by Mark Winkler
I swirl my Johnnie around in the glass. Even though there’s nothing to mix it with. Madge watches the bubbles rising through her drink. She perks up.
“You can have my shop.” She sings the words. It’s like she doesn’t mean them. “You do me and the shop is yours,” she says.
I understand now. The understanding makes me knock back my whisky. “Fuck you, Madge,” I say. My tongue is behind my teeth, ready to strike. I could sting her like an asp. I don’t want her anything. What I want is for her not to die.
“No, fuck you,” she says.
“Fuck me?” I try to sound indignant. What I hear is, “Fugg me.” Okay, so the whisky has my tongue. It has other parts of me too. The parts in the middle of me. The parts around my lungs and my heart. It hurts. It makes me want to sob. I do. Snot shoots out of my nose. Madge takes the tissue from under her strap. I take it. “I don’t want your policies or your shops. I don’t want to kill you either,” I say.
“Come, Nate,” she says. “It’s not that hard to understand. I’m dying and I’m not. I’m trying and I can’t. Every day is a living death, and that thing called life is as far from me as Steve McQueen is from you. And like old Steve, I’ll never see the real thing again.”
Every breath catches and chokes so that I can’t speak. I last cried like this when I was a kid. Madge’s tissue isn’t enough. I’m using my wrists, my sleeves. She watches me and waits. She levers herself out of her chair. She takes my glass. She pours twice what I’d poured earlier. Shoves it towards me. I gulp. It hurts. Halfway through I have a huge hiccup.
“Murder me, darling,” Madge says. “Please.”
I sleep on her orange couch
I sleep on her orange couch in my clothes. I wake up at dawn. As usual I have a hard-on. Half of it I put down to a full bladder, and half to being indefatigably horny. It’s up against my jeans on the left. It hurts. There’s a small toilet next to Madge’s lounge. While I’m peeing, I wonder at the silence. I wonder if I killed her in the night. I can’t remember anything beyond whisky and crying and sounding petulant. My body breaks out in goose bumps. It’s not a cold day. My knees turn to balloons of water. I put my hand up to the wall so that I don’t pee all over the cistern. My prostate has a little fit of its own. I pee in spurts. Like an ornamental fountain. So much pee and so little time. Did I use a kitchen knife? Did I find a hammer somewhere? Or did I smother her with an orange cushion? When I’ve finished peeing I look at my hands. Squint at the places where blood might collect. Under the fingernails. In the cuticles. I see nothing. I wash my hands just in case. Scrub them with Madge’s nailbrush. Stare at the basin for a while. Wonder about luminol. Other forensic stuff they probably have and never show on TV.
The door to Madge’s bedroom is open just a crack. I nudge it, waiting for the horror-movie creak. There isn’t one. I can’t go in. I have to. I can’t see in the murk. I stand in the doorway, waiting for my eyes to adjust. A glow filters through the blinds. I make out a shape on the bed. A silvery strand of drool dangles from the corner of her mouth. It dips in the hollow of her cheek and stretches like a spiderweb to her earlobe. In the middle of the lobe is a tiny diamond stud. It’s an old person’s earlobe, long and soft. Madge inhales, emits a gentle snort. Even in her sleep she hugs her sides. Evidently I didn’t kill her. I leave a note. See you later—N, I write.
So banal.
It almost undoes last night’s conversation all by itself. I like banal. It’s why I work where I work. It’s why I live where I live. Why I live how I live. I’m not Dino.
I take the stairs in case
I take the stairs in case Mrs. du Toit is lurking in the lift. I don’t feel like her right now. At the top I peer around the corner. I don’t see her. Maybe she’s gone to church. Maybe not. The open passageway has a brick balustrade along its length. You have to walk past doorways and the windows of kitchens and bathrooms. You can see the saddle between Lion’s Head and Signal Hill. In winter when it rains you can be totally drenched on the way to your door.
