by HJ Golakai
“Those weren’t lies and you know it. If you got more to add to it, then do it.”
“Stop talking to me like that. I didn’t call for bullshit. I called to warn you to stop printing lies about me!”
“Calm down. Listen to what I’m offering, and you’ll see it’s the best deal you’re going to get. This isn’t going to melt away because you know how to throw a tantrum. In fact, the more you lose control, the worse you make it for yourself. Look what you did to Akhona. Take back your control over how this plays out.”
“Fuck you and control. Fuck – now you listen to me. If you don’t back off, I can make things very bad for you. I can do it. Stop messing around with me.”
“What d’you m–” Chlöe managed to blurt, before Vee yanked the cell away and scuttled a safe distance off. Chlöe got as far as parting her lips before Vee’s hand flew up to silence her, her eyes firing razors. Chlöe glared back. Maddened, she flailed her arms, stomped her foot and mouthed, animatedly and not quite soundlessly, “Are you mad? She’s crazy! Stop making it worse!” Vee shook her head, either ignoring or unable to hear her, and turned her back.
“You listen. I repeat: I am bored. This menace-to-society ridiculousness will get you nowhere. You’re not a gangster, and this isn’t a movie. This is real. You nearly killed a woman last night. Do you deny it? You’re quiet … so I’ll take that as a no. You’re intelligent enough to know there’s not much left to bargain with. That’s great, because I’m not a bargaining woman. I’m not the police, I’m not your lawyer. You know how limited your options are at this point, so suit yourself.” Vee lifted her face skyward in a pause for breath. Chlöe knew that look – ironclad resolve – knew that beyond it there was no reasoning. “Call me if you want to at least try to save what’s left of your life. Otherwise, don’t waste my time.”
She cut the call, switched off the phone and turned around. Arms akimbo, Chlöe stared her down, mouth ajar.
“I know you don’t agree with what I did back there. But we don’t negotiate with terrorists, am I right or am I right?”
Vee turned on the charm as she negotiated traffic along Adderley Street. The crickets-creepy wall of silence was eating into her. They’d waited around in the Mediclinic car park, hoping Moloi would be able to go over and add more to her story. But she’d sounded half-asleep when they managed to get through a second time, too exhausted to talk for long. By then, they’d missed a plum chance to avoid the evening bumper-to-bumper and were now caught in its cringe-worthy midst. She flipped the indicator, swung into Strand Street and nosed towards The Castle and the Grand Parade, intending to circle back by some other circuitous route to Chlöe’s complex on Roeland Street. She glanced sideways again. “It was necessary.”
“Necessary?! Irresponsible, more like!” Chlöe erupted. She smacked her hand against the partly wound window so hard the glass vibrated. “You’re not Bruce Willis, to be hanging up on ‘terrorists’ to flex your muscle. When you call crazy people’s bluff, guess what, they respond crazily! Call Akhona back, if you’ve forgotten so quickly how it panned out for her.” Her breathing was jagged, her face scarlet.
“I haven’t forgotten.” Vee swallowed. The sound of Moloi’s ragged cough and broken voice would scrape along the walls of her skull for a while, fingernails on a blackboard. “I’m not playing hero here. By ‘necessary’ I meant to wrap this up, hopefully with a bow on top, we have to play it a little fast and loose. Gaba’s on her last legs, her last toes actually. We need her, and she needs us. We have to get her to talk. You know how this works. Yeah, we’re sitting pretty right now with a first-hand account from Moloi, but if we get the other side …” Vee waggled her shoulders and sat up straighter. “Nico may actually wet himself with joy … the opposite of what he’ll do if we screw this up.” She gave Chlöe a grave, loaded look. “Which is tear us a new asshole. Just one. And then stitch up the old ones and force both of us to pupu through the new one. At the same time.”
“Getting her to talk means poking the bear, staring her down to see who blinks first? Throw caution to the wind, yes, but I’ve never ever known you to be careless with safety and life.”
“Careless with life?” Vee spluttered. “I only moved back home this past Saturday when I was positive it was safe, and now the neighbourhood watch are paying special attention to my house. The busted glass door and window have been fixed, so have all the security bars. The armed response company’s on speed dial. I’m not taking any chances.”
