Like it Matters

by David Cornwell

  And ja, sure, it was only three places—but I let it get to me that they all said no.

  I felt betrayed, and what I did about it is I went back to the bar that couldn’t give me a job and I nearly, nearly went in—probably just to order a line of shots and bomb myself out that way.

  But then across the road, at this new place that called itself The Juicery and that had a sign out front saying MINDFUL BUCKWHEAT PANCAKES R32, I saw a waiter with blond dreadlocks and fisherman pants walk out from the entrance and go set up an umbrella at a table on the street.

  Bingo.

  It took a while—I had to order some really expensive coffee—but in the end the guy with the dreadlocks told me about his guy, Bruno, apparently he was the man around Muizenberg and everyone bought from him. He lived in a run-down hotel on the road out to St James—I couldn’t miss it—and I could tell the guys at the door that Carl sent me.

  “Are you Carl?” I asked him.

  “No. I’m Kris,” he said, and we shook hands.

  I left the place and I went away down the street. I had my eyes on my feet but my feet were stepping surely. I didn’t feel any doubt in my mind, and I walked up to the bridge and I crossed Atlantic Road

  Passing people but not really seeing them, I was already wondering what I’d go for if Bruno gave me a choice

  And then all of a sudden there it was—

  It felt like I’d bumped into the sight and it’d winded me—

  This weird piece of industria in the middle of town, it looked like a junkyard but it had government buildings right nearby and flats rising up all around, high flats with balconies full of potted ferns and laundry

  And what kind of junkyard had such awesome shit in it?

  I saw an entire carousel, listing badly, so the horses on one side were kneeling on the ground, I saw little rocket ships for kids to sit inside, the kind that come alive when you put coins in, I saw pieces of track that must’ve been for a rollercoaster, I saw plastic sheets covering other strange shapes, they flapped in the breeze but they were tied and weighted down with bricks, I saw a pile of rusty bumper cars. And then I saw the sign, hanging in front of a little workshop in the back corner of the plot:

  HELLUVA RIDES—FINEST RESTORATION AND MAINTINANCE

  It was the kind of late autumn afternoon that’d make you swear that’s what the weather was like in heaven, always. Where the sun seems like a quality of the air and everything looks polished with amber, and I was looking at the place—it didn’t look like it belonged, it looked like where kids got taken in the Land of Broken Dreams—and I’ve always been drawn to places like that, who knows why, but I’ve always loved it when places are so sad they actually go beyond it, they sort of cross over to being noble.

  I felt like I was getting some kind of message and I made a deal with myself.

  I was only allowed to go find Bruno after I’d tried to get a job at Helluva Rides.

  I followed the fence round to the back of the plot. On the door to the workshop there was a painted sign that said THE GENIUS IS … and then hanging underneath it, a big card saying IN!. All of a sudden I wished I’d had a beer earlier, or I had a cigarette right then, anything to stop my hands shaking so much

  And I wondered about heading home and coming back the next morning but I knew how that’d go—

  So I just knocked on the door, before I could think myself out of it.

  When it opened a tall guy was standing there, in white takkies and a tracksuit made out of parachute material. Dark blue, with green chevrons on it. Definitely a school tracksuit. He had a square face and short hair with a square fringe, low ears, chipped teeth in a slack mouth, small eyes and they blinked a lot when he talked.

  “Ja, can I help you?” he said.

  “Maybe. I really dig the yard out there.”

  “Oh thanksh, man. I do my besht, you know?”

  “Ja, well, it looks great. Do you run the whole thing by yourself?”

  “Ja, it’sh jusht me. Jusht me here.”

  “Could you use any help?”

  “Like what?”

  “I mean, is there any way I could maybe work here with you?” I said—

  And you should have seen the look on the dude’s face. Uncomprehending joy. Like he’d just won a lounge suite on a game show.

  He said, “Come in, come in,” and he stood to the side and waved me through the door. It was dark in there, the whole place lit by a bare bulb swinging from the ceiling and a desk lamp over in the corner of the room, standing on a trestle table. There was a book lying in the light pooled under the desk lamp.

  He went and sat down at the table and told me to make myself comfortable. I looked around but there wasn’t another chair. I leaned up against a big machine.

  He found an exam pad on the desk and then he scratched around and found a pen as well. “Oh, I’m Duade,” he said, then leaned forward and shook my hand. For some reason, I think he wrote his name down on the pad. “What’sh your name?”

  “Ed,” I told him.

  “Ed …?”

  “Bennett.”

  “How do I shpell that?”

  I told him, and he wrote it down. “What’re you reading there?” I said.

  “No, I’m writing.”

  “But the book there on the table, what is it?”

  It was a Harry Potter.

  Duade asked me a bunch of questions—some normal stuff, like my age and if I had a car and if I was married, but then also some weird ones, like my star sign, my blood type, who I voted for, how many times a week on average I went to church. Then I think he ran out of ideas and there was a long lull and to fill it I said, “Do you have a car?”

  He said, “Not anymore, hey. Do you?”

  “Uh, no. I think you asked me that already.”

