The Mall

by S. L. Grey

  ‘When did this happen?’ Rose says, suddenly sounding way more sober.

  ‘Five years ago. I was about to start university.’

  ‘You were? What were you going to study?’

  ‘English. At East Anglia.’

  ‘So why didn’t you go?’

  ‘Good question. I was angry. Still am. And… well, look at me. I was in hospital for ages.’

  ‘Skin grafts?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How awful for you. But surely they offered you plastic surgery?’

  ‘I was sick of operations by then. And anyway, I guess I wanted them to remember what they’d done every time they looked at my face. What a bitch, huh?’

  ‘Makes two of us, Rhoda,’ she says. ‘It’s understandable.’

  ‘Is it?’ I look up at her in surprise.

  She waves her drink again. ‘Sure. Never underestimate a person’s propensity for revenge. But, Rhoda, no parent can live with the thought that they’ve hurt their child. It’s unbearable.’

  We sit in silence for several minutes, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

  ‘Rose,’ I say, draining my drink. It goes down easier this time. ‘Can I use your phone?’

  She’s waiting for me in the lounge, the half-empty gin bottle and a fresh can of tonic on the coffee table.

  ‘How did it go?’ she says, although she’s now so pissed the words sound more like: ‘Hozs shiir go?’

  I smile at her. ‘Really well.’ I wipe my face again. Shit. My cheeks are still damp.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Rhoda,’ Rose slurs. ‘I’m a veteran of crying jags.’ She takes another slurp. ‘What did your parents say?’

  ‘They want to help me out. They’re sending me some cash.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘They want me to go back to the UK.’

  ‘And what do you want to do?’

  ‘Can’t stay here for ever, can I?’

  She hands me a drink. ‘Well, I think it was brave of you to call. Cheers!’

  She clanks her glass against mine. My head’s beginning to swim, but I take another sip. Pure gin. I down it anyway.

  ‘Jolly wolly good,’ Rose says. ‘Shall we have another?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. The alcohol is really going to my head now. ‘Why the fuck not?’

  Rose starts laughing and I find myself joining in.

  ‘Why the fuck not indeed?’ she says.

  So when Dan comes home, he finds me and his mother in the lounge dancing to ‘Copacabana’, the overturned bottle of Tanqueray dribbling the last of its contents into the carpet.

  chapter 26

  DANIEL

  For fuck’s sake.

  I barge past Rhoda and Mom doing their fucked-up woman bonding whatever it is, take the stairs two at a time and slam my bedroom door shut. I’m hungry, but now I can’t very well go downstairs to raid the fridge. I take a cigarette out of Rhoda’s pack and light it. I stand by my window and look out over the walls and gardens. The old couple next door are sunbathing by their splash pool. They’re crinkly and red and I can just about hear the cancer munching at their age-spotted skin.

  I fiddle with Rhoda’s knife in my pocket. What’s happened to her? Or is this who she really is? Were the street-smarts and anger just a façade to cover up her boring middle-class self? I watch the leather corpses turn themselves over to roast their backs. Clarrie pisses against a bush in our yard. This is it. This is the rest of my life. I stub out the cigarette on the window sill.

  I grab my wallet and my old phone – the dead gelphone on the night stand now looks like a deflated grey balloon – and head downstairs again.

  ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘But you just came in.’ Mom tries not to slur. Rhoda stands watching, unsure. ‘Have something to eat.’

  I walk up to Mom, brushing past Rhoda without acknowledging her – I can’t deal with her and Mom at the same time; they shouldn’t be occupying the same space.

  ‘Mom. I love you. Thank you for taking care of me.’ Where did that come from? I was planning on saying something else entirely, but that just seemed the right thing to say. I leave before she can say anything in response.

  I stride along the pavement, not really knowing where I’m heading. I see Florence ahead of me, on her way to the Sloane Street taxi rank. I check my phone: it’s five fifteen already. ‘Hello, Mister Daniel,’ she says as I catch up to her. Now that she’s out of her lavender polyester housecoat she’s different, more relaxed, and she gives me a slight smile. The fact that I’m walking along the pavement – something only workers do in Bryanston – seems to put us on common ground, and for a moment we inhabit the same world. I wonder what she thinks of Rhoda, whether she feels more connected to her because she’s black, or whether Rhoda’s outlandish clothes, her English accent, just make her another one of us.

