Zoo City

grinned.

'Stealing electricity too good for you?'

'I'm a terrible thief. But a great cook.'

It turned out he wasn't a great cook. But neither was I.

He was surprisingly easy to be around. My shavi is a bitch. Most mashavi are. But I was cynical about people before I could feel the threads of lost things radiating from them, like cracks splaying out from a hole in a windscreen. He didn't have any threads. Lost things, yes, incredibly faint and blurred around him, but no connections. Obviously, he had something horrible in his past, viz the Mongoose, but he wore it well, like a soft old shirt that's been washed many times. It turned out this wasn't a coincidence.

It also turned out that his name wasn't Elias. Elias was just the guy he filled in for when Elias was sick. The rest of the time, Benoit hustled. Odd jobs, man-on-the-sideof-the-road stuff, bouncer, labourer, fixer, entrepreneur, as long as it was legal, or mostly legal. Seducer of women was not part of his resume, he claimed, until he met me.

In fact, I was the one who kissed him.

'I didn't expect you to be so forward,' he said, surprised.

'Better than being backward,' I said. The texture of his burns under my palm was like cellophane.

'Must be nice to wear your scars on the outside,' I said.

'I'm not the only one,' he said, touching the ruin of my left ear where the bullet had caught me. But he only told me about his wife and kids in January, four and a half months after we'd first started sleeping together.

We were perusing the wares on a food stand downstairs, when he dropped the bomb that his wife's mother used to have a fruit stand in Walakase.

'Wife present tense?'

'Possibly. I don't know.'

'You failed to mention a wife.' I thought I was speaking at an appropriate volume, but I was loud enough to perk up all the hawkers on the corner. Even the upstanding young drug-dealer on the corner with the unnaturally wide-eyed Bushbaby craned his neck to see what was happening. Sloth ducked his head. He hates it when I make a scene. 'Maybe you should have told me about your wife, Benoit.'

'You didn't ask,' Benoit said calmly, picking up a mango from the fruit stand, turning it over in his hands. He squeezed it gently. Ripeness check, aisle three.

'I thought those were the rules we were going with. Former Life out of bounds. No questions.'

'Why?'

'Because it's none of my business. I didn't want to know.'

'And now you do. And this is my fault?' He swapped the mango for another candidate and handed it over to me, while the fruitseller pretended not to gawp. 'What do you think of this one?'

'I think it's soft in the head.'

'Would it have mattered to you, if you knew, cherie na ngayi?' I knew the textbook answer. The manual of morality dictates that I should have said 'of course' or 'how can you even ask that?' but I've never been a dependable liar. Or a good person.

'That's what I thought,' he said. 'It doesn't change anything, Zinzi.' He moved to kiss me, but as I tilted my head up, he pressed the mango against my lips instead.

'Idiot,' I said, wiping my mouth, mainly to hide my smile.

'Adulterer,' he grinned.

'Unwitting accomplice!'

'You weren't so unwitting last night. And besides polygamie is legal in Congo.'

'Did I call you an idiot already?'

'Only as much as I deserve.' This time he did kiss me.

I handed over twelve bucks for the mango and tucked myself under his arm, forcing Sloth to shuffle over begrudgingly.

'Are we a terrible cliche?'

'Isn't everybody?' he said.

The full story only came out later, and then only in snapshots, images caught in a strobe. The last time he saw his family, they were running into the forest, like ghosts between the trees. Then the FDLR beat him to the ground with their rifle butts, poured paraffin over him and set him alight.

That was over five years ago. He'd sent messages to his extended family, friends, aid organisations, refugee camps, scoured the community websites, the cryptic refugee Facebook groups that use nicknames and birth orders and job descriptions as clues – never any photographs of faces – to help families find each other without cueing in their persecutors. No dice. His wife and his three little children had vanished. Presumed dead. Lost forever.

The reason I didn't sense any of this? The reason I thought he was safe and sane and well-adjusted? His shavi is dampening other people's. He's the static to our ambient noise, the fuzzy snow that cancels out other frequencies, but only in how it affects him. A natural resistance to magic. Don't let that get out. If there was a way to synthesise his mashavi, gangsters and governments would both be after him. He lied to the Home Affairs officers on his refugee application, listing his talent as 'charm' – and he was charming enough to get away with it.

I thought it didn't matter. But now that his wife is no longer a theoretical construct of a tragic past, it suddenly does. That's the thing about ghosts from Former Lives – they come back to claim you.

In the shopping arcade, the brittle ack-ack of gunfire has cut off, replaced by the wail of multiple sirens. People start venturing out, some newly supplied with pungentsmelling meat pasties from Mr Pie. Who says violent crime is bad for business? I'm tempted to get one myself, but I'm held up by the signage in Go-Go-Go Travel, or more specifically the list of specials.

The place names are a list of well-worn exotica: Zanzibar. Paris. Bali. Amazing deals! Airport taxes not included.

These are places that do not feature: Harare. Yamoussoukro. Kinshasa. These are places that require alternative travel arrangements.

Border official bribes not included.

I'm woken by a scritching at the door. I don't know what time it is, barely remember falling asleep reading a threemonth-old You magazine, with its gleefully scandalised headlines about minor league South African celebrities and moral degeneration in general. It's been doing the rounds on this floor for a particularly torrid piece on 'Forbidden Love! My Zoo Story Romance', about some corporate banker and her reformed gangster lover – complete with Silver-backed Jackal. Sample quote: 'The biggest challenge, after my parents, was getting over my allergies!' Tabloid journalism at its finest.

The lights are still blazing, which is no good for my generator. I make a note on my mental shopping list to get more petrol (along with food, any description), and stumble, cursing, to open the door.

The Mongoose is sitting to attention on the spot where my doormat used to be. Add another item to the shopping list. That's the third one in six months. Maybe this time I'll get one with an anti-theft charm woven in. There's a tailor in the flat opposite who has a real talent for it, as opposed to the placebos they sell at Park Station.

The Mongoose gets to his paws and pads off down the corridor towards the fire-escape. He pauses and looks back expectantly over his shoulder.

'Really?' I say. I'm wearing a t-shirt, panties and a pair of socks, and it's freaking cold out there.

The Mongoose sits down again and waits.

'Okay, hang on. For fuck's sake.' I close the door and yank on my yellow leather coat with the ripped lining. Sloth mumbles sleepily.

'S'okay, buddy. I think I can handle Operation Retrieve Drunken Idiot Boyfriend on my own.' Sloth makes approving chewing noises and goes back to sleep.

I button up the coat, deciding on impulse to forgo jeans. The coat only comes down to my thighs, but it covers the objectionable bits. I will come to regret this. Also not putting on shoes. Because Benoit is not just down