by Smith, Roger
Exley shrugs and Vernon feels the poison inside loop up through his innards, seeping into his bloodstream. “Okay, you have a good night. But I’m warning you, that’s rough trade you got inside your house. Don’t be fooled by the nice packaging.”
“Thanks for that insight,” Exley says, and Vernon can feel his knuckles connecting with that mouth, ungrateful little fucker’s teeth flying like popcorn.
Vernon turns and gets into the car. He watches Exley enter the house and close the door, then he starts the Civic and takes off at speed, roars his way along the coast road, no music, nothing, just the image of Doc’s needle in his vein keeping him from totally and completely fucken losing it.
Chapter 45
Exley lies in the dark on the sofa in the living room, covered by the sheet he brought down from the linen closet, his head on a new foam pillow still thick with the smell of the plastic it was wrapped in. The house is quiet but not empty, the ghosts of his wife and daughter diluted by the presence of Dawn and her child.
Exley catches a trace of Dawn’s scent, a mix of cinnamon, woman sweat and tobacco. As he sees her splashing in the waves, laughing, her hair dripping water, he feels his cock harden.
Lifting his head from the pillow, Exley sits up, the sheet sliding from his body. He stares down at the erection tent-poling his shorts, willing it to wilt, but it doesn’t obey. He can’t remember the last time he was this turned on. Maybe back in New Mexico, as a teenager, when he lost his cherry? Definitely not when he and Caroline first slept together, which was arousing more on a cerebral than a physical level.
Exley flicks a finger against his swollen dick. You, my friend, are an unwelcome visitor.
In an effort to distract himself, he thinks of the child asleep in Sunny’s room. He remembers the evening—pizzas and Disney DVDs—Brittany rattling off her own commentary in that garbled, staccato accent. He thinks of Vernon Saul telling him that yet another black man is being sacrificed to protect Exley’s privileged white ass. Thinks of anything but Dawn lying up in the spare room.
It doesn’t help.
So he allows the images of horror that he has kept behind an emotional firewall to seep through: Sunny dead on the beach, Caroline spewing blood, the cop’s skull turning to pulp.
But still his desire is not dimmed. If anything, his cock is even harder now, painfully engorged, throbbing against his belly, the brew of grief, guilt, terror and bloodshed working as a potent aphrodisiac. Perverse, of course, but there it is.
Jesus Christ, you sick bastard, he says out loud, lie down and go to sleep.
But the words slide away into the darkness and Exley finds himself standing and walking to the stairs, his hard-on like a dowsing rod leading him upward.
The door opening wakes Dawn and she thinks it’s Brittany, but there’s enough moonlight coming through the curtains for her to see Nick Exley, standing in the doorway, wearing only a pair of shorts.
“Nick, what’s wrong?” she whispers, sitting up, holding the sheet against her chest even though she’s sleeping in a T-shirt and panties.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This is crazy.” Turning to go.
Dawn knows, right then, that it is her call. Does her life stay as it is, or does it change? She says, “Nick, come here.”
He does, with his almost hairless boy’s body and his surprisingly big cock, and when what happens happens, it feels shockingly intimate. It’s the first time Dawn has ever slept with a man sober, and it’s the first time since she was raped as a child that she’s let a penis into her without a condom. Even the messed-up night that Brittany was conceived she knows a rubber was used. It must have torn (cheap shit she got free from the sex clinic) but there was no barebacking, ever.
So, this is terrifyingly intense, this broken man with all his pain, deep inside her, carrying her with him, making her feel things that are better left forgotten.
Exley, lost in this woman’s heat, her hair flung dark against the white linen, is visited by his dead wife, her memory coded into his skin. He feels the hard bones of her blue-white, freckled body, her inverted nipples fleeing his hands and mouth. Caroline always holding back, unyielding, fighting him, even now.
He pushes through her and into Dawn, her dark body fuller, warmer, more welcoming, her nipples hard against his chest, her breath hot on his face.