  ‘Have a good evening, Florence,’ I say, realising as I say it that I’ve never imagined what Florence’s home is like. I know she’s got two grown-up kids and a grandchild living with her. But what does she do when she goes home? Who cooks, who cleans, how many rooms does her house have, does she have a TV? Do her kids work? Who gets up for the baby? Is she the same bleak and silent woman at home, or does she sing songs to the baby? Does she tell stories? I can’t imagine her sitting around a table with her family and laughing. Florence starts existing at eight in the morning and blinks out of being at five. And as I pass her, she leaves my mind just as quickly.

  The sun is sinking into the dust and car fumes on the horizon are turning the sky and its cloud scraps pink and orange; the remnants of blue are luminous. I stop walking. I watch the colours mixing, the rays shifting and the clouds moving. I want to save that light, take it with me. I stand on the pavement, staring, ignoring the rush of luxury cars, taxis and bakkies grinding past; they are just a hissing soundtrack to the light show above.

  When I snap out of my trance I realise that I’ve fiddled Rhoda’s flick-knife open and nicked my index finger. While I walk, I suck on it to stop it bleeding, and the taste of blood in my mouth reminds me of kissing Rhoda yesterday. I remember the feel of the scars on her back. I want to believe that she is still dangerous, that she’s not a suburban princess who lives to buy clothes and get drunk with old women.

  At Sloane Square I wander into a pool bar. It’s still quiet this early, just a group of boys playing at the table nearest the bar, a rock band warming up in the room upstairs. I buy a beer and sit at the bar. I look at the bar-top slot machine blinking away and the strips of biltong packets hanging on a rusty nail gouged into the bar’s strut. Is this me in twenty years, escaping the repetitive duties of my home and my family and coming to drink and waste my pocket money on a pathetic corner-pub gamble? The idea horrifies me. Have I forgotten how to be happy? If I allow myself to admit it, that’s all I want: to be happy. It’s not very hardcore, but it’s true.

  I flick out Rhoda’s knife and gouge my name – Dan, not Daniel – into the wood of the bar top. The barman is unpacking crates of beer and doesn’t notice my vandalism. Out of the window across the bar, the sun has set and a deep, dusty blue replaces the psychedelic stain. I’m leaving a memorial, proof that I was here. I test the knife point against my finger, and then stash the blade back in my pocket. Suck the blood again, think of Rhoda.

  ‘Dan.’

  It’s Rhoda. Of course it’s Rhoda.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Followed you, didn’t I?’ She’s wearing a pair of jeans, one of my black T-shirts and her shitty Converse. Much better than that fucking dress. As she steps up to the bar stool the denim tautens around her hips and arse. I signal for two more beers. The band upstairs lets out a squeal of feedback. A cymbal crashes.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asks.

  The old Dan would whine: What’s the matter with you? You’re the one who’s betrayed me. Blah blah blah. But I don’t feel like it. She doesn’t owe me anything. She never promised me anything. />
  I shrug.

  ‘You’re pissed off because I’m getting on with your mum?’

  ‘As long as you’re not like her,’ I mumble.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You seem very comfortable in Bryanston. For a crack-whore.’ I try to stuff the word back into my mouth, but it’s too late. She winds up and gives me the biggest smack across the jaw I’ve ever had. Bigger than any of the punches she dished out in the mall. I reel off the bar stool and crash into two others, cracking the back of my head and my spine on my way down. I land square on my shoulder. Rhoda is up and over me, ready to pile in and smack the shit out of me but the barman restrains her.

  ‘Cool it,’ he shouts, but I can see he’s enjoying the spectacle of a guy being beaten up by a girl for a change. The pool players gawk across at us.

  Even as the pain adds up to an excruciating seethe around my back and neck and head I’m looking at Rhoda and thinking, That’s more like it. I lie there and look at her struggling in the barman’s arms. I would smile if it weren’t so sore.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I groan. ‘I deserved that. Evens?’

