Beverly Hills Maasai (16 page)

“That
is
amazing,” I agreed.

“And here’s fifty dollars for you.” He pressed it into my hands. Once again I was too stunned to speak.

“I hope that’s okay. I figure I should keep most of it because I did all the singing and I’m the one in the Elvis suit, but you deserve a cut.”

“Umm … thanks,” I stammered. I looked down at the bills in my hand.

“I was wondering,” he said. “Do you think you might want to partner up with me?”

“You want
me
to wear an Elvis suit?” I asked.

He laughed. “No, just show up and let me sing to you, like today.”

“I can’t do that,” I said, shaking my head.

“Don’t say no. Just think about it. They loved us!” He beamed. “Here, take my card and think about it. Okay?”

He offered me his card and used that excuse to grab my hand again. Not more singing! I had terrible visions of him bursting into “Blue Suede Shoes.”

“Just promise me you’ll think about it,” he pleaded.

“I promise. I gotta move my car before I get arrested.” Or he started singing “Jailhouse Rock.”

I ran off toward my car.

“Promise!” he yelled out.

“I promise!” I called back over my shoulder.

I stood at the front gate, waiting, looking up and down the street. I glanced at my watch. It was almost five. Carlos had told me they’d left just after two o’clock to go on a training run.

If I hadn’t been at school when they left I would never have let them go out by themselves. I would have gone along—well, at least driven behind them. Now they were out there by themselves, alone somewhere. They could be lost, or something could have happened to them … but then again, this
was
L.A. It wasn’t like they were going to run into an elephant or a lion, and even if they did they’d certainly know how to handle it. No, the worst thing they could run into in our neighbourhood was a very large French poodle, and that wouldn’t be a problem … unless they killed it and brought it home for lunch. Okay, now I was worried again.

“Good afternoon, dear!”

It was my mother, waving her arm above her head in greeting, dressed in her yoga clothing and coming from her Zen garden. I waved back.

I walked out onto the street so I could see farther in both directions. The street was quiet except for the sound of a couple of birds singing in the bushes. Instinctively I looked at my watch again, like somehow that was going to help.

“Are you looking for your friends?” my mother asked.

“Desperately.”

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. They all have such strong auras.”

“Auras?”

“Life force, an energy field that is visible to the eye,” she explained.

How was I supposed to respond to that?

“The body has seven chakras, and the soul escapes through trap doors and forms a halo around the body.”

“Like an angel?”

She laughed. “In some ways we are
all
angels.”

Man, she was getting stranger by the day. Was my mother burning incense in her little Zen garden to cover up what she was smoking?

She took her hands and ran them from my head down both sides of my body, almost but not quite touching me.

“Did you feel that?” she asked.

“You didn’t touch me.”

“But I did touch your
aura.”

“I didn’t know I had one.”

“We all have one, and yours is particularly beautiful.”

“Thank you.” I figured if I
did
have an aura it would have to be beautiful.

“Can you see mine?” she asked.

I looked at her. I couldn’t see anything. “Not really.”

“It’s there. If you meditated with me you would see auras… like I can see yours right now,
so
clearly.”

I noticed that the sun was behind me and she was sort of looking into it. “It might be the way the bright sun sort of does funny things to your vision. If you were wearing my Gucci sunglasses it would filter it out.” I offered her my sunglasses.

She declined the glasses. “In some ways you’re right. The quest for material things like those glasses does get in the way of people’s auras. Through yoga and meditation, we can rise above the material world.”

That would have come across as more legitimate if she hadn’t been wearing expensive yoga clothes, standing in front of her mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

“I know. I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Who am I to speak about forsaking materialism?”

She was right, and I suddenly felt uncomfortable.

“It’s part of my journey. Part of my work.” She smiled. “Speaking of work, would you like to see the website?”

“The website? … Oh yeah, the website you’re making about Nebala and the guys?”

“And their efforts to raise money to build a well.”

“I’d
love
to see it,” I said. “But not right now … I’m a little worried about where they are.” I didn’t have
time to waste indulging her latest little whim. Considering that she’d just discovered there even
was
an Internet, I didn’t hold out much hope for her web design.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “They’re fine.”

“I was thinking that I should maybe go out in my car and have a look for them.”

“Let’s give them a bit longer. I’m
sure
they’re fine.”

“I’m just worried that they might be lost. All the streets here curve around the hills in such a confusing way. Even people who live here get lost. I could just go out and drive around—”

“Listen!” she said. She closed her eyes. “Can you hear?”

Great. Was she
hearing
auras now? All I could hear were the birds singing in the trees.

“No, I don’t—”

“Just close your eyes and listen.”

We were still standing in the middle of the road, and I didn’t think that was such a wise thing to do. Wait … I could hear something … Was it voices?

“It sounds like singing,” my mother said.

“Probably somebody’s sound system … maybe their car stereo.”

I took her by the hand, and her eyes opened as I guided her off to the side of the road.

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “it’s not that.”

My mother had closed her eyes again, and I thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. I closed my eyes too and tried to focus on the sound. It was faint, but
it did seem to be getting louder, closer. It was rhythmic but not really musical. There were voices but no music. There was no big bass beat behind it like I’d expect from a car stereo.

“There they are,” my mother said.

My eyes popped open, and I looked one way and then the other … and saw them! The three Maasai were coming toward us, running down the street. As they ran they were singing. Nebala was calling out a verse and the other two echoed it back. I’d heard the Maasai singing similar songs in Kenya. They got closer and closer, and the singing got stronger and louder and clearer. Not that I understood the words. They were singing in Maa.

I noticed then that they all were barefoot. Their new running shoes were tied together and looped over their necks, bouncing and swaying as they ran.