Nick’s cock thickens and hardens and she can feel the small spasms low in his stomach, his breath coming in gasps, sweat from his face dripping onto hers, and that’s okay—Dawn’s no stranger to guys getting their jollies—but now there are no chemicals to keep her dead and detached and safe and she tries to stop herself but she can’t and she feels the orgasm welling up in her, bringing with it all the self-loathing and shame from so long ago.
She fights it, her mind filled with the same hot disgust she felt then. Tries to push it down and away. But it explodes inside her and she hears the filth on her mommy’s bed say, “You like it, you little whore, you like it, don’t you? You. Fucken. Like. It.”
Nick falls asleep almost immediately—lying on her with his arms and legs spread like he’s in freefall—and Dawn slips out from under him and leaves the room without waking him.
She walks naked into the bathroom and has to pass through the main bedroom, its king-size bed a tangle of sheets. Dawn flashes on him in that bed with a faceless woman who is now dead. She pees and wraps herself in a towel and goes downstairs to where her cigarettes lie on the table in the living room, in the mess of pizza boxes and McD’s kiddie food and DVDs. A pillow and a blanket lie on the sofa, where Nick slept. Or lay awake.
Smoking, standing at the glass doors staring out at the moonlight on the water, Dawn feels the presence of the dead woman and child, not like ghosts, but how they live on in the man sleeping upstairs, and always will.
Dawn goes back up and pauses at the door to the spare room. She can hear Nick’s soft snores. She walks down the passageway to the child’s room. A nightlight is on and Brittany sleeps clutching the little bear, her face hidden and, surrounded by the clothes and toys and photographs of Sunny, she could almost be the dead girl.
Dawn is gripped by a crazy panic and turns her sleeping daughter’s head to see that it is still her, that she hasn’t been stolen away, her soul bartered in exchange for the return of this rich white kid.
Stupid thoughts. Of course it’s Brittany, mumbling, her little hand reaching out and grabbing at Dawn, who curls up on the narrow bed with her daughter. But she can’t sleep. Terrified for herself and for her child.
This isn’t their world. She sees how easily Brittany could slide into it, how happy she could become, here in this house with its beach and its endless supply of junk food and kid’s movies.
And what happens when it’s all taken away? Because it will be. That’s how it is, for sure. People give you things but just as quick they take them back, and want more from you than they ever gave.
At first light Dawn packs Brittany’s things, and creeps into the spare room to get her clothes. Nick sleeps on. She feels guilt, for an instant, but knows she mustn’t weaken. That she has to protect them.
She goes back to the child’s room and dresses Brittany and lifts her from the bed. Her sleeping daughter is a deadweight, and Dawn feels like a donkey carrying the bags and the kid down the stairs, trying to make no noise.
Dawn heads for the front door and sees one of those keypads beside it, suddenly terrified that Exley set the alarm and when she opens the door it’ll scream and wake him. But the door opens without a sound and she closes it and breathes the fresh, cool air of morning.
She stresses again when she comes to the high, barred front gate. Locked. No handle. Then she sees a little button to the side and she jabs it and the gate clicks opens and they are free.
She takes off in the direction of the main road, far away, high above the sleeping suburb. Brittany wakes and wants to pee. Dawn lets her do it at the side of the road, the child trickling her piss into some rich person’s gut
ter. Then the kid won’t walk, so Dawn has to carry her, wondering how the hell she’s going to get all the way up that mountain.
She hears the whine of an engine and a little truck battles it way up toward her, two surfboards in silver covers tilted in the back catching the sun like mirrors. Dawn waves the truck down.
A couple of young white guys with long blond hair and fluff on their chins, dressed in wetsuits, look up at her.
“Hey,” the driver says.
“Give us a lift, man,” Dawn says.
“Where you going?”
“To the taxis.”
“We're going down to Hout Bay. We can drop you there, okay?”
“Cool,” Dawn says, and the passenger gets out and lets her sit between him and the driver. They smell of seawater and weed. Brittany sleeps on, Dawn hugging her close.
The truck takes off, old-school reggae buzzing through the speakers. Bob Marley telling her: no woman, no cry. The guys don’t speak, which is fine with Dawn. She thanks them when they drop her at the circle near Mandela Park, black workers already piling into the taxis on their way to the city.
