Hot for Talia

by Julian Bloom

  The 2-hour flight to Jo’Burg’s Oliver R. Tambo Airport was uneventful. The view out the window looked much the same as she’d seen flying from Denver except that there were no green circles, and hardly any evidence of human activity. The contrast between the sardine tin conditions in Kayalitsha and this emptiness struck her. South Africa was a land of extremes, she decided.

  At Oliver Tambo, she was met by a company chauffeur who ferried her in a limousine to Sandton where the company’s headquarters were. He ushered her into the Garden Court hotel in the Sandton City shopping complex, which looked out onto Nelson Mandela Square with its huge statue of the great statesman. He left her at Reception, telling her she had two hours to settle in before the company CEO would come and take her to lunch. As in Cape Town, the company had booked her into a suite – even more luxurious than the one in Cape Town.

  Frikkie Pretorius arrived at her suite exactly on time. He was a rather short man with an enormous belly that poured out over his belt like dough in a baking tin, a feature that even expensive tailoring could not disguise. His suit jacket was wrinkled and his unbuttoned collar revealed that his shirt, even if had been put on fresh that morning, had picked up considerable grime from his neck. His red nose betrayed an excessive thirst for liquor as clearly as his belly did an excessive taste for food. With him were three business subordinate types, much more presentable than he, who nevertheless took pains to make their inferior status clear.

  When Tasheka opened the door, Frikkie walked passed her into the room, but his three juniors introduced themselves, shook hands with Tasheka and greeted her affably by name. When all were seated, Frikkie introduced the other three men as “Hansie,” “Johan,” and “Rudi” and then asked Tasheka in a surprisingly thready voice, I hope you traveled well and that the hotel in Cape Town was satisfactory.”

  Tasheka said that everything had gone well on the flights, and that the hotel had been wonderful, as was this one. It was clear that Frikkie had expected nothing else, and the greetings over, went immediately on to business.

  “Tasheka, we are very sorry indeed that we have all lost Jake. He was of considerable value to the company, and for many of us, a close friend. So we offer our heartfelt condolences. We are also so very grateful that you have come to help us out. Jake left considerable personal effects with us, and we have no idea what to do with them. I hope that in the two days you’re here, you’ll be able to sort through them. Whatever you want done with them, we will do. All you have to do is ask. Hansie, here, will give you every assistance possible.”

  It was hardly surprising that Tasheka took an immediate dislike to Frikkie. Every black growing up in America can sense immediately when they are faced with a racial bigot, and in this case it was abundantly clear. Aside from his failure to shake hands, or to bother to get her name correctly, his overt behavior was impeccable, but his body language spoke volumes. Jake had never told her a lot about his colleagues in Jo’Burg, but her memory jogged, she remembered that he had said that he had very little to do with the company CEO and thought it was deliberate on the CEO’s part. She could certainly understand avoidance on Jake’s part.

  She gave no sign, however. She was sure that she too would see very little of him, and was not unhappy about that. “I’m very grateful for your concern.” Then there was a painful pause in which no one could think of anything to say. Finally Frikkie took a deep breath and apologized that an important matter that had blown up just that morning which demanded his immediate attention, so regretfully, he would not be able to have lunch with her, but Hansie, Johan and Rudi would prove to be entertaining replacements. “If for any reason you need to contact me, please feel free to do so. He then left the room without any further words.

  Once Frikkie was gone, his three stand-ins came to life. Tasheka sensed that Hansie. had been embarrassed by the way Frikkie had treated her, and went out of his way to be affable and courteous. He suggested that they move to a very nice restaurant just across Mandela Square. As soon as Tasheka had taken Frikkie’s measure, she had been rather dreading the lunch, but once they were seated and the orders given, it was a congenial and pleasant meal. The three Afrikaners were interested in their life in Colorado, and she in her turn asked them about theirs in South Africa. They regaled her with stories about Jake in the office, where he had been quite popular, but it was clear that none of them had socialized with him elsewhere.

  When they had finished, Rudi and Johan left them to hurry back to work, but Hansie escorted her back to her room, and made arrangements to collect her the next morning to go to Jake’s flat.

  ‘*

  Tasheka had the afternoon free and thought about doing some exploring, but what she’d seen of Sandton didn’t seem different enough from Denver to warrant putting additional stress on her already tired feet. Besides, the smart dress she’d put on for the formalities of the morning seemed too uncomfortable to spend more time in, so she took a shower, wrapped the soft robe supplied by the hotel around her and sat with her feet up to think.

  She had plenty of things to think about. Although sheltered and unsophisticated, she was far from stupid, and especially shrewd about people. She was aware that the four men she’d spent the morning with had been less than totally frank with her, possibly because there were things they had wanted to conceal, or possibly just because they hadn’t thought her important enough, or clever enough, or interested enough to bother with outside of what was polite.

