Serengeti Serenade Unzipped

By Anne Knowles

Cinn Wyatt-Jones is on her way back to the Serengeti to shoot another documentary. She's excited about the film, but she is far from excited to have to work with Dr. Colin McCullough, world-renowned expert on the Serengeti lions. Cinn has known him less than a year, and he's already broken her heart twice. When she arrives with the rest of the crew from Edwards Production Company, she finds herself pulled in two different directions. She is as attracted to Dr. McCullough as she's always been, but that attraction calls up dark thoughts, fear, and anxiety in her. Through her writing, she fights for peace of mind. In the harsh realities of the Serengeti, however, Cinn is brought face to face with danger, inhumanity, and a struggle to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Knowles
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301023417

Anne Knowles

I'm a former Vista Volunteer, zookeeper, and teacher. I write books and poetry for children.

Book preview

Serengeti Serenade Unzipped

Anne Knowles

Copyright 2012 Anne Knowles

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Cover Design by Laura Shinn

Dedication

For my friends

Ginny and Anne

Chapter 1

Here's the problem. I was on a plane to Nairobi, after which I'd be on a bus to Serengeti National Park, after which I'd settle into a room at the Seronera Lodge, after which I'd be expected at a meeting with Dr. Colin McCullough, world-renowned expert on the Serengeti lions. The inception of this problem was innocent enough. I conceived and wrote a documentary on Dr. McCullough and his lions, hung around with him for two months with a film crew, fell in love with the man, and we found out together the fun things bodies can do. I had to return to Los Angeles. He didn't want me to.

Not a word from him for three months. He came to Los Angeles for the premiere of the documentary. I got jealous (really, I'm not the jealous type) of an intern named Candace Harrington-Richelieu. Quite a mouthful until you compare it to my name. Thanks to my kooky, performance-art mother, my full name is Cinnamon Sugar Wyatt-Jones. It's a name that, if you pronounce the hyphen as a word, sounds eerily like a football cheer. Anyway, Cinnamon Sugar is bad enough (call me Cinn), but when you add an intern named Candy into the mix--I don't know--it made me think of sweet tarts.

After the premiere, Colin and I were in bed in his hotel room, and our hands were all over each other. I was doing the Hallelujah thing because maybe I wasn't going to lose him after all, and then I found out about Candy. I couldn't keep my mouth shut. He got angry. He kicked me out of his bed, told me to get dressed, got a taxi for me, and that was that.

So here's the crux of the problem. We--the film crew and I--were on our way back to the Serengeti to do an Oxford University/Global Warming Initiative-funded documentary on Candace's dissertation research. Centered on cutting-edge, digital data gathering, it had the potential to speed up collation of research findings of the effects of climate change on the biosphere. I know, Blah Blah Blah. But wait. Important stuff was going on in her work! Her methodology could help prevent loss of life. She'd focused her data gathering methods on the lions of the Serengeti. That's why Dr. McCullough was her advisor/mentor. He insisted that I be the writer on the documentary or he wouldn't do it. I mean where did that come from? I hadn't heard from him in the two months since the hotel fiasco. The documentary would be good for the lions of the Serengeti, good for future lives (humans included) that might be lost because of Global Warming, good for the University, good for the Global Warming Initiative, and good for the Edwards Production Company for whom I work. I. Could. Not. Say. No. That's my problem.

I did not want to see Colin again. I was out-of-this world angry with him. I was also out-of-this-world in love with him and had been devastated in that hotel room. I'd spent two months grieving. I could see no chance that he and I would ever get back together. I have my work. He has his work. I was trying to forget him. And yet, for three months I would have to eat, sleep, and breathe Dr. McCullough and his hazel eyes and all the rest of him, and, of course, his intern Candace.

Colin's a sexy, sexy man, and I could tell you about what happened during the two months we worked on the previous documentary. However, my story would lack the necessary social graces taught me (unsuccessfully) by my grandmother, she of the Victorian mindset.

We arrived at Seronera Lodge late at night. The cooks had sandwiches ready for us, and after a quick supper, I fell into bed and dropped off to sleep. When my alarm buzzed in the morning, I sleepwalked to the shower and washed away the miles and miles of travel.

I wrapped myself in my robe and poured a cup of coffee from the thermos I'd filled from the urn in the dining room the night before. I opened the door, stepped out on the veranda of the lodge, and looked out at the Serengeti. I took a deep breath of the air. The sun was just coming up. Its rays touched the tops of the Acacia trees and turned them golden. Long purple shadows stretched behind each tree. I heard a faint, full-throated roar in the distance. A Serengeti lion was greeting the sun. My anger melted. My fatigue faded. I was happy to be back. I'd never admit it to Dr. Colin McCullough, but somehow I felt at home.

I gave myself a little shake. I wanted to watch the acacia tree shadows shrink as the sun rose in the sky. I wanted to listen to the breeze in the grasses all morning long, but I had a meeting with Howard Edwards (owner of Edwards Production Company), Patch Whitney (soundman), Perry Kellogg (camera), and Dr. Colin McCullough. McCullough's cabin. Nine o'clock. Oh, and Candace, of course.

I pulled on a thong, a lacy bra, khaki pants, and a crisp, pink blouse. I slipped into my shoes and went to breakfast. (By the way, the thong and bra are a survival technique I used after my fiancé died almost four years earlier. My under-my-clothes girly garb kept the feminine part of me alive, just a little bit, and, in my grieving, kept me from retiring to a cold garret to write depressing novels about abandoned heroines and unrequited love. It reminded me of who I'd been with my fiancé. And now it reminded me of who I'd been with Colin, the second great love I'd lost in my life). I know I sound like the jealous type with the whole Candy thing, but there was a lot of grief going on inside me. I was beginning to think that grief was what I had been born for. Writing was my salvation as it had been my father's.

