by JT Lawrence
The Campari comes on the rocks—it’s one of the few clubs that still offer actual ice in drinks—despite the cost, instead of frozen silicone shapes. He grinds a block between his molars; he likes real ice. She purses her lips at the shooters, as if to say he’s naughty. He presses one into her hand; they touch glasses and down the drinks. Both feel the rush of the warm spirit as it washes through them.
A man arrives at the bar and pretends to not watch them.
The woman blinks at Seth; sighs as her pupils dilate. With a cool and gentle hand he propels her by her lower back to a more private area, with brocade curtains and oversized couches. An oil painting of a man with a patchwork blazer and rivets for eyes gazes over them.
‘Let’s get you out of those dreadful shoes.’
Kirsten opens the folder while Kekeletso watches her. Inside: her parents’ autopsy reports. Keke has removed the photos taken by the forensic team in situ. It is enough that Kirsten found them dead, without having to see their death-grimaces again. Not that it makes much difference to Kirsten: a picture on glossy paper won’t be much more vivid than the images in her head.
The reports aren’t long. Kirsten skims a few pages describing what she already knows: bullet in brain, bullet in heart. .22 calibre Remingtons: one to stop thinking, one to stop feeling. Fired at arm’s length distance for her mom, half a room for her dad. Her mother was most likely kneeling there when the killer squeezed a round into her head. Execution style, but face-to-face. The police say it is a botched burglary, but this creep isn’t a stranger to murder.
Kirsten scans the medical jargon: entry wound of the mid-forehead; collapsed calvarium with multiple fractures; exit wound of occipital region. Official cause of death: Massive craniocerebral trauma due to gunshot wound.
There are diagrams on one of the final pages, similar to what you might find in a biology textbook: line drawings of people dissected lengthways so that you can see their bones and organs. Kirsten is always better with pictures. She strokes the diagrams with her finger, following the coroner’s notes and asides. When she finishes with her father’s she starts on her mother’s. Immediately something looks wrong.
‘Do you see it?’ asks Kekeletso. Kirsten has been so absorbed she has almost forgotten Keke is there. She looks up, her finger glued to the illustration of her mother’s abdomen. The ceiling rains cerise spirals down on them.
‘She had a… hysterectomy?’
‘Yes.’
‘How come I didn’t know that? Did she do it when I was too young to remember?’ This is entirely possible given her sketchy childhood memories.
‘Turn to the last page. I found it in her private medical file.’
Kirsten locates the last page in the folder and holds it up, pushing the others away. It is a record of an elective surgical procedure undergone by her mother in 1982. A full hysterectomy, five years before Kirsten’s birth.
Journal Entry
12 March 1987, Westville
In the news: Sweden announces a total boycott on trading with South Africa. Les Miserables opens at Broadway.
What I’m listening to: The Joshua Tree by U2. Radical.
What I’m reading: The scariest book known to man: IT by Stephen King.
What I’m watching: Lethal Weapon
I am, like, the happiest person in the world right now. When I told P about the baby I thought the worst, but I am right to love him because he is the nicest, sweetest, strongest man ever. Okay he was totally shocked but after a few minutes he hugged me so tightly and said that he would take care of the baby and me. I thought that he meant having us holed up somewhere as a secret lover and lovechild (which would have been totally fine by me!) but he is a better man than that. Said he wants to be a good father and you can’t do that not living in the same house. He asked me to MARRY HIM!!!
It wasn’t, like, the romantic picture I had in my head, the proposal. I guess I thought that when the day arrived it would be all champagne and roses and candlelight. Maybe on a tropical beach somewhere (Mauritius?), or a fancy restaurant. And the man would be taller and have more hair and he’d be rich (and not married!) and I… well, I wouldn’t be knocked up. It was more of a discussion than a proposal, and then he, like, blurted it out. Not as a question, but as what we should do, and I agreed.