Dawn gets her and Brittany into a minibus, letting the Xhosa chatter calm her, watching the mountains and trees of the rich give way to the low, ugly suburbs of the poor. Going back to where she belongs.
Chapter 46
Vernon is woken by the whine of a power tool. He sits up on Doc’s rancid sofa, sun blasting through the broken window, all manner of stench welcoming him back to the world. He checks out his watch. After ten. He doesn’t have to work, but he still needs to get his ass into gear.
He feels rested. His mind calmer, focused now. His rage wrapped up nice and tight, ready for when he needs it. He knows all he has to do is keep chilled and a plan will come about how to deal with Exley and Dawn, forming piece by piece in his mind, like his plans always do.
He needs to take a piss and walks deeper into the house than he has ever been, toward the noise. The short corridor leading from the living room to the kitchen is crammed with old newspapers and magazines and bits of broken furniture and junk food boxes. The linoleum, cracked and buckled, is sticky with something that grips at Vernon’s shoes, making kissing sounds as he walks.
He stops in the kitchen doorway and sees Doc, wearing a pair of old swimming goggles, at work at the kitchen table, cutting into something with a small power saw. The room is a mess. The sink is filled with dirty dishes that spread across onto the tabletop smeared with something dark and greasy and hundreds of flies buzz around, eating. A big box freezer rattles and moans and more flies hang over it in a thick cloud.
Doc looks up at him and nods, then carries on with his work, the saw screaming, its blade black with blood. Vernon steps closer to the table and sees that Doc is busy sawing the toes off a human leg, amputated just beneath the knee. The leg belonged to a whitey. A woman. The toes are painted with chipped red nail varnish.
Fucken Doc. Selling body parts from the police morgue to the darkies for muti. Witchcraft. Juju.
Vernon is ready to reverse his ass out the room and find the piss-house when he is struck by an idea. He waves his hand and Doc shuts down the saw, the blade rattling as it slows.
The old boozer looks at Vernon through goggles peppered with bone chips and flesh. “Ja, Detective?” he says, using the opportunity to suck on the bottle of brandy that rests beside the amputated leg.
“Doc, what can I use to keep a kid quiet?”
“Permanent?”
“No, man. Just for a couple of hours.”
“How old’s this kid?”
“Four or five.”
Doc nods, then he rummages in a kitchen drawer and comes out with a small bottle with a rubber stopper.
“Put ten or so of these drops in Coke or milk or whatever. Should sort it out.”
Vernon takes the dusty bottle, the label long gone, and stashes it in his pocket. Not sure yet if he’ll need it. But it soothes him to know he has this, as insurance. Doc fires up the saw and starts his work again, detaching the big toe and placing it in a small ziplock baggie. Gets busy on the next toe.
Vernon leaves the kitchen and goes looking for the toilet. The passage runs dead at a bathroom so stinking that he almost hurls. There’s no light, but enough of a glow comes in from the passageway for him to see that the pot overflows with shit. The little room is heaven for the flies, singing like a church choir.
Vernon doesn’t go near that filthy pot, just unzips and drills his stream of piss onto the floor, and who is ever going to know? He finishes and leaves the house and goes out to his car.
He can’t face going home now, with his mother hovering around like a lost shadow, so he sets course for Voortrekker Road and Lips, knowing this is the time he’ll find Costa alone in the empty club, counting his money.
He’s going to sit himself down in Costa’s office and tell him to give Dawn another chance and if the bastard tries to argue Vernon’ll lean back in his chair, nice and relaxed, and say, “Costa, buddy, remember I know where the fucken bodies are buried.”
And the Greek will look at him and feed a cigarette in beneath his mustache and nod and do exactly what he’s told.
Chapter 47
Exley’s eyes flicker once and then open. Wide. There is no gentle transition from sleep to wakefulness, with dreams dispersing like mist. He’s pitched straight into a roll-call of the dead: Sunny wet and lifeless on the beach. The bloody Rastafarian. Caroline prone on the kitchen floor as life leaves her. The cop’s smashed skull.
