by HJ Golakai
“I didn’t want it either,” Titus murmured. His lips and breath tickled her cheek. “I wanted us. I didn’t want to be the asshole that suggested …” He sighed, looking like he’d aged in a few minutes. “God. I wish we’d just talked. I would’ve supported you going through with it.”
“I couldn’t, Titus, you know I couldn’t!” She pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes, forcing back a fresh surge of tears. “I can’t kill anything again, not after what I did, not after I …”
“Voinjama. Jesus Christ.” He tried to hold her and she resisted, twisting away until he gave up. “Stop doing this to yourself. That was forever ago. You were a kid, in a war zone. You did what you had to to survive.” He stroked her cheek. “And you didn’t make yourself miscarry by thinking it. That’s not a real thing people can do. I’ll concede that you are something of a freak-show, but fuck that. That’s going way too far.”
Vee wrapped her arms around herself. Her mind was shutting down; it was too much for one night. Whether he was making sense or not, she didn’t want to think about it anymore. She was spent.
“Titus.” She caressed his shoulders. “I’m sorry. About … Joshua.” Her heart did an odd flutter.
“No.” He scrubbed both hands over his face before raising his eyes, their intensity changed. “I realise this … whatever we’re doing, is totally unconventional, and every day I gotta fight my urge not to …” He balled a fist and made a deep, guttural noise. “But don’t. Alright? No mentions of your assistant boyfriend on my time.” He kissed her, very softly.
“I just meant …”
His kisses took on a sumptuous pull, and Vee felt her pulse change.
He led her upstairs, eased her across the bed and cradled each foot as he slid her shoes off, stroking her arches. He gripped her thighs and pulled her to him, easing her knees apart, fingers gliding over her skin, tickling the delicate sinkholes behind her knees. His hand slipped between her legs, cupping her through her underwear. The heel of his hand pressed gently into her mound, while his fingers teased her through the flimsy fabric. Air filled her lungs and hissed out slowly through her teeth, ripples tasering through her.
His fingers stilled. “Look at me.” She opened her eyes dreamily and fixed on his voice, his lips, feeling separate from her body as his hand caressed. “Don’t look away. I want you to focus on me and only me, so you know who’s got you right now.”
“Ti …” she whispered, “we n– … need to talk.”
He brushed her skirt all the way up and moulded her thighs around him, his arm still wedged in between, palm pressing into her, his pressure toying but insistent. “We are. This is just like talking,” he murmured.
“No …”
He edged his hand away and Vee dug her fingers into his arm, clinging, grinding in its direction, desperate to keep the humming pressure close. His laugh warmed her cheek. “See? Action, reaction. Dialogue.” His mouth caught the last of her feeble protests, their kiss filling the last of the hollow, wounded emptiness, driving sense away. He dipped his head and traced his lips down to where his hands had roamed, over her lower belly and thighs, and lower still.
Vee put her head back and caught heaven.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“Open the door.”
“No.”
Gritting her teeth, Vee mimed punching the door. A guy with a gym bag and towel over his shoulder rounded the corner from the staircase, caught her at it and shot her a strange look. She hastily dropped her arms and tried to act natural. When he slowed down, still eyeing her as he headed down the balcony walkway, she raised her eyebrows dramatically, like ‘what’re you looking at?’. The stranger grinned and waggled his eyebrows back. Vee rolled her eyes. Universally, men were idiots.
“Joshua,” she tried again. “Juju.”
“No. If I do, you’ll just waltz in here and dump me. I know how this works.”
“I won’t. We’ll just talk.” She nibbled her lip. “Come on, my darling sweetheart. My dashing stud-muffin. Apple of my eye. Pretty please …”
His chuckle was audible through the door. “So now you’re gonna talk to me like a five-year-old.”
“Because you’re acting five! Maybe this is why I keep going back to Titus, you ever thought of that?”
“Great. The low blows have already started and you’re not even inside yet.”
She threw her hands up and leaned against the balcony wall. The world on the other side of the door of Joshua’s flat went creepily quiet. She crossed her feet at the ankles and folded her arms, rubbing the scab on her forearm. The cut had healed over nicely. A few more tenants trailed past, paying her no mind. Eventually, she heard the clack of the turnkey and clink of the door chain falling. She waited a minute before turning the handle.
