From Cape Town with Love by Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Blair Underwood Read Free Book Online

away from the streets. And how Chela was almost eighteen, and I was going to pay to send her to college. I wanted to tell her all about me.
    â€œSounds like a good reason,” I said.
    Maitlin picked up a photo frame from her bureau, which she stared at for nearly thirty seconds before she gave it to me. The frame held a stylish black-and-white photo of a white-haired man and a woman with Maitlin’s nose, both in their sixties. I saw the pieces of them in Sofia Maitlin, jumbled and rearranged. The photograph had caught them laughing at something off to the side.
    â€œMom and Papi,” she said. “They weren’t perfect—an artist and an activist trying to raise a kid?—but they gave me everything they had. Mom was always bugging me about having kids. I saw so many beautiful children the last time I was here, and I haven’t been able to get them out of my head. But the time wasn’t right. I’m ready now. Today, I want to see those children again. I want to bring a child home and give her everything I was blessed to have. More.”
    It was only my imagination, but in the photo I thought her mother’s eyes laughed.
    â€œChildren First?” I said, remembering. “Are they reputable?”
    â€œThey’ve only done two transnational adoptions, but my lawyers said they check out. It’s a very small agency run by a private mission.”
    â€œWill you take the baby home today?” It didn’t seem likely; there were no toys or baby gear in sight. But the baby would change our scenario, so I had to ask.
    Maitlin sighed, gently removing the photo from my hands to return it to its place. “I wish! But it’s not possible. There are piles of bureaucracy ahead. It can take five years to get approved here, they told me. But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
    I hoped it would work out for her. I didn’t want Sofia Maitlin to leave South Africa with my kind of disappointment.
    Maitlin looked up at my face, studying me.
    â€œWant to see the real reason I always book this room in Cape Town?” she said, and moved away, expecting me to follow. I did. She took me to the spacious bathroom’s doorway.
    There, in a corner by a large white soaking tub, were two huge picture windows that made the room feel like it was built entirely of glass. I could imagine her bathing with nothing but the sky above her and the ocean below. The view was breathtaking from the living room and balcony, too, but the bathtub made it a private peek show. Spectacular.
    There were no words for it. We stood in silence a moment, humbled by the vision of morning in Cape Town.
    â€œThis doesn’t happen often, does it?” she said thoughtfully.
    â€œWhat doesn’t happen?”
    â€œAn instant spark.”
    She was standing two feet from me, but suddenly the distance seemed much smaller.
    â€œExcuse me?” I said.
    â€œThe spark between two strangers. It’s a rare, delightful thing.” Her voice was soft.
    I had two warring instincts: The first, and strongest, was to lock the door and pull her into that tub with me. My next instinct was to take two steps back, toward the doorway. Training overcame them both: I did neither. I didn’t move. This was a game, and I wanted it to play out.
    â€œAnd because it’s so rare,” she went on, “we’re supposed to think itmeans something. We’re two attractive people, two polite people, and we want to think that’s a license to act out the dirty pictures in our heads. I’m sure you could make a woman lose her mind for a while.”
    Since I hadn’t lost my mind, I had heard enough to understand where this was going. I became ice, and ice could not smell the lavender in her hair. Or wonder how her skin tasted.
    â€œMs. Maitlin, I don’t know what you think you’ve heard about me . . .”
    â€œI didn’t have to hear anything.” She