My door clicks open and still she doesn’t appear. I pull it shut. Lock it. Slowly slide the chain into its slot. I take the old photographs down from the wall. I’m always careful how I put them up. I use thin red ribbon to connect one to the next. I’m just as careful when I take them down. It’s silent behind the wall. Once I’ve removed the photographs, the strips of ribbon make up a giant family tree that’s lost its leaves. I don’t take down the last two images. One is a photo of me. I’m twelve years and three months old. I don’t remember how I know. I just do. I’m standing in dappled shade. There is a lake behind me. There are pine trees to my left and right. I’m not very big in the picture. There’s shadow over my face and sunlight on the top of my hair. It was lighter then. Short. Shiny. It’s hard to see me in the picture. The other picture is of my sister. Isabel about eight in the photograph. Hair like a helmet. It wasn’t taken at the same time as mine. She’d have been eighteen or so on the day my picture was taken. Almost forty today. I wonder what she looks like now. I wonder if she also wears single colours like Mrs. du Toit.
I take the strips of ribbon from the wall. I drape them carefully over the back of a chair. I take the photograph of the woman at the airfield and stick it above my sister and me. I use three bits of ribbon to connect our pictures to hers. One piece goes across from me to my sister. Then a shorter bit connects us vertically to the airfield woman. She’s our mother now.
I open the album and pop each photograph from its triangular mount. I should be wearing white gloves for this. Like they do in museums. I line up the photographs on the coffee table. They’re in the same order as they were in the album. It’s sort of sad to see them laid out one after another. The whole thing takes me hours. Like always. I stand up, find some bread. Wash it down with Sparberry. Get back to work.
There’s a knock on my door. My knee hits the coffee table. I’ve been concentrating hard in the silence. I hope I haven’t made a noise. It’s getting dark. I need to switch on a light.
“Nathan?” Mrs. du Toit coos. “Naa-than.” I freeze. If I move the couch springs will squeak. She knocks again. Calls my name. I can hear her breath at the door. Huffing and puffing, wanting to blow my house in. I hope she doesn’t hear my breathing. My shin hurts. If I didn’t know who it was I would be afraid. I don’t get visitors. Then I hear high heels clicking. Red or white or black heels. Keys being fiddled with. It takes her a while to open her door. She slams it, almost. I hear her locks being locked and her chains being chained.
It takes me past midnight to build my new family. The first step is to edit out the ones that don’t fit your story. Then you have to figure out the connections between all the rest. You make mistakes and start again. You carry on editing. Sometimes you rescue a discarded face from the slush pile. Sometimes you select a face and then reject it later. You constantly ask yourself, “What if?” It makes you think. It helps you build the stories and the backstories. It helps you be sure that everything is logical and tight.
I fall asleep on the couch.
I wake up and know I’ve had The Dream. I hardly ever dream. When I do it’s always the same one. My neck is stiff. The dream has no pictures. It’s just black. It smells of pine needles. In the blackness is the sound of someone crying. There’s also the smell of something mouldy. My heart is thumping as if I’ve been running up the mountain. It’s always like this when I wake up from The Dream. I look at my wall of photographs until I’m calm again. I need a run. It’s two am. I go to bed. Set my alarm for six.
I run into the wind. It’s strong. It’s beatable. It’s a barrier of marshmallow. The marshmallow smells like sun and dust and fynbos. I run all the way along Tafelberg Road. I turn around at the ravine near Devil’s Peak. There’s a barrier there now. It’s been put there to block cars from going any further. A sign warns of rockfalls. Just beyond is an old reservoir at a bend in the road. The water in it is black. There
are frogs. The wind is at my back on the way home. I’m pushed along by a giant marshmallow that smells of mountain.
When I get out of the lift I hear my cellphone ringing in my flat. I don’t get the door open in time. I see a missed call from Mrs. du Toit. I call her back. I can hear her phone ringing through the wall. It’s playing “The Sting.” One ear hears her voice next door. The other hears her voice on my phone.
“Come for breakfast,” she says. “And bring your laundry.”
“I’ve just come back from a run. I need to shower and get to work.”
I’m looking at my family on the wall as I speak. There is a picture of a woman who irritates me. She is in profile. She has a heavy jaw. Her braided hair sits on top of her head. On top of the braids is a small floppy hat. Maybe it’s a handkerchief. The white of her blouse fades into the white of the background. She has a smile. A grin. It’s almost too modern, that smile. Candid and toothy. Perhaps that’s what’s irritating me. I’ll get rid of her sometime.