  She stops writhing and the barman gradually lets her go. ‘No more bullshit, okay, or you’re out of here,’ he warns as he goes back around the bar.

  Rhoda helps me up, the cords in her arms tightening, the dark skin over them stretching satiny. We take our beers across to the far end of the bar where it’s unlit and empty and sit down in a skanky black leatherette booth. The band is belting out a bad metal cover and the lead singer is screaming to mask his awful voice. Rhoda still hasn’t said anything, and I wonder if I really hurt her feelings.

  ‘Sorry. Really. I didn’t mean it. I was just…’

  She still says nothing, smiles vaguely as if she’s not listening.

  ‘I was just feeling… you know,’ I try.

  She looks like she’s about to say something, but doesn’t. Instead, she takes a gulp of beer, looks out the window.

  ‘You know you’re not…’ I say, digging myself deeper into the hole. ‘And anyway, you’ve never cared about what I called you before. We had plenty of fights in… there. We’re still friends, hey?’

  Nothing. She just fiddles with the beer bottle.

  ‘I hurt your feelings, huh?’

  She takes a large gulp and puts the bottle down, and suddenly she’s alive again. ‘Wanker. You couldn’t hurt a fucking fly’s feelings. You’ve got to try harder than that. I’ve been called plenty worse before. By people who meant it.’

  I smile, relieved. ‘You look nice tonight. More…’

  ‘More myself?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘Sore, thanks.’ I rub my hand over the back of my head, and my fingers brush the scab under my ear. It’s healing quite well. ‘What happened today? Are you okay?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You look sad.’

  ‘No, actually. I’m… You know I told you I haven’t spoken to my parents for ages?’

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘I called them today.’

  ‘Oh, well done. Was it okay?’

  ‘Yeah, it was. I…’ She takes another slug of beer.

  ‘That’s good. I’m happy for you,’ I say when I realise she’s not going to say anything more.

  ‘You working tonight?’

  ‘Nah. Day off.’

  ‘Great. Let’s have some fun tonight,’ she says, and she puts her hand on my leg. Then she turns and kisses me, smooths her hand along my thigh, getting closer and closer to my crotch, just stopping short each time. For a bit, I’m worried that she’ll feel the knife in my pocket and ask me where I got it. But just for a bit. Her mouth tastes of cigarettes and beer and gin. And I can taste that her life was hard, I can taste that her life was rough, I can taste blood from her gums, I can taste her pain: this is who she is, not some mallrat, poolside lapdog; not some suburban bridge-playing mother.

  I move one hand to her back, under the shirt, feeling those scarred ridges as her hand finally reaches my dick. I pop open her fly and she bites my tongue and undoes mine. We’re working each other and trying to suck the life out of each other, and my head is throbbing like it’s going to shatter and every nerve is screaming and alive, and I’m kneading my hand over those scars, mixing the scar tissue with her living tissue, merging it and her and me, and I’m fingering her and she’s pumping me and I come all over her hand, over my hand, up onto her shirt. And she slumps over my shoulder, her neck slick against mine, the scar on her face rubbing against my stubble. It’s heavy, it’s sore, it’s real; it’s who we are.

  ‘I thought you’d… become… that you’d changed. That you’d become… like them,’ I say.

  She blows some breath into my ear, still holding me. ‘You don’t listen, do you?’ She takes another breath in as if she’s about to say something, but doesn’t. Instead, she wipes her sticky hand on my T-shirt, buttons up her jeans and climbs over me and heads to the toilets. My head is pounding now, my shoulder already stiffening into a spasm. My tongue is bleeding and my cock has been grazed against my zip.

  That’s more like it.

  When she comes back, we sit drinking, not talking much as the bar fills up with students and embryo salarymen, as the music gets louder, as the band starts playing, as the pool balls clack and the beer bottles crash. We don’t talk much, except about the next beer, or to swap comments on the chick with the whale tail or the guy with the mullet. We don’t say much, but I’m planning the future. I can see it for the first time. I wonder if she can too.