“Right. Because you’re the only one she knows. You’re the only one she can target.”
“I didn’t …” Vee snapped her mouth shut and took a deep, steadying breath. “I wasn’t insinuating that my welfare trumps yours. In all fairness, if fairness is even the right word to use, it does look like I’m the one she’s set on targeting and hurting. Though I agree,” she rushed on, when Chlöe lanced another glare and started to speak, “that doesn’t mean much when dealing with a zepsy person. I pulled the whole hard-core, sleazy journalist tactic because I had to. That’s not how we roll but … she pushed me. Hell, I know she shouldn’t but she really gets to me.”
“Well, she’s not supposed to get to you. This whole thing is getting to you. We’ve been fine, doing the stories we’re used to covering and staying out of the line of fire, but since this started it’s like you’re on some crusade to …” Chlöe threw up a wild shrug, “… I dunno. Prove something to yourself. Or to Nico and Portia. Like if we nail this, Nico’s gonna hand over the entire crime desk to us on a silver platter.” She shook her head, a short laugh catching at the back of her throat. “That’s not going to happen, I hope you know that.”
Vee felt her shoulders tense. Maybe I’m not fine riding my desk while all the good stuff passes me by, she wanted to say. Instead she swallowed the words before stealing another sideways glance. “Look, be that as it may, I apologise, alright? I want this to be over, as much as you do. If we can come out of it smiling too, the better.” The half-apologetic, half-goofy face she pulled didn’t elicit a sea change, but Chlöe softened a touch all the same. Out of the corner of her eye Vee saw her flick a chin nod, like she was satisfied for now, and wiggle down deeper into her seat, though she kept her eyes trained outside the window and her arms crossed. The pout was staying put.
Vee breathed a little easier and let it slide. If she pushed too much, if they made a wrong move somewhere, it could all slip through their fingers. This juncture was always the most delicate, always killed on their nerves; the almost-knowing, almost-there-ness, the teetering on the lip of the thing just before all the lights went on. Gaba had sounded desperate, a mind tottering on the edge of a cliff of her own. She was a matter of time. Vee snuck a look down at her cell tucked in the enclave behind the handbrake, expecting it to ring any second. The witch was in a corner.
“Got to give her credit, though,” she said, almost to herself, a tiny smile on her lips. “This was one helluva plan. Simple enough, didn’t involve a lot of players; fewer to trip over, therefore minimising the chance of screw-ups. Demands stayed pretty reasonable, though they sound exorbitant to small fry like us. If she’d stuck to a one-off payoff instead of going Defcon One, she could’ve gotten off free and clear.”
“Sure, pat a killer on the back. Sympathise with the psychotic. Why am I not surprised that’s your takeaway?” Chlöe drawled.
Vee clenched her teeth and changed gears too gruffly. The mechanism ground and whined, out of sync, till she whacked the gear level in place with the heel of her hand. “I’m saying imagine, for a ridiculous minute, we’re using some of that journalistic objectivity you got so preachy about not so long ago. Let’s pretend we’re writing this up, playing around with perspectives. Gaba put her head down and kept her eyes peeled, learnt how to play the game. When she had enough ammunition, she put the squeeze on. Okay, not extremely well, but this had legs.” Vee forced a dry laugh. “If this debacle don’t epitomise the saying ‘no honour amongst thieves’ I’hn know what do
es.”
“Paraphrased: let’s hand out blue ribbons to the lawless. Thanks for clarifying. Makes even more sense now.”
“Oh, where’s your sense of humour? This has to tickle you a little bit. Gaba’s a rainbow nation product. She could’ve shot up the ladder, Lord knows all the steps been put in place for people like her. Instead she does what?”
“People like her? Which people would that be? Oops,” Chlöe hastily zipped her fingers across her lips, “I’m not the right shade to speculate on that, am I.” She slammed her head back onto the headrest and scrunched her bum into the seat with such violence, Vee worried she’d pop the springs in the upholstery. “Maybe honour only flows along colour lines. Maybe if she’d been in on it with Moloi and they’d knocked off Berman together, then he’d be a more deserving victim. Or less deserving. I dunno.” She flapped a hand. “Forgive me. I’m having trouble following your logic when it comes to loyalty.”
