The Lazarus Effect (6 page)

Adele rummaged through her handbag for a pack of Stuyvesant Extra Mild and tipped it in Vee’s direction. Vee shook her head. She had more than enough chipping away at her already.

‘I warned Jacqui not to smoke,’ Adele said, exhaling out of the nearest open window. ‘I never used to. Disgusting habit. Told her it would lead to an early grave.’ She shook her head bitterly. From her lips to God’s ears.

‘How did Jacqui take Sean’s death?’

Adele knocked ash out of the window and walked out of the room. Minutes later, she returned with the squirming puppy in her arms. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s not house-trained yet, but I never have the heart to leave him out in the cold.’

New cigarette between her fingers, she continued: ‘My girl was so different from me. Sometimes I wondered whether they didn’t hand me the wrong baby at the hospital. She took it so hard, because to her she’d messed up. She was like that, so protective and proud. When she loved someone, she made their well-being a personal responsibility. Something her father could’ve learned a lot from.’

Now came the hard part. Vee cleared her throat and sat straighter. ‘Ms Paulsen, you speak about Jacqui in the past tense. I’m sorry to have to ask, but does that mean you don’t believe she’s still alive?’

Without hesitation, Adele shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied flatly. ‘Wish I could say different, like ‘I feel it in my gut’ or ‘Deep down a mother knows’, but I can’t. Jacqui was a handful. She was growing wild and I was essentially a struggling single parent. But one thing she wasn’t was cruel or maliciously dishonest. Yes, she lied – which teenager hasn’t? But she wouldn’t run off without one word, not
one
, to tell me where she was or how she was doing. Nothing would make my girl do that to me. So, no, I don’t think she’s alive.’

She lowered her dejected weight back into the sofa. ‘I told her to stay away from those Fouries. I knew nothing good could come out of it, but she wanted to be part of them so badly. By the time the madness of the transplant was over, the idea of them had taken root. She wanted a real family. I tried to be enough, but they had a draw on her I couldn’t compete with.’

‘You suspect they had something to do with her disappearance?’

‘Don’t know what to think. I’ve been over it a thousand times in my mind and it makes no sense. This city’s dangerous, but no one wants to think what can happen to their own. I’ve learnt so much about missing children these past two years … Do you know how many go missing countrywide? Over one thousand six hundred per year. And three hundred of them are never heard from again.’

Her voice cracked. The burning circle of tobacco illuminated a film of liquid brilliance in her eyes, threatening to break over the rims. ‘One thousand six hundred a year,’ she whispered, ‘and my baby’s one of them.’

Vee switched off the recorder and let the silence chew at the edges of the room. Families and their lies and wars. If anything was familiar … She refrained from rubbing her tired eyes. Outside, the light faded fast. ‘Do you have a picture?’ she asked.

Adele walked over to a dresser, and retrieved and handed over a thick envelope. A lot of thought had gone into cobbling it together. Among the papers were two photographs. The uppermost showed Jacqui on the beach, fully clothed and laughing as she held a Coke. She had a small face, framed by shoulder-length curly hair, and her mother’s brown eyes. A pretty pixie of a girl. The second showed her decked out in full uniform, forcing an embarrassed smile for the camera on what looked like a momentous school day.

‘Keep it,’ Adele said, blowing smoke in Vee’s direction. ‘I don’t need so many any more. Sometimes I think I’m the only one left in the world who still cares what she looked like.’

Cape Town doesn’t really see men, Joshua Allen mused. It definitely wasn’t a man’s city, red-blooded, not the way Johannesburg or Rome felt, or parts of New York. Sure, people looked; their eyes rested on and made out the shape of a person representing the male gender, but somehow it didn’t quite register. Weird, for a city with a markedly higher proportion of women than men. He would’ve thought the female majority would be … not exactly beating doors down with sticks, but a little more attentive. Husbands and fathers were the worst hit, trundling after their womenfolk everywhere. Their owners.