  She had learned, though, much more than they were revealing. She assumed that Frikkie’s racism extended to Jake as well as her, which meant that Jake was in all likelihood the token black in the organization. She knew from Jake that the South African government was under heavy pressure to put people of color in high positions in their firms, and tried to do that without yielding any significant control. She’d seen the same thing going on in the U.S. And, she thought, an American black would probably seem less threatening than a South African black to people falsely assuming that racism was a thing of the past in America. Jake had never talked about his work in South Africa, which could well have been because he would have been well aware of his insulting situation of holding a high office with very little power.

  She also supposed from reading between the lines of what Frikkie’s three stooges had said that though he might be superficially popular in the office, as Takesha knew Jake would be, he had not been regarded as a friend. They actually knew very little about him.

  Tasheka knew that Jake was a gregarious type and would have sought fellowship for his leisure time outside the office when it was clear that he wouldn’t find it in the office. She wondered why he had never mentioned it, but that did give her an inkling that what he did or whom he did it with might not please her. She thought she would perhaps find out more when she had his personal effects at her disposal.

  After these musings, Tasheka fell asleep, and when she awoke she was hungry. She again considered lashing out on one of the exotic restaurants advertised in the hotel’s guest booklet, but instead opted for ordering a meal delivered to her room, and spent the evening there, exploring South African TV which was something of an adventure itself. She found the news very interesting. Like most Americans, she had assumed without considering it closely, that the dismantling of apartheid had cured South Africa’s race problems. So the news, full of violence and acrimonious arguments was a revelation. She knew the problem hadn’t gone away in the U.S., but at least it was under wraps, which she rather thought was better.

  Chapter 4 NEW REVELATIONS

  In the morning, Hansie came to collect her and took her to Jake’s apartment, which was very spacious and luxurious. She was surprised at first, because Jake had shown no particular taste for luxury at home, but then realized that the apartment had been supplied by the company and showed their taste rather than Jake’s. Starting a closer inspection, she opened the closet in his bedroom where she found an array of expensive suits. There were only perhaps three in his closet at home.
Underneath the suits there was a row of shoes. Wondering if this really was Jake’s apartment, she moved on to the next closet where to her total surprise she found a dozen dresses with matching shoes underneath. She closed her eyes, fully expecting that when she opened them she would find the women’s clothes gone, but of course they weren’t.

  Stunned, she tried to think of alternate solutions to the problem they presented. She was as sure as could be that Jake was not a cross-dresser. That was a ludicrous idea. Was he helping one of his colleague’s wife out by storing them? But that idea was hardly less ludicrous than the first. The idea that he had a woman living with him seemed hardly less ludicrous, but when she looked in his dresser drawers to make sure it was as ludicrous as it seemed, she found lacy women’s underwear, size 4 – things she’d never thought of wearing herself: black thongs with sequin decorations, red silk brassieres with holes for the nipples. In a frenzy, she emptied all his drawers and found sex aids she had no idea existed and the purpose of which it took her a few minutes to figure out.

  Too flabbergasted for further exploration, she retreated into the living room and collapsed on the couch. Wishing it were all a dream, but too clever to think for a moment it was, she began to search her memory for any clue that she might have missed but failed to find a single one, except for his increasingly lengthy stays in South Africa which she had supposed were the result of an increased work load. When she could face it, she had to accept that the decreasing frequency of their love-making, which she had supposed was the normal cooling off of a marriage, was another clue.

  The fact was that they both had been living a lie for maybe two years. Jake had reverted to the polygamous life of this ancestors, but without the honesty of the traditional version.

  A thought suddenly terrified her. Had Jake married this woman? She had no doubt about the validity own marriage: she and Jake had married before he had ever heard of South Africa. But was there a marriage valid under South African law which meant that this woman was entitled to half of Jake’s property?

  That thought sent her in a panic to his desk where she found a number of personal documents, but no second marriage certificate. In fact, now that she could consider the whole matter more calmly, there was everything to suggest that the woman hadn’t lived with Jake, but had merely been a frequent visitor. There was no picture on the dresser, no woman’s touch in the furnishings, no cosmetics or feminine hygiene items in the bathroom. Except for the unexpected luxury, the apartment was exactly as she would have expected Jake’s apartment to be. That was slightly better, she thought, but only slightly. Her life was completely shattered. She fought tears. She would not succumb, but for several minutes she just shut down and thought about home.

  Getting a new idea, she took his bank book and statements and searched through them for any evidence of what Jake’s arrangement with the woman had been, and was pleased to find a regular monthly transfer made to a bank account, but no expensive purchases for things that might be gifts. If Jake’s relationship with the woman had been merely commercial, she felt better about it.

  She had been too complacent. She should have known that Jake’s need for companionship would lead him to make some kind of arrangement to secure it. And she also knew that in a strange place, for a man without any local ties, the easiest relationship to form was the one that Jake had formed. In the early years, she now recollected, Jake had made regular requests that she visit him, which a fear of air travel and general inertia had made her refuse. Poor dear, she had failed him.

