. Waiting and picking it up again. She said one time, after, still in her seat, "Fuck."

"What's wrong?"

"I stayed too long on their hands. Like I've never seen hands before."

Xavier, working on Katrina, would try all kinds of weird angles, shooting down on a scene, or zoom in for a smash close-up, his favorite. Dara would say to him, "We're telling a story: the way hurricanes leave people and what they do. That's drama enough."