My mind is swirling right now. I mean I feel bad that he is going to leave his wife, that’s so gnarly, but it has been over for a long time and I know that he will take care of her. Still, I feel sick about it. I hope she never finds out the truth. But I’m going to have his child and that is the most important thing right now. I hope that she will forgive him/us one day, and that I will be able to forgive myself. I am going to be a better person. I am going to stop being selfish and be the best wife and mother that I can be. I’m going to make P so happy.
Chapter 6
Mad Furniture Whisperer
Johannesburg, 2021
Seeing as James is away in Zimbabwe and Kirsten has no grind planned for the day, she decides it’s time to do something she has been putting off for too long. She catches a boerepunk-blasting taxi to the south of Johannesburg and takes a long, brooding walk from the bus stop to the storage garages in Ormonde.
As she walks she snaps pictures with her locket. She used to have a superphone with a built-in camera, had a collection of lenses for it, but lugging a phone around when you could snap a Snakewatch on your arm just seems archaic. Now smartwatches are being replaced with Tiles and Tiles are being replaced with Patches. It seemed impossible to keep up.
The LocketCam is tiny, smaller than a matchbox, and is really only a lens and a shutter release. She’ll get the pictures later from her SkyBox. It is great for scenes like this: an old bus depot painted white by the ratty pigeons that have adopted it as their home; a mechanic’s cheerful advertising mural painted on a brick wall; a poster for a Nigerian doctor with an unpronounceable name who can enlarge your penis, get your ex-lover back, make your breasts grow, make you ‘like what you see in the mirror,’ vaccinate you against The Bug, and make you rich. If he had that power, I’m sure he wouldn’t be messing around with other men’s junk. Or, on second thoughts, maybe he wanted to mess around with other men’s junk, and that’s why he became a junk doctor.
When she reaches the storage building it looks all closed up. Not very promising. Then she sees their billboard, and the logo: a smiling rhino. Ironic, and sad. Like a dodo giving a thumbs-up, or a winking coelacanth. Who would choose an extinct animal as their mascot?
Once the cops gave her the go-ahead to put her parents’ house on the market she paid a company to move all their possessions here. There is no way she could have faced doing it herself. This is the first place she found online, and she doesn’t remember the rhino. Now she wonders if her parents’ things really are here or if they were on the first truck out to some dodgy location: Alex, Lonehill, Potchefstroom.
There is no bell to ring or reception to visit. When she calls the number on the faded hoarding, a telebot tells her it is no longer valid. She walks around the building and finds a back entrance, a simple fenced gate closed with a heavy padlock. She has been given two keys she at first thought were identical, but she tries one now and the padlock springs open. She steps inside and locks the gate behind her.
The number on the cheap keyring is pink/purple-blue: 64 (Chewed Cherry Gum; Frozen Blueberry). She walks past a xylophone of colours before she finds her lot. The garage door is rusted and needs some persuading to roll up. It screams all the way and the red chevrons the noise causes in her vision momentarily blinds Kirsten. Then, silence: dust glitters in the sunlight.
She stands still, breathing, blinking, trying to cope with the onslaught of smells, colours, feelings, memories whirling around her. The lounge suite is closest to her, and she focuses on that. She lifts the protective sheeting and glimpses the arm, a familiar tattoo of faded chintz. Pictures in her head: her lying on the couch, eating milky cereal while watching TV, one throw-cushion behind h
er back, another under her knees. The base ragged where their decrepit cat, Mingi, used to sharpen his claws. She lifts a seat cushion and looks at its stained underside where her mother once spilled tomato soup, never to be forgiven by the stubborn fabric.
The coffee table with a small crack in the glass top that had been there for as long as she could remember. The server; the kitchen table; the counter swivel chairs. The buzz in her head dies down. She can do this. Slowly, methodically, she re-acquaints herself with each object. She lays her hand on them as she goes, acknowledging each piece, like some kind of mad furniture-whisperer.
The huge steel angle poise lamp, the bedside tables, the antique oak bookshelf. Box upon box of books and files and folders. Her parental units were academics and personally responsible, she was sure, for razing at least twenty rugby-field-size portions of rainforests each in the amount of paper they used over their lifetimes.