  He turned back a page on the exam pad and read for a while, then said, “Hey, I did. Good shtuff.”

  Then Duade put the pen down and pushed the exam pad away across the desk. “But that’sh all boring things,” he said. “Tell me about yourshelf.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’d be another boring thing,” I said. He didn’t laugh. He just kept looking at me, that open-mouthed, blinking smile fixed on his face. “What do you want to know?” I said.

  “Tell me about your family.”

  “No ways.”

  “Okay, tell me about your firsht job.”

  “I want this to be my first job,” I told him. “And I don’t really care even if you can’t pay me that much. Just get me some paints and let me paint the carousel or something, please.”

  And I knew that’d probably do it, but just to be sure—

  Even though, already, I felt like I didn’t really want the thing I was about to win—

  A reluctant serpent under a sick flower, I stood up and brought my hands in front of me and stared a little down at my shoes and I said, “Duade, this will really help me, please. Please help me.”

  The old train station had scaffolding all over it—it looked caged in and a bit sinister, the clock like a huge unblinking eye—and all the buildings on my side of the road were unlighted and they were set back from the pavement and tall grass grew behind the low, broken walls. One of the places was missing a door and I could see someone had a fire going inside—thick smoke in the firelight, paraffin smell drifting out onto the street. A bit further down, a young couple were setting up camp for the night on a dry porch. Her back was to me but I could see she was holding something heavy and I remember thinking, God, I hope that isn’t a kid.

  A few hundred more metres down the road I saw the hotel. That guy at the juice place, Carl or Kris or whatever, he was right—you couldn’t miss it. It had a big piece of wall missing where the moon was shining through, and just in general, the way the walls looked shored up by a raft of seedy yellow light on the bottom floor, you just knew, it was obvious, it might as well’ve had a neon sign on the roof flashing DRUGS! DRUGS! DRUGS!

  I turned in through a rusty gate, up
a little path and a wide, cracked staircase. The place had a big stoep and it was covered in bright light, like security light, giving everything sharp shadows and pluming my breath as soon as it came out my mouth. There was a barred gate in a wooden doorway and I went up to it and rang the bell. Inside smelled like bugs and wet carpets.

  I heard some floorboards creak and then two big guys appeared in the hallway. One of them had a piece of paper in his hand. Both of them were dressed in coats and scarves and beanies.

  “List?” one of them called.

  “I’m just looking for Bruno.”

  They came up to the gate.

  “He’s not here. On the list?”

  “Uh, maybe,” I said. “My name’s Carl.”

  “But on the list, what name?”

  “Kris.”

  He shook his head.

  “Pick one there for me,” I said.

  The guy who hadn’t said anything yet smiled. “Sorry, my brother,” he said. “Not tonight, nè?”

  “But, I mean, do you guys have?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But you must organise. You must be on the list.”

  “I’ve got a pen here with me,” I said. “How much for you to fix the list? I’ll take anything.”

  The first guy who’d spoken to me—he was bigger than the other guy, and he had an awesome afro—walked up very close to the gate. He looked angry.

  He leaned with his hands on the metal and his mouth between the bars and he said, “There are cameras. He watches. If you don’t go now I have to chase you.”

  “If you chase me, can I buy something from you?” I said

  And I seriously didn’t even see him move

  But some of his knuckles came through the bars and got me right above the eye. While I was swearing and rubbing my forehead, I heard him say, “Sorry, sorry. Come tomorrow,” and then I heard him on the floorboards walking away.

  I went down the stairs and I was feeling so angry I just kicked the shit out of a little tree I saw planted in the lawn. It hurt my foot but it snapped so nicely, and I stood there with my hands on my knees and just breathed and breathed and I felt a bit better.

  But then I didn’t feel dizzy and vengeful anymore and I stood up and took my hands off my knees, and I looked at the tree, and I saw it’d been tied to some stakes and so the broken pieces were still floating there, sort of next to each other, not quite touching

  And I realised that was probably two years of work I’d just gone and cancelled forever

  And that probably made me more of a fuck-up than any- thing else that’d happened all day.

  I was in a mist the whole way back up the road—I mean in my mind, with feeling shit about myself, as well as the wet stuff that soaked through my hair onto my scalp, and made me puff water off my lips when I breathed and made it difficult to see anything except shadows and lights.

  I really wasn’t in the mood for a miracle.

  But sometimes life feels like that—like it’s only got two gears and if it’s not bloodless, it’s frenzied …

  Back at the top of the road, near the train station, I saw this special shadow coming through the night and it happened again.

  My breath came shallow and I could feel my heart had run right to the end of its chain already, and I stood there under a streetlight and I watched her come closer and I begged god that it’d really be her this time, not another mirage—

  And it was, it was definitely her—

  That was Charlotte and she was coming right at me.

  She had her head down and she wasn’t looking around. Somehow, I knew where she was off to

  And just when she went past me I said, “He’s not there, hey.”

  She stopped.

  “I mean, unless you’re on the list.”

