‘Why not make him a coffee bomb, Janeé? Have you got any?’
Romano shakes his head. ‘No need.’
‘Can you make one for me?’ Tamba asks.
‘You’re not on night shift.’
‘For this afternoon, I mean.’
‘Can you not do your job?’
‘Janeé. You’re starting to sound like a tattle tale.’ Tamba pleads, ‘I’m just bored. I don’t know. Miff.’ He drags me into it. ‘Malachi’s doing such a good job spotting trouble, there’s nothing happening.’
Olivia glows at me approvingly.
‘I’m like . . .’ Tamba’s fists clench on the table top, ‘battling a bit, Janeé.’
‘Okay, Tamba. But I’ve only got the liquid.’
Tamba’s hands go limp. ‘Lovely.’
The muscles in Romano’s jaw bunch like a chainsaw as he finishes his lunch way before me.
‘Bao tarde,’ he says dolefully. His canvas clothes seem to sigh as he leaves.
Tamba and I sit and watch Janeé dine like a French princess with Amazon arms and ten-pound teeth.
‘Cold milk or hot?’ she asks Tamba.
‘Hot.’
‘Wait here.’
Tamba and I wait in silence for a full five minutes. It is not me who wants the coffee bomb, but I would sit here all day and all night rather than return to the wreckage my half a story has wreaked.
Janeé squeezes through the door again. Tamba jumps up to receive his foaming polystyrene cup. He takes a big swig, gets a bumper of foam on his top lip. He coughs so hard, coffee streams from his nostrils. Cocaine surrogate. Tamba wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
‘I love you, Janeé.’
Janeé smiles for the first time, it seems, in her whole pumpkin life. I touch my palms together once, thank her for the difficult beef. Follow Tamba, the coffee charmer, to the place where I least in the world want to be.
Tamba floats up the spiral stairs with his precious liquid. Ebullient, one might say, after a single sip. Heaven help us. He must be sensitive.
I rest my forehead against the metal door. Swallow solid air.
Be strong, Malachi.
The bones in my forehead pick up the ongoing tremors of the tidal wave inside. The prisoners are still stirred up, I can feel it.
I raise my red lanyard, turn the light green.
* * *
The prisoner’s beard is prematurely grey, his legs long and skinny. He starts to tell me about something he didn’t do, but his words are broken by his chipped teeth. One thing is for sure, Janeé’s beef would have killed him. He says the word ‘Harare’ somewhere in his stream of slurred English.
Ah, a white Zimbabwean, his beard and his teeth ruined by GM corn. I was lucky. My mother grew wild spinach at our doorstep.
I flick my switch.
Tamba is head-banging in his chair, chewing his dreadlocks with his front teeth. He rocks towards the glass. ‘What, so quick?’
I mime a shot in the bum.
Tamba squints at my finger squeezing an imaginary syringe. ‘Of what?’
I form a vee with my hands, take a chance with the literacy thing.
‘Vee . . . vee . . . um. Vitamins?’
Spare me. The two of us are now playing afternoon charades.
‘Oh, really? What symptoms, Malachi?’
I swirl my fingers at my chin, knead an invisible beard. I tap my teeth.
‘Ah, I see,’ Tamba says. ‘Good! I’ll tell Olivia.’ He speaks into a nearby microphone, rolls his chair back to me. ‘You’re brilliant, Malachi.’
The caffeine has made Tamba horribly hearty. Still, his overzealous compliment gets me through the next two subjects.
I stall before the social worker and his accusing, grey gaze.
‘I thought you were ex-ANIM.’
Your mistake, stupid.
He watches me square off his overgrown fingernails. ‘Do you hate me for helping them?’
I can’t stop my head from nodding.
‘Does that mean you believe I am innocent?’
I falter, bewildered.
He sings joyously to the hall, ‘Malachi believes me!’
In the movies they would say, ‘Shut up, you fuck.’
Sorry for swearing, Hamri.
My anger burns all the way to Charmayne, the big beauty. I can almost see sparks fly as I slash at her nails. She must know she is a fraction of a millimetre from sudden agony, but still she tries to clear her name with me:
‘It was their greed that killed them, Malachi. They both had solar Volvos. Mansions.’ She shakes her head. ‘If you knew what they spent on their suits.’
Splat, Charmayne. Splat splat. I would love to shut her up with some childish onomatopoeia. Those suits must have split their seams on the concrete. She sees the cynicism in my eyes.
‘I grew up wearing other people’s clothes from lost property.’ Charmayne has dark, soft hairs on her belly, the down on a female doe. ‘No children of staff were allowed in our block so I hid all day in the fire escape.’ She raises her stair-climbing thighs, gives me her feet. ‘I used to sneak into the pool at night and swim up and down the dark side where no one could see me.’
I imagine her broad shoulders rolling through quiet lengths, her breasts swinging up, swinging down the painted line. I clip and clean the long, strong feet that must have kicked underwater so as not to make a splash. I must admit that Charmayne’s eccentric hair, her full-cream skin, her eyes gleaming with some mystical mercury must have created a magical sight, even in the dark lane of a locked-up pool.
If I was a normal man I would fall in love, surely, but the only thing that tempts me is Charmayne’s beautiful knees. The bones are flat on top like a mesa or a butte, I can’t remember which. I drag my eyes from them.
Don’t be stupid, Malachi. This woman is an instrument of earth-moving greed with no regard for human life or the flimsiness of suits.
A growl begins to brum at the base of my throat.
* * *
‘All right, all righ-h-t,’ near the end of the row, Madame Sophie soothes sarcastically.
I didn’t realise my growl had risen to loud.
Madame Sophie’s blonde hair is a blown-out white today, her skin as pale as an albino’s. Even her eyes have turned platinum.
Is my mood affecting my eyesight? I see white spots on
