By time I arrived at the Table Bay, I was very hot, very sweaty, and very tired. And a bit crabby. I couldn’t be bothered to make it up to my room, instead plopping down in one of the cushy lobby chairs to bask in the glorious air conditioning and debate my next move: another cab, shower, or beddy-bye?
I was still far from a decision when I caught sight of Cassandra Wellness as she emerged from an elevator. She saw me too and headed my way with a beatific smile. I must have looked like a half-drowned albatross compared to her perky peacock. She was resplendent in a jaunty sailor boy outfit, a look as perfect for a fine dining room as for the bow of a scow.
“Russell! Tremendous to see you. What the hell have you been up to?” she asked with an enthusiastic air, at the same time managing to show off a fair bit more cleavage than any good sailor boy would.
“You’re just the person I need to talk to,” I responded after standing to greet her with a peck on each cheek.
“A lot of people say so,” she cracked as she lowered herself into the chair next to mine, encouraging me to follow suit.
I handed her the paper with Matt’s address on it. “So here’s the story: I just tried to take a cab to this location, but when the driver saw where I wanted to go he threw me out on my butt.”
Cassandra studied the paper quite intently before looking up at me with a solemn look on her face. “Why are you going here, Russell?”
I stumbled on that one. Why was the mayor of Saskatoon going anywhere other than a restaurant, bar, nightclub, or straight to bed on his first night in Cape Town? This is one good example why the fantasy-life-on-a-plane game isn’t always the best way to go. “I’m looking up an old friend,” I finally got out.
“He lives here?” she asked, shifting her head to one side, scrutinizing my face as intently as she had the scrap of paper with the address on it.
“I think so. At least that’s the last address I have for him.”
“Who is he?”
Now wait just a minute here. This was getting to be one too many questions for my liking. I didn’t really need Cassandra Wellness; I could probably get the help I required at the concierge desk. “Just a friend,” I said as I reached over to retrieve the address, which she gave up only after I tugged on it.
“And where did you get the taxi? That can be a very dangerous thing to do in South Africa, you know, Russell.”
I did not know.
“There are still some very vicious taxi wars on certain routes.”
Taxi wars? She said it as if I should know what she was talking about. I was about to ask whether they were anything like Star Wars but stopped myself. It was beginning to dawn on me that Cassandra was speaking of serious things and concerned for my safety, and that these taxi wars were nothing like those at home between Blueline and United.
Cassandra tossed her hair over her shoulders, crossed her arms, and sat back in her chair, regarding me like a curious specimen of flora she didn’t know whether she should admire or simply ignore. She nodded at the paper in my hand. “That address, it’s in Khayelitsha.”
I looked down at it. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Do you know where that is?” She knew I didn’t. “Do you remember the miles and miles of shanty towns we drove by on the way here from the airport?”
I nodded.
“They’re not just slums, not the way you or I think of slums or ghettos. They’re townships. That was Khayelitsha, the largest one. Do you know what a township is?”
I shook my head. I should have read my Fodor’s.
“Township refers to residential areas for non-white peoples.”
My face drained of colour. Was this why the taxi driver would not go there? Apartheid had ended over a decade ago, but here was a vivid leftover of that brutal time. One of many, I would soon discover.
“Khayelitsha means ‘new home’,” Cassandra continued, “and was intended by the government to provide controlled housing to legal residents. But the influx controls didn’t work. Keep in mind, Russell, they planned for one hundred and twenty thousand people to live there—today Khayelitsha is home to over half a million. Most of them are unemployed, and many of them live without basic infrastructure services.”
I remained silent. She let that sink in for a moment or two before she made a surprising offer: “I can take you there tomorrow if you like.”
My eyes widened at the suggestion. I had thought she was going to tell me how foolhardy I was to even attempt a visit to this part of town; I was thinking my search for Matt was over before it even got started. “Are you serious?”
She nodded, a slight smile on her thin but nicely shaped lips. “My driver can take us. He knows the people there and where to go.”
