by JT Lawrence
‘How are you?’ James asks, ‘how have you been holding up?’
‘I had a very interesting weekend,’ she says, spooning the last of the wasabi into her mouth and feeling the jagged edges of the stars fade away. ‘I discovered the reason I’m so, well, fucked up.’
James takes a long, slow sip of his beer. They had been through this so many times before.
One of the problems with long-term mono-relationships, is that listening to the same old issues gets eyeball-bleedingly boring. At least now she has a new angle.
He looks at her, measuring her mood, puts down his glass. She senses him sighing on the inside.
‘Kitty, you’re not fucked up.’
‘I am, a little.’
‘Okay, you are, a little, but so is everyone else. You’re just more aware of your fucked-up-ness than the average creep, because you’re...’
‘Special?’
‘Not what I was going to say, but let’s go with that.’
They smile at each other, and it reminds her of when they started dating in varsity. When things were still shiny.
‘Do you mean your synaesthesia?’
‘No, the synaesthesia is my light side. I’m talking about my dark side.’
‘The Black Hole,’ he says. God, how he hates The Black Hole.
As a child she had tried to explain it to her parents, thinking that they had it too, that is was a necessary human condition, but they would get frustrated and lose their patience, just as James does now. Perhaps The Black Hole on its own would have been fine, but with her synaesthesia it seemed too much for them to handle. It caused a rift: a cool, empty space between them that could easily be ignored; not often navigated.
Once, when she was still in primary school, she tried to explain the emptiness to her mother, who became furious and stormed out, leaving her at home alone. When the minutes streamed into hours and the sun started sinking she went to the neighbour’s house: a young couple who, nonplussed, plopped her in front of the television. They fed her milky rooibos and stale Marie biscuits while they whispered into the phone. Afterwards, they sat in the living room with her, making awkward conversation, until the glare of her mother’s headlights lit up their sitting room, announcing, with bright hostility, her return. It wasn’t the first or the last time her mother had left her on her own.
Eventually, a little desperately, her father had produced Mingi: a meowing yin-yang ball of fluff, hoping the kitten would stitch up The Black Hole, but it didn’t. She kept quiet about it after that, not wanting to cause them any more worry. Now they were gone and now James was the worrier.
‘And?’ he prompts, ‘what’s the reason?’
She smooths out the polka-dotted tablecloth then says the words out loud: slowly, clearly, listening to her own voice. ‘I think I was adopted.’
James frowns at her. ‘What?’
‘Keke visited while you were away. She found out some... well, to cut a long story short, my mother had a hysterectomy before I was born.’
She lets it sink in. James just looks at her.
‘And,’ she says, taking the birth certificate and magazine clipping out of her bag, ‘look at these. Look at this cheap-ass certificate, probably created in CorelDRAW. Do you know that there is not one photo of me as a baby? Not one.’
She flips the imposter-baby picture over to reveal the magazine name and date on the other side. James looks stunned. She doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t quite believe it yet, either. He grabs the photo from her hand and studies it.
‘I know!’ she says, ‘isn’t it crazy? I’m adopted!’ The woman at the next table looks over in interest. Kirsten lowers her voice. ‘So there is a reason I never felt properly connected to them. Why I always felt like an outsider.’
‘Everyone feels like an outsider. It’s inherent, the feeling we don’t belong. Ironically, the one thing we all have in common.’
‘Yes, okay, but... it’s crackers, right? Do you realise what this means? I could have a family out there!’
James is quiet, looks worried.
‘Well?’ she urges him, as if he has some kind of answer for her.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s pretty shocking. If it’s true.’
‘I need to find them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What the hell do you think I mean? I’m going to find out who my real parents are. And meet them. Have them over for some fucking cake.’
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
‘I knew you’d say that.’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘That night… that night they were killed,’ says Kirsten.
James puts his hand over hers.
‘My mother called me. She said she had to tell me something. That it couldn’t wait.’
‘Why didn’t you... tell me?’