Despite being part of the original e-reader generation, they preferred their reading style old school, and pen and paper to glass or projections. ‘It just feels more real,’ her mother used to say when Kirsten sighed at her for writing down her shopping lists on the back of old receipts. ‘Smartphones exist for a reason,’ Kirsten would show her over and over how she could have a virtual shopping list, how she could send it to the store and have her groceries picked and delivered for her. Her mother would give her a tight smile, and she would know that she would never win this particular battle. When Cellpurses and then smart watches came on to the market it was just too much for them. They used to wield those old smartphone bricks as if they were something to be proud of, like the burning bras of the 1960s. An image of a particularly ugly bra in flames comes to Kirsten’s mind; she doesn’t know where it comes from. One of her university courses? An ancient Fair Lady? Picstream? Webpedia? Flittr? Sometimes she feels as though her brain is a giant, multi-dimensional reflector, filled with the world’s random pictures. Where have they come from? A parallel life? A previous life? Someone else’s life?
The only exception to her parents’ fear of progressive technology was when she had given them a Holograph: a 3D-photo projector loaded with her Somali Pirates pictures. This is before the collection had won any awards. They were so proud of her, kept the projector running on loop, despite its rather macabre content: they had pirates in their lounge for months. The Holograph never moved from the mantelpiece, even when it stopped working.
There, there’s a good memory to hold on to, until she remembers that the Holograph was stolen in the burglary, which makes her see the crimson comets again.
She battles to tear open the buff boxtape, cursing herself for not thinking of bringing a pair of scissors, when she finds in the third carton a neat little pocket-knife (Royal Sky). It is, fittingly, a sharp taste, a stab of bitter on her tongue, a hint of cyanide, like chewing an apple seed. She remembers this taste exactly, and gets a poke of nostalgia. Her father would keep this knife in his pocket and bring it out on special occasions: when a bottle of wine needed de-corking at a neighbourhood braai, or a loose thread threatened to unravel a dress. There would always be a calm measured-ness on these occasions. A slow inspection of the problem, a thoughtful diagnosis, and the retrieval of the magical object from the deep recesses of his trousers. A slow opening of the blade, a glint of light when it was revealed, and then at last, the careful incising where it was needed. Never forgetting the cleaning of the tool afterwards, a sleeve-shining of its insignia, and its eventual evaporation. Considered, calculating, careful.
She remembers specifically an occasion when she was battling to free a new baby doll from its suffocating plastic shell. The way he had achingly-slowly dismantled the packaging and kneeled to hand the toy to her. The way he had looked at her, almost with sadness, as if he had some kind of prescience that she wouldn’t be able to bear children of her own. The memory, before fond and with pretty edges, now stings her with its poignancy. She swallows the hard stone in her throat.
Kirsten was never allowed to touch the knife, it was forbidden. She flicks it open and starts ripping into the boxes.
Seth knows before he opens his eyes that he’s late for his grind. He groans and stretches for the Anahita water bottle he keeps next to his swingbed. Switches off his dreamrecorder. A few gulps later he turns on his Sunrise. Throughout the apartment all the curtains open, allowing the morning light to bleach the inside of the rooms, and what feels like the inside of his head. The apartment voice, which he has nicknamed ‘Sandy,’ wishes him a good morning and proceeds to play his Saturday playlist.
It’s his last day at Pharmax so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem if he’s a few hours late. It takes him a while to remember why his head feels like it had been left on a township soccer field: Salvia pills, cocaine drops, ShadowShots, a beautiful girl with sequins for eyes. Having sex with the shining girl behind one of the curtains in the club, but bringing a different girl home. Rolo calling them a private cab. Long chestnut- and blonde-striped hair, palest skin, beautiful tits, cosmic blowjob. He yawns and rearranges himself, has another sip of water.
Shit, I didn’t even check her ID for her Hi-Vax status.
That is dumb, but lately he’s done worse. He is either getting less paranoid or more self-destructive. Maybe it’s the salvia. Stretching his arms above his head, he makes a verbal note for his Pharmax report. Seth reaches over for his jacket, lying on the floor, and checks the inner pocket. He shakes the white bottle: almost half of the pills gone. He’ll need to top up today before he says his goodbyes.