“Come shower here,” Mrs. du Toit says.
I’m not wearing a shirt. I am dripping sweat. The phone feels slippery in my hand.
“I have to be at work by eight-thirty,” I say.
“Have to? Says who?”
There’s a silence.
“Okay,” I say. I text Sonia to tell her I’m sick. She hates it when staff text like that. She expects them to call. She wants to hear the sickness in their voices. She’s been known to go to their homes if she doesn’t believe them. I turn off my phone. I kick off my running shoes. Pull off my socks. They have holes in them.
I knock on Mrs. du Toit’s door. I have a bundle of smelly clothing in my arms. I drop a sock and pick it up. Mrs. du Toit is wearing a white towel. She knew things would happen like this. She’s planned for it. Again. The towel is tied over her breasts in that secret woman-knot that stops it sliding off. It’s tied high, so it’s short. The thrust of her breasts makes it even shorter in front. The high heels are a bit much. Mrs. du Toit grabs my arm and pulls me into the flat. She’s giggling. She makes a show of peeping out of the door before she closes it. Pretending to make sure that nobody has been watching. She isn’t a good actor. There’s a cheap coffee filter machine on the counter. It’s making noises and dripping brown liquid into a glass pot. The room smells of coffee. Mrs. du Toit drags me to the bathroom. She takes my clothes. She squats at the washing machine and stuffs them in through the glass door. Whites, colours, blacks all together. I don’t mind. I don’t care how they come out. As long as they’re clean.
She curls a forefinger at me. “Come,” she says. I step closer. She laughs. “Your shorts,” she says. I step out of them. “And?” she says. She holds out her hand for my underpants. I take them off. There is a great dark sweat stain down the back of them. She throws them in with the rest of the laundry. She stands and turns the machine on. Then she turns to me and cocks her head to one side. Her smile is a caricature of someone being sexy in the movies. She puts out a finger and runs it down my chest. She puts the tip of it into her mouth. Then she undoes the towel. It drops to the floor. She steps up to me and takes my balls in one hand. She sticks her tongue down my throat.
Having sex in the shower isn’t easy. It only really works in books and movies. We stop trying and head for the bed. Soon the bed is as wet as we are. She pours coffee afterwards. Sips it as she scrambles some eggs. Piles this onto toast. We are naked. We eat breakfast naked. I wash the dishes naked. I hear the washing machine change cycles. She laughs and flashes fillings.
“You’re stuck,” she says. She nods towards the noise. “No clothes.” She leads me to the bedroom by my dick.
I could easily do every Monday
I could easily do every Monday like this. I could easily not work for a living. The trouble with bunking Monday is that it makes Tuesday much worse. The hangover of all that unfinished Monday business. The more of Monday we use up, the closer Tuesday is. Mrs. du Toit isn’t that bad, I decide. She falls asleep next to me. She’s almost beautiful. I watch her as the day ticks away. When we wake up we shake out my clothes. I put some on. We go out for a late lunch. A burger at the place on the corner of Kloof Street. It’s not very good. We only drink one bottle of wine between us. She chats. A lot. I don’t mind. The more she talks about herself the less she can ask about me. She starts to go on about her husband. She goes quiet and stops talking. I suddenly want to tell her all about Madge. About what Madge wants. I swallow the words down. Either the stories about herself or the wine has made her sad.
“Come,” she says. I can see she’s trying to shake it off. “Let’s walk.” I like to run. I hate walking. We go to the Company’s Garden. It used to be a vegetable garden for sailors. There are ponds. There are homeless people. Bronzes of old jingoists. Rhodes. Smuts. General Somebody on a horse. Mrs. du Toit is wearing jeans and sneakers. It’s almost dark. At Wale Street we turn back and head up to Gardens again. A last peanut vendor is trying to offload his day’s stock. He thinks we’re tourists. He tries to sell us a bag of peanuts to feed to the squirrels. “No thanks,” Mrs. du Toit says in Afrikaans. She holds on to my arm with both hands. It’s like she’s trying to crawl into me. I know she’ll take it badly if I shrug her off. There aren’t many people left in the avenue. We’re halfway back when Mrs. du Toit stops. I look at her. She holds a finger to her lips. I listen. A bush is snoring. A pair of tattered sneakers protrudes from it. I wonder whether Mrs. du Toit is going to laugh. She shakes her head. She isn’t laughing. I suppose the feet of a homeless man sticking out of a bush is only funny if you’re twelve.
