Somebody's Heart Is Burning Read Free Page B

leaned back in my seat.

    There’s a river around central Abidjan, like a moat. As we approached the bridge to enter the downtown area, the driver suddenly swerved into a gravel parking lot.
    “Ici,”
said the driver.
    A hand-painted wooden sign reading
“Hôtel”
was propped against the door of an enormous stone rectangle of a building. The windows on the ground floor were boarded up.
    “Are you sure this place is open?” I asked Jean-Pierre.
    “Bien sûr!”
He jumped out and opened my door.
    I paid the driver and he peeled off, covering me in dust.
    Jean-Pierre grabbed my backpack and headed through the door.
    “Improvements,” he said, gesturing at the boarded-up windows.
    The stairway was narrow and dark after the bright gray outdoors. We climbed two flights and entered a deserted lobby with dirty green carpeting, a sagging sofa, and a counter that looked like a bar. At least there were windows—that stairwell made me feel claustrophobic.
    A man popped up behind the counter as though he’d been crouched there, waiting. He did not seem to know Jean-Pierre. I told him I’d like a room and asked the price. Before he could answer, Jean-Pierre jumped in, speaking to him in the local language. The man answered him curtly. He turned his attention to me.
    “Please, the cost is 4,000 CFA,” he said. The price, roughly thirteen dollars, was slightly more than the guidebook said. Expensive for this part of the world, but I was prepared to splurge on my first night. He reached under the bar and got a key and a form to fill out. I was ready to drop from exhaustion.
    “Can I put my things in my room?” I asked. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
    “Please,” the man at the desk said. Jean-Pierre accompanied me down a short, unlit hallway.
    “See,” he said proudly. “I got you a good price.”
    I said nothing. I dumped my things, locked the room, and headed back to the desk. I had two things on my mind: shower and laundry. I hadn’t done laundry since the volunteer project ended, and all my clothes were stuffed in my backpack in fetid lumps.
    I paid the man at the desk, who introduced himself as Adjin. I thanked Jean-Pierre, and turned toward my room.
    “Pardon,”
said Jean-Pierre, “you have forgotten my commission.”
    “Jean-Pierre,” I said, “you told me the hotel pays the commission.”
    “No! You pay the special, low price. Then you pay me commission. I got you a good price.”
    I turned to Adjin.
    “Did you give me a special price?” I asked.
    Adjin frowned, and Jean-Pierre burst into a string of words. Adjin ignored him.
    “You paid the regular price,” he told me.
    “You see,” I said to Jean-Pierre, “I don’t owe you anything.”
    “But I have helped you to get here!”
    I handed him 300 CFA. “Goodbye,” I said.
    “Uh!”
He made a high-pitched sound of disbelief.
    “Jean-Pierre, I’m tired. You said you didn’t want anything from me. That is enough.”
    I refused to feel guilty about the pained, vexed look in his eyes. Michael would’ve given him more money, even if he knew he was being ripped off. He was like that, generous as rain, giving of himself until there was nothing left. It was healthy to move the money through, he said, otherwise you got constipated. Consequently, I sometimes had to loan him the rent.
    I went to my room, shut the door, and locked it. It was a basic room: a single bed with a mosquito net hanging above it, suspended from the ceiling by a rope and a wooden ring. A ceiling fan, a wooden chair, a tiny barred window facing a cement wall. But the bathroom held an overhead shower with running water, albeit cold. That was more than I’d had in a month. I showered, lay down on my bed, and slept.

    When I emerged in the late afternoon, I asked Adjin if he knew of a place where I could do my laundry. I’d spent much of the last month on my knees in the dirt, and my light-colored cotton clothes were covered with ground-in grit. I’d scrubbed and scraped at