Like it Matters (17 page)

The air around me seemed to grow clear, all the colours sharpening. Like it was going to be my last ever breath, I breathed, and then pushed the green phone.

I didn’t say anything, I just listened.

I thought I might’ve been hearing street noises on the other side of the call.

I stayed quiet, not even breathing—

And then finally her voice: “Dewald? Dewald, it’s me, ’s jy daar?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Hello? Dewald, please,” she said.

I was scared that if I spoke to her, she’d tell me lies and I’d believe them—

And I’d already fucking swallowed the hook, I didn’t want it to go in any deeper—

“Please?” she said

But I just hung up.

Then I quickly opened a new message and I typed out:

And I sent it.

I threw the phone across the room and it hit the wall and smashed into three pieces.

The sun was way up. It fell heavily on the curtains and oozed out the bottom. It lay in the dust on the dirty floor, banded by grime and breathing when the draught moved the curtains.

Monday morning.

Lying there in the corner like a coiled snake.

I
NEEDED THINGS
.

Food, painkillers, something to read, water—litres of water.

And a pen and a notebook so I could start my planning for Friday night.

I mostly slept through Monday though, and when I was awake—a sweaty stretch around noon, then a blue hour when the streetlights came on—I felt more unglued than I could ever remember feeling, and actually just too terrified to step outside the room. The bars on the window made shadows on the curtains and I fell asleep with cool sweat dripping down my eyelids, worried that any second now the cops were going to come and kick in my door, and convinced I’d never be able to sleep again until I went under. And thank god I went deep down, into blackness.

Tuesday started bright and warm.

My mouth was so dry my tongue felt cracked. I peeled my feet off the sheets, some skin stayed behind and then they were bleeding again. I put them on the floor and sat with my head hanging between my knees.

A whole-body hangover—that poisoned feeling right up and down. I felt like if I didn’t get water right away I might never be able to swallow again, and I had visions of sweating, green-capped doctors having to take a hacksaw to my feet if I didn’t purge them of Salt River Station as soon as possible.

I shuffled over to the other bed. I gathered up all the little black-plastic bricks of cash and I packed them into the smaller bag. Then I peeled off a thick stack of hundreds from the big roll of cash and put the rest of it in the bag as well, and I zipped it all up. Then I packed that whole bag into the other one and threw in the gun and the two sacks of drugs and I pushed the superbag under the bed. I put the two thousand or so I’d taken from the roll into my pocket. I moved the chair out from under the door handle and stood at the door for a while.

I worried about leaving the bags there.

But I worried more about having them with me on the street again.

Outside, I moved slowly because of my feet, with my eyes down to watch for broken glass. I didn’t look up at all, but still, I felt like people were looking at me, even the ones in cars, and the whole time I was convinced that any second a police van was going to pull up alongside me.

I was lucky I washed up in Salt River, where when you’re close to Main Road you basically can’t spit without hitting some kind of cheap store. I saw an Asia Mart across the road, a big one. Through the window I could see clothes and food and stationery, plus the place looked pretty empty. I didn’t want to go into a busy place smelling like sweat and death.

Inside the tiles were so clean and smooth I knew my feet were going to streak them. I grabbed a basket and tried to ignore it, but when I got to the other side of the store, I looked round to check, and already there was a girl who’d been sent over with a bucket and a mop. I went straight to the clothes. I ripped the tag off a pair of black socks with cartoon pandas on them and I put the tag in the basket and the socks on my feet.

I drank half a bottle of water standing in front of the fridges, then loaded the basket up with three more bottles. I bought everything on my list, plus I checked how much money I had on me and then I bought more stuff—a bicycle chain for the stashbag, a kettle, a mug, shower gel and shaving cream and a three-blade razor, shoes, boxers, three shirts, a jersey, two pairs of tracksuit pants, three more pairs of socks, a tub for my feet, a facecloth, a towel, some antiseptic, plasters. I had to upgrade to a trolley long before I was done. It was strange spending money that didn’t belong to anyone anymore. Or at least, money I really didn’t count as
mine
. I remember feeling so free in the aisles—almost divine, this proper, light-chested rush—I saw for the first time why rich people actually
liked
shopping so much.

The lady at the counter was lovely to me, she’d obviously forgiven me for my feet. I was putting the stuff into bags as it went through the scanner, sort of any which way, but then she took over from me and she packed them with a kind of machine-like genius—she made four big, almost cubic sacks. She even tied the handles into double bows for me, and then after I’d paid her she took my hand and showed me how to carry the bags with my fingers in the bows.

I’d asked her to keep the shoes out and I put them on and I laced them up.

Then I thought of something, and I bought three newspapers at the till. And a pack of zim cigarettes and a lighter.

I couldn’t think of anything else and so I loaded myself up with the heavy bags and I walked home to the Daybreaker Hotel.

It was on page six in the
Cape Times
and at the bottom of page seven in the
Argus
, just a tiny article, a few lines about two dead bodies and two wrecked cars, no names and no other speculation. There was nothing about it in the
Voice
, but I read about a pastor in Maitland who was basically pimping out choirboys and a guy in De Doorns who fed his gardener to his dogs—stuff that made what happened to me seem like it was actually hardly fucking news at all.

I put bottled water in the kettle and boiled it and then I mixed a tub of hot water and antiseptic and threw the facecloth in there to soak. While I waited for it to cool a bit, I took off my clothes and threw them in the far corner of the room, then laid the new ones out on the other bed and locked the rucksack to the frame of the bed with the bicycle chain.

