by S. L. Grey
‘Yes,’ I lie.
She clucks her tongue. ‘I was wondering… How long will you be staying?’
I put my feet up on the coffee table and dunk one of the WeightWatchers biscuits into the coffee. ‘I’m not sure. Why, is there a problem?’ I gaze up at her innocently. ‘You must let me know if it’s a problem my being here, and I’ll let Dan know immediately.’ I blast her with a full-wattage smile and she can’t help but respond. That’s the thing about being a miserable nonsmiling bastard: when you do, it totally disarms people.
‘There’s no problem,’ she says.
‘Good.’ I nod towards the mantelpiece above the fake fireplace. ‘Nice collection of photos.’ They are all of Dan: Dan as a baby, chubby and cheerful; Dan in school uniform, uncomfortable in his blazer, but still grinning at the camera; and then Dan as a gangly almost-teen, acne scoring his cheeks, the smile long gone, looking every inch a magnet for bullies.
‘Aren’t they lovely? He was such a super child.’ She pauses. ‘Rhoda, may I be frank with you?’
‘Of course, Rose. Please.’ This is going to be fun.
‘I was wondering. What is the… nature of your relationship with Daniel?’
I pretend to look confused. ‘The nature, Rose?’
‘I mean… are you and he…’
I click my fingers and notch up the cut-glass accent. ‘Ah! You want to know if we’re fucking each other?’
The look on her face is priceless. She’s about to speak, but then my phone beeps, making both of us jump. I check the screen; as always, the beep of a phone still has the power to put me on edge. But it’s Dan.
‘Speak of the devil! Sorry, Rose,’ I say sweetly. ‘I’ll just have to take this.’
She’s still trying to regain her composure and just waves a hand in my direction.
‘Hi, Dan,’ I say. ‘What’s up?’
‘Just checking in.’ I can hear the hiss of his breath and he draws in a lungful of smoke. He sounds exhausted.
‘How’s it going?’
‘It’s not.’
‘You get in any shit for missing work?’ Rose shakes her head in disgust at the swear word and I wink at her.
‘Not really.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Having a smoke break.’
‘Where?’
‘Out back. Where everyone goes.’
‘Fuck it, Dan!’ I say, my voice rising, forgetting about Rose for a second. ‘You’re in the corridors? Behind the shop?’
He doesn’t speak for several seconds. ‘It’s cool, Rhoda.’
‘Dan, it’s totally not cool.’ I glance at Rose. She’s doing her best to pretend she isn’t hanging on every word. ‘Look, get out of there and we’ll talk about this tonight, okay?’
‘Sure. You okay?’
‘Yeah. You know me.’
He doesn’t answer that. ‘See you in a couple of hours.’
He hangs up, and I listen to the dial tone for several seconds. I nod, smile and then say, ‘Love you too,’ just for the hell of it.
Rose flinches, as I knew she would.
I’m outside lighting up the last of the fags when Dan pulls into the driveway.
‘Hey,’ I say, as he hauls himself out of the car. He looks finished. The dark rings around his eyes are becoming a permanent fixture. ‘How was work?’
‘Fucking nightmare.’
‘So why don’t you quit?’
He shakes his head in exasperation as if I’ve just said something completely insane, and glances towards the front door. The silhouette of Rose’s body looms behind the frosted glass.
‘I think your mum wants me to leave,’ I say.
He plucks the cigarette out of my hand and takes a deep, shuddering drag, blowing the smoke out of his nostrils as if he’s been smoking his whole life. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
He idly scratches at the back of his neck, fingernails digging and poking under his hair and beneath the collar of his shirt. The tips of his fingers come back bloody, and he wipes them on his jeans.
‘If you wanted me to leave, you’d let me know, right?’ I say. ‘I mean, I may be a freak, but I’m not a sponger.’
‘I don’t want you to leave,’ he says, his voice sounding a million years old. ‘And stop saying you’re a freak. You’re not.’
I raise an eyebrow at him. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Ja,’ he says, smiling at me. ‘I’m sure. Compared to everyone else we met at that… place, you’re actually pretty boring.’