  She found that since she couldn’t be furious with Jake, and yet had anger, she could direct the anger at the woman – that whore, that Jezebel! Free at last to be furious, she went to the kitchen and found a pair of scissors with which she slashed the dresses and the underwear and filling a black trash bag with the remnants and the shoes and left it at the trash collection point. For some reason she didn’t understand, she left the sex toys in the drawer. She had no intention of ever using them - at least that’s what she told herself - but they intrigued her.

  When she decided she had found everything that was going to be found in Jake’s apartment, she started to dismantle the bed, and discovered that she had been wrong. Tucked in the corner under the bed was a carton nearly full of pornographic magazines. Jake? Pornography? It seemed inconceivable. He wouldn’t! Not when there was live sex available, which there obviously had been. But perhaps, just perhaps, before he’d found a source of live sex or, as she preferred to think, when he was resisting betraying Tasheka, he might have used it for solitary satisfaction.

  She’d never looked at a pornographic magazine before and out of curiosity – at least that’s what she told herself – she began to leaf through them. Her first thought was that they were essentially boring. The same positions over and over with different performers. The bodies were beautiful, she supposed: the men’s penises extraordinarily long and the women’s breasts extraordinarily large. Jake’s penis had been satisfactory, but she had no idea what was normal for men’s penises. His had been the only one she’d ever seen. For a moment she imagined what it might be like to have sex with a man whose penis was the size of those in the magazines. Despite herself, she felt the liquefaction at the base of her spine that was the beginning of desire. She both liked and disliked that. The idea repelled her, masturbation with a porn mag? She had never stooped so low. But then, she’d never had to, and if that’s what Jake had done… what’s sauce for the gander could be sauce for the goose. And it had been a long time.

  As she was pondering that in the back of her mind, it suddenly struck her that a number of the couples depicted in the magazine were racially mixed. That was yet another thunderbolt. It had never occurred to her that Jake’s South African interest might be white. She tried to think if she had found anything that gave her a clue, but she hadn’t. If this were a movie, she thought, the detective would find hairs somewhere - on the man’s suits, or in the drain of the bathtub. Letting that thought move her into action, she minutely examined the suits in the closet but found nothing. She looked at the sieve in each of the bathroom drains and again found nothing. She supposed that the crime techs in the movie would remove the drains to examine them more closely, but she had no tools and anyway decided she didn’t want to know the truth that badly. She’d learned so many unbelievable things about the husband she’d thought she knew intimately, that another was inconsequential. But the idea stayed in the back of her mind.

  Chapter 5 NEW BEGINNINGS

  Tasheka knew that she had to start making decisions about what to have shipped to America, what to throw out, and what to send to charity. To make a start, she made the easiest decision and put the magazines in the throw away pile. She didn’t want to think about them, let alone keep them. The clothing was easy too; she had no need for men’s clothes. She rang Hansie and received from him the phone number of a charity, and immediately rang them and requested immediate collection. They were willing to collect, but were not very willing to say when they would do so. When Tasheka explained the situation, and described the quantity and quality involved, they changed their mind and promised to be there in less than an hour. She collected all the clothes and threw them in the pile near the door of the apartment.

  Next she went through the kitchen. The food in the fridge was all off, so was thrown out immediately. She wasn’t sure about the equipment: utensils, cutlery and crockery and phoned Hansie again to find out if it belonged to the company. Getting an affirmative answer was a big relief – another decision taken off her hands.

  She hesitated over the bedding which was silk. She’d never slept on silk sheets. The very large and thick bath towels, too, were tempting. But suddenly she just wanted to get rid of almost everything. She wanted nothing at home in Denver to remind her of this place. So she made a huge pile next to the pile of clothes and hoped the charity would want them. She thought one of the workmen might like them, so added them to the charity pile. That left only the papers and docu
ments in his desk, and after a moment’s dithering, the sex toys. She and her friends might like to giggle over those. All that would fit in her luggage, she thought. If not the company would ship them.

  Her work finished, she wanted to get back to her hotel as soon as possible. She phoned Hansie to tell him she was finished at the apartment and waited impatiently for him and the charity to arrive. She suddenly realized she was famished, but there was no food in the apartment and she didn’t know where to find any nearby. To her relief, the charity were as prompt as they had promised and were clearly delighted with both the clothes and the bedding. Hansie arrived soon afterwards and she left the apartment behind without another glance. Leaving her new knowledge about Jake and his life in South Africa was not so easy to leave behind, however.

  When he dropped her at the hotel, Hansie offered to join her for a late lunch, but she declined. She wanted to be alone. In her room, she ordered a hamburger and chips from room service, and took a short shower before they delivered. She felt soiled.

  Fed and refreshed, she lay on the bed and took stock. She figured that she had learned that the husband she thought she could read like a book was an entirely different person than she had thought he was. But as soon as she’d formed that thought, she corrected it. He hadn’t been entirely different. The Denver Jake was real. She was sure of that. He had loved her; the way they lived in Denver had been his doing all the way. It wasn’t a sham. But Africa had changed him – not so much altering what he was but actually teaching him new things about himself. That wasn’t a bad thing. People who didn’t change became petrified.