  Despite the stale smoke in my mouth, stale sweat in the sheets; despite the amount we drank last night, I wake up clear-headed. Not a trace of a hangover and only a dull ache from the bar fight. It’s half past six – we’ve only slept for five hours, but my mind is racing, and I know that there’s no way it’s going to shut up and let me go back to sleep.

  I lift Rhoda’s arm off my stomach and get up. As I do she stirs in half sleep and smiles at me. I’m kind of surprised that she doesn’t wake up screaming and run out of the door.

  I walk over to the window and open it. The dogs have just run out and are sniffing the dewy grass. I breathe in the fresh air. It’s moist and green. I hear the morning songs of bulbuls and thrushes; hadedas probe into the damp ground for worms and crickets. Rhoda and I could rent a flat. We wouldn’t need much. A crappy car, a crappy TV, a pile of books; we’d live on bread and lentils and fuck all day. We could do it. Mom would help me, and maybe Rhoda’s parents could send her some cash.

  I hear the crumple of Rhoda shifting up against the headboard, the flick of her lighter. I turn to her. She’s wearing the T-shirt from last night and nothing else. Her long, brown legs chart the length of the white duvet, crossing at the ankles. She’s stretching and yawning, rubbing her hands over her head and face, the cigarette clutched between two fingers. When she notices me watching she points her cigarette at me, offering me one.

  I nod and she lights another. ‘Dan, come here. I’ve got to tell you something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come here.’ I don’t like her tone. She’s going to fuck up my mood.

  ‘Rhoda, I was thinking,’ I say, to stop her from saying what she was going to say. ‘What do you think about us getting a flat together?’

  She says nothing, turns away. Takes a long time stubbing out her cigarette in the saucer on my side of the table. Swings her legs over the side of the bed, her back facing me. Just sits. Fumbles behind her for another cigarette. Lights it. Still turned away.

  ‘How would we pay for it?’ she says at last.

  ‘We’ll find jobs.’

  ‘I don’t even have a fucking work permit, Dan. Soon I’m going to be here illegally.’

  Why’s she sounding so pissy? ‘My mom would lend us some cash.’

  ‘Christ, I’m not sucking another day’s charity out of that poor woman. You just take her for granted, you know that?’ />
  ‘Jesus, Rhoda, chill. I was just thinking, okay? Thinking aloud. Forget it. It doesn’t fucking matter.’

  She says nothing.

  ‘What did you want to say?’ I ask.

  She shifts across the bed and sits on the side closer to me and the window. She takes a long drag.

  ‘Dan, you’re a sweet… a great guy.’

  Oh shit. Here it comes. Fuck! How did I manage to fuck this up?

  ‘Uh-uh. Don’t say it.’ I rush to put on my jeans and T-shirt, grab my shoes and am out of the door. Behind me Rhoda’s saying, Wait, wait, but I’m not listening.

  I’ve forgotten to grab my car keys, so I’m going to have to walk, and the closest place to get cigarettes and alcohol is the Highgate Mall. As I walk, my mind starts striking bargains with my life. I can’t believe that last night meant nothing; I’ve never had a stronger feeling about anything in my life; for once in my life I’ve had a feeling strong enough to believe. It can’t be a lie. It can’t.

  I cross Main Road on autopilot, barely aware of the black Merc turning in front of me and the rattling taxi that misses me by centimetres. I don’t even know what Rhoda wanted to say. I should have let her speak. So I should just turn back home and say, Sorry, what did you want to say? But I keep walking to the mall. I’ll come home to her with a proper apology… and a proper plan. I check my pockets. My phone and my wallet are still there from last night, Rhoda’s knife too. I’m going to draw all my money from the bank. I’m going to get my back pay – whatever tiny pittance it amounts to – from those cunts at the bookshop. I’m going to show it to her in my hand. I’m going to say, Rhoda, we can do it, we can make it together. I’m going to buy her some flowers; I’m not going to take her for granted.

  chapter 27

  RHODA

  The sunlight dances over the chlorinated water, and I stretch out my legs and take another slurp of coffee. The Rat Dogs lie under my sun lounger, snoozing and chasing dream rabbits.