I start flipping through the pages, careful not to mar that perfectly aligned edge, even though I know he’s not the one who stacked it so anally in the first place. It looks like legal documents, contracts. A broadcast agreement. When I see my name near the head of a page, I drop it, burnt.
He stalks back in, carrying a silver cocktail shaker.
‘Hey, cut it out. Do I come to your domestic and go through your shit?’ He sits down in another folder chair, pulling it up so he’s right next to me, and unscrews the shaker, knocking a fair quantity of sticky white powder onto the surface of the desk.
‘You didn’t have to be so mean.’
‘In the streamcast? I wasn’t mean. To Khanyi, maybe, not you.’
I shove the chair back, stand up, and prowl to the other side of the room, checking his book
shelf while he sifts the powder for clumps.
‘Shouldn’t we contact your friend?’
‘When I’ve had a joint, okay? Besides. You may not have noticed, with all that beauty sleep you got in, but it’s really late.’
‘I said thanks.’
‘Don’t need your appreciation, baby girl.’ He sweeps the powder into a tidy line with a pencil and wraps it up with two short twists of Rizla.
‘Well, I appreciate it anyway.’
‘Noted duly.’ He seals the joint with the edge of his thumb.
‘Look, should I just go? If I’m an inconvenience to you? I was so stupid to come here. Shit.’ I’m ready to leave, walk another eight kays across town in this oversize shirt and my ruined dress and my broken heel, but I can’t find my damn bag.
‘Would you just sit down?’
And then I remember that it’s still at the station. With my camera. Jesus. I wonder if it’s still there, if anyone’s taken it, if the pumped-up defuser has fritzed the Zion. But then I start thinking about what’s on the memchip, what I’ve lost, what I can try and duplicate.
‘Hey.’ Toby takes my shoulders and presses me down into the couch. ‘Sit down and have some sugar with me. All right? And then we can do whatever the fuck you want. Get hold of Lerato or your dad or the cops or your boyfriend or whoever. Okay?’
‘I’ve left my camera behind.’
‘Least of our worries, sweet K. We could be dead in forty-eight.’
‘And he’s not my boyfriend. We broke up. Although it’s not like we were really together before, I mean—’ I’m rambling. ‘He was a prick.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Not thinking about it.’
‘I have a headache.’
‘Me too. Sugar will chase it. Here.’
He hands me the joint and squeezes in next to me.
‘I’m not supposed to. The nano. It was in the contract.’ On page sixteen, a list of non-standard chems and supplements that are absolutely prohibited, accompanied by dire warnings, long-term damage potential, unpredictable results, permanent health risk, possible heart failure.
‘Don’t fret it. They’re just covering their asses. They know all about you creative types. They would have tested it. They just don’t want some supersmack freak ODing and making bad publicity noises. What did you think they were going to say, “mix it up”?’
‘I haven’t done—’
‘I know. It’s cool. Hold it like this.’
He lights it for me, putting his arm around me to cup the flame. I take a deep breath, and instantly the room spins and the air takes on a puffy consistency, like we’re the centre of a candyfloss vortex.
Toby takes the joint from my mouth, his fingers brushing against my swollen lip, so that I flinch away. But I’ve already chosen what comes next, even before the air goes shimmery. Even though I know it’s only because we’re both afraid.
Toby
Sweet K is unexpectedly bold. She pulls into me even before I’m anticipating reaching for her. It’s a little annoying, kids, cos where’s the fun in that? I think about blocking her, but reconsider and kiss her back, hard, devouring, so that she winces from the wound on her mouth. I don’t care.
By the time we make it to the bedroom, her legs are pretzelled round my waist and she’s whimpering for the want of it. The third time, I don’t even get to the condoms. ‘It’s coke,’ she whispers, looking at me with those pale, pale green eyes. ‘The nano’ll kill anything you got.’
‘Did it say so in the contract?’ She laughs and bites my neck and we fuck until I’m raw and aching and glazed from the exertion. Or that could be the virus kicking in. I’m woken by K’s fingers gripping my shoulder in a vice.
‘They found us,’ she hisses.
‘Mmmggh.’ I try to shrug her free and roll over, cos I’m still mostly unconscious, but she won’t let go ‘The chem spray. They tracked us.’ She’s breathing in small rabbity panicky breaths.
‘Go back to sleep. You’re just paranoid.’
‘They’re right outside. Toby!’
‘It’s the sugar. You’re not used to it.’
Only then there’s a noise, a scratch at the door.
She makes a small choked-off sound.
‘It’s just the VIM, baby.’ I pry her fingers loose from my shoulder. ‘You need to drink something.’ I feel around for the glass of water I keep by the bed, but it’s not there, cos my little cleaning friend is too particular in its habits. Grudgingly, I peel back the covers, which are sticky with an alchemy of juices. How did I end up in the wet spot?
As soon as I stand up, though, inky spots swarm in my head and a jazz beat of pain kicks off behind my eye sockets. I stagger, mostly blind, in the general direction of the kitchen. Credit to the girl, she comes after me, naked and armed with a book off my bedside – the collected works of Curtis Malebi, whose prose is dense enough to kill anyone, or at least cause a concussion, if your aim was good. I haven’t opened it in months, but the high-gloss cover makes for a perfect rolling surface.
While I’m focused on getting to the kitchen and a glass of water, she sneaks towards the front door, trading the book for a steel vase, which holds the calcified remains of a chronoorchid. Not as unkillable as the product blurb would have you believe.
‘Hey. Do you want to get your own water? Cos I was quite happy in bed.’
She shoots me a look so tortured, I almost laugh.
‘Baby. It’s okay. It’s just the drugs. There’s nothing out there.’
She’s so sweetly lost, I can’t resist her. I go over and wrap my arms around her, and she’s shaking, wired on the adrenalin. But also very soft and curvy, which stirs something up all over again. Feebly, admittedly, but it does stir.
‘I can tell, Toby. I can feel it,’ she whispers.
‘Shhh. It’s okay.’ I keep my voice as low as hers. ‘Come back to bed.’
I lure her back into the warmth, but she’s not up for anything else. And the truth is, kids, sorry to say, neither am I.
Tendeka
It’s over.
Ashraf is gone.
Taken S’bu and Ibrahim with him, along with any of the other kids he found en route. Gone belly-up, slinking off to the nearest vaccine centre, and then to find Emmie, make sure she’s okay. Always the responsible one. Too impatient to wait it out, to call their bluff. He couldn’t see this is exactly what we’ve been working towards. Pushing the corporates and the cops so far over the line there’s no coming back for them.
skyward* says not to stress. There was a box waiting for me, on our bed, when I got eventually got home last night. Inside was a new Nokia. And a note. ‘Thought you might need this.’ As soon as I turned it on, the messages started coming through. He says it’s going to be beautiful, not to chicken out at such a cru cial juncture. They’ll never know what hit them.