‘Thanks, I think.’ I try to smile back at him, but the mention of the other mall has unnerved me. It’s the first time he’s even alluded to it since we escaped.
‘I can’t stay here for ever, Dan.’
He stares straight at me. ‘Why not?’
He chucks the fag-end into the rose bushes and slouches into the house, pushing straight past his mother and heading for the stairs. I follow, giving Rose a rueful shrug as I edge past her.
‘Dan,’ she calls after him. ‘How was work?’
‘Fine,’ he says, without turning around.
‘I’m cooking something special tonight.’
‘Great,’ he says, without slowing his stride.
When we reach his room he throws his body down on the bed and flings an arm over his eyes.
‘Dan?’ I say. ‘How often do you think about, you know, what we went through?’
He doesn’t answer for a couple of seconds. ‘All the time,’ he says.
‘Really? Because I don’t.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No. Do you think that’s weird?’
‘No,’ he says. He turns on his side and his breathing changes. Fast asleep.
I rummage in his jacket, retrieve his packet of Winstons, light up and sink back down in front of the computer.
I play a game of spider solitaire, trawl the news sites again, make another sweep of the conspiracy sites, and finally click onto missing.co.za for the third time that day.
I sit up. There’s a new face on the front page. A face that looks unnervingly familiar.
It takes me several seconds before I realise that it’s mine.
chapter 24
DANIEL
I’m standing in the corridor, propping myself against the smokers’ wall with my foot. I pull another cigarette out of the pack and light it with the butt of the last. A few metres away, just past the alcove, Josie’s whispering something to Katrien. But fuck them. For once I don’t care what they’re saying.
That… place… broke something in me. I don’t know who I am any more.
Or maybe it fixed me. Maybe I know exactly who I am now. I finger Rhoda’s knife where it sits in my jeans pocket. I found it when I was digging through her bag for some cigarettes and I pocketed it, almost without thinking. I like having something of hers with me.
Katrien nudges Josie and stubs her cigarette out on the wall behind her. She looks at me as if she’s seeing me for the first time, pauses as if she’s going to say something, but changes her mind and carts herself back inside.
Josie lingers a little.
‘When did you start smoking?’ she asks.
Before, I would have sold my soul just to have her speak to me. Now I just feel a spark of irritation. Unbidden, I get a flash of blonde bodies swinging redly in infinite mirrors. I shake it off.
I shrug. ‘I dunno. A while.’
‘You’ve been out here ages. Bradley’s going to… You can’t chain smoke instead of work.’ She says it like it’s a joke she’s sharing with me.
‘I give a fuck what Bradley says.’
I know my surliness will offend her, but I like the feel of the scowl on my face, the burn of tar in my lungs. I’m done trying to be nice. I’m done taking their shit. She starts to turn away, but then hesitates. ‘Jeez. You’re off sick for a couple of days and you come back… all…’
I wait, looking into her eyes without flinching. She is pretty, there’s no denying it. She holds my g
aze then walks away again. I watch her arse and her legs in her jeans. ‘It suits you,’ she says without turning around. I’m waiting for that voice inside me to start squealing, She likes me! Should I ask her out? What will I say? But that voice is silenced by a thick layer of filth and memory and rage. I light another cigarette with Rhoda’s Zippo and stroll back the long way, through the service corridor and to the front of the shop. I take a few puffs in the doorway and grind the butt out against the display window.
Bradley skitters up to me. ‘Come on, Daniel,’ he whinges. ‘That’s just not acceptable. You’re late for your counter shift.’
I just look at him. It’s only in these last few days that I’ve realised I’m taller than him.
‘In fact, take your dinner break now and put a new shirt on. You stink of smoke. And I’m going to dock you an hour.’
Did he sound so high-pitched before? He’s like a mosquito.
‘Ja. I’m here now.’ Katrien and Josie are staring at me, caught in mid-transaction. The bejewelled customer they’re dealing with also watches with interest.
Bradley’s face drops. ‘I – I. Listen here. You can’t… In fact, I’m giving you a written warning. It’s really unacceptable.’