“But, but, I can’t ask this of you, it’s too much….” I said it weakly—I knew this was my best, and maybe only, chance to get to where I needed to go.
“Nonsense. I’m here to take pictures, and I haven’t been to Khayelitsha in years. Not exactly Well-Spotted’s cup of tea, I suppose, but there are plenty of other magazines that will love it, and so will I.” She lowered her jaw and looked at me from beneath a swath of shiny brown hair that had fallen across her left eye. “But you have to promise me something.”
Here it was, the rub. No such thing as a free ride. “What is it?”
“I want you to first come with me to Cape of Good Hope. I need to take some photographs there tomorrow morning, early. You have to see this place, Russell. It’s fantastic. Then we can go to the townships in the afternoon. Deal?”
We shared a brisk handshake and smiles.
“Now why don’t you get cleaned up, meet me down here in half an hour, and I’ll take you out for a drink and, if you’re good, maybe some dinner as a proper welcome on your first night in South Africa.”
We started the evening at a stand-up table on the narrow outdoor deck of Café Manhattan, which, after a little bit of gawking around, I realized was a gay bar. When I questioned Cassandra on her choice, she laughed and said it was one of her favourite places for sightseeing. Taking a gander at the staff and several of the patrons around us, I had to agree. In particular (although carrot tops aren’t usually my taste), there was a heartbreakingly handsome redhead two tables over from us. His curly locks, orange as a Hawaiian sunset, grazed the neckline of a skin-tight, chartreuse sweater pulled over a perfect V-shaped torso, and he had these amazing sparkling eyes that strayed my way every two minutes or so. It was one of those fall-in-lust-in-a-flash kind of scenes.
After a couple of strong cocktails, Cassandra’s driver, Joseph, ferried us to the Africa Café on Shortmarket Street, housed in an eighteenth-century Cape Georgian home and touted as the place to go for real African feasts (which immediately made me wonder if this was the Red Lobster of South Africa). We were led to a colourful room on the second floor called the Boma, with hand-painted wall murals of earthy greens, vivid yellows, and sharp oranges depicting stylized flower and butterfly designs. After describing the food offerings for the night and suggesting a menu for us, our server, dressed as a Xhosa maiden, brought us several gaily painted bowls filled with our portion of that evening’s communal feast. It consisted of Malawi cheese and sim sim balls (sweet potato and cheese rolled in sesame seeds), springbok curry, mbatata (caramelized sweet potatoes), Congolese spinach, Moroccan chermoula (crispy fried fish), Zanzibar chili coconut bean stew, and many small bowls of dipping sauces and chutneys. Along with the food came my first ever bottle of Pinotage, a superb, gently oaked Beyerskloof from the Stellenbosch wine region just outside of Cape Town.
Topping the evening off, about halfway through our meal, the restaurant and kitchen staff (doubling as a troupe of African vocalists and drummers) meandered through the restaurant, treating guests to a vibrant, ultra-high-energy bit of entertainment. The drummers beat their instruments with great intensity, building into swelling rhythms, as singers, mostly women (wearing kerchiefs on their heads to match their long-skirted outfits), clapped their hands and
threw back their heads, letting loose chorus after chorus of melodious songs sung loud with throaty voices. It was a memorable evening, my first night in Africa.
I had stripped off my shirt and was giving my face a much needed wash at the bathroom sink when I heard the knock at my door. Towelling dry, I answered it and found Cassandra waiting for me, wearing a filmy negligee and holding aloft a pink-labelled bottle of champagne and two flutes.
“Guess what hotel management left cooling in my room?” she announced as she slithered into my room like a tempestuous temptress. “There is no possibility I can finish this all by myself…before it goes flat that is,” she added with a backwards glance at me, still standing at the open door (with mouth to match). “So I come seeking your assistance, Mr. Quant.”
I felt my lips turn up in pleasurable anticipation, a little too high from all the cocktails and wine we’d consumed over the course of the evening to know better. I pushed the door closed and said, “You’ve come to the right place, Ms. Wellness.”