She found him over the kitchen sink, hacking open a block of ice wrapped in plastic.
“Are we going to talk?”
He harrumphed. The ice pick in his hand was a black blur as chips flew off the quickly disintegrating block. Icy frags landed on her arms and inside her tank top; Vee brushed off melting drops.
“It’s been days since last we talked. It’s –”
He upended what was left of the ripped bag, letting chips and wedges cascade into a Tupperware container by the draining board. The long, loud crunch of ice drowned her out. He walked out with the container. She followed. In the sitting room he stopped by the minibar, where an array of liquor bottles lined the cabinet. He opened the bottom, took a cognac tumbler, paused, then held out another with a raised eyebrow. She hesitated, then nodded. He added ice to both glasses, followed by a generous dark amber cascade of J&B. Without a word, he picked his up and strode past her across the room, opening the sliding glass door that led to the beachside balcony. Vee sighed, took the other glass and followed.
He reclined in a wooden patio chair and set the glass on the table. “Okay Jezebel. Knife me.”
She winced at his choice of words, a dull throb kicking up in the wound in her arm. She willed herself to ignore how good he looked barefoot, in blue jeans and black Michael Jackson T-shirt, a floodlit silhouette of the pop icon moonwalking across the front. Instead she parked her drink on the ledge and savoured the view. It never got old. From this vantage, they could see half the ocean and the rest was the sprawl of avenue below, the neighbourhood out relishing a lovely Saturday afternoon. The air was sticky and tickled with salt going down her throat, the roar of the sea a stone’s throw away.
He started to hum and she eyed him over her shoulder. “You busted that ice like you wished it was my face.”
“Giving all the love I feel for you, couldn’t make you change your point of view, you’re leeaaviiiing …” he sang softly.
“Oh God. Please don’t sing.” It was a bad sign when Joshua started soundtracking his emotions. At least it meant his anger had burnt off.
“Now I’m sittin’ here, wastin’ my time. I just don’t know what I should dooooo,” he crooned louder. “It’s a –”
“Shut up,” she clapped her hand over his mouth. “It’s not a tragedy, so don’t guilt-trip me with Milli Vanilli of all things. Terminal illness is a tragedy. Car accidents, starvation, and-and-and death, horrible deaths …” A mental image of Xoliswa Gaba, teeth bared and neon-white eyes pulsing, filled her head. A thick, hard knot bobbed up and down in the back of her throat; she gulped against it. “Real life is tragic. Us …”
He sat up, scooted to the edge of the chair and spread his knees apart. Vee walked between his legs and wrapped her arms around him, cradling his head to her chest. “I’m sorry, Joshua Allen. I’m sorry. I don’t want to keep hurting everybody. I don’t know what I’m doing.” She rubbed her cheek against his hair. “I’d rather be confused on my own, no responsibility to anybody else. Last year, all those months I spent alone … I loved it. I’ve never enjoyed being alone, but now I’m struggling to remember why I got frisky and dragged both of y’all back into this. Maybe I thought it would clear my head fas
ter, or teach y’all a lesson, or press reset, or …”
“You’re just a wanton freak.” Her cleavage muffled his voice.
She laughed and hugged him harder. “Fine, maybe. But now it’s worse. Let me back off and think. I need to think more before I do things.”
“It’ll fix itself.”
“No, it won’t. I need to be on my own. For real this time. Without Ti. And without you.”
He made a low, anguished sound. “And I never will forget the day we met, girl, I’m gonna miss youuuu,” he finished the chorus. He propped his chin on her sternum and stared up, eyes forlorn. “Do you … remember the first time we met, I mean?”
She sucked her breath in sharply, prising his arms off and walking backwards away from him. “What the hell? Why’re you asking that all of a sudden?” Her eyes narrowed. “Have you talked to Ti? Y’all planned this whole thing out beforehand, right?”
