I dry my skin gently. Tonight I must be a silent shadow herding them up to the stars.
I dress in black chinos and a black t-shirt. I nod to the mirror now, a dark pastor. I tuck my stiff penis into my Sunday best.
I lift my mattress and pull out the key to the deck. I swap the lanyards, clip the hall key to the pink strap, clip the deck key to the red. I pour the red strap onto the cabinet, let it take the form of a beaten snake.
* * *
As I enter the canteen, Meirong leaps to her feet like she wants to punch me. She thrusts out an open palm. ‘Key.’
I smile obligingly, unravel the pink lanyard from my pocket. Meirong snatches it and loops it around her neck. I try not to look at it dangling between her breasts. Not because of the soft, swollen place where it is nestling, but because I have just played a trick on a very dangerous woman. The weight of the key seems to relax her.
But something has lit the green fuse in Tamba’s right eye. ‘You look smart, Malachi. You going somewhere special?’
I smile and shrug, mime a shower. I uncurl my fingers, show the opening of the petals of a sweet-smelling flower. I sit down, turn the tables on Tamba. I point a finger at him, pinch my nose as if to say, Dude, you’re stinky.
Tamba lifts an arm, smells himself. Janeé giggles.
‘Mmm. Sweet Tempest,’ Tamba says.
I can’t help but let out a deep laugh. Sweet Tempest, the perfect deodorant for being lost at sea. I watched the making of their ad on TV once – they spent two million dollars on a mechanical seagull the size of a pterodactyl. The sky, I remember, was not the pale, punished blue I have seen above the rig. It was the luminous blue of brake fluid. I start to hum the song from the Sweet Tempest TV ad.
Janeé shrieks with delight. ‘Malachi’s singing!’
Tamba grins, lifts his arms to fly, gives us a whiff of chemical sweat. I have managed to distract him from me dressing like James Bond, but I am appalled at my own stupidity. Nice, Malachi. Have a shower and dress like a cat burglar with your roommate watching your every move.
Isn’t this why there was such a bloody, bloody ending to Thomas Wyatt’s sonnet?
A deep despondency settles over me. These could be my last moments on earth, and here I am humming advertising jingles.
Olivia traipses into the canteen, her white skirt rolled up like she has been leaping for joy across green grass. I am the only one who notices that she is barefoot. She sits down, beaming. There are pink smudges on her hippie shirt like she has been eating ice cream. But the fluids in her lab are mostly pink. Possibly from the preservative.
Janeé serves us our supper, a whole baby chicken each, but in South Africa they don’t call it that, they call it a flatty. A chicken pressed flat, its tendons stretched to make it lie low. This one is dusted with something that smells like Aromat.
Olivia pricks her flatty with her fork. ‘Looks lovely, Janeé.’
‘Delicious,’ Janeé agrees, like someone else cooked it.
My last supper, and I am eating what I could have bought in a Nando’s budget box for eighty bucks in Nelspruit. New Nation supplies the franchise with fast-growing hybrid fowl, those creatures with no wings, no beaks, no feathers, no feet.
I mean, no feet.
I stare at my golden thighs that end at the knee. This poor thing didn’t even get to stand up.
I nip the end off a sachet of salt. Sprinkle it on my chips. Will a sachet of salt take us to the sea? If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be funny.
Funny like dropping my trousers before the Asian beauty before me. Meirong catches my eye, blushes a becoming pale pink. She was thinking of my bum. Definitely.
What is wrong with me? I can’t stop thinking like a man. Pornographically.
Sex and death. Non-identical twins.
Now that Meirong has seen my bum, she seems to consider me a human being. ‘It won’t be long, Malachi. Six months will go quickly.’
I nod amicably at her.
‘We’re thinking of using that subject with no teeth? He keeps pulling them out, the idiot.’
Tamba says, ‘Number thirteen.’
The Indian. They were going to use him to grow my tongue! Ironic, very ironic that he is the only one who can help me with the black box. My laugh erupts as a hiccup.
What black box?
Get real, Malachi. Six hours to go and the precious object is nothing more than a mention from a dead young woman.
As Olivia tucks into her chicken, she tells me her news. ‘Timmy’s in theatre right now, Malachi. They’re busy with the transplant.’
I grin at her. Wow. Wonderful!
‘I’m not worried, really,’ she assures me passionately. ‘I prayed the whole of last night.’ But tears dampen the smudges beneath her eyes.
Janeé hugs Olivia with a huge arm. ‘My boy, too. They’re fixing him tomorrow,’ she tells me.
Lovely.
I exude genuine happiness for both of them. Inaudible sounds tease my mind for the second time today. First Romano’s pain, now Janeé and Olivia – they are ululating, aren’t they?
Something odd is happening to me. It’s like I can hear people’s sound effects. Am I becoming schizophrenic?
I stare at my footless flatty, feel a terrible yearning for sand and grass and trees. Let me walk again on solid land, please. I will eat the earth if necessary to show how grateful I am to be delivered to it. God only knows how. Lifeboat. Black box. Outboard engines. These are not things I am familiar with, other than
