Slipping

by Lauren Beukes

  “See, it likes you.”

  “Don’t be a jerk, Jonathan.”

  “There’s a journalist who wants to interview you, by the way. And he’s pretty cute.”

  My stomach spasms. This is another thing Jonathan does to keep me in my place, to make it razor that we’re not together. My shrinkable tells me I’m still in love with him. Well, actually, he didn’t: he let me figure that out for myself, which cost a little more, more wasted time, when apparently he had the answer all along.

  What my psych does tell me, of his own accord, after this revelation, is that I should cut Jonathan off, get some distance, recover a sense of self. He uses a lot of shrink-speak that doesn’t translate—it only applies to someone else’s ordered life, where the rules work. But it’s complicated. Jonathan was the one who orchestrated this exhibition—or should that be exhibitionism, because isn’t it my soul being laid bare here?

  I know Jonathan is intending to sleep with me again. It’s been real casual since we broke up, only a couple of times, but it’s still happening, even though he’s seen at least two other women that I know about in between. Just fuckbuddies, he says.

  I met the one, Marinda, at a party. One of those awful media types, hanging off him like she was his handbag. Old bag. Thirty-eight at least. An editor at one of the pushmags he works for occasionally. One of the perks of the job—fraternizing with the help.

  Of course, Jonathan is thirty-two, so he’s right up there with her. Closer to her than me. And was it just imagination, or did she scope me with just a shade of pity? First time we met, I asked to take her picture. Jonathan kissed me on the head, whispering, “You cunning little fox, sweetheart. You just guaranteed yourself a publicity splash. We’ll have to make the event worthy of the write-up.”

  But I was more interested in reducing her to planes of color, the hard sculptural form of her bones. The print I went with was an accidental, a misfire, while I was adjusting the light settings. She is sitting on the edge of the twist of spiral stair on the fire escape outside a party. The focus is on the shapely knot of her knee, one hand resting in the dark fall of her skirt, the other touching her mouth, although you can only see the angle of her jaw tilted out of frame. It makes her look vulnerable.

  I glance over at my pictures, partially obscured by the swilling crowd. Only one of my prints has turned out perfect. An image that appears abstract, but on closer inspection resolves itself an anonymous blur against the edge of a doorway, wrecked wood and the liquid swirl of graffiti, the paint still wet and dripping in runnels, so that it is all sharp-focus texture.

  The others have not come out so distinctively, and Sanjay is still a tad uncertain about the whole shebang, about how the critics will take them all. The overexposed and under-, the bleached, washed-out, over-saturated with color, the ones with blotches and speckles and stains like coffee-cup rings, or the buttresses of white that frame the horizontal top and bottom, where the canister has cracked and let the light slip inside. My favorite is called Self-Portrait. A print from a decayed piece of film. 1m x 3.5m. It came out entirely black.

  Jonathan propels me in the direction of Sanjay, who is standing in deep conversation with two other people. The one is clearly money, some corporati culture patron or art buyer, the other, I realize with a shock, is Khanyi Nkosi. I recognize her from an interview I saw, but she is so warmly energetic, waving her hands in the air to make a point and grinning, that I can’t match her with her work.

  I realize I can’t deal, and checking that Jonathan is intent on pushing through the queue at the bar, I detour back towards the entrance and the open air—only to skewer someone’s foot with the blue velvet heels I bought for the occasion.

  “Hey! Easy!”

  “Oh god, I’m sorry.” Shit, I really, really, really need a cigarette. I wonder if I can make it to the spaza down the road and back before Jonathan notices.

  “No worries. You’re the artist, right?”

  “Um, yeah. Yeah, or the photographer, anyway. I’m not, I mean, the thing—Woof—that’s not mine.”

  “Yeah, I’m Osiame. I’m from Sonar?”

  “Oh, right. The journalist, right? Hi.” Vaguely, I note that he is cute, but I’m distracted by nerves.

  Osiame touches my shoulder, which only irritates me more. “Do you have a drink?”

  “No. Someone’s getting me one.”