“Huh? Planned what?” He shook his head, clearing confusion off his face. He yanked her gently by the arm and she staggered and plopped onto the empty space on the recliner. “Can I have my moment without you bringing him up? Now where was I? I was walking down the street minding my own business …”
“I was. I was.” She shuddered, a chill zipping up and down her back. Déjà vu, or someone was walking over her grave.
“No, I was. You had deliberately packaged your gorgeous derrière in jeans designed to disturb the peace. I saw you and …” he tipped her chin towards him, gently caressing her lips with his thumb, “forgot my manners. I forgot, for instance, that women don’t appreciate strangers following them down a dark, lonely street in a dangerous city like New York.”
“We also don’t enjoy perverts trying to mug us.”
“My, how revisionist!” His grin was weak, like it was slipping off his face, but at least it was there. “You asked me to mug you. Yep, you sure did. You’d bought into the thuggish black male stereotype and you freaked out. All I did was get too close and next thing I knew you were offering me money for your life.”
“Which you didn’t turn down! You just stared like a serial killer, not saying a damn word, and let me hand over my handbag. Which you walked away with.”
“You gave it to me. A gentleman doesn’t refuse gifts. Besides, it really suited my outfit, and I let you keep your wallet, didn’t I? There was enough in there for me to find you if I wanted to, but I had a feeling I’d see you again.”
His voice trailed off. Vee shifted closer till their thighs touched, the ripped, faded blue of her denim pressing against the darker wash of his. She tapped the toe of his Nikes with her red strappy wedges and he tapped back.
“And I did. Walked into a friend’s party one night and there you were. The girl one of my boys had been raving about for weeks, pointing and yelling ‘J’accuse!’ all up in my face. And I just stood there. Thinking, oh shit.” He laughed at the ground, at their touching feet. “You’re right. Real life is tragic.”
She put her hand over his, threading their fingers together. The sound of the ocean pressed in, till it was alive in her ears, in her chest, behind her eyes. She put her head back, blinking it into retreat, determined it not spill. He nestled his hand in the small of her back and rubbed until the thundering stopped.
“I should throw you out now,” he said softly.
Vee tightened her grip on his arm and dropped her head onto his shoulder. “Five more minutes,” she whispered.
Epilogue
Trevor Davids impatiently stabbed the fast-forward button on the remote, casting a wary glance at Zintle Msengwana. “Don’t worry, it’ll start up soon. It just takes a … one moment …” He hit the side of the video monitor repeatedly, as if that would clear the screen of the squiggly lines jumping across it.
Zintle fidgeted in her seat. This place had gone beyond getting on her nerves, it was under her skin. It would’ve been simple to blame it on the gloom that hung over The Grotto since the murder happened, but she couldn’t lie. Months beforehand something had been following her around, building in her chest, eating into her slowly. A sadness, a dissatisfaction. She was better than this.
Fifteen more days. Just fifteen more days …
“Aha. There we are.” The monitor came on. Trevor brightened, then quickly rearranged his face, as if he’d remembered their meeting was of a very grave nature. “This footage might be disturbing, okay? But it’s important you see it. Watch the screen, please,” he ordered, making the two-finger ‘eyes over here’ point at her then aiming it at the television, like she’d be looking somewhere else.
Zintle fought a swell of irritation, the feeling immediately giving way to unease. Why had she been called away from her work in such an underhand manner, and not by Mr Gono who was the only one who ever had a word to say to her, but by this stuck-up Trevor of all people? And why were they alone in the security team’s room, with the door closed, surrounded by equipment for the CCTV camera system that the entire staff knew didn’t even work? Did they have something on her? Like hell; she hadn’t put a foot wrong since she started. They did this kind of thing. Just before Caroline had handed in her notice last year, they’d suddenly pulled some stunt about her not being full-time staff and had not paid her fully when she left. Was this entrapment? Zintle swallowed hard. She’d been watching a lot of crime series lately. The world was a lot shadier than she’d been aware.
Trevor unpaused the tape. The feed captured the inside of one of the rooms, in which nothing seemed to be happening. She blinked. The room looked very familiar. When Ms Greenwood passed in front of the camera, Zintle jumped and uttered a tiny yelp of shock. Trevor was unfazed. Rhonda went about several tasks, then disappeared from sightline briefly. When she returned she had a vodka bottle and poured herself a stout drink, which she downed with a contemplative stare out of her bedroom window.
