The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2009

J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 21 down. We melted into the crowd as Roberta Flack’s voice flowed across the room like warm honey. I put my fingers where the Frenchman’s had been, and we danced, barely touch- ing until Kat moved into my arms and we kissed again and again. The Safari closed at 4:30 a.m., and I waited with her in the cool pre-dawn air while one of the volunteers hailed a taxi. Kat squeezed my hand, planted a farewell kiss on my cheek, jumped in the cab with her friends and called out the win- dow as they sped away, “Meet me this afternoon at 5—La Terazza Hotel.” I had never been to that ancient hotel, favored by eld- erly Germans, shady businessmen and the odd traveler. It was a crumbling pink stucco confection perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Paraguay River. Kat, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, was lounging on a canvas chair that cast narrow shadows across the flagstone terrace in the late afternoon sun. The muscles in her long legs flexed seductively as she played with her sandals. She was reading a book by some feminist writer I had never heard of. “Let’s go to the beer garden tonight,” she whispered, sliding her fingers around the back of my neck and rubbing my hair with her thumbs. Kat called me whenever she was in town. I would take her to dinner, where we would discuss the books we were reading and argue about Watergate, Vietnam and women’s rights. Then I would walk her back to La Terazza. She never invited me into her room and she refused to come to my apartment, but we inhaled each other’s kisses, which grew longer and more intense each time we parted. In May, I arranged to travel to Acahay for the day with F O C U S As I reached up to take her hand, she wheeled her horse, kicked him into a gallop and buried her face in his mane.