  “Oh, okay. Listen, if you want, we can talk later. I know it’s your opening and you’ve got things to do, people to schmooze.”

  “Actually, do you want to get out of here?”

  “What?”

  “Just for a sec. I need some fresh air. And a smoke.”

  “Isn’t that a contradiction?”

  “You want to come?”

  “Oh. Okay, sure.”

  We’re not the only people hanging outside. I cadge a cigarette from a blonde, familiar from other events, with fucked-up hair, cut ugly on purpose.

  “She makes me feel conservative,” I confide to Osiame as he lights up for me. “But that doesn’t make it into the copy, okay?”

  He holds up his hands. “Do you see me making notes?”

  I inhale deeply. “So, can we go ahead, get it out of the way? The interview.”

  “Am I allowed to take notes now?”

  “Yeah-yeah.” I wave my hand.

  He hooks a mic into his phone and points it at my mouth. “So. What’s with the old-school?”

  “Didn’t you read the press release?”

  “Let’s say I didn’t.”

  I quote it from memory. “Adams’s use of non-digital format is inspired by her fascination with the capacity for error . . .”

  “Okay. Let’s skip the press release.”

  “Ah, it’s just—film is more interesting than digital. There’s a possibility of flaw inherent in the material. It’s not readily available, so I have to get it over the Net, and some of it has rotted or it’s been exposed even before I load it in the camera, but I don’t know that until I develop it.”

  “Like Self-Portrait?”

  “And it’s not just the film. It’s working without the automatic. The operator can fuck up too.”

  “Did you fuck up?”

  “Ha! That’s the great thing about working with damaged materials. You’ll never know. Actually, it’s the same in audio. Digital was too clean when it first came out, almost antiseptic. The fidelity was too clear, you lost the background noises, the ones you don’t even pick up, but it’s dead without the context.”

  “Like a sound aura.”

  “So they had to adapt the digital to synth analogue. You can do the same thing in photography. Apply effects, lock out the autofocus, click up for exposure, all to recreate the manual. It’s contentious though, now the audio techs are saying it’s been nonsense all along, just nostalgics missing the hiss of the recording equipment. So it’s reverted now again. Who knows.”

  “So you’re looking for the background noise.”

  “Yeah. Or something like.” I drop the stompie, twist it under my heel. “Got enough?”

  “Yeah. I’m good. You give good soundbite,” he says admiringly, flirtatious even.

  The gallery seems less oppressive. I’m less freaked, even when I overhear some over-groomed loft dwellers giggling into their wine. “And this. I’m so tired of Statement! Like she’s the only angst child ever to embrace the distorted body image.”

  “Oh, I quite like the undeveloped. Because she is. You know, still young, coming into herself. The artist in flux, emergent.”

  “Well precisely. It’s so young. You can’t even tell if it’s technically good or not, it’s all so . . . damaged.”

  Amused, I’m about to lean in, to point out that Self-Portrait is not actually that at all. That under the black is a photograph of a photograph, clutched in my fingers, captured in the mirror with a reflected flash of light. That it’s all meant to be damaged. But then I realize I don’t have to make my motives transparent.

&nbs
p; I’m distracted by a flurry of activity at the door. There are people shoving, wine spilling from glasses, yelps of dismay.

  “This is a private function!” Jonathan yells, spouting clichés at the rush of people in black who are pushing in through the crowd, their faces blurred like they’re anonymous informants in documentary footage. It is so disturbing, it takes me a second to catch on that they’re wearing smear masks. Another to realize that they’re carrying pangas.

  A few people scream, sending out a reverb chorus from Woof & Tweet. The crowd pressing backwards. But then the big guy in front yells, “Death to corporate art!” and Emily, the woman who dissed my work, laughs scornfully. “Oh god! Performance art. How dreadful gauche.” And there are murmurs of relief and snickers, and the living organism that is the crowd now pushes forward again to see.

  Osiame grabs my arm and pulls me back out of the front line, because I haven’t moved this whole while, just as one of the men (women?) grabs Emily by her hair and forces her to her knees, spitting with rage, “Don’t you dare make me complicit in your garbage!”