After breakfast, I took the time to do some unpacking. I picked up a small stack of shirts from my suitcase and carried them to the dresser. I noticed that the sun was shining through a small gap in the curtains, spotlighting the picture over my dresser. The picture frame barely contained the majesty of the rhinoceros that was pictured there. With its two horns and massive body, it looked invincible. I knew, however, that it wasn't invincible because poachers had brought the animal to the brink of extinction.

I put the shirts in the dresser and looked up at the picture again. The rhino's pointy lip told me the animal was a black rhinoceros. It used its prehensile lip like a finger to grasp and hold twigs to get at the leaves or to pull fruit from trees. My roommate for the next three months looked both wonderful and strange. Its legs were thick and stumpy. Its eyes were small, and its tail was short. Its gray skin stood out in the picture against the gold and green of the land around him. The way the sun peered into my room and shined on the rhinoceros captivated me. Somehow it made the animal seem exalted.

In my lodge room during the previous documentary, the picture over the dresser was of a pride of lions. It seemed fitting because they were the subjects of the film we were shooting. And how about you? I said out loud. How are you going to fit into this documentary? Yep, I was talking to my roomie, a two-dimensional rhinoceros.

I turned away and glanced at my watch. I was already a minute late for the meeting on Colin's porch. How could that have happened? Talking to a rhinoceros--that's how it happened. My grandmother's voice meandered its way into my brain. Daydreaming, young lady, will cause you fail in your duties. Keep your mind on the task at hand and your hands minding the task given you. She'd started trying to train me in her Victorian mindset before I'd even started kindergarten. How she survived having my mother for a daughter, I'll never know--a performance artist, for crying out loud! My detective father told me once that Nana's over-reaction to my mother's rather cutting-edge, crazy personality leaked over into her instructions to me. To tell the truth, I think it's a miracle that my mother fell in love with a detective. She saw the writer in him, I'm sure, and a hint of the Bohemian spirit that would fall madly in love with her. Oh God, how I missed them both! I glanced at my watch again. Five minutes late. Enough daydreaming down family-history lane. Time to go.

On my way to the door, I grabbed my coffee cup off the end table and took a last quick gulp of coffee--a too cold, too fast, and way-too-big gulp--and spilled it down my blouse. I looked at my watch. Six minutes late, and there's me with that old familiar hurry-up feeling that always trumped rational thought. My scientist, Dr. Colin McCullough, didn't appreciate latecomers. I ripped off the pink blouse, threw on a blue one, buttoned one, two buttons from the bottom up, phone rang, Howard said, 'Where the hell are you? I said, I'm on the way," and out the door I went, and down the path I ran, and up the stairs of Colin's porch where he waited to greet me.

He grinned. I hated him. His eyes lowered to my breasts, and I realized he was inappropriately enjoying the ladies. I glanced down. Top four buttons left unbuttoned in my haste, and there, for all to see, was my skimpy, lacy bra and the swell of the ladies saying Howdy-Do to Colin. This inability to travel through life with a Zen approach to dressing had been my constant companion. Colin knew it. During the filming of the last documentary, I'd told him my first grade story of the forgotten fruit-of-the-looms. And, there I was, unbuttoned, and the girls happy to be seen by the man who'd enjoyed them so much the last time I'd been in the Serengeti.

Dignity, C.S. Wyatt-Jones, I said to myself. I looked him directly in the eyes and started the process of buttoning up, but my hands were shaking. A very, very uneven job with the buttons.

Colin grinned--I hated him--took my hands, gave them a squeeze, lowered them to my sides, undid the two buttons I'd just misbuttoned--I despised him--and proceeded to button the buttons correctly--the bastard--all the while his eyes picnicking (or wanting to) on the playground of the ladies. The rascal. The pompous, self-important rascal.

What took you so long? called Howard from where he was sitting on the porch with Perry and Patch. Thank you very much, Howard, for adding a layer to my embarrassment cake.

Shut up, Howard, I said. Colin grinned at me again, took my arm like a gentleman, and, as we headed over to the group gathered in the rattan chairs, I whispered, This is your fault.

What's the matter with you, he whispered back.

Shut up, Dr. McCullough. I did not whisper. After my second, impolite shut-up in less than thirty seconds, I took a self-awareness step back. I had known when I got off the plane that I was pissed off, but this was no puddle-after-a-rainfall pissed off. I was oceanically pissed off.

Let's just get this meeting started, I said. I sat in the empty chair by the porch railing, crossed my legs, and pulled my notebook and pen out of my messenger bag. I was ready to be the professional writer that I knew I was. All business. Well, almost. Where's Candace? (Totally middle-school tone of voice).

Colin replied, She'll be out in a minute. She's brewing up a pot of coffee.

In case you've forgotten, in the attack and counter-attack that had been going on smack in the center of the well-populated porch, Howard, Perry, and Patch were listening and not one of them had put on sound-canceling headphones.

Perry stood up and threw me a lifeline. I'll help her. How obvious and sweet was that? I think they all knew what was going on. Howard, who had been like a father to me after my parents were killed in a car accident just after I'd started working for him, had listened to a full week of my granite-hard refusal to work on the second documentary. He knew me well enough to understand why I did NOT want to return to the Serengeti to film another documentary that involved Dr. Colin McCullough. I didn't tell anybody why Colin had flown back to the Serengeti the day after the premiere. But, most definitely, they all felt the tension between the two of us.

Just as Perry reached for the door handle, Candace emerged, carrying