money means more than being able to buy things. You can be different and no one says anything. Then I knew what I wanted. But how to get it? You could marry a rich man, but it?s still not your money. I got a job working weekends for a catering business. One night at a golf course I stood having a smoke and this man comes up to me. He had a car business in Zastron Street, and he asked me, ?How much do you earn?? When I told him he said, ?Wouldn?t you rather make a thousand rand a night?? and I asked, ?How would I do that?? and he said, ?With your body, love.? He gave me his card and he said, ?Think about it.? I phoned him that Monday. And I did it. In a flat, they were seven guys who had a flat in Hilton, and sometimes at lunchtime or sometimes in the evening they would phone me at the hostel and I would go.
?But then, just before final exams, I got pregnant,? she said. ?I was on the pill, but it didn?t work. When I told them they said they would pay for the abortion, but I said no. So they gave me money and I came to Cape Town.?
38.
Orlando Arendse had a fixed routine every morning. In his large, pretty house in West Beach, Milnerton, he got up at six without the help of an alarm clock. He put on slippers and a burgundy dressing gown. He picked up his reading glasses from the kitchen table, left his wife sleeping and went to the kitchen. He put the spectacles on the kitchen table and ground a 5
/5
mix of Italian and Mocca Java coffee beans?enough for four large mugs. He filled the coffee machine with water and carefully poured in the ground coffee. Then he pressed the switch.
He walked to the front door, opened it and went out. He looked up to see what the weather was doing today, then crossed the paved driveway to the big, automatic security gate. He walked briskly erect, despite his 66 years, most of them lived on the Cape Flats. To the right of the gate was the postbox. He opened it and took out
Without unfolding the newspaper he glanced at the headlines. He had to hold the paper at arm?s length, as he was not wearing his glasses.
He walked back to the house and just before he went through the door he looked left and right. It was instinctive behavior, no longer functional.
He spread the paper open neatly on the Oregon pine table in the kitchen. He put on his reading glasses. His right hand drifted down to the dressing gown pocket. It was empty and he clicked his tongue in exasperation. He no longer smoked. His wife and doctor were conspiring against him.
He only read the front page. By now the coffee machine ended its burbling with a final sigh. Orlando Arendse sighed with it as he did every morning. He got up and fetched two mugs from the cupboard above the machine and placed them on the counter. First he filled one cup and inhaled the aroma with pleasure. No milk or sugar. Just as it was. He poured the rest of the coffee into a flask so it would stay fresh. Mug in hand, he sat down at the paper again. He turned the page and inspected the small photo of the page-three editor, a lovely woman. Then he shifted his gaze to page two and began to read in earnest.
Usually at seven he would pour coffee from the flask into the other mug and take it to his wife. But at ten to seven, while he was reading the cricket report on the sports page, the electronic box in the entrance hall made its irritating noise.
Orlando stood up and crossed to the hall. He pressed a button and held his mouth close to the microphone. ?Yes??
?Orlando??
He knew that deep voice, but couldn?t place it at the moment.
?Yes??
?It?s Thobela.?
?Who??
?Tiny. Tiny Mpayipheli.?
He ran down a green valley through knee-high grass, chasing a red balloon. He stretched out a hand to the string but stumbled and fell and it shot up into the air. He woke in Christine van Rooyen?s sitting room and smelt the sex on his body. What the fuck have I done?
He swung his legs off the couch and rubbed his eyes. He knew he hadn?t slept enough, could feel the lethargy in his mind and body, but that was not what lay so heavily. He didn?t want to think about it. He stood up a little unsteadily. He pushed his Z88 pistol and cell phone under the couch and took the little pile of clothes and shoes with him to the bathroom. He would have liked to brush his teeth, but that would have to wait. He got under the shower and opened the taps.
Jissis. Drunkard and adulterer. Whore-fucker. Fucking weakling who couldn?t control himself, telling her his entire life story. What the fuck was wrong with him? He wasn?t a fucking teenager anymore.
He scrubbed himself with the soap, washing his genitals two, three, four times. What was he going to do with her now? How far was Witness Protection? He would have to call them. How had the night gone for Bushy Bezuidenhout and company out at Camp?s Bay? While he lay in the embrace of a prostitute. With premeditation, that was the fucking thing?he had come here looking for it. Wanting her to touch him because he needed someone to touch him so fucking much. Because he thought a whore would find it easier to touch him. Because he couldn?t wait six fucking months for his wife, just maybe, to touch him.
He got out of the shower and toweled himself aggressively. Jissis, if only he could brush his teeth, his mouth tasted as if a mongoose had shat in it. He smelt his trousers. They still smelt of sex, he couldn?t go to work like that. Better phone Tim Ngubane and find out if Witness Protection could come and collect her.
Why did she have to come and lie with him? And then to tell him her story as if it was
fucking fault?
He was still standing like that holding his trousers up to his nose, when she opened the bathroom door and said in a frightened voice: ?I think there is someone at the door.?
Arendse had last seen Tiny Mpayipheli five years ago. Sitting together at the Oregon table, he could see that the Xhosa had changed. Still a very big man with a voice like a cello. Still the pitch-black eyes that made him shiver