  The black-clad one raises the panga, pulling back Emily’s head by the roots of her hair, exposing her throat. Emily raises a hand to her mouth, pretends to stifle a yawn.

  “Are you going to chop me into little itty-bitty pieces now? Oh please. This is so melodramatic.” And it is. The crowd is riveted. But I didn’t think this kind of promo stunt would be Sanjay’s thing.

  The man jerks her head back further and, bowing his legs, moves his arm as if to slice across her throat, only at the last instant—so late that she winces back involuntarily—deflecting to a side-swipe—not at her, but at Woof & Tweet, just in front of them.

  The thing emits a lean crackle of white noise. The audience is rapt, camera phones clicking, as the others move in, five of them, with one guarding the door, to start laying into it. It’s only when the artist starts wailing that it becomes apparent that this was not part of the program.

  The pangas tear into the thin flesh and ribs of Khanyi Nkosi’s thing with a noise like someone attacking a bicycle with an axe. The machine responds with a high-hat backbeat for the melody it assembles from the screams and skitters of nervous laughter. It doesn’t die quietly, transmuting the ruckus, the frantic calls to the police, and Khanyi wailing, clawing, held back by a throng of people.

  The bright sprays of blood make it real, spattering the walls, people’s faces, my photographs, as the blades thwack down again and again. The police sirens in the distance are echoed and distorted as Woof finally collapses in on itself, rattling with wet, smacking sounds.

  They disappear out into the streets as quickly as they came, shaking the machetes at us, threatening, don’t follow, whooping like kids. With the sirens closing in, one spits on the mangled corpse. Then, before he ducks out the door and into the night, glances up once, at the ceiling. No one else seems to notice, but I follow his gaze up, to the security cams, getting every angle.

  I’m sick with adrenaline. The woman who was taken hostage is screaming in brittle hyperventilating gasps. Her friend is trying to wipe the blood off her face, using the hem of her dress, unaware that she has lifted it so high that she is flashing her lacy briefs. Khanyi is kneeling next to the gobs of her animal construct, trying to reassemble it, smearing herself with the bloody lumps of flesh. There is a man trying to comfort the girl with the jagged blonde hair, but he is the one weeping, laid waste by the shock, while she lights cigarette after cigarette, her hands shaking.

  There is still a prevailing undercurrent of thrill, a rush from the violence, because no one was hurt, except the thing. Everyone is on their phones, taking pictures, talking. Osiame is shouting above the ruckus, to his editor no doubt, and there are even more people trying to wedge into the space, so that the cops, who have finally arrived, have to shove their way inside.

  Self-Portrait is covered in a mist of blood. I move to wipe it clean, although I’m scared the blood will smear, will stain the paper, but just then Jonathan takes my wrist, wraps his arms around me and kisses my neck.

  “Don’t ruin the effect, sweetheart,” he whispers, his breath hot against my throat. “Do you know how much this is going to be worth?”

  I glance up at the cameras again. The beady red lights, the unblinking lenses recording everything. Already the cops are asking for the footage. Jonathan kisses my neck again and grins. “You were magnificent.”

  At first, she chose them at random. Opening the phone book, she’d drift over names with her fingertips.

  “Hello?”

  In time, she would refine her methods. She’d choose names she liked the sound of. Gamboni or Ndudlu. It was less fickle than chance. It allowed her to feel more attached.

  “Frenkel residence?”

  Sometimes she didn’t look at the names at all. The symmetry of the numbers was enough. She’d find patterns, repetitions. Some combinations had a cadence that she found pleasing. She made little mantras out of them. 93-0-12-12. 426-526-4. 889-12-59. Skipping rhymes.

  “Sandy?”

  Sometimes, but only sometimes, she would just dial. Haphazard configurations. Although this worked least well of all.

  “Is that you?”

  She found an old-fashioned rotary phone in a junk shop. She liked the click of the dial spinning back when she released it. She liked the solid weight of the handset. It was carbon-colored, a muted grey, a plastic pigeon color. It was scratched. The woman sold it to her for peanuts.