Did I seriously put up with this before? I’d rather have a whiskey and a cigarette than stand here, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned lately it’s that life’s too short to waste your time on shit you don’t want to be doing. Especially when you know what you’d rather be doing.
‘Ag, stick it up your arse, Bradley.’ I walk out of the shop, imagining their faces. Josie, Katrien, the customers, Bradley.
So, ten thirty on a Tuesday morning, I’m sitting in the bar at JB’s, drinking my second double and smoking another fag. I stick my finger into the hole under my ear and dig around a bit. It’s become a habit since we came back. I want to see what I saw when I did it first; I want to feel what I felt. But there’s no magical light show; all it does is throb. I wipe the film of bloody mucus on my jeans and take another slow drag.
I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to deal with Mom’s neediness, her constant nagging and watch Rhoda put on her middle-class private-schoolgirl act. The strung-out druggie freak who beat the shit out of me and held me at knifepoint just six days ago seems to be some distant dream. But rather that dream than this nightmare.
Do I mean that? Would I rather be caked in shit, running for my life, or here, at home, doing the same old crap I’ve always done?
These fucking Johannesburg suburbs: they suck you in. They want you to get comfortable and complacent and enslaved just like the rest of the rats in this city. Working to pay for shit we don’t need so that we can feel happy we’ve got a job. Putting up with prats like Bradley. Or even worse, ending up like my mom, selling herself for a big, ugly house and a car.
I down my whiskey and call for another. I stare at the face reflected in the mirror behind the bar. I’m not the same person. None of this bothered me last week. Nothing bothered me last week except whether Josie liked me.
And what about Rhoda? Is she still playing the game, or is it over for her?
I don’t want to go home; I’m scared to find out.
I down another double, wait for the alcohol to hit. It doesn’t. I can’t even get fucking drunk. But I keep trying till the end of my shift, till my money’s run out.
When I get home, Rhoda is lying on a sun lounger by the pool. She’s wearing a pair of my board shorts and a vest and has my music in her ears; the dogs are lying in the sun next to her. At least she’s not wearing my mom’s bikini. The dogs jump up and sniff my legs as I cross the lawn, then look up at me, bemused. They can’t seem to find a trace of me either under this smoke and booze sweat. I lean down to fluff Clarrie’s head but she flinches away.
Rhoda looks over at me and takes out the earphones. She shifts to semi-sitting and crosses one foot over the other. Her legs are glistening with sun cream. I try not to look at her small breasts inside my top, but fail.
‘Dan. I’ve got to tell you someth—’ She stops as my smell reaches her before the rest of me. I sit down heavily on the side of the lounger, almost tipping her over. ‘Christ, you don’t look too good. You smell like a fucking ashtray a wino pissed in.’
‘I just quit.’
‘Smoking?’
‘My job.’
‘What? Why? What happened?’ There’s something about her tone. It’s almost as if she’s going to launch into a Rose-like nag. You give up too easily, darling. Daniel, you really should apply yourself more. You have such promise, but you waste it idling and staring at the ceiling. Opportunity won’t knock on the ceiling, my boy.
‘Oh, never mind. What did you want to say?’
Rhoda puts her hand on my arm. ‘I’m worried about you. You haven’t been… yourself for days now.’
Myself? Myself? What the fuck do you know about who I am? This is me. Right here. You taught me that. Until you changed. You changed. Not me. You, sitting like a fucking suburban princess on my mother’s fucking sun lounger.
‘I’m just tired,’ I say.
‘Listen, Dan. I say I need to go, I know your mother doesn’t want me here, and you tell me to stay. What are we doing? Where do we go from here? What do you want to do?’
I want you to tell me what to do. The only time I ever did anything interesting with my life, I was following you. I need you to tell me what to do.
‘I don’t know. I need to… I don’t know,’ I say.
Rhoda starts winding the iPod’s cord, looks away from me. ‘I’m going to go. It was fun. But I’ve got stuff to sort out, and the sooner I start the better.’ She gets up.