Exley sits, fighting for breath, alone in the bed in the spare room. Then he remembers last night, remembers Dawn, and even if that memory isn’t enough to temper the hell of the others, it does get him standing, pulling on his shorts over his chafed dick, knowing that at least he won’t begin this day alone.
Exley goes into Sunny’s room. The bed is empty and he hears no voices. They’re out on the beach, he tells himself.
He pads downstairs and across to the deck, slides open the door onto the beach. It’s deserted but for a mob of seagulls fighting over the pizza crusts that Brittany dumped on the sand last night, Exley promising that she could watch the birds feed in the morning.
“Dawn?” he shouts. No reply.
He goes into the deserted kitchen, then runs upstairs again and sees their bags are gone, feeling a tightness in his chest and the grip of panic at his throat.
What did he do? Or what didn’t he do? He has no idea.
Trying to reach Dawn through Vernon Saul is not an option, and he has no phone number for her. He doesn’t know her last name, or even if Dawn is just her stripper’s handle.
What he does know, as he walks unsteadily back down the stairs, is that the little oasis of comfort that Dawn and her daughter brought is gone. It was just an illusion. Like his belief that yesterday’s crying jag in the shower had straightened out his head.
Standing near the kitchen, all alone and sober, the events of the last days hit him and take him down. Exley starts to shake and even though he staggers out onto the deck into the blazing sun, the tremors continue. He sinks into a squat with his back to the wall, clenching his jaw to stop his teeth rattling, and feels madness coming in to claim him.
He has no skin. No muscle and sinew and bone. Nothing to contain him, to stop him leaking away, disintegrating and dispersing into a future of infinite pain.
Exley has come, he understands, to the place where the debts are paid.
Chapter 48
Like fucken clockwork, is how it went. Just like Vernon knew it would. He stands on the sidewalk outside Lips, in the familiar sun-bleached ugliness, lighting a smoke, hearing the rat’s-claw scratches as Costa locks up after him from the inside. The Greek has agreed to take Dawn back. From tonight.
Vernon didn’t even have to bring out the threats. The fat white bitch Costa got in as Dawn’s replacement went and OD’d, so the Greek’s desperate.
Vernon, inhaling nicotine, finds himself standing across from Dawn�
��s apartment block, staring up at her place. On the sidewalk beside him a homeless darkie woman with white blotches on her face curses out a one-legged brown guy on a crutch, his remaining foot bare and cracked as elephant hide.
“Go to her, go to your whore!” she shouts.
The cripple says in Afrikaans, “But it’s you that I love. To her I’m just a sex toy.”
Vernon laughs at the ways of the world, wondering how the next part of his plan is going to come together, how he’s going to get Dawn away from Nick Exley. But he’s not hassled, knows he’s in the flow. That things will just come together for him now he’s at his creative best.
And he’ll be fucked if he doesn’t see a flare of sunlight as Dawn’s balcony door swings opens, like a welcome mat telling him to come on up.
The cramped apartment has never seemed so ugly. Or so hot. Dawn forces open the kitchen window in the hope of a breeze but all she gets is the stink of the plumbing so she slams it again. Nothing for it but to unlock the balcony doors, letting in the stale KFC and taxi fumes.
Brittany sits on the bed, eating a bowl of ice cream, talking to Mr. Brown, and it is Uncle Nick this and Uncle Nick that. Long and elaborate tales of how she swam with Uncle Nick, and how he bought her pizza and how he’s got a whole pile of Disney movies.
“Hey, Britt,” Dawn says, switching on the TV, giving it a smack to settle the picture that wobbles and floats and then locks on some South African kid’s show with crude talking puppets. “Come watch.”
But Brittany isn’t interested. She’s been given a taste, now, of another life, of a world beyond her dreams.
Dawn stares at the stupid puppets, their voices scratching at her nerves. She kills the tube and just parks there on the sofa, lights a cigarette wishing it was a joint, trying to tune out her daughter’s ramblings, but can’t help hearing Brittany telling the bear how her mommy’s gonna marry Uncle Nick and they gonna all go live there by the sea, Mr. Brown too.