  “Hi? Can you hear me?”

  Her name wasn’t listed in the phone book. On the form from the phone company, she’d left that particular box unchecked.

  “Helloooo? You’re going to have to phone back. I can’t hear a thing.”

  She liked it best when there were ghosts on the line. It had only happened once, though. When she heard the woman’s voice, so confident, mid-stride, she’d been taken aback. Talking about avocados. Of all the banal things in the world. And then the man had said:

  “Who’s there?”

  She kept hoping it would happen again.

  “Is anyone there?”

  She pretended she was part of their conversation. She pretended she had strong opinions about avocados. They couldn’t hear anything she said. Perhaps she was the ghost.

  “I think you have the wrong number.”

  She had rules. She learned to avoid women. When she could, when it was possible. Sometimes the phonebook didn’t say. There was only so much she could tell from the crisp initial.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  She was careful. She crossed names off. She never phoned the same number more than twice. Not after the man whispering fiercely into the phone. Pervert. Freak.

  “Time to follow. When you hear the signal, it will be twenty-two hours forty-two minutes and thirty seconds. ”

  She tried the Internet once. At a café with neon lights and coffee and a skinny kid playing computer games with fast-moving square-faced men and guns. The waitress had a tiny stud in her nose. She had asked her if everything was okay.

  “Four. Three. Eight. One. Five. Two. Four. is not available right now. Please leave a detailed message after the tone.”

  She had left a message. For Goldenbaum. B. 788-166-0.

  “Hi! We’re not in at the moment . . .”

  Only she didn’t say anything. She thought she might have. Until the machine cut her off.

  “Hello? Hello, hello, hello?”

  She listened for the question mark. For the anticipation.

  “I’m sorry. The number you have dialed does not exist.”

  Sometimes she would just pick up the handset and listen to the dial tone. Sometimes that was enough.

  You might think of a city as a map, all knotted up in the bondage of grid lines by town planners. But really, it’s a language—alive, untidy, ungrammatical. The meaning of things rearranges, so the scramble of the docks turns hipster cool while the faded glamor of the inner city gives way to tenement blocks rotting
from the inside. It develops its own accent, its own slang. And sometimes it drops a sentence. Sometimes the sentence finds you. And won’t shut up.

  I’m walking through the gardens on my way to an exhibition on Pancho Guedes, the crazy post-modern Surrealist Mozambican-Portuguese architect, because that’s my major (only three and a half years to go) when a voice drifts down out of a tree: “Hey, cute student guy, wait up.”

  A girl drops down from the branches where she’s been perching like some tree frog in black amongst the squirrels and starts strolling along behind me, imitating my walk like a bad mime.

  I turn, irritated. “What are you doing?”

  “Attaching,” she says. “It’s what the dead do when they get lonely.”

  It’s obviously an art-school prank or, worse, a project. Like that tosser, Ed Young, who stages pointless events with buckets of fried chicken and beer and strippers with scarily over-inflated boobs and pouted lips, like they’d been blowing up balloons and the balloons blew back. Campus is only a block away.

  “I’m really not interested,” I tell the girl still riding at my heels, like she’s a surfer who has caught a wave. She busts me looking around furtively for the rest of her posse, for someone with a video camera.

  “Oh don’t worry,” she says, “I’m all yours. Rule 285a, subclause iii. Only the embodied attachee, also known as the ‘living’, will be able to physically observe his or her attacher, also known as the ‘apparition’.”

  “Oh.” There isn’t a whole lot more to add.

  She giggles. “I just made that up.” And then, wistfully, “They’re not much for rules on this side.”

  “Look, could you leave me alone?” I say. And by the time I look back, she is already gone. Which is why it’s all the more annoying to find her waiting for me in the lecture theater the next day.

  She’s sitting in my usual place, last chair, second row from the back, so I can sneak out for a smoke break if the lecture drags. She’s swinging her legs like a kid, which I guess she is. She can’t be older than fourteen, the eyeliner crayon-scrawled around her eyes as if by a toddler with more enthusiasm than hand-eye coordination.