  She turned around and I saw her face, it looked so soft and full of secrets, and she said, “Oh, it’s you. I remember you. The ice-cream guy? But it’s only seven o’clock.”

  I shrugged. “I just came from there.”

  “Ja?”

  “I wasn’t on the list. One of the dudes punched me.”

  “Okay, well. That fucks that plan then.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. Then, “I didn’t know you could go out at night.”

  She didn’t say anything. She was chewing her lip and staring down the road. I looked at her wrist and she was still wearing her bracelet.

  I said the same thing again.

  “Huh? Oh, my dad thinks I’m at a concert.”

  “The one down the road there, at the church? I heard it. It sounded jangly.”

  “Ja.”

  “He’s kind of trusting, isn’t he?”

  “No, I’m proud of this one,” she said. “I planned this one all by myself.”

  “Ja?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Well, you have to tell me,” I said. “I’m your sponsor, aren’t I? What if I want to talk you out of it?”

  “I know this guy,” she said. “Wayne, this musician. And obviously he’s broke, like all the time, so then when my dad started telling me about this band night they had at the youth church, and how I had a beautiful voice and the Lord wants to hear me use it and whatever, at first I just kept telling him to fuck off, but then I got an idea.”

  She can sing, Ed!

  “I got him to call the church for me and I found out they paid the band, pretty well actually, way more than you’d make playing anywhere else around here. So I found Wayne at the beach one day and I hooked him up with the number, and I told him just not to show up there high, or if he was, just to sit by himself with his eyes closed and his hands together to throw them off his trail.”

  “Jeez. This is like a full-on scheme, hey?”

  “You have no idea. So I got Wayne in there, and then the first week after that I just mentioned to my dad that maybe the church band thing wasn’t such a terrible idea. And I did little things, like I started singing more around the house, Bible songs and hymns, and I’d pretend I couldn’t remember the words and I’d ask him to remind me. He loved that.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, and it was the weirdest thing, because she wasn’t trying to be sexy, she was being sort of evil, but this pressure came into my groin and I was dying to hear her go on.

  “And then the next week, this was last week, I asked him to take me along to watch the band, and when he picked me up afterwards I introduced him to Wayne, like as if Wayne was the guy who ran the show, and then in the car on the way home I made sure he saw I was playing with a piece of paper with a number on it. It said WAYNE in big letters on the paper, but it wasn’t actually his number—”

  “It was his dealer’s.”

  “Ooh, you’re smart. Anyway, now here we are tonight, my first gig.”

  Christ, the way she was smiling when she said that …

  “But how’d you keep him from coming to watch?” I asked her.

  “Oh, that’s the best part. It’s a youth church, no over-twenty-threes allowed.”

  “Money?”

  “Twenty per cent of what Wayne gets, every time he plays.”

  “So what you’re telling me, Charlotte, is that you’re some kind of genius?”

  “Almost. I couldn’t pull it together to get my name on the list.”

  “No, you could’ve,” I said. “You just didn’t. I think you wanted this part to feel like it happened all on its own.”

  “Ja, maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s also because he’s put a fucking PIN on the home phone.” She laughed. “So what do we do now?”

  Just kiss me, I was thinking.

  Kiss me, then who fucking cares about the rest?

  “Ja, I was thinking about that. We could walk around and try talk to somebody, except I’m worried anything we find’ll be mostly bicarb and Rattex.”

  “Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I quit buying drugs off the street long before I quit buying drugs. Also, I only have a couple of hours.”

  “Could probably get a bit d
runk?”

  She shook her head again. “No, my face really wears it when I drink. And I’ll smell like a bar.”

  “Okay.”

  “So no more ideas?”

  I said, “I’m just trying to think of something you’d like.”

  “Well, don’t. Just think of something you like. And even if I hate it, I’ll fake-like it, I promise.”

  “I do a weird thing sometimes. When I can’t sleep at night.”

  “Ja?”

  “Ja, follow me,” I said.

  We went back up the road, past the Christian radio station with the sign in the window saying:

  LET GOD HAVE YOUR LIFE; HE CAN DO MORE WITH IT THAN YOU

  Past the youth church, past the park, down the road some more and then we took a left and headed up the hill. Ahead of us, all the house lights and the streetlights bled into the air, the mist so bright you couldn’t tell how deep it was. The road was slick and it had streaks of colour on it from the lights. We kept going up the hill, then I chose a street to turn down—Charlemagne, one of my favourites. I told her to close her eyes.

  She did, and that gave me an excuse to hold her hand. I led her down the road, looking at the houses—some of them looked like boats in the mist, some of them like castles. No one was home at the one I really wanted to show her so it didn’t look like anything. I chose one just a bit further down the road, one of the castles. “Okay,” I told her. “You can open your eyes.”

  The first thing she said was, “There’s no fucking ways you live up here.”

  I laughed. “No, my place is much further up the hill.”

  “No, I just mean, you know, what’s the point?”

  “Is this how you fake-like stuff, Charlotte?”

  She gave me a nice, long smile for that one. Then she said, “Seriously, I’m interested. Why’re we here?”

  “Look at the thing,” I said.