‘She was upset, stumbling over her words. Not making sense. I thought she was... having one of her episodes.’
Carol had been showing signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s. She hadn’t been diagnosed, but the symptoms of dementia had begun presenting themselves the year before, and were increasing in frequency. Kirsten pictured the disease as a whey-coloured cotton wool cloud over her mother’s head (Cirrus Nest). As with most issues, her parents hadn’t liked to talk about it. James looks into her ever-changing eyes, the sound of the sea.
‘Surely you must get it? This is my chance to find my missing part. Besides, it’s not just for me; it’s for us. To know my biological mother’s medical history… it might help us figure out our... fertility issues.’
‘I wish that I was enough for you,’ he whispers, turmeric in the air. Kisten gives him a segment of a smile. They both know it will never be true.
He takes a gulp of his beer. ‘We don’t have fertility issues.’
‘Are you being serious? We’ve been trying for years.’
‘That’s normal, nowadays.’
A frozen veil descends between them.
‘I feel the hope too,’ says James. ‘And the disappointment. I want a baby as much as you do.’
‘Bullshit,’ she says, although she knows it hurts him.
‘Look, the less you worry about it—’
Kirsten curls her hands into fists. ‘Less worry is not an option currently on the table. Please choose another fucking option.’
The chicken truffle with cocoa-chilli reduction and green peppercorn brittle arrives. It is beautifully presented but Kirsten is raging inside and can’t imagine she can swallow any of it.
‘Look,’ she says, pushing her chair back. ‘I’m meeting Kex for drinks tonight. I’m going to go.’
‘Kitty, please don’t be like this.’
She stands up. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Seth leaves the Fontus building at 20:30. He is enjoying the actual work of the new job, the flavour-mapping and production process modelling; it’s like grinding at Disney World after the serious chemical engineering he did at Pharmax. Plus they have everything you could possibly want on the campus: a gym, a spa, a drycleaner, a download-den, communal bikes, restaurants, a (mostly empty) childcare centre, a virtual bowling alley, a Lixair chamber, SleepPods, all complimentary for staff. They even have wine tasting and book club evenings. Golf days, gaming nights. Infertility support groups. Overnight accommodation. The huge property is not dissimilar to a full-board holiday resort. It’s as if they don’t want their employees to leave the premises. Seth is surprised they don’t run a matchmaking service to keep all the creeps in the family. Or a brothel.
The employees themselves seem to be extremely clean-cut: professionally dressed, well groomed, clear skinned. Not a lot of individual style—no Smudge or ink in sight. Certainly no recreational drugs as far as he can tell.
The Weasel is turning out to be even more of a pesticle than expected, literally leaning over his shoulder as he works. He finds it difficult to be constructive when he’s being watched, especially by a bag of dicks. He n
eeds to experiment and play around, and this includes swapping and swerving in between a host of different programs and apps, and you can’t do that when you have those watery eyes glued to your screen.
Worse still, it makes it almost impossible to do his real job—his Alba job—the reason he is here is in the first place. Seth feels a hot rush of irritation, almost anger; he needs to blow off some steam. He has a cocaine drop, his third for the day, and decides to head to the SkyBar.
Kirsten catches a tuk-tuk for the short ride into the inner city. She has the feeling someone is watching her, and keeps looking over her shoulder for James, that he must have followed her out of Molly Q’s, but each time she thinks she hears something, or sees movement out of the corner of her eye, there is no one there. Despite the reassuring company of her fellow passengers, she starts to feel quite spooked.
Kekeletso is already at the bar when Kirsten gets there, and is getting some girl’s number. Once she has it, they smile at each other, and the woman kisses Keke’s cheek, strokes her arm. Keke is wearing a lacy tank top that shows off her nano-ink tattoo beautifully. It’s an antique grey colour now, so Keke must have shot up quite recently.