The silence grew fangs. Vee finally managed to inch under the overhead walkway of Golden Acre Mall and turned right off Strand Street into Lower Plein, which bypassed the taxi ranks. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the cheap shot of the week.” She pulled in tight to the car ahead, drew up the handbrake and turned in her seat. “You got something on your mind, spit it out. Don’t use Gaba as an excuse to hide behind. ’Cause it’s pretty clear she didn’t need a helping hand creating this fiasco. That one’s got no trouble turning sunshine into sewage. Which, looks like to me, you know a lot about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Stop …” Vee slammed her palm against the steering wheel, “… stop asking me to give you answers to your own questions. It’s infuriating. This – this … I’hn know whetin y’all white pipo call it, passive aggressive nonsense.”
“There we go,” Chlöe threw her hands up.
“Yeah, here we go. You took it there. Whatever this is,” she flicked a finger back and forth between them, “cut it out, ’cause you been at it all damn day and I’ve had it. If you feeling left out –”
“Left out?” Chlöe flinched like a bad taste had flooded her mouth. “You think this is about feeling left out? My cool black friend doesn’t wanna sit with me at break so I’m acting out? Get over yourself.” She glared outside, then whipped her neck around so fast the braid of her French plait made a ‘whumph’ against the window. “If you want to know the truth, okay then. Yes, there’s been an infuriating, and might I say suspicious, element of exclusion to how things work with us.”
“If you’re talking about … we’ve been over this … if you mean me going to B&M without you the other day …”
“Not only then! Suspicious and recurring. I never get elbow-room to work on anything on my own. Every time you get assigned I have to trail after you, whether I want to or not. When was the last time I got to shadow another journalist, take a story from an angle other than yours? That piece in January, about Parliament and the by-elections and ANC Youth League? I so wanted to be a part of that with Naledi, but no. I’m sick of it.” Chlöe thumped her thigh for emphasis.
Vee jerked the steering wheel left and swung out of traffic. As the car behind her honked up a storm, she nosed the Chrysler by the stretch of zinc-roofed vendor stalls fringing the Parade, and parallel parked into a miraculously vacant spot behind a blue Toyota Tazz. A nearby fruit vendor dipped his head to peer through her window and pointed at the spot she’d filled, wagging his finger and shaking his head. Vee got out, slammed the door and saw his point: she was parked on a yellow line. She ignored the cautionary stream of words he poured at her in a language she couldn’t understand, perhaps Tswana, she couldn’t tell. If a traffic cop dared try to clamp her car, she was pissed enough to cuss him out.
“Where the fuck is this coming from?” she shouted.
Chlöe slammed the passenger door and stormed around. “You don’t know where it’s coming from?” she snarled back. “Try the place where I’m gatvol of trailing after you everywhere. All the time wondering if I deserve being nicknamed your fuckin’ puppy by the entire office.” Her voice cracked on the end of the sentence. The splotches in her cheeks, previously isolated to the hollows, had diffused across and down to her ears and neck.
“God …” Vee blew a weary breath, playing for time. Damn Nico. They, all of them; herself, Nico, Chlöe, even Portia, had been building up to this from the get-go. Since day one, when she alone ought to have crossed the threshold into the newsroom’s frenzy, but instead had trundled in with what Nico now termed ‘baggage’. She’d known a showdown was inevitable, and it’d be far from pretty. She’d also assumed, rather stupidly she now realised, her head wouldn’t be the only one on the block. You don’t see that I’m always fighting for you, and I’m sick of that?! You’hn realise every time I ‘kept you at heel’ I was protecting you? That Nico offering you a ‘solo project’ is his way of throwing you a bone, isolating you and watching as you fail? Naledi Sibisi dah somebody who want helping you, are you delusional? The same Naledi who complains she’s not being paid enough and spoilt brats like you are the reason why? She gulped it all back down and said instead: “You want autonomy, act hungry enough to earn it. Fight your own battles.” She threw her arms open in challenge. “Pick some battles, for heaven’s sake. Otherwise standing behind me ends up looking exactly like what it is, you waiting to be spoonfed because you don’t have the guts to stick your neck out for yourself.”