“There’s a lot of that. Here … and here again … yeah, again,” Trevor fast-forwarded and paused to several drinking episodes, only allowing it to run for a few seconds. “It goes on for days. Evenings were heavier. Then there’s this.”
The next bit of taping made no sense at first. The camera switched on when Rhonda was freshly dressed for the day but still fiddling with her fine strands of hair in the mirror. Time-stamp: almost 7 a.m. Another stretch of nothing, fast-forwarded. Around noon Rhonda bustled in, apparently searching for something. She found it, gathered the folder and her day planner. She swallowed a pill from a container on her dresser, changed her shoes to a lower heel and left. More nothing. Trevor jumped the tape several hours. Through the parting in the curtains, one could see night had fallen. Rhonda, exhausted. Opens the top two buttons of her blouse. Swallows another pill. Disappears into bathroom. Glass of wine poured. Rhonda stares at it long and hard. Shakes head, walks back to bathroom. Comes out quickly, frowning towards the en-suite lounge where the door was. Hurries past. Over a minute passes. The tape stopped.
Trevor swapped it with another. “This is the feed from the angle in the lounge.”
Rhonda walks back in, laughing and trailed by another woman. Dark jeans, black top. Dreadlocks.
“You recognise that woman?” Trevor asked.
Without thinking, Zintle automatically shook her head, Trevor’s voice a dull echo emanating from far away. True, she didn’t really know the woman. But she’d seen her photo in the papers. She was big news lately.
The tape showed their chat, polite laughter. Zintle asked for sound and Trevor shook his head; there was none. Another glass of wine poured; Rhonda sips hers with reserve. Time spools; the conversation grows animated and the laughter genuine. Wine flows freely. Rhonda leaves the room, giggling. Dreadlocked chick cranes her neck round the door after her, then quickly tips the contents of a nearly empty water bottle into her wine, stirs with her finger. Rhonda returns. More chat. Rhonda’s eyes droop. She wobbles to her feet. Dreads steadies her by elbow. Giggling, Rhonda waves her away, stumbling to bedroom.
“You get where this is going,” Trevor said, low
and sombre, switching tapes again.
Bedroom again. Rhonda curled up on the bed, fully clothed. The room seems empty. After several minutes, Dreads steps in sight, duvet in hand. Throws it over Rhonda, pokes her gently, then very slowly but clumsily rolls her up, feet and head sticking out. Dreads leaves her face down; Rhonda doesn’t stir. More minutes pass. Dreads picks up two pillows, gingerly lifts Rhonda’s head, sandwiches it in between, gently presses the pillows together. Rhonda thrashes, feebly, then spiritedly. Dreads, looking terrified, keeps pressing. Rhonda wriggles and tries to kick out; Dreads jumps away. Rhonda twitches, precariously near the edge of the bed. Falls, banging against the dresser. Rolls onto the floor.
“Not much else happens. The intruder, Gaba, tried to finish her off on the floor, and got scratched by Rhonda. Gaba then does this weird thing of cleaning and fixing Rhonda’s fingernail again. I suppose to remove any traces of blood or tissue, make it look like nothing was out of place.”
Zintle had both hands over her mouth. She lowered them and saw they were wet. She wiped the tears properly with her sleeve.
“I’m not showing you this to upset you, or frighten you. We cleaned the personal effects from Greenwood’s room before giving them to her family but we double-checked for anything … untoward. I had no idea she had nanny cams in her chalet. She obviously put them up around the time the thefts started, to catch our thief. Do you know what a nanny cam is, Zinzi?”
Fighting another snipe of irritation, Zintle nodded, sniffling.
“Well, the others didn’t, which is why I’m glad I’m the one that caught it. She had two in there, glass figurines, looked like normal decoration. They carried lots of footage. I think she re-used some of the tape, but yeah, that’s some of what’s on it.” He looked extremely uncomfortable. “I know she was really close to you, Zinzi …”