I scrub at my scalp, use my affliction to turn down her kindness. Allergy is easier to mime anyhow than, Sorry, but if I did I will piss on the sofa every time one of us pulls a trigger.
Just then, we hear a volley of little bombs, muffled by acres of stainless steel. Janeé grins.
‘Someone’s already up there. It must be Tamba.’ She trundles to the door. ‘See you tomorrow, Malachi.’
I smile at her wryly. I have two mothers, it seems. Cecilia who gave birth to me, and a big Xhosa cook who would forsake me any day for a War Console game.
* * *
I scuttle from the canteen, knock hard on the door of Olivia’s laboratory.
‘Ja?’
Olivia bends over a long plastic sleeve of pink fluid. Blue bruises of optimism hang beneath her tired eyes. ‘Malachi?’ she says, surprised.
I hook the top digits of my fingers, scrabble at the air around my head. I touch my bottom lip, show an imaginary pill going in.
‘Itchy head?’
I nod, curl my hands into the shape of a dish. Mime the action of eating.
‘The fish!’
No, not the fish. But Olivia whips a drawer open, breathing heavily. She digs inside it. ‘How is your breathing, Malachi?’
I stroke my throat, put up a hand to reassure her there is no swelling.
‘The fish,’ she repeats while she fishes in the drawer of glass bottles and silver wrappings. She snaps a yellow pill from its bubble pack. ‘Take this. Quickly.’
I drop it in my mouth. Swallow it. I want to explain to Olivia that the fish was mother’s milk. It was that stupid red syrup, but Olivia is the last person in the world who should ever see my Samsung.
‘Is your throat feeling tight?’
I shake my head. Five plastic sleeves lie on the counter pasted with white stickers, neatly printed, Zymocticyllin. 200 ml per mouth.
Olivia is watching me anxiously. ‘I think I should call Meirong.’
I wave a casual hand, smiling.
‘Malachi.’ There is a threatening note in Olivia’s voice. ‘You need to be fine for tomorrow.’
I walk backwards, show Olivia I am perfectly coordinated, thank you. I turn at the door, smiling to quell her worry that I might die of anaphylactic shock and sabotage harvest day. I wave cheerily, glide down the corridor, an old-fashioned actor exiting stage right.
* * *
It feels like I have never in my life been so happy. My itch is completely cured by the antihistamine. I whistle in the shower, Bayira’s song from Saturday.
I stop suddenly. The warm water pours down. I had no idea I could whistle without a tongue.
I can whistle perfectly, even with water running between my lips. Astonishing. I giggle to myself. Perhaps an unforeseen effect of Janeé’s frying grease.
I hide my stolen phone beneath my pillow. Drop both key cards on the cabinet, climb into my sleeping shorts which smell of fake lavender. The antihistamine, I think, has sent me flying. I set my alarm for ten minutes before midnight, put myself to bed among a profusion of purple flowers, humming Bayira’s tune.
I will see Vicki at midnight.
My mind travels to her bellybutton. This is safe, isn’t it? The bellybutton has nothing to do with the skeleton. It is miles from the saxophonist’s knobs of her vertebrae, a different creature entirely from her pretty patella draped in pliant knee-skin. Her bellybutton is just a keepsake, a souvenir from the woman who carried her for nine months, her baby skull knocking against a soft, sloping cervix.
Is a woman’s cervix smooth and buttery, or is it spongy, I wonder? I see the dark moss at the entrance to the mermaid’s cave. Feel my penis rise up like a medieval weapon. I turn onto my stomach, but it digs into the mattress like it wants to lift me up and go and seek Vicki’s pink reproductive parts.
Shame stabs me in the soft centre of my pelvis.
Would my mother be ashamed of me?
I thrash the pillow fiercely. No! Cecilia would want her son to be a full-blooded human, not bomb his manhood out of existence. I stroke my cheek against the pillow, let it comfort me. I slide my hand into my shorts. I want to lick Vicki’s bellybutton, thank her mother for carrying her. I want to tickle the globule of skin with my imaginary tongue so she buckles towards me, gives me her breasts. I want to take her nipple between my lips, let the flesh touch the roof of my mouth. I caress my pitted penis, let it grow in response to my delicious gentleness. I want to feed on her unloved abundance, suck her feminine flesh until a surprising richness floods her bony chest, throbs through her guitar frets, passes in ecstatic stop-starts through her knife notches until she is free to be a groaning, grown woman, unharmed by man or metal. I touch my scarred penis, stroke it to shocking rigidity. I want to slip it into her mermaid’s cave, feel the slippery velvet swell around it, drive to the edge, sink and lift, sink and lift, rhythmic, until the world cannot hold us and we fall, we fly, we shatter in blazing waves that drown everything we have ever known, our very birth, the fact that we are perfect.
I fall into a blissful, sticky sleep.
* * *
I wake still holding her lush hills that guide me back to time. Who am I?
Where do I live?
A helicraft throbs somewhere above me. I am lying in a metal rig beneath a damp, sticky sheet. I smile, wrap myself tightly in it. I am in love with Vicki.
The helicraft engine slows, switches off. The extra surgeons are here. Poor Shikorina. Poor Lolie. I can’t bring myself to feel sorry for Angus, the rapist. I listen for the Dragonfly to load up the solo sailor and fly her away to the best medical care on earth. I listen for an hour and ten minutes, but all I hear are muted detonations of outdated war-game weapons. I fall asleep again