Joshua leaned against his car in a parking lot in Rondebosch, eating an ice cream cone. He felt ignored, and kind of lonely, if he was being honest. Which was nuts, since he was in the clutches of a draining situationship that left little time for feeling sorry for himself.

He stared through the glass-panelled entrance of the Pick n Pay supermarket across the way, making short work of identifying the pair of women’s shoes he’d come with from among a stampede of others. Real leather boots, an ankle-length cut with a matching maroon handbag. Expensive stuff. He should know, since he’d
paid for every stitch. The shoes met another pair before the till and began an animated exchange he knew of old: toes pointed at each other, heels clacking. He’d have to wait longer.

‘Great,’ he muttered. He was a dumb disciple too, just like all the other guys. Here he was, left to rot on the curb like an old banana peel, and he wasn’t even put out. Wouldn’t be surprising if women no longer registered his presence, either.

‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he ventured to passing potential, endless legs in a snug pair of jeans.

‘Fuck off.’ The girl eyed him up and down with lazy nastiness and swayed on.

Too young, anyway. Her hips dipped just a touch in his direction, though, he was sure of it. He pushed off the bonnet of the Jeep Cherokee, took a step in the direction of the supermarket, instantly concluded it was a bad idea. He would be eaten alive. He leaned back again. Five more minutes and that was it.

A solitary figure across the street caught his eye. A familiar outline loitered near the display window of an electronics store, watching Celine Dion in concert on a dozen stacked TV screens. Joshua hesitated, smoothed his hair down best he could and stepped off the curb, right into a tree trunk of a chest.

‘How much per hour?’ the guy in his way said, frowning.

‘Uh …’

‘Parking.’ The man pointed to his car and dug through his pockets. ‘How much?’

‘Oh,’ Joshua said. The man, stout and fair-haired, was a good two heads shorter, compensating with the brand of bravado that Joshua had come to expect from Mzansi’s paler citizens. Joshua
shrugged. ‘Ten bucks … rand. Ten rand. Twenty if you take longer than half an hour.’ He was acclimated to this shit. The Mother City played a remorseless game of favourites, cosseting some of her children and abusing others, a reality inescapable unless one chose to ignore it. This was hardly the first time some random had assumed he was a car guard, or a janitor, or a waiter, going on nothing more than skin colour. Might as well make some money off it. The man made a big show of his surprise before he paid up, muttering about the country going to the dogs as he walked off.

‘Please man, some money for food.’

Joshua dropped his eyes, further down this time. A street kid, a skinny little thing in an oversized, battered tracksuit top and shorts – too short for a Cape Town winter, however mild Joshua considered it – stared a challenge up at him. The kid’s eyes skimmed over Joshua’s tatty attire, sizing up both his rank as a fellow homeless person and right to any money changing hands on that turf.

‘Listen, kid, I scammed this money fair and square,’ Joshua teased. ‘How ’bout we split it?’

‘
Ten rand?
’ The boy snorted. ‘And
that’s
yours.’ He pointed accusingly at the gleaming Jeep and then thrust out his hand. ‘I saw you park.’

Joshua chuckled and handed over the note. ‘Here’s a bonus.’ He pushed a KFC box with an unfinished three-piece meal in it at the boy. ‘You need it more than I do.’

He struggled to keep himself from breaking into a run as he crossed the road. On the other side, Celine Dion’s rapt audience
hadn’t moved, a bulging plastic bag of shopping clutched in her hand. His heart was going way too fast for half a minute’s exertion, but that much was out of his control. He searched his mind for the perfect, coolest opener and the best he came up with was: ‘I’ve asked you to stop following me around. I’m never gonna crack and sleep with you.’

The woman turned, and a huge smile lifted the most inviting mouth Joshua had ever pressed against his own.

‘Joshua Allen! I do declare,’ Voinjama Johnson rolled her eyes. ‘You always know how to ruin my day with your presence.’

‘V. J.’

She was competition, tall for a girl – a jibe she always hissed at. Joshua dragged her into a hug and she laughed and pretended to struggle, while he surreptitiously revelled in the smell of her hair and neck. A waft of baby soap, vanilla and something feminine and bespoke filled his nose, setting off an ooze of warmth under his breastbone. His arms made quick study through her navy pantsuit. She wasn’t back to her usual weight since the surgery but she looked a lot more solid than she had when they’d last met. Her ass was still perfection; her smile touched her eyes.

‘Stop groping me, New York City boy. Whetin you doin’ heah? Dah nah even yor neighbourhood. And it too cold for dis kana nonsense.’ She prised the ice cream cone he’d forgotten he had from his fingers. She took a large bite and made a series of throaty sounds he hoped, had long hoped, he’d hear one day in a less public, less clothed arena. ‘Brain freeze, but so worth it. Yeah, so, I had no idea you were still in town, since you too hip to take anybody’s calls. Whehplay you been hidin’ so?’

Joshua grinned. She’d been a floater for two-thirds of her life, yet aside from a slight American affectation her accent was unharmed. ‘For Chrissake, when are you gonna learn to speak English properly? You write for a living.’

Vee gave him the finger. ‘When Celine Dion stops freaking me out. Why do
you
look like …’ she mussed her hand over his overgrown hair, the stubble on his face, the hole in his T-shirt, ‘… a homeless turd? You’re supposed to be an expat, a high-powered finance exec. Have some pride.’

‘I had some time off. I’m allowed to cut loose too, y’know.’ Joshua shot an eye across the street and his heart dipped. Vee followed his gaze. Her eyebrows cocked at the sight of the pricey boots, prowling a hole into the concrete of the parking lot, a frown on the face of the wearer. ‘Ohhh,’ she smirked. ‘Shopping with the missus, and she looks twitchy. My bad.’

Joshua grunted. ‘Cut that out; she can wait. Let me walk you to your car. It’s getting late and you’re loitering around, enticing muggers …’

‘My car’s two steps away. And the French Canadian songbird isn’t finished …’

‘You hate this song. C’mon.’ He steered her by the elbow, the back of his neck itching thanks to the laser of annoyance drilling into it from across the road. He’d patch that up later. ‘You look good,’ he said. ‘Much better. Happier.’

‘I’m working on something.’

He lifted his eyebrows.

‘Good question. Time will tell.’ She crunched the cone down to a nub, eyes planets away.

Oh, Jesus
. Joshua studied what he could of her profile in the half light, the almost too-muchness in the slant of cheekbone and plumpness of mouth. Her mind was on the grind and the process was practically audible: shit unspooling, hacked and bashed to pieces and spliced back together in a digestible, Voinjama-approved format. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Nothing! Jeez. Why everybody always think I’m
doing
something?’ He said nothing. ‘Okay, not nothing. A small something. I’m still figuring out what, though.’

‘Your somethings can derail into a series of weird, very bad other things.’

‘That’s because … you know … circumstances get away from me.’

‘No, it’s because your process is so moronic that it circles back on itself and just about manages to squeak under the door and turn out brilliant. Face it. You got a thing for starting fires when you’ve got no water on standby.’

‘Msshw,’ Vee sucked her teeth and poked a finger near his nose. ‘Don’t shrink me. Just because you know a few of my problems …’

He quirked his eyebrows again. A few?

Vee pulled open the Corolla’s door and eased in. ‘Dickhead. I’ll see you later.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he called after her.

‘You sure you don’t want something to eat?’

Vee drained her cup of Ovaltine and ahh-ed in satisfaction. ‘Nope. Can’t stay. And don’t give me that look.’

‘Bheti whyyii?’ Connie pouted. ‘I’m coming to cook any minute now.’

‘Yeah, you coming. Christmas coming. I only came for the ambiance, anyway.’ Vee stretched her feet out. ‘Y’all know how to make noise like market people round here.’

And it served her purposes. Connie’s flat in Rondebosch was the antidote to the imperious silence of her own house that she wanted to avoid right now, the white noise she needed. Tonight had been no disappointment. Connie’s younger sister Adesuwa’s whining about her financial woes was tuned to the perfect pitch, warbling over the baseline of Ikenna jumping up and down on every surface that could support him, refusing to be put to bed. Connie worked the books with her two employees, deaf to the din, Napoleonic in her approach to success.

‘Thanks again for taking Ikenna to the paed for that chest cold,’ Connie said. The lounge had emptied, Suwa out getting takeaways and Ikenna asleep at last on Vee’s lap. ‘I waited two
weeks for that appointment, and Suwa couldn’t leave classes to do it. If I’d lost it, haaay!’ She pushed out her mouth at the prospect. ‘That WI not funny. No sympathy for the plight of those with no lives.’

‘You tellin’ me,’ Vee said. Before Connie pounced on the loose thread and started grilling her about whether she’d made her appointment, which would no doubt be followed by a cuss-out that she hadn’t, she hurried on: ‘Speaking of the walking dead, guess who I bumped into this evening at Pick n Pay, looking like a shoeshine boy?’

It took a second. Connie put down her wine glass. ‘Oh-o-o-o! And so we begin. Again. What did he say? Did he do that sleepy-eyed smiling thing? Did you tingle?’

‘
What?
No. We didn’t talk much. Don’t start your fwehn-fwehn noise about–’

‘Laaa-yah! Lies. You know what your problem is? You’re ungrateful.’ She popped a hand up over Vee’s protest. ‘Shut up. America don waste plenti moni on your jagajaga country and you still refuse to aid one of their citizens. That man’s been massaging your ego forever, and you won’t give him some ass. Give the man some ass, please. At least, let him lick something. This is bordering on animal cruelty.’

‘Jesus be a fence …’ Vee scooped Ikenna up and headed for the bedrooms. ‘You somebody Ma, o!’ she hissed.

‘I know, right. Pregnancy arrived by bus.’ Connie winked and made a lewd gesture. ‘Old-fashioned stress relief. You can’t say you don’t need it. Stretch those long legs.’

‘Ikenna, dis your Ma get mouf like street walker,’ Vee whispered to her sleeping godson. ‘Shameless.’

‘Msshw. Shame is for lonely people. Like me.’ Connie drained her glass and smacked it down. ‘Abeg, leave my house.’

Vee complied, hitting the road for home soon afterwards. A quiet evening and a full belly were all she now craved, preferably in a dark room where she could zone out uninterrupted.

Till then …

Running into Joshua Allen on the street wasn’t the surprise. Her
reaction
to seeing him was the thing. She’d almost forgotten how uplifting it was seeing another friendly face, one that knew her unfriendly past. In the four years they’d known each other, his exterior hadn’t changed at all. Height and build perfect for swimming or track, but wasted on a joker who refused to take any sport seriously for long. Heavy, sloe eyes that rescued his face from being too sharp and odd. That infuriating shit-eating grin when he could be bothered. Their meet-and-greet had typified Allen’s ambience: materialise looking like a soggy pile of crap, rattle her chains with some nameless beauty hating on the sidelines, then disappear.

Wow, he’s thirty, Vee thought suddenly. About five weeks ago. Time was growing him up. It was depressing how their lives had been, and would continue to be, careening down paths unpaved, both of them as unprepared as children. Broken dolls. Joshua had come to Cape Town on a quest for the Holy Grail, the perfect family. She’d come to follow her heart. Fat lot of good that pursuit had done them.

He was the product of an African-American history professor who’d fallen for a Hindu anti-apartheid activist exiled in the US. When the democratic tide had turned against the apartheid regime, exiles had begun to trickle home. His old man had returned and married respectably within the Indian community, letting time wither the American connection. Joshua had been six when his father had returned for good, never looking back.

Nearly twenty years later, Joshua had boarded a plane. The reception he’d received had been far from rosy. The final slap in the face had come when an uninterested family on the African continent had refused to acknowledge his existence and a loving one in America had kindly advised that he bury the past for peace of mind. Older and wiser, he now called Cape Town home away from home. He’d never admit it, but Vee knew he drew an illicit thrill from the proximity to his old man. The hovering nightmare, the illegitimate pin itching to burst the well-constructed bubble of a traditional paterfamilias. Lazy vengeance was right up his alley.

Vee idled at a red traffic light. She hadn’t seen Joshua in a while; his reappearance had dredged up a lot that she would much rather forget. If she was being completely unfair – and what was driving alone on a mild winter evening, back to an empty house, if not a green light to do whatever the hell she wanted? – then it could be said that her predicament was all Joshua Allen’s fault. He was friends with Titus Wreh, and Titus Wreh had torn her heart out and pissed on it. Had Joshua not been living here, maybe neither she nor Titus would’ve had the bright idea to leave New York, which spelled the beginning of their end.

Fine, it was a stretch, and even she knew it. Titus had been hunting for a change of scene, preferably one on the continent and, like many in the know, to avoid the worst of the global economic crash. She’d hardly wanted to say it to his face but her ex, a Liberian–American hybrid who’d lived three quarters of his life abroad, tended to paint his expectations with an overly rosy finish. Before long, the empty romance of ‘returning to the Motherland’ had become reality, one she should’ve put brakes on. But … a woman in love was not a well-reasoning organism. She had a commendable master’s degree from a fine institution in hand, the world was her oyster, fortune favours the brave and love would find a way, and all that. She’d landed a temporary position with an independent news agency to complement Titus’s new job with Deloitte, and they’d packed their bags.

Now, here she was. From engaged, employed and happy to a mess, drowning in the fulminant fuckery that was her new normal.

The ghost of an ache, surely a phantom sensation, started up in her abdomen. Vee sneaked a hand under her sweater and rubbed the tiny ridge of a scar, one hand on the wheel. Wisdom and self-awareness had come at an astronomically high price. Waking up in a hospital post-op, minus an ovary and a foetus she’d had no idea she was nourishing. Signing on full time with a goddamn fashion magazine because she was out of job options. Being miserable, broke, abandoned … or, to put it another way, unceremoniously un-fiancéed, if there was such a thing. A blizzard of blows.

‘What am I s’posed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re okay? I’m falling to piiieeeces yeah,’ crooned Danny O’Donoghue of The Script, his heart breaking unevenly all over 5FM radio.

‘I hear you, o,’ Vee muttered, switching it off.

Not since she was maybe ten years old had she anticipated a birthday, but turning twenty-nine in a month’s time held the promise of a new beginning. Twenty-nine felt like the last phase of a painfully drawn-out ripening. It would be wiser. Lonelier, more bitter, more sexually frustrated. Definitely poorer. But fuck it, she was ready.

She taxied into the garage and slammed the door as she got out, a noise bound to bring her dog running. Having her own place was the best and she didn’t miss having a roommate. The last one, Mia, had been lovely, wild of hair and brimming with spiritual guru-ism, but time had exposed that she was about ninety degrees short of a right angle. Never had Vee met a person less suited to the sane, regular rules of cohabitation. Her snobby cats Ginger and Wasabi, strict sushi diet and unrelenting peppiness had pushed Vee over the edge. Luckily, Mia was a peaceful soul who shunned confrontation. She’d moved to Observatory, where her kookiness was appreciated.

Vee plucked a wad from the post box, not bothering to look them over. Bills and takeaway menus, it only ever was. Through force of habit, she scanned the dark street as she closed the gate after her. A fat-cat vehicle, luxurious in shine, hulked a tad too close to her driveway. Must be her neighbour’s, the one constantly into new toys; she’d have a word with him about boundaries tomorrow.

Vee dumped her handbag and laptop on the kitchen counter and, without switching on any of the lights, opened the fridge. Milk. Mineral water. Leftover fragments of fish gravy, jollof rice and boiled sweet potatoes. Bread and Windhoek lager. Fresh salad ingredients. Vee scratched her nose and popped the freezer compartment. Free-range chicken and prime beef cuts. She closed the fridge. Bottle of wine on the kitchen counter. She paused, and then sniffed. Asian food. No dog.

‘You want another beer?’ she called out.

‘Nah, I’m good, just opened this one,’ a male voice called back.

She grabbed the wine and headed for the lounge, still not flipping any switches. Criminals were best confronted in the dark.

‘Didn’t I warn you to stop breaking into my house? Don’t you see how creepy this has got?’

Joshua waved. ‘I took your concerns under advisement. See, I opened the curtains. So it wouldn’t be, like, evil villain skulking in the dark when you walked in.’ Light from the streetlamps filtered through the windows. The onyx-black, ice-blue-eyed husky near Joshua’s feet didn’t budge, simply swished his tail in welcome. Treachery and deceit in her own home. Males always stuck together.

‘Come on, you’re glad I dropped by. Besides, breaking and entering’s a skill I learnt from the best.’ Joshua tipped his beer at her in salute. ‘Like all skills, if you don’t use it, you lose it. Hungry? Dig in, please.’

Vee made a grateful sound through a mouthful of Thai noodles. It was very good. Too good to be a cheap takeaway. Wiser not to ask.

‘I don’t taste any meat in this.’ She stirred the veggie-laden mix with the chopsticks. ‘There’s no meat? It’s meat-free?’

‘That’s mine. Yours is in the microwave.’

Vee got up, zapped the carton of pad thai and sat back down. Blowing on it to cool it, she said, ‘Throwing money around doesn’t impress me, negro. For your information, I don’t keep bread in the fridge. Or buy pinot noir. And free-range chicken? What’s wrong with normal chicken?’

‘That’s an excellent pinot from a grateful client, you refugee. Don’t refrigerate it. And learn to buy better food for the sake of your health.’ He looked severe as she rolled her eyes. ‘Remember, you’ve only got one ovary, cripple.’

‘Whatever,’ Vee said. She scarfed noodles down until the snarl of hunger was gone, before slowing to leisurely bites. She looked him over: he hadn’t even gone home first to change out of his bum wear before he’d sneaked in. This was their thing and he’d missed it; she’d missed it, hugely. She stretched her legs until they reached his and tapped her boots against his loafers. A smile darted over his eyes, barely lifting the corners of his mouth. He tapped back. Vee cleared her throat. ‘How’s the girlfriend?’

‘Here we go.’

‘What? You can take a cheap shot at my ovaries, but I can’t ask questions?’

He folded his arms. ‘I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m saving the spot. You know that. So stop asking.’

She rolled her eyes, appalled at the heat tickling her cheeks.

Unsafe ground. Their … whatever this was … was built on it. Grudging respect, liberal scoops of abuse, a tacit flicker of something that tiptoed ever closer over the years. Titus had been their referee. Now that he was gone and they were left to their own devices, they found their friendship its own trajectory. Joshua had introduced her to the dark web, a place she never wanted to revisit, and to the underworld of finance, showed her how extortion and tax evasion worked. She had schooled him in shoplifting and housebreaking. He’d explained the nuances of male anatomy, including the precise international units of small, medium and large penis sizes, and given an impressive live demonstration. She’d ignored his women, until he’d passed her the responsibility of dumping the insipid ones by email when he couldn’t be bothered. At her lowest, he’d given her a place to stay, a bank card with no limit and a shoulder. She hadn’t deserved it, was too up her own ass at the time to appreciate it. Yet, and still. Here they were.

He smiled, a real one. ‘We done?’ Banter-wise, he meant.

Vee flexed her neck and put her head back, stress seeping out of her like tiny, invisible insects squirming out of her skin and jumping off her shoulders. She felt better. In less than half an hour, she felt markedly better.

‘Are we ever?’ she answered.