‘Oh, come and play ping-pong.’
Another no for Tamba.
He hides his hurt with racism. ‘Ping-pong, haww saww. Must be a Chinese thing.’
‘I’ll come,’ Olivia says listlessly.
I watch Janeé jab her spoon into her caramel. I sense a yearning in her. Ask Janeé, I want to say. She might not be the one you would normally pick for sport but you never know, she might mop the floor with you in a ping-pong tournament.
The canteen empties, except for Janeé who packs the plates, one might say, indelicately. I nod gingerly at the cook. Walk my chafing, raw limbs towards my living quarters.
* * *
I need to read.
I am thirsty for words to escape into.
When I reach my room I hear the tap, tap of airtight plastic. Rifle shots in the distance, approximately twenty kilometres away – this is the volume of ping-pong through an acre of stainless steel. I sit painfully on Tamba’s bed.
Ouchie, as the giant said.
Tamba’s storage hatch is unlocked, a rusted Volkswagen sign dangling off an ancient key. I slide the door open, scratch through his things. I find a thin, red Kindle with Little Red Riding Hood on the cover. I open her cloak. Tamba’s first favourite is a poetry book. Riding White Clouds. I click his second best. Sun Prophet, Memoirs of a Psytrance DJ. The cover is a naked torso of a man with wire tattoos coiling across his skin. His smile is transient, thin, his eyes unnaturally bright, even in black and white. It says he used to DJ in the Arizona desert, led ten thousand people into spiritual ecstasy.
I creep to the bathroom, shut myself in.
I sit on the toilet seat, my neck muscles tight against the sound of protracted gunfire pinging above me. I swipe the book to the middle, fall into the words like an addict.
When I cut molly with amphetamine it was like someone telling me I won the Lotto while I was getting head. But when I snorted MDMA straight, pure empathy and love built tiny houses inside me and sent waves of love children into the atmosphere . . .
My bum stings against the porcelain but I wallow in the words, grateful for the luxury.
I could feel my separate skin but my compressed kick drums fused us all into one, synchronised us . . .
The talk of chemical ecstasy calms me.
Tap tap. Tap tap tap. Olivia and Tamba are perfectly matched, two martyrs playing ping-pong, both of them missing the stars to bring back a pulsing, live gift to their loved ones.
Yet there is something about Tamba that does not quite fit. He is like the DJ in this book, a man without a long-term plan, tickle me, let’s dance, play ping-pong, haww saww. I can’t imagine him suffering this rig for a soulmate. I stare at the picture of the desert DJ, the barbed-wire art gouging his skin. Just like Kontar’s scars, after he saved the lion cubs.
* * *
A rogue lioness dragged her cubs through the barbed wire at the factory wall. Kontar and I watched her cubs suck her dry until she was staggering. Kontar couldn’t stand their mewling.
* * *
I shut down the Sun Prophet. But the razor thorns have already hooked into my memory.
* * *
My uncle burst through the dark doorway while I was sleeping.
‘Kontar stole hippo meat from my storage drum. Where is he, Malachi? Tell me.’
I shook my head stupidly.
‘Tell me!’
My father stepped between us. ‘Malachi doesn’t lie. Let’s go and find him.’
I waited for their footsteps to fade beneath the distant night engines.
I ran out before my mother could catch my fluttering sleeve.
* * *
‘Kontar!’
‘Help me!’
The barbed wire lay tossed like tumbleweeds. Kontar’s satchel was open in the long grass, chunks of hippo fat gleaming in the fluorescent light from the fibre-optic factory. I crouched down and peered into the wire tunnel. A skinny lion cub was licking Kontar’s face, taking his ear softly between its teeth. The other cubs were balancing on the wire behind it, their paws bleeding. I flung a piece of hippo fat towards the dead lioness. The cubs scrambled back to the factory wall, whimpering. There was a terrible snarling as they tore into it. They must have been starving.
I ripped off my clothes, leopard-crawled into the tunnel.
‘Aaaghh!’ I cried as the pain arrived in stinging, hot rips. I backtracked, rubbed a chunk of hippo fat down my arms, my legs, my belly. The barbed wire still tore my skin, but let me slither through.
* * *
I groan softly now, remembering. I force my attention back to Tamba’s Kindle, scroll to the end of his list. Basic Anatomy. I click on the medical textbook, stare at the black diagrams of human skeletons. Clavicle, scapula, sternum. The scientific name for fingers is phalanges. A carpal is a wrist bone. Metatarsals are the bones in the centre of the foot.
* * *
The serrated steel tore my elbows as I pulled his trousers down his thighs, hooked them off his feet. I smeared the hippo fat on Kontar’s legs as he hollowed his chest and slid his shirt over his head.
* * *
I shut the basic anatomy book.
I drop Tamba’s Kindle on my pillow, take off my socks and shoes. I slouch on my bed, stare at my bare phalanges.
* * *
One lion cub caught the scent of our greasy skin and crept purposefully towards us. The others dipped after it, wincing with each step. I scrambled backwards, crying out as the wire clawed into me.
‘Hurry!’ Kontar begged me.
The barbs sank their teeth into my hips. They tore my underarms before I folded myself up and slithered past.
As Kontar and I stood up, the lion cubs burst from the tunnel. I grabbed the last chunk of fat and flung it to them. The cubs pounced on it, growling. We turned and sprinted.
When we reached the first rise, Kontar and I stopped to watch the cubs prowl and lick, circle and slink into