And so she had. Over the next hour we proceeded to do our best to relieve that pink-labelled bottle of its pinkish, bubbly contents, at the same time having very high-minded conversation about the various goings-on in the worlds of art, politics, and fashion. Thanks to the tutelage over the years of my worldly friends Anthony Gatt and Sereena Orion Smith, it seemed to me, and I think Cassandra too, that I was able to keep up quite well, thank you very much, even telling my new friend a thing or two she didn’t know before. It was about the time I was describing for her the Antoni Gaudí creations I’d seen in Barcelona with Errall a couple of years before that she leaned in and kissed me.
Just a peck.
At the corner of my mouth. The left corner.
I leaned into her, and it wasn’t long before tongues and roving hands were involved.
Stupid, drunk boy.
I discovered that negligees are filmy…and flimsy…for a reason. Why don’t guys have something like that? Things began to fall out of here and there, and as they did, my hands were working to catch them.
Some time later I pulled my head away and forced my eyes onto hers. “Cassandra, this is great, you’re beautiful, I really like you, but I think we should stop.” I thought I’d just about covered the gamut of polite-nice-guy things to say at a time like that.
Her eyes began to focus too. “Oh. Okay. Why is that?”
Fair question. “I’m…attached.”
She sucked in her lips and pointedly looked downwards. “You don’t look…attached.”
I followed her eyes to where my male anatomy was showing off beneath my trousers. Damn that! I repeat: stupid, drunk boy. I swallowed hard and said, “I’m attached, not dead, and a lot drunk.”
She threw back her head and let rip a magnificent laugh.
Thank Christ.
After she’d settled down, she put her hands in safe places and asked, straight-faced, “How about if we just neck for a while?”
Neck? Neck? I had to say it. “Neck? What grade are you in? And in what decade?”
Another laugh. “I really like you, Russell.”
“I like you too.”
She got up, artfully rearranging her translucent outfit like a pro, so that when she was done she looked as chaste as a nun—well, a nun with issues—and said, “Okay, I gotta go sober up, and maybe spend a few minutes with an electrical appliance. God I hope I have the right outlet adaptor.”
She walked to the door, stopped, and shot me a look. “Tomorrow morning, right? I promise never to take advantage of you again.” And then she added with a playful snigger, her dark-fringed eyes at their most mischievous, “At least not until the next time we see the bottom of a bottle of champagne together in a hotel room.”
I nodded, and she departed.
I really needed to sober up myself—stupid Quant—and falling into bed was not going to do it. I threw on a T and headed out for a walk around the harbour.
Despite the late hour, the waterfront was a hive of internationally flavoured activity as tourists (and maybe some locals) window-shopped at the numerous boutiques that populated the area, dined alfresco on the wharf, danced at bars and bistros, and simply soaked up the atmosphere by indulging in leisurely strolls, the kind often promoted by proximity to water and sparkling nightlights. It was exhilarating to be part of it, but eventually I began to feel the effects of my long day—travel, heat, drinking, eating, mayor-impersonating—bear down on me and decided to head back to my room.
After checking one of those You Are Here signs, I chose the quieter East Pier Road that would lead me to the rear of the hotel. I was enjoying the sea air and solitude when, from somewhere behind me, I heard the unexpected.
Clump, scrrrrrape, clump, scrrrrrape, clump, scrrrrrape.
Limping Man was in South Africa.
Chapter 9
When you’re standing there, at the southwesternmost point of the African continent, Cape of Good Hope seems like the edge of the earth. Situated at the junction of two of the earth’s most contrasting water masses—the cold Benguela current of the West Coast and the warm Agulhas current of the East Coast—this place is popularly perceived as the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (but geographically they actually join a little to the east at Cape Agulhas).
I found myself distracted on the southerly drive from Cape Town in the little white van that our driver, Joseph, referred to as a “combi.” Cassandra didn’t seem to mind; she was preoccupied with the scenery outside our windows and attempting to capture it with a succession of increasingly expensive-looking cameras with increasingly longer lenses, the greatest of which was the length of a small child’s arm. I did my best to pay attention to the ostriches, elands (a kind of antelope), and collection of boks (bontebok, grey rhebok, grysbok) that wandered alongside the road, but I couldn’t help but dwell on the mystery of why the man with the limp (who I suspected was the same guy I almost ran into outside Ash House in Saskatoon) had turned up literally across the world in South Africa. Was it the same guy? From what Frank had seen and heard that night, it also seemed likely that this guy was responsible for the brutal attack on Ethan Ash. If that was true, who was he after now?
I had called the hospital before going to sleep the night before, and although Ethan was recovering, he was still unable to recall any details about the night he was beaten. This, I understood from my psychologist officemate Beverly, is fairly common in the early stages of recovery from this kind of trauma; the body’s first priority is to take care of its physical wounds, and it would get around to confronting the mental ones when it was good and ready to do so.
The idea that what had happened to Ethan was not some random act of violence, but rather somehow directly related to my case, turned me cold. I’d first heard the peculiar, dragging sound behind me when I visited Ethan Ash for the first time. I had assumed it was either my imagination or something completely innocent or, at worst, someone following me but certainly having nothing to do with Ethan. But when I learned Ethan had been attacked by a man with a limp, my assumptions changed. It hadn’t been my imagination, and it wasn’t innocent, but it also hadn’t been about me: it was about Ethan.
I had to admit, I knew nothing about the Ash House proprietor; the assault could have been the result of a whole host of possible scenarios playing out in his life. The assailant could have been someone whose boyfriend was cheating on him with Ethan, or someone who didn’t agree with Ethan’s politics, or someone Ethan had pissed off in traffic; who knew? It had seemed that Limping Man wasn’t my problem. But now, the possibility that Limping Man had followed me to South Africa would link Ethan’s attack directly to me or to the case I was working on.
My frustration was growing. Of late, there seemed to be an entire spate of mystery men hell-bent on interfering with my life. Who were these guys? First the guy in the balaclava who accosted me behind PWC, then Limping Man, then the refrigerator-like thug who boarded the plane at Sal Island (to be honest I wasn’t sure abou
t him; his malevolence toward me could have been a figment of my already creeped out imagination, and he didn’t limp—I checked). Were one or all of them somehow tied to Matthew Ridge a.k.a. Matthew Moxley?
I threw a glance at click-happy Cassandra, who seemed oblivious to my thoughtful mood. I was ever so grateful earlier that morning when, with good coffee, fresh croissants, and some hair-of-the-dog Bellinis on an elaborate silver tray, Cassandra had shown up at my hotel room door and proved, without a doubt, that she was definitely the kind of gal you could have poor judgment with the night before and have no icky, residual weirdness to deal with the next morning. For her, romantic misadventures were simply an expected and accepted part of the escapade.
The van grumbled to a halt in a gravel parking lot, and Cassandra jumped out with her collection of photographic equipment, letting loose one of her trademark husky honks of delight. She dashed down a short embankment and nimbly scaled a tumble of boulders against which mighty waves and near gale- force winds were crashing with shocking severity. For a long time, Joseph and I watched as she stood there, not taking pictures but simply pointing her face at the sun, thrilling to the sensation of wind and water going wild around her. The noise was tremendous, and after a while I felt that same crazed buzz in my head that one gets after staying too long at a boy-band concert in the company of giggly teenage girls and non-teenage gay guys.
When Cassandra was ready, Joseph drove us as far up the seaside cliff as vehicles could go, then we boarded the Flying Dutchman funicular (named after a phantom ship said to appear off the cape during particularly bad storms, displaying its horribly smashed mast and shredded sails—I just love stories like that), which took us the rest of the way to the top. The wind was even wilder up there, so that at times, to avoid being blown right off the hill, we were forced to our knees and moved forward on our haunches, looking not unlike the aggressive Chacma baboons that roam the grounds there, amongst endemic fynbos (fine bush) plants, proteas, heaths, and reeds, scavenging for food.
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