As Allan’s secretary closed the door behind her, Allan and I shook hands and switched to first names, a mid-Atlantic nod to my unfortunate Americanness. “Good to see you, Parker,” he said. “It looks like the stop in Johannesburg gave you enough time to buy a suit.”
I nodded. The clothes also cost more than two months of backpacking.
“That telex you sent surprised me.”
Telexes were the least expensive and sometimes the only way to quickly send a long-distance message from sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1980s.
“It’s been, what, seven months? How did you end up staying in Africa? Weren’t you two going around the world?”
“Things change. You meet someone who tells you about a place just over the hill, so you flag down a truck and go there. Then there’s another person, another hill, and another truck. Before you know it, you’re a couple of thousand miles down the road and time’s gone by.”
“No matter. It’s great to see you. How are things with your girlfriend? Will she be moving to the States with you?”
“Absolutely.” Another fib.
Allan fell silent, waiting for more, but I focused on stirring my coffee. After an awkward pause, he said, “Well, why don’t we get started?”
Throughout the morning, we made good progress on revenue forecasts, headcount, and total investment. As we finished our working lunch, Ms. Lawrence knocked on the conference room door. “Pardon me for the interruption,” she said, handing me a telex. “This just arrived, Mr. Griffon. It’s from your fiancée and appears to be urgent.”
“Fiancée!” Allan exclaimed, smiling. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Sorry, it slipped my mind,” I replied, surprised at how quickly a lie grows legs. I scanned the telex.
FM: VIVIAN, MAIN POST OFFICE, LILONGWE, MALAWI
TO: PARKER GRIFFON C/O ALLAN BAILEY, LURNIX LABS
HAVE MALARIA. 60USD LEFT. TRANSFER DIDN’T ARRIVE. MAY NEED YOUR HELP. WILL TELEX NUMBER FOR CALL TOMORROW.
V
I paused for a moment as I reread the note, trying to make sense of it.
At best, malaria meant days of debilitating chills, fevers, and vomiting. At worst, you came home in a box. It gave me hope that she had made it to the main post office, unless, of course, someone else had sent the telex for her.
The message was intentionally brief, probably to save money. After a quick mental calculation, I figured that sixty US would last three days if she were at a hostel or a week if she were in the tent. But could she be tenting alone with malaria? Then I wondered about healthcare costs in Malawi and decided the sixty dollars might not last even three days.
I had barely convinced her to write Lurnix’s telex number in her travel notebook. She wanted time alone, she had said, and that didn’t involve sending me expensive notes.
This was a woman who, before I knew her, had moved across the world to assert her independence from a man. Given how much pride she had to swallow to send that telex, writing that she might need help almost certainly meant she did.
Now the thin scrap of paper I held was the only thread connecting us. With phones capable of international calls scarce in Malawi, all I could do was wait until she found one and sent the number with a time to call.
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