‘Wait, Rhoda. I don’t want…’
She stands, arms folded, waiting, challenging me to say what I mean. Then when she sees I’m not going to say any more she shakes her head, and I see a flush of anger settling in her face, and I recognise the knife-fighter I met those lifetimes ago. ‘What happened to you?’ she says.
‘You know what happened to me,’ I tell her. ‘It happened to you too.’
‘No, I mean since we got back. At least you could string a fucking sentence together in that place.’
‘Rhoda, it’s not the same any more.’ I slump over and lean my chin on my hand.
But I feel her arm around my shoulder. She’s sitting next to me. ‘I know…’ And now she’s smelling the skin around my neck, breathing in the smoke and the whiskey sweat like a memory, and her face is pushing against my skin and it feels warm, and then we’re kissing and her mouth tastes different from anything I’ve tasted before. So much realler than I ever would have believed. Her hands are moving over my clothes and under my shirt and my fingers are on her face, feeling the scars, pressing them into my palms, and I want to fuck her right here, on my mother’s sun lounger, and my hands are pulling up the vest, nudging over more scar tissue, and the dogs are milling about, squealing, not knowing who to protect, and then they bolt away, yapping with glee and the garage door is shearing open.
My mother is home from bridge.
‘You need to move out,’ Rhoda licks into my ear.
By the time Mom’s rattled out of the car and through the house onto the patio, Rhoda and I are straightened up and sitting half a metre apart, looking innocent. I make a show of lighting up a fag for Rhoda and then myself as Mom picks off her heels and tiptoes across to us, the dogs trotting at her feet, tattling tales in Pomeranian. I know how much the smoking bothers her and sometimes I ask myself why I want to hurt her, but no answer comes. I just like smoking. It distinguishes me.
‘Daniel, I wish you wouldn’t. It’s so… unhealthy.’
I blow out a stream of smoke in her direction and she flinches, then shoots a disapproving look at Rhoda. To my surprise, Rhoda grinds out her cigarette on the edge of the pool. ‘Sorry, Rose. I am trying to cut down.’
‘It’s okay, Rhoda. It’s not you I worry about. It’s Daniel. I told you about Alvin… and I just wouldn’t… want—’
I stop listening. She what? She told Rhoda about Dad? No fucking way. I glare at Rhoda. Her eyes shift, her gaze landing anywhere but my face. ‘I’ve got to go.’ I get up and stalk inside and grab my keys from the kitchen counter, but now Mom’s parked behind me. I can’t very well go outside and ask her to move her fucking car before I make my grand exit, can I? I go upstairs and slam my door, making sure they can hear it down in the garden.
I slump on the bed, which Florence has made neatly. She’s picked up Rhoda’s clothes and shaped them into sharp little passive-aggressive squares stacked on the chest of drawers.
There’s a perfunctory knock on the door, and Rhoda barges in, ready to argue, Clarissa at her heels as backup. ‘Dan, don’t blame your mother fo—’ But she stops when she sees I’m laughing.
‘I’m too old for this shit, Rhoda.’
‘Yes, you are.’ She sits down on the bed next to me. Some of the electricity from earlier is still coursing and I touch her hand. She laces her fingers through mine.
‘I would have told you about Dad, you know. It’s not some big secret.’
Rhoda doesn’t say anything, but there’s an expression of pity on her face. I don’t want to be pitied.
‘Did she tell you about Frank?’ I ask.
‘Uh, a bit. Just that she was seeing a married man.’ She takes the cigarette from my mouth, taps the ash worm into the saucer by the bed, takes a long drag.
‘Ja. The slimy fucking bastard.’ I pause, wondering how much I want to tell Rhoda. All of that was before. This is now. ‘Do you know how she’s able to shop and play bridge all day, and live in this house and drive a Merc?’
Rhoda takes a last suck and grinds the butt out. ‘I can guess,’ she breathes out with her smoke. Clarissa curls onto the rug in the sun and starts licking herself.
‘Ja. And meantime Rank Frank is sitting at the head of his company, appearing in public with his happy family, probably fucking another five women until they get too old for him. Then he pays them all off for their silence, a fraction of the income from his dodgy business deals.’