Chlöe’s blush deepened. The sinking stone of guilt hollowed out Vee’s gut some more, but she knew it was a charge that wouldn’t, couldn’t, be countered. “Really? How hungry do I have to be, to get you to keep me in the loop? How can I, adequately and to my full cowardly ability, protect myself by standing behind you,” Vee took a step back from Chlöe’s clench of sneering teeth, “when I hardly know which way the wind’s blowing? How can I trust you, allegedly my self-appointed protector, if I don’t know where madness takes you from one minute to the next?”
Don’t change the subject. Vee bit back the words. “If you got palaver with being dragged along, you shoulda spoken up sooner. But you can’t accuse me of leaving you out of the loop one minute, and then complain you’re not up to being roped into ‘my madness’ when it suits you. Everything we do is one blindside after another. Especially when a big fish like this drops in our laps, it’s weird … dangerous … who got time to – to – to – think and plan. That’s the nature of the job. Roll with it or step aside.”
“Then maybe I’m not like you.”
“You signed up! And you’ve stayed on. You could’ve stayed at Urban, where you would’ve made fashion editor in a few years. But no, you chose to stick with me.” Vee stabbed a finger at her, surprised to find both the finger and her voice were unsteady. Heat bloomed in her chest, rose, and stopped in her throat. “I asked you, and you chose. Now you want dump responsibility on my head? Hell no.”
“Really? The job requires that at times you use your lackey to accomplish what you can’t, yet at other times said lackey must be seen and not heard?”
Vee smoothed shaky hands over her hair. “Doggit,” she awed softly. “Now I’m using you?”
Chlöe shifted from one foot to the other, blush bleeding from her neck down to her clavicles and cleavage, like an invisible and overzealous makeup artist was shading her in. Her mouth yapped the air but no sound came out. She looked odd standing there, flummoxed as to how one pulled thread was unravelling an entire tapestry, one jeaned leg up on the sidewalk and one down, the half of her hair in shadow a dull bronze and the sun-kissed half the russet flame of angel Gabriel’s sword. She looked around, dazed, and Vee followed her eyes. Behind them, a small crowd of people buying apples, naartjies and sweets had decided to linger and watch as they ate them. The vendor shot Vee a toothy grin and surreptitious thumbs-up, thanks for the show and bump in sales.
“I-I-I … if it sounds … then that’s … yes. Yes.” Chlöe set her jaw and nodded firmly. “I feel used at times, and I have a right to my f
eelings. Let’s not pretend we have the most typical relationship in the world. We’re not just friends who happen to work together, or colleagues who kick it outside the office now and again. So what kinda partnership is this?” She kicked up one shoulder. “Let’s pick a lane and stick to it, ’cause I can’t handle the flip-flopping.”
Vee gave a tight, harsh laugh. “You want pick lanes and define limits? You? Can I rewind a little ways,” she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, “so I can call bullshit? What’s happened lately, that’s the opposite of respecting boundaries? What’s made you feel like you’ve made certain things clear, very clear, over and over and over till your spit’s run dry, and still, you end up getting slapped in the face? Please, air your grievances!”
“Don’t take that high and mighty tone with me! You said you were over the Richie thing. You lost it, I apologised, and we squashed it.”
“I was and we did! Who keeps bringing it up? And having the nerve to sulk over it like you were wronged?”
“Yeah, I do keep bringing it up! Because it’s a symptom of a greater ill when it comes to us –”
“Haay, finegeh know plenty book my pipo,” Vee clapped her hands.
“Deny it if you want, but I never would’ve used Richie to go behind your back if you’d simply trusted me to begin with.”
“I told you I would when I was ready. But no. I’m not ready fast enough for you. So by your logic I made you stick your nose into my private life –”
“I take responsibility for my shit, okay?” Chlöe vehemently shook her head, hand raised in pledge. “But … I-I-I’m saying … it’s like walking a tightrope with you sometimes. One day I’m in, next time, blackout. You dangle the bait and expect me to walk away from it. Would you, if the tables were turned?”
“Let me get this straight. You want trust. More than you feel I nah give you, and your way of getting it –”
“Yes! Call me a needy, nosy brat, that’s what I am! Sue me. But I’m your friend. I’m on your side. I’m not the assholes who’ve screwed you over in the past, to the point where you’re always in defence mode. Or the guy who runs off on you after a miscarriage …”