At my door she stops. I am a little disappointed. She kisses me on my cheek. Pats the spot she’s kissed. Goes to her flat.
Sonia has held over our Monday meeting to Tuesday because of my Monday illness. Yumna is on time. Already everyone has heard about Sarel’s ARs comment. Now they’re all calling him Arse. Sonia tells everyone about my big sale. They already know of course. They congratulate me. The make jokes about “the bank job” and “the heist.” I laugh when they laugh. I can taste the envy behind their words.
I don’t feel like working. I try to remember my Monday with Mrs. du Toit. It’s patchy. I go into Sonia’s cubicle with my coffee. It looks like she does feel like working. She’s spreadsheeting away. Every time I open my mouth to say something she makes a phone call or holds her hand up. At the edge of her desk is a reporter’s notepad. It’s spiral-bound with a blue line down the middle. I pick it up. The inside cover has Dino’s name and cellphone number on it. The first eight or ten pages are covered with shorthand scrawl. I can’t make out a thing. I wonder whether there are murder or corruption or hijacking syndicates hidden in the cyphers. The thought of big macho Dino making notes in old-fashioned secretary’s script makes me smile. Sonia is boring me. I take the notepad to my desk. I tear off Dino’s notes. I ball them up. I wrap the ball in another sheet of paper. I drop it into the bin. I slip the notepad into the pocket of my hoodie. I have a plan for it. I just don’t know what it is just yet. Sometimes plans only reveal themselves once you have all the bits to hand.
By four-thirty Sonia is also bored. We pretend we have a meeting upstairs. We take the lift to the ground floor. Eric drops his pen and starts pouring our drinks as we walk in. Beers for both of us. I like women who like beer. The bar is quiet. Eric resumes his drawing. It’s of some elf or sprite or troll or something. Above the waist it splits into two creatures. They’re fighting with each other.
“So,” Sonia says. It’s the kind of “so” that’s heavy with what’s to come. She raises her glass at me. “Well done on the bank thing,” she says. So, that wasn’t the reason for the “so.” It must be about my Monday sickness. I wait for it.
“Thanks for your help,” is what I say and toast her back.
She shrugs. “That’s what I’m there for.” She drinks her beer. “You need to know that it’s been noticed by bigger people than me,
” she says. “One or two more like that during the year and you might have my job soon. You just need a bit of focus. Being on time. And not pulling sickies for no good reason.”
“Two things,” I say. “One, the bank thing was pure fluke. Ally could have called anyone. You. Sarel. Yumna. I didn’t actually do anything to land it. And two, I really don’t want your job.”
“Gee, thanks.” She frowns into her beer. “It’s not such a bad job, by the way.”
“It’s not that. I’m happy where I am. How I am.”
Sonia looks at me hard. Her little eyes grow littler. I wonder whether she can actually see me out of the slits. “How old are you?” she asks.
The enigma of these women.
“Thirty-one,” I say.
“Do you have absolutely no ambition?”
I pretend to think about this for a moment. I’m wondering why this should be surprising.
“Nope,” I say.
“So you don’t want to be rich? Famous?”
“Nope.”
“Just famous?”
“Definitely not.”
“Just rich, then?”
I shrug. “I could do rich if I didn’t have to work for it,” I say.
“Not going to happen.”
I don’t see what’s so hard to understand. “Listen. I don’t want my name on a door. I don’t want it in the movie credits. There are more people alive today than have ever died. Did you know that? Seven billion. How many of the dead ones do you remember? Ten? Twenty? How many of the alive ones can you name? The one billion that have roofs over their heads and enough to eat are climbing over each other to be on top of the pile before they die. The ones with the most toys win, remember? They say that after people were gassed by the Nazis, the camp officials would find them in a pyramid. The ones that died first were at the bottom. The toughest climbed to the top because they thought they could get to fresh air and survive.”