The SkyBar is on top of the tallest skyscraper in South Africa. It’s five hundred floors, and has a glass elevator on either side. They used to have a C-shaped infinity pool outside, running almost all the way around the venue. Now it’s dry and filled with exotic-looking plants with larger-than-life leaves and trailing tendrils. The club’s main attraction is that there’s always an interesting crowd, a good mix of BEE and reverse-BEE millionaires, bohemians, sports celebrities, tourists and race car drivers.
‘Hey,’ she greets Keke, ‘this place is packed! I thought we were only meeting at nine-thirty.’
She waves off the woman. ‘I decided to come early, to network.’
‘So that’s what the kids are calling it nowadays?’
Keke smiles, and Kirsten grabs the still-warm barstool, which is more of a post-modernist statement than an actual chair.
‘Seriously, she’s a good contact to have. Grinds for the Nancies.’
‘Yuck,’ says Kirsten, ‘and I thought my life was bad.’
‘She’s clearly a masochist.’
‘Those masochists. Handy to have around.’
Keke orders them a couple of beers, hits the ‘tip’ button twice, and the barman delivers them with a wink in her direction. Her account will be debited with the balance by the KFID system as she leaves.
‘So, why are you early? I thought Marmalade was taking you out tonight. What happened, did he stand you up? No petrol in Zim again? No water? No aeroplane stairs?’
‘It would have been better if he had.’
‘Oh, shit. Sorry. Another fight?’
‘Argh... I’m so sick of hearing about my own problems. Fuck it. What are we here to celebrate?’
‘Well... can I tell you a secret?’ asks Keke, eyes a-sparkle.
‘Hello,’ says Kirsten, ‘who else would you tell?’
‘You can’t tell anyone, not even Marmalade.’
Won’t be the first time. Kirsten nods.
‘I’m just about to break this big story. It’s huge. I’d love to say that it’s been weeks of hard journo-ing but actually it just fell into my lap. All I had to do was fact-check.’
‘In other words, all your Friend With Benefits had to do was fact-check.’
‘Yeah-bo.’
‘Hey? Who did it come from? Why would someone just hand over a story to you? And why you?’
‘I don’t know. The gods of the fuck-circus that is journalism decided to smile down on me. Why do whistleblowers toot their flutes? Justice? Revenge? It arrived in my SkyBox with no note and no author. Just the picture of a little green rabbit that disappeared as soon as I opened it.’
‘Bizarre,’ says Kirsten.
‘I know already. But listen to this. You know that Slow-Age super-expensive beauty-salon-slash-plastic-surgery clinic in Saxonwold? Tabula Rasa. They were the first spa in SA to have a Lixair—vitamin air—chamber. They made headlines a while ago with their FOXO gene therapy? The one with all-white everything? Like, you get blinded when you go in there?’
‘Heard of it. Never been. My freelance salary doesn’t stretch that far.’
‘Lucky for you. All that white was hiding something very dark indeed.’
‘Let me guess. They were exchanging their wrinkled flesh-and-blood clients for smooth-skinned Quinbots?’
‘Worse,’ says Kekeletso.
‘Ha,’ says Kirsten. ‘What?’
‘They were buying discarded embryos from dodgy fertility clinics, spinning them for their stem cells, then injecting them into their clients’ faces.’
Kirsten stops smiling. ‘No,’ she says.
‘That’s what I thought. No way it could be true, but this report came from someone who had worked there. Had infiltrated the system and had proof of hundreds of transactions. Pics, video, everything.’
‘That is so fucked up. Horrible. I wish you had never told me. I wish it wasn’t true.’
‘Sorry,’ says Keke. ‘I had to tell someone. I’ve been sitting on it for days waiting for all the facts to check out.’
‘What kind of world are we living in?’ asks Kirsten.
‘One where at least there is someone willing to out those bastards. If something like this had happened fifty years ago we wouldn’t have had a cooking clue. May The Net bless Truthers everywhere.’
‘To Truthers!’ says Kirsten, raising her drink. ‘Also, ha ha.’
‘Huh?’
