It was the trip they’d talked about for 30 years, imagined first those lovely weekends outside of Breckenridge when John’s dissertation chairman would lend them his remote cabin. It was shortly after they’d met and long before they married, long before they were able to marry, uniting John’s interest in all things Hemingway and Carl’s love of all things photography.

            They still talked about it, maps of African countries dotting the walls of their historic home in Madison, where John taught and Carl managed a creative arts cooperative. And when at last they both were able to retire, they purchased the trip they’d fantasized about all those years. Twelve days and nights following the Great Migration through Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro, and the Serengeti, followed by another week near Lake Manyara, where Ernest himself had stayed.

            “I thought there were supposed to be mountains of giraffes,” Carl said, after they’d been bouncing through the arid landscape in an open-air Land Rover for nearly four hours.

            “I’m sure they’ll be out and about soon.”

            “All these animals heading nowhere, you’d think there’d be plenty of giraffes.”

            “You’re having fun, though, aren’t you?”

            Carl tipped his head down and looked at John over the rim of his Ray Bans.

            It would be their last trip, John had decided. Whatever had been there once – in the Breckenridge cabin, when they finally got married, the historic house they’d renovated that Carl would now get….

            It was time. He had not yet told Carl.

            “Come on,” John pleaded. “It’s not that bad, is it? Isn’t this what we’ve dreaming about since we first got together?”

            “I didn’t have a bad back, and you didn’t have acid reflux. I never imagined drowning in sunscreen, and you never, ever said you’d be wearing Bermuda shorts, for Goddess’s sake.”

            The road turned and dipped, and the driver eased to a stop. An entire herd standing there, some drinking in that spastic way of theirs, a few youngsters bouncing around energetically.

            They watched a mother give birth.

            “OMG!” Carl said, raising his hands to his face. “Did that mama just kick her baby?”

            “To get it moving,” Carl said. “Mama knows that Baby better get up and get moving, or some predator will make a meal of Baby.”

            Later, back at the hotel, Carl was thumbing through a magazine, while John was checking his email.

            “Did you know giraffes are queer?”

“What?”

“Says here that 94 percent of observed giraffe fucking is men-on-men,” Carl said, tossing aside the magazine. “Now that I would have liked seeing.”

“You’re making this up.”

            “I’m not. It’s right there in the magazine.”

            “Seriously?” John said, shutting the lid of his laptop and looking up at Carl, sprawled across the bed.

            “But they don’t establish life-long relationships, it said. Just short term, apparently.”

            “Fuck ‘em and leave ‘em, huh?” John said, laughing.

            “Like what you’re doing to me. Isn’t it? Leaving? You don’t have to tell me. I know.”

From Julia Berger: