You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers Page A

and Hand, that he had calm where I had chaos and wisdom where Hand had just a huge gaping always-moving mouth. But he was not cool, though Hand and I aspired to be and occasionally achieved some level of local cool. Jack didn’t have the gene, couldn’t move with any kind of fluidity or fury, couldn’t push his socks down the right way, wanted his hair to work for him but spent too much time keeping it in place. He was careful and kept his corners crisp—we’d assumed it was because he was asthmatic, and was for years such a tiny kid, so much smaller than the rest of us, shorter, thinner, proportionate but almost anemic. He was coordinated, a fine athlete, really, but so small, a miniature kid—even his head was smaller. Until the last year or so of high school, that is, whenhe shot up, hit six feet, filled out, and with his liquid eyes and chin-dimple became a favorite of mothering girls who wanted both to coddle him and teach him things they knew he’d need to know. And he’d taken the new attention with a sense of responsibility, a solemnity even, that we found infuriating.
    The low rumble of our idling truck came to an end, and there were voices coming close.

THURSDAY
    We woke up late. It was 9 A.M. already.
    “What a waste,” Hand said. “We could have slept in the car on our way somewhere.”
    “We’ll be fine.”
    “We really have to move.”
    We were throwing our stuff in our backpacks.
    “Did you get up last night?” I asked. “I woke up at 2:30 or something and you were gone.”
    “Yeah, I woke up. You were talking in your sleep.”
    “What’d I say?”
    “Nothing sensical.”
    “So you left?”
    “I went down to Raymond’s.”
    “No.”
    “I did. Man, that guy—”
    Someone knocked on the door. I opened it; a very small woman gestured that she’d like to clean the room. I apologized and said we’d be leaving soon. She smiled and bowed and backed out.
    “Wait,” I said. “What’s that smell?”
    “It’s you. You smell.”
    “It’s us. We smell.”
    I inhaled from my underarm. The smell was very strong. “We’llhave to wash these things. We’ll soak through everything today.” We’d figured out long ago that it wasn’t the first-time sweat that created odor. It was the second time sweat came through once-exposed skin or cloth. It was the
re-sweat
.
    I showered with great joy. In the shower, swallowing water, the water broke and hissed on my head, while heavy drops, after loving my abdomen, touched, rhythmically, my insteps. I said to myself, actually whispering out loud, that it was the greatest shower I’d ever known.
    We drove to the airport and made for the Air Afrique desk. Behind the counter were three queens—grand, dressed in the most florid and glorious wares, skin luminous like lanterns polished.
    We asked what they had flying out.
    “Where are you going?” they asked.
    “What do you have flying out?” I asked.
    “You do not know where you are going.”
    “Well, yes and no.”
    They had a flight to Mauritania, but Mauritania wanted a visa.
    “Anything else?”
    “There is a flight tomorrow to Casablanca.”
    Morocco required no visa. But we’d have to stay in Senegal one more night. Which meant the diminished likelihood of us making it around the world. We were failing in every way at the same time.
    We made sure there was room on the flight and decided to decide later. We left the airport, heading for the coast, for Saly, where there were beaches. First we had to swim. Then we’d see the crocodiles and the monkeys. Then to Gambia and back. We could make it, we figured, but we’d have to speed.
    We were lost before we left the airport complex. In front of an abandoned hangar we stopped for directions. There were about thirty men there, half in suits, standing in the parking lot adjoining the airport. A contingent of five approached the car. Weexplained where we needed to go, Saly, and instead of directing us, two of them began arguing, each with his