I can’t slit throats – too brutal. I’m not a barbarian. Next he’ll be telling me to scalp her.
“So you’re picturing, like, a samurai sword?” I ask. Not very practical.
“If you feel the need to be aesthetic,” he says dryly. “Otherwise, a kitchen knife will do.”
I’m grateful to Doctor Olaf for his advice, but the whole experience left me feeling a little empty. No murderer would ask his doctor how to kill his victim. I feel I’ve cheated. So for the pharmaceutical side of the affair I decide to go underground. My drug dealer usually delivers (isn’t that great? Door-to-door Diazepam! He’s really business-savvy. If he had a credit card facility I would nominate him for entrepreneur of the year. What’s also great about him is he takes real pride in his work) but I need my purchase this time around to be a bit more ghetto. Plus, I don’t think my dealer is any way interested in what I am looking for. He prefers designer drugs with their appropriate prices. Also, he has added vitamin supplements to his offering, which I find disturbing.
I drive to Hillbrow, stop in a nice-looking suburb on the way and draw a thousand Rand. I don’t even bother to look at the slip the machine spits out at me. Once on Louis Botha I slow down and look around. I ask the potential hijacker at the robot if he knows where I can score. He just shakes his head at me and there’s a strange look in his eyes. He either wholeheartedly disapproves of drug taking or he thinks I’m undercover.
I ask a few more people but it’s hard to not look suspicious. I’m in a Jag convertible in Hillbrow, for God’s sake. Besides, everyone looks suspicious. It was a lot easier to score when I was a student. Not that I had to come to Hillbrow for a banky. I only moved on to harder stuff when I needed to, for a short story I wrote in my early twenties.
I pull in at the notorious petrol station and ask the attendant. He doesn’t seem to speak a great deal of English. He just shouts in the general direction of the building and a few faces look up out of the dim interior. He puts the petrol pump nozzle in my fuel tank but doesn’t turn it on. Another guy in greasy blue overalls ambles out to my window for a chat.
“Nice ride,” he smiles. He’s laid back, like a Rasta, but without the trappings.
“I need GHB. Just enough for one night. But it has to be GHB, untraceable, nothing else. No mixed shit. And I don’t want roofies.”
“Angazi.” He shakes his head and sucks his lips. “I got roofies. More kick. Much better.”
I can tell why this guy’s a drug dealer and not a brain surgeon.
“I don’t want roofies. You can trace it. I need GHB.”
I’m starting to think this is a bad idea. Strictly speaking I don’t even need to be here. You can make your own damn GHB, if you know how. If you have an iPhone and know how to spell Google. But the fear gnawing at my stomach is the reason I came, this dull paranoia, this feeling: you can’t get this by sitting on your Chesterfield in the ’burbs.
It’s hot. The tattiness of this place and the smell of petrol is getting up my nose.
“Well?” I’m trying to act cool but I can hear tick-tock before some ego in a cop car pulls up. I wind my watch.
“Drive around, I’ll see you now,” says the lipsucker.
“What?”
The other attendant chips in. He turns out to be able to speak very good English. They seem amused at my presence.
“Drive around the block, then come back here. Park in the carwash.”
He takes back his nozzle, closes my petrol cap and pats the back window, leaving a nice set of fingerprints on the glass. It seems that these guys have lost their healthy sense of fear a long time ago.
I cruise around the block feeling like an idiot in my flashy car. This neighbourhood is Dodge City. The roads are full of potholes and the uneven pavements teem with weeds and junk. There are no road names. I should have parked somewhere and caught a taxi in. Doctor Olaf wouldn’t be happy: I can feel my blood pressure spiking. There is a certain relief in pulling into the cool shade of the car wash, until someone switches the damn thing on and the old rollers scratch the shit out of my duco.
We take care of business without much going wrong. They hand me three pink powdery pills in a used Ziploc and grossly overcharge me for it. My dealer would tell me that it serves me right, buying from the competition.
Eve hasn’t called and I’m thankful for that. It would be awkward. I wouldn’t be comfortable seeing her. Looking at her thin, pale neck, so easy to strangle, or sitting across from her, thinking of the blood moving in her veins. And her beating heart.
12
WHO HAS TIME TO READ IN THIS RAT RACE? OR,
WHITE CANARY
“Hey buddy, let me buy you a beer.”
It’s Wednesday night at our indoor soccer club and we’ve just been beaten two-nil by a bunch of hillbillies. Middle-aged punks who bring their pregnant teenage mistresses to watch the game. The poppies sit around skinnering and clap half-heartedly while downing Alcopops and smoking petite packs of Camels with neon-painted nails. Frank played well but I wasn’t concentrating and let a few balls through.
“What an awesome party we had, huh?”
Last Saturday seems a decade ago.
“Dude, you throw the best parties. That waitress was a minx. She gave me her number.”
“Have you called her?” I ask.
“Nah.”
Frank has commitment issues.
“Hey, did you nail that short chick?” he asks.
I squint and have to think before I answer.
“The one in the pool?”
“Ja. The one with the tits.” He jiggles imaginary melons on his chest in case I misunderstand the question.
We reach the bar, which is too bright, and Frank drops the melons and orders two pints of Windhoek draught from a bartender who looks like a Hell’s Angel.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Pussy.”
Meaty, tattooed arms pass us tall glasses of the good stuff. Frank tells the biker to keep the change.
We find a table at the back, away from the jubilant hicks, and sit down. The top is stained and sticky. Three beers later, we’re bonding over some third-grade pork scratchings we bought from the bar.
“So what was up with you and Eve, man? She looked seriously pissed off.”
Usually I wouldn’t have too much to say about it but it’s been an exhilarating week and I need to tell someone. Also, Frank calls me buddy so I guess he’s the closest thing I have to a mate. We met when he joined our team. He’s hardly my intellectual equal, but he laughs a lot, which I like. If the conversation ever turns to books or reading he likes to feign constipation and quote Mario Puzo: “Who has time to read in this rat race?”
I shouldn’t say anything. It would be crazy to tell anybody. It could get to the wrong person and I would be locked up. I would lock me up. Besides, everyone knows it’s Jinx City if you reveal the premise of your novel before you’ve started it. Like roasting chickens before they hatch.
Frank is waiting. I can’t tell him.
Loose lips sink ships.
“It’s a long story,” I drawl.
“Is she your piece of action?”
“I’m working on it.” I picture a white canary being sent down the mineshaft.
“That’s funny.”
“Why?”
“Ah, nothing. I just thought she might have been gay or something.”
“Gay? Are you crazy?”