Page 90 of Death of the Author

“How much extra did they charge?” Uchenna asked, walking over to them. He was still typing on his phone.

“Three times the price,” Zelu said. “And it makes me feel like a freak. Writethatpart down.”

The boat was tiny, rickety, and probably overloaded. There were five other tourists, white Brits from the UK in their sixties; they were quiet, but none of them was able to resist staring at Zelu. She stared right back, daring one of them to say something. When one did, she was annoyed.

“So... are you that writer?” one of the men asked. “With the movie?”

She clenched her fists and forced a smile. “That’s me.”

“Oh, I knew you had that name, but I didn’t know you were actuallyfromNigeria,” the woman sitting beside him said. She was petite and wore a swimsuit that was too small for her. Zelu was sure one of the woman’s breasts would pop out before they made it to the beach.

“Yeah, by way of my parents,” Zelu said.Why can’t they just shut up with the small talk so I can look out at the ocean?

“So, you’re an American?” the woman asked.

Zelu glanced at the others in their group. They were all looking at her intensely. They really wanted to know.

She chuckled, keeping the smile plastered on her face. “Would you like me to produce a passport?”

The woman flinched. “Oh... well... I didn’t mean to pry.”

Then shut the fuck up, Zelu thought. But she laughed again and said, “No, no, you’re all right. Yeah, I’m Nigerian American. Born in the USA.”

This and Zelu’s smile seemed to set them all back at ease. She glanced at Uchenna and Hugo; both of them were silently cracking up. She shot Hugo a discreet middle finger and Uchenna silently cackled even harder. The boat ride to the beach took twenty minutes, and thankfully, everyone soon turned their attention outward to the glorious waters. When they reached the beach, they had to jump into about four feet of water and swim to shore.

“You couldn’t tell us this before we left?” Hugo asked the captain.

“I thought you knew,” the captain said. But the smirk on his face told Zelu the guy was purposely being an asshole. She giggled.

“Do we look like we knew that?” Uchenna asked, motioning to his jeans and sneakers.

“I’m not the type of man who judges people by their appearance,” the captain said.

Uchenna rolled his eyes.

“You can stay on the boat,” the captain said. “I will be the one taking you back in an hour anyway.”

“Fine,” Hugo said, looking down at himself uncomfortably. “You all right with that, Zelu?”

The other passengers had already jumped out and were wading toward the beach. The cool water splashed over their bodies, the waves lapping at them with gentle curiosity. She looked out at endless blue and sighed. “Yeah, no prob. But if we’re just going to wait, could we at least go a little further that way?” She pointed toward the deeper water, farther from the crowded shoreline.

“These waters aren’t very tame further out,” the captain said.

She fished a few dollars from her pocket, and he took them, nodding. She turned to Hugo. “You’ll watch my exos?”

Hugo nodded. “Remember Dubai? You get sand in the upper parts and you’ll have to spend hours picking out every single grain with tweezers. I didn’t want to discourage this excursion, but I’ve been thinking about it this entire ride.”

“Cool,” Zelu said. But her mind wasn’t on the thought of fishing out grains of sand from her exos. She was willing to do whatever she had to do. She was thinking about the ocean. She touched the sensor on the side of her exos and held her hand there for twenty seconds.

“Name?” her exos asked.

“Zelu,” she said, holding her face still so that the exos could not only recognize her voice but scan her retinas. The exos responded by removing themselves from her legs and packing tightly into a heavy two-by-two-foot box. So much possibility was now wrapped into a solid cyan cube. It always reminded her of the monolith in that old movie2001: A Space Odyssey.

She took off her shirt, folded it, and placed it atop her exos. Her swimsuit consisted of blue-and-green Ankara-printed shorts and a matchingbikini top. She took the elastic bands from her backpack and put them around her thighs. As she prepared, she ignored the captain, who was staring at everything she did. It was annoying, but she couldn’t say that she wouldn’t have done the same if she were him. Still, she wished he’d cut it out.

“Want some help?” Hugo asked.

“Yep,” she acquiesced, handing him two bands and instructing him to put them around her calves and ankles.

---