My feet were in the water for half an hour at least. I had the facecloth wrapped around my hand and I was just rubbing it softly over my caked, cut feet until the dirt all came away eventually. I saw the cuts and they weren’t that bad. I wrung out the facecloth and let my feet soak for a while and it felt wonderful with that warmth so close to my bones. The rest of me still felt like shit but at least there was that—I could focus on that.

I dried my feet and used my finger to put more antiseptic on the cuts, then plastered them pretty well. I boiled the kettle again and made myself some noodles in the mug. I tried to do the crossword in the
Cape Times
while I ate them—

And then I’d done all that.

I sat there, staring around the room, and I realised that I’d actually done nothing.

Except blow like twelve hundred bucks we could’ve used for Mozambique.

I still only had a few days to fix the biggest fuck-up of my life, and I was ready now. I had clothes and money and food in me, I had a notebook waiting for all my brilliant plans—

I lay back in bed

And sang to myself till I fell asleep again.

P
ROBABLY BECAUSE
I
DID NOTHING
except worry and shiver and sweat on Wednesday, I couldn’t turn off

And I rolled out of bed but I didn’t go to the light, I just put my shoes on in the dark. There was some moonlight coming in the window, and on my way to the door, I saw Dewald’s pouch lying on the table I’d made with the washing tub and the box the kettle came in.

And then it was like a pantomime, me trying to turn away from the door and then reaching back for the pouch, not just in my head, my whole body going back and forth, two or three times at least—

Then finally wrenching the chair out from under the door handle, and falling into the corridor and lying there on the cold tiles breathing like I’d just shut the door on a pack of wild dogs.

It wasn’t raining, but it was one of those nights where the mist hangs heavy over the harbour and drifts into the streets, stinking of salt and sticking to your skin. The streetlamps glowed in the haze and their light was like liquid. On dark streets, there were sometimes lights left on in lonely rooms up and down the road, these yellow gothic gates of light containing in them the shadows of the bars on the windows they shone from. There were very few cars but they passed slowly and with the dignity of hearses, the headlights making long, raking sweeps through the mist.

I was heading down Salt River Road, and in the low clouds it was like the harbour was right in front of me, glowing and sparkling like a false city—

I had the coins in my hand already—

And I was thinking about him.

He used to watch quite a bit of porn, and when he was drunk he didn’t worry that much about hiding it, and I remember, and I’ll always remember, one night walking into the lounge—I was pretty young, I think, and I’m not even sure I knew what I was looking at, it was weird, sort of exciting and nauseating at the same time—and my dad, in that flickering blue light, pointing at a woman’s face on the screen, can of beer in his hand, and almost with a kind of patrimonial weight saying, “That’s the thing you’ll learn about porn stars, boy. They look great, sure. But you
know
they’re bad news. Otherwise, how come they’re porn stars?”

And I’ve found that funny since I was about sixteen—but not right then.

It just stung

And I pushed eight rand into the payphone and I dialled the number.

I’d been practising it in my head, and so I did it right first time, very deliberately—

But there wasn’t even a second before that harsh fax-machine sound came on the line, and then that Telkom woman’s voice, telling me the number wasn’t in use anymore.

The machine wouldn’t spit back my change but the credit stayed loaded up, and I tried again but obviously the same thing happened.

I tried to think of anyone else in the world I could call. Standing there with the phone in one hand and my other hand resting on the receiver

While just up the street, I could see that line of date palms and streetlights I knew so well—that jagged silhouette with the factory roofs and The Rainbow Lodge just buried in behind there.

And I thought to myself,
Fuck, there’s always Ken.

He’ll probably try and kill you at first, Ed, but he’ll come round.

There’s always Ken.

And I thought to myself,
It is—it is too late for you now, Ed

Too long not caring—

It’s ruined, and that means forever

But you don’t know yet about her.

Not yet.

I left the phone dangling on the end of the cord and I started motoring back up the hill.

Past the palms, towering above me—the palms and the bright moonlight behind them, the edges of the leaves glowing like silver neon.

It was like the whole universe had slipped into groove, a key finally turning in a rusty lock

Ken—then Friday night.

And then we’ll see.

We’ll see if you’ve got a partner, Ed.

Ken.

Then Friday night.

T
HERE WAS A NEW GUY AT THE DESK
downstairs at The Rainbow Lodge.

In my backpack I had one of the black plastic bags from the rucksack, and I’d put the gun in there too. The rest of the drugs, as well as the other bag, with the cash, that was all still locked up in my room at the Daybreaker.

Even though the guy at the desk was new, he seemed to look at me funny when I got closer—

And there I was—

In the top left corner of the
CALL KEN
noticeboard.

About a week’s beard on my face and heavy, slitted eyes—looking pretty much exactly the same as I must have standing right there.

I looked at the guy and said, “Ja. Go call Ken.”

The dude from the desk didn’t say a word to me the whole way up in the lift—

And then the way the two guys grabbed me when the doors opened let me know how much trouble I was in. The bag came off my back and before I knew it my arms were pinned behind me. One guy held me like that. All three of us were breathing hard.

It was all happening too fast.

And nothing like I’d pictured it.

Ken was standing a few metres away—impassive, in a purple velvet tracksuit—taking his time finishing off a pipe. There was bright morning sun coming through the windows and it gave the whole scene a creepy, cheerful look.