‘Don’t you think it’s funny? The name? Tabula Rasa means “clean slate”, doesn’t it? Like, come in all aged and wrinkled and shit and leave with a face like a clean slate.’
‘And a brain to go with it,’ Keke adds.
‘Except now it’s going to be revealed as a black clinic.’
‘Poetry!’
‘You’re right, it is funny. Ha!’
‘Or would be, if it wasn’t so fucked up.’
‘Yes,’ Keke pulls a face, ‘well. You know what they say.’
‘Tell me. What do they say?’
‘If you don’t laugh, you cry.’
‘Story of my life. Well, congratulations. That’s one big fucking story. I sense some kind of award for journalistic excellence on the horizon. Huzzah!’
‘I wish I could take the credit. Oh, Kitty... there’s something else,’ says Keke, looking hesitant.
‘What’s up?’
‘I found something else. It’s something about you. About your parents.’ Keke rubs her lips, rings for another round. ‘You’re not going to like it.’
Seth is gliding to electro-house swampo-phonic with a drunk woman in a kimono on the superglass dance-floor. It is easier to dance if you don’t look down: five hundred floors up, the vertigo from looking down sucks the rhythm from your feet. Usually he loves the mixed crowd at the SkyBar but he feels off-balance tonight. The drinks don’t taste as good; the women aren’t as pretty as usual. It’s too crowded. He tried taking more coke earlier but it seems like a waste with this mood. Usually he would have already banged this girl in the plant pool, or in the unisex bathroom, but tonight it doesn’t feel worth the bother. This makes him feel worse. Is he getting old? Is grinding in a corporate environment leaching him of his personality? What’s next? Wearing a suit and tie? A nametag? A hearing aid? Joining the Fontus D&D club? Facebook? Getting married? Viagra? He shivers involuntarily. The sooner he can get his job there done and move on, the better.
He gives up on having a good time, abandons his drink, shrugs off the kimono and goes to get his jacket and gun from the security counter. While he manoeuvres through the warm bodies that block him he inadvertently gets close to the bar. As he’s making his way forward he feels a surge, an electric current zip through his body. It shocks him into standing up straight. He is surrounded—touching so many creeps at the same time—and he looks about to see if anyone else felt it, but n
o one around him registers any kind of surprise.
The fuck was that?
Kirsten is doubled over. Keke grabs her arm.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Christ,’ she whispers, ‘what the fuck?’
‘What?’
‘I just had the weirdest feeling.’
‘Your synaes-stuff?’
Slowly she starts to straighten, hands on hips. ‘Fucking hell. I don’t think so. More like getting the electric chair. You didn’t feel anything?’
Keke shakes her head.
‘I must have touched something.’ She looks around for anything that may have shocked her. ‘It’s so crowded in here, maybe it was just some kind of sensory overload.’
Keke looks unconvinced. ‘Good god, woman, the more I get to know you, the stranger you become.’
‘It’s nothing. I’m okay. Hit me,’ she says to Keke. ‘I can take it.’
‘You weren’t adopted,’ says Keke.
‘What?’ says Kirsten, cupping her ear.
‘You weren’t adopted!’ shouts Keke.
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I know,’ says Keke. ‘But my FWB knows his stuff and there is no record of your parents adopting you, or of you being put up for adoption. He’s the best hacker I know. If Marko didn’t find anything, believe me, there is nothing to find.’
Kirsten can’t think of anything to say.
‘It wasn’t easy, either. I did some of the digging myself. Since the last orphanage closed in 2016 it’s tricky to get information... enough red tape to strangle all the bureaucrats on the planet. It’s as if, now that adoption doesn’t happen anymore, it’s a closed chapter in SA history.’
‘I guess that makes sense. Now that babies are... hard to come by, no one wants to think of a time when there were hundreds of them growing up in nasty institutions.’
‘Another legacy of the HI-Vax. No more AIDS orphan babies.’
‘And of the fertility crisis. No more babies, full stop.’ Pain flashes across Kirsten’s face.
‘Sorry, I know this must be difficult for you.’