The stripey-haired hook-up wasn’t happy when he asked her to leave at around 3AM but that was pretty much the standard reaction. He made the night more than worth her while, so he told her to suck it up as he pushed taxi tokens into her hand and closed the door behind her, opening it again just to turf out a lone red boot that smelled of Givenchy and old carpets.
As always, he is surprised by the hurt expression. Honestly, how could she expect him to get a decent night’s sleep with a total stranger in his bed? Some creeps were Fucked Up.
He gets up and wraps his raw silk dressing gown around himself. He doesn’t like walking around the place naked, even though he lives on his own. He finds people doing mundane things in the nude—like eating breakfast—distasteful. Naked is for showering and sex, for God’s sake, not for frying eggs and pressing wapple juice. He switches on the kettle, pours Ethiopian javaberry grounds into his antique espresso maker, and puts it on the gas stove to percolate. While he’s waiting he supercharges his Tile, steams some double-cream milk. Makes seedtoast with almond butter and wolfs it down. Makes some more, and takes it to his tablet along with his mug of fragrant coffee. Just as he had hoped, a small green rabbit blinks on his screen. Someone from Alba is online and bumps him. He types in his password to gain access to the thread.
FlowerGrrl> Hey SD. You ready?
He takes a sip of his coffee, dusts crumbs off his fingertips, and types a reply:
SD>> Hello my favourite cyberstalker. Yebo. Starting/F on Monday.
FlowerGrrl> U happy/brief?
SD>> Always.
FlowerGrrl> U did a good job/Pharmax.
SD>> There was nothing 2 do.
Out of nowhere, his left thumb starts tingling. He examines it, rubs it on the top of his thigh, and carries on typing.
SD>> They had nothing for us.
FlowerGrrl> Clean corporate? Thought those went/way/rhinos.
SD>> Me 2. But they R squeaky. Apart/drugging up country & making lds $$ off vuln & desperate.
FlowerGrrl>Hey, we all need 2 earn/living.
SD>> Sure. Any news re anything else? Heard about/stupid politician/pool?
FlowerGrrl> Criminal.
SD>> : )
FlowerGrrl> Sure there are lots of those at F.
SD>> Criminals or pools?
FlowerGrrl> Both. If u find 1 have/swim for me. Haven’t swum since/kid.
SD>> Me neither. Probably have heated springs & shit in there. I’ll do/fuc
king backstroke 4 U. YOLO!
FlowerGrrl> LOLZ! LFD. YOLO FOMO FML.
SD>> Congrats on Tabula Rasa bust. Excellent work. Mind-5.
FlowerGrrl> Going 2 break story next week.
SD>> They’ll make good miners/farmers/etc at the PLC.
FlowerGrrl> Ha! Can U imagine? 1 day a botox billionaire, the next you’re lubing up a cow.
SD>> Karma’s a bitch.
FlowerGrrl> U said it, baby.
SD>> Nice/catch up.
FlowerGrrl> Ja, B careful now.
SD>> Always.
FlowerGrrl> Seriously. Watch yourself.
SD>> I am being serious. I’m paranoid, always careful.
FlowerGrrl> LOL! Funny cos iz true. X
The green rabbit disappears.
Kirsten’s left thumb is bleeding. She hadn’t realised you could get a (double) paper cut from double-walled cardboard. After swearing a great deal in every colour she can think of, she kicks the box that had inflicted the damage. She wants it to go flying, but it’s heavy and all she manages to do is nudge it off the pile. It lands with a thud of disappointment on the concrete floor.
The corner of a white card sticks out from underneath the box. She pries it loose. Smaller than the palm of her hand, tacky double-sided tape on the back: it’s the kind of card that gets sent with flower deliveries. The illustration is of a lily, printed in sparkling pink ink (Strawberry Spangle), which she bleeds on.
Inside, in a script she doesn’t recognise, it says ‘CL, yours forever, X, EM.’