About Smoke: Askari
by Lee Benoit
42 pages / 16300 words
ISBN: 978-60370-986-6
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, epub, and Sony Reader pdf
Noble is an American medical anthropologist who wants to save the
world. His work in Kenya is off to a slow start until he accidentally
moves into a brothel. The night guard, Harry, is more than what he
seems, and soon he’s helping Noble take his research, and love life, to
a whole new level.
Their work among the poorest of Nairobi’s poor is challenging, and they
find great comfort in each other until an old crush calls Noble away and
sinister forces mass against him and Harry. From slums and whorehouses
to game parks and Indian Ocean beaches, this isn’t the tour books’
Kenya, and Harry and Noble aren’t your ordinary couple! Can simple love
triumph against the complex forces of corruption, prejudice, and public
health crises? Or is it just a curl of smoke, ready to be blown away?
Sample
"Hurry up, Noble," Stuart said when he finally tired of the impromptu
photo session. "The concierge said breakfast only goes 'til nine." With a
slap to Noble's butt, which was now halfway to asleep on the hard rail,
Stuart set about getting dressed. Watching Stuart dress had become a guilty
pleasure for Noble. A snug singlet covered the tight chest, puffy plaid
boxers slid over Stuart's tiny little ass. An ancient red bowling shirt with
"Bill" embroidered over the pocket, a pair of disreputable chinos and a
tatty pair of Birkenstocks transformed Stuart from wet-dream god to
insouciant junior scientist. The lissome creature who, in Noble's futile
fantasies, nipped his throat and hissed filthy things when he came, was a
secret only Noble got to see, and watching Stuart conceal it had become
almost a holy rite for Noble, like dressing a saint's statue for a
procession.
Noble was going to miss Stuart when he left.
"Ready?" Stuart tossed Noble his shirt before he'd finished brushing his
teeth, forcing Noble to juggle a foamy brush in order to catch his last
clean shirt. He ran a flat comb over his short curls, and promised himself a
proper bath later, now that he had a place to stay. He jammed his feet into
his own Birks, much newer and, to Noble's reckoning, less cool than
Stuart's.
"Ready," he said, slinging his camera bag crosswise over his body and
hefting a small daypack.
The grandly named "Trophy Room" on the ground floor of the hotel was where
breakfast was served. During their training period, Noble had become
accustomed to the endless oatmeal and coffee at the YMCA in central Nairobi,
and he'd uncritically expected the same at the modest hotel Stuart had found
as a base for Noble's fieldwork and a crash pad for himself when his
conservation work brought him back to the capital. Instead of the Y's
abundance, however, there was sweet, milky tea and white toast in wire
racks, presided over by an assortment of rough looking folks at littered
tables. Noble and Stuart wove through the few tables to sit at the bar
manned by the whippet of a guy who'd checked them in the night before. Noble
knew it was horribly bourgeois to be fearful of these strangers, but it was
all he could do not to grab Stuart's hand as they sat down, especially when
the whispers of ‘mzungu’ reached them.
"Steady, boyo," Stuart mouthed at Noble. After so many weeks together,
Stuart knew how uncomfortable Noble got whenever Kenyans called him "white."
Honestly, Noble felt beyond uncomfortable. He was dismayed that most Kenyans
saw him as white. He’d expected, naively perhaps, to be less conspicuous
here than back home. Noble bit his lip and accepted a cup from the
bartender. This place was one of the few places he could afford during the
high season on the Spartan per diem provided by the institute funding their
projects, so he'd better not antagonize the local denizens.
Rather than examine his cup too closely for cleanliness, Noble looked around
the "restaurant." No cozy breakfast place, it ponged of the morning after a
party, and looked it, too, with smeared glasses and Tusker bottles littering
tabletops and the odd dirty plate hosting an after-party of flies. Memories
of the lessons they'd had in avoiding local infections came back to Noble.
"I don't think I can eat here," he whispered to Stuart, feeling foolish. If
pressed, he’d have insisted that more than the atmosphere bothered him, but
this early in the morning he couldn’t put a finger on what it was. He looked
around the room again, observing as a scientist and not a tourist.
Stuart slid him an indulgent look. "So don't. The tea should be hot enough
to have killed anything nasty. Drink that, and we'll get something on our
way over to the bus depot."
"So the best I can hope for is street food?" Noble sighed. Even that would
be better than the warped toast the barkeep slid in front of him on a grimy
plate. Noble watched as the plate maneuvered around an empty Rough Rider
wrapper, and that made everything click -- all of the women in the room were
the same ones he’d seen when he and Stuart checked in the night before. He
had the strong sense that these weren’t ordinary market women or travelers
from Kenya’s hinterland.. Noble did his best to hide his wince and glared at
Stuart.
"You've set me up in a brothel ?"