Nebala raised his hand and they stopped singing and stopped running, slowing down to a walk.

“Those shoes work better if they’re on your feet,” I said.

“We run better without them,” Nebala said.

“You must have run a long way. I was starting to get a little worried,” I said. “I thought you might get lost.”

“Us?” he exclaimed. “Lost? We are—”

“I know, I know. You’re Maasai. But this isn’t the Serengeti and you don’t know your way around here.”

“Is it not the same sun in the sky?” he asked. “Is this not the same wind that blows?”

“You used the sun and the wind to find your way back here?” I asked.

“Those and a map.”

Samuel produced a glossy-looking map. He handed it to me.

“You had a map of the movie-star homes?” I asked, incredulous.

“We bought it from a man,” Nebala said. “Did you know that Rocky lives close to here?”

I didn’t know any Rocky.

Samuel started to hum—it was the theme song from the movie
Rocky!

“You mean Sylvester Stallone?”

“Yes, yes, Rocky! He lives one street over. And there is Tom Cruise and—”

“How do you know all these people?” I asked.

“We are from Kenya, not the planet Mars,” he said. “Although even on Mars they must know Elvis is only the second-best singer the world has known.”

“Second-best? Who’s first?”

“Bob Marley, of course.”

“Yes, yes, Bob Marley!” Samuel called out.
“I shot the sherriffff!”
he sang out loudly.

“But I did not shoot the deputy,”
Koyati chimed in.

I don’t know what shocked me more, the Bob Marley or Koyati singing Bob Marley.

“Okay, that’s great,” I said, trying to silence them.

Nebala joined them in the song, and my mother pulled out her cellphone and began snapping pictures—more shots for her website assignment, I guessed. It was all strange, but it could have been worse. At least there was no Elvis. Still, I wished they would forget about Elvis and Bob Marley and focus on the race …
tomorrow was almost here. And this wasn’t just a race. This was about winning enough money to build a well so their cows and crops and tribe members could survive … winning enough money to buy back their cattle and their manhood. I felt a wave of anxiety swell through my body.

“This is just unbelievable,” I said, more to myself than anybody else, as we wandered through the throngs of runners gathering for the race.

“It’s wonderful to see so many people taking part in such a wonderful opportunity,” my mother said.

“How many people do you think are here?” Olivia asked.

“I heard something on the radio about it being over twenty-five thousand participants,” my father answered. “And who knows how many more have come to watch? I heard there might be somewhere between a hundred and two hundred thousand spectators.”

Olivia and both of my parents had come down to offer their support. It was great to have them all here. It was strange about my parents. Not that long ago, putting them in the same place at the same time
would have been the only ingredients necessary to cook up a big fight.

“You didn’t all need to come down,” I offered.

“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Olivia said.

“And I just wanted to make sure that there were no, shall we say, complications,” my father added.

“They’re official.”

All three had their tracking chips, and their entry numbers were pinned to their chests. They all were also wearing their original shoes, the tire-tread sandals. They found that they just couldn’t run with those fancy shoes on their feet. Dakota and his shoe sponsor wouldn’t be happy if those three found themselves on the victory podium wearing their sandals. The sponsor’s high-tech, space-age-material, super-expensive, super-advertised sports footwear was basically the Prada of running shoes.

An announcement came over the P.A. system: “Runners, please report to your assigned sections.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Everybody shrugged. Nobody knew.

“Let’s ask him,” Olivia said, pointing to a man. “He looks official.”

With his orange vest, and carrying a big walkie-talkie that looked like an old-school cellphone, he did have that official quality.

“Excuse me,” my father said to him. “Where do our runners go?”

“Each runner reports to his or her starting-grid position,” the man replied.

“And that means?” my father questioned.

“We can’t have everybody start at the same time and same place or there’d be a stampede, so there are different grid spots, with the fastest runners starting from the front positions and those with slower qualifying times starting farther back.”

Suddenly I had a very bad feeling.

“And how do we know where they start?” my father said, pointing to the Maasai.

“By the entry number that they were assigned,” he said. “Let me have a look at your numbers and I can tell you their grid spot.”

I already knew where they were going to be. “What’s the last grid spot?” I asked.

“Ten … and that’s where you three are going to be starting. Grid ten.”

“But that means there are over twenty thousand runners who will be in front of them,” I said.

“Closer to twenty-
two
thousand runners,” the official said.

“What is the name of that
gentleman
whom I was dealing with, the director of this race?” my father asked.

“Dakota Rivers,” I said.

“Dakota Rivers,” my father repeated slowly. “When I find him, he’s going to severely regret ever crossing me. I’m going to find him right now and have him change their starting place or—”

“The race is going to start in less than five minutes,” the official said. “If they don’t get to their grid positions before race time they’ll be disqualified.”

“With all these people out here it might be very hard for anybody to tell just where exactly they started from,” my father said.

I knew his mind was already spinning, looking for a way around this.

“No, it wouldn’t,” the official said.

“You’re going to tell?” my father asked.

“The
chip
is going to tell.”

We all exchanged confused looks.

“The chip contains a global positioning system, so the computer link knows exactly where they are at all times during the race … including the start of the race. If they’re not in their grid they
will
be disqualified.” He looked at his watch. “And they have less than three minutes to get there. They’d
really
better hurry. In fact, come with me and I’ll lead you there just to make sure. Come.”

He started off through the crowd, and we all rushed after him—a funny little parade of me, Olivia, the three Maasai, and both my parents moving through a sea of runners. They were all warming up—stretching and bending and doing little fast steps. Some seemed to be lost in thought, while others were laughing and talking and practically vibrating, waiting with excitement for the start.