Then he’s off, leaving me to a long night in an empty house.
23
DARK RIBBON OF RED
I have been having bizarre dreams so when the doorbell rings it in the middle of a particularly vivid one it jolts me like a defibrillator in a medical drama series. I dread the phone ringing and the doorbell jangling, it sets my heart racing. I don’t want to see anyone. I want time to just sit around on my own and think. And sleep. And eat four meals of two-minute noodles in a row without washing any dishes. It rings again and I want to pull the blanket over my head and pretend I’m not home but in the end my curiosity gets the better of me.
I prowl to the peephole.
I can’t see anyone out there. My persecution complex jabs me in the ribs. It might be PsychoSally. She’s probably thought of a new creative way to defame me or deface my house. Probably rang the doorbell and hid behind a bush so that she could watch me admire her work. I strain my eye trying to see the impossible angle of the space behind the front pillars of the pedestrian gate. My heart has not fully recovered from the brisk awakening. Gingerly I touch the door handle and turn it. In a dream sequence of déjà vu I take the six steps to my newspaper, pick it up and turn around to face the house, this time expecting the worst. I don’t see anything out of place. I let my shoulders relax.
“Hello stranger,” comes a purr from behind me.
I jump what feels like a metre in the air.
“Christ,” I say, clasping the newspaper to my chest. “You f-frightened me.”
She laughs her gravel laugh.
I am frozen to the spot.
“Well,” she says, swinging her hips, “are you going to invite me in?”
I’ve barely closed the front door when her lips are on mine. I drop the newspaper. She pushes me up against the door and pulls down my boxers and I wonder if I am still dreaming. Then I remember I read somewhere that if you ever think you may be dreaming you are, ipso facto, not dreaming. Then I try to stop thinking because all of a sudden my dick is in her hot mouth and it feels so fucking good and who cares if it’s a dream or not. I feel like my whole body is in the dark red heat of her lips and I have to stop her before I lose it. I haul her up by the hand she has resting on my hip and, forcing her backwards, against the wall, rip open her blouse while I kiss her. She lets out a shriek of a laugh. Black clothes open up to reveal lightly sunned skin and lace. I taste her neck, just under her right ear. She is smiling but I can hear the barb of desire in her breath. I spin her around and push her skirt up over her arse. Down on my knees I lick the silk of the inside of her thigh but then can’t wait any longer so I stand and find her hole with my cock and drive it into her smooth, tight pussy. My left hand is on the wall to steady us and my right is inside her bra, squeezing her hard nipple. Denise grips me, traps me, after every thrust, as if to show me that I’m not in charge. I move my hand to the tangle of her dark hair and grab it but she bats my hand away. I see her tattoo and I have a fleeting feeling of being somewhere else, somewhere in the thorny garden. Again, that feeling that I know her, that I know this body. Her moans bring me back and I let my body go. After a few final thrusts I empty myself into her, into this exquisite creature. Afterwards we crawl to bed.
Later, after she has gone, I am lying on the chaise in the sun porch reading The Time Traveler’s Wife. I still feel a little stunned by Denise’s visit, like I have been given a gift by a stranger in the street. When the doorbell rings again I waste no time in answering it, much to my detriment.
It’s as if the universe had suddenly realised that nothing bad had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours so they’d better make up for lost time. It is the boys in blue: good cop, bad cop. I was feeling so buoyed by Denise’s visit that morning that I was able to open the door.
“Hello, officers,” I say, in a way that was not unfriendly.
“Hello Mister Harris,” says the bad one, Sello.
The good one has the grace to look uncomfortable.
I buzz the gate but they don’t move. It seems that today we are observing niceties.
“Would you like to come in?” I ask.
“We’re here to take you down to the station,” says Sello, not taking his eyes off me.
“Why?” I say, acting surprised. In fact I am a little surprised. What do they have on me? Can’t they just ask me questions here?
“Can’t you just ask me questions here?” I say, trying to look inviting. “This time you can have cappuccinos,” I smile. I buzz the gate again.
They both look at me with a cool distance in their eyes. There is obviously no smiling allowed on duty.
“We phoned you,” says Madinga, “but no answer.”
“Often,” adds Sello. “Maybe twenty times. We wanted you to come to the station.”
“I get anxiety,” I tell them. “Panic attacks. When I’m in closed spaces.”
Especially in interrogation rooms and cells.
“Can we please rather just do it here?”
I think they see the genuine worry in my eyes because they turn away from me and speak their ambush language. No one wants to be responsible for the heart attack of a paranoid post-traumatic stress claustrophobe. After a quick discussion and a shushed phone call to a superior they relent, but still refuse the cappuccinos.
We sit at the kitchen table again. My senses are on high alert and the chairs scrape against my eardrum. Déjà vu again, as if my reality has turned into a giant fucking hamster wheel.
“Your domestic worker,” says Madinga, looking around the now clean kitchen, “she’s back?”
He can’t see the five unwashed noodle bowls in the sink.
I shake my head. They obviously have no news on Francina’s whereabouts.
“Look,” says Sello, holding his hand at his stomach and leaning back in his chair as if he has just finished a good dinner. “New evidence has come to light.”
He has been watching too many episodes of Law and Order.
I think of that stupid Chuck Norris joke, when he introduces his legs individually as Law and Order.
“Really?” I say, “Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?”
Madinga looks at Sello. Both are expressionless.
“Maybe not for you,” he says.
My intestines squirm and I swallow hard.
“I can’t imagine what you mean,” I say, trying to keep my voice even.
There is a Latin proverb that says that when one’s life path is steep, try to keep one’s mind even. I am way past that and just an even voice will do for now.
“What would you like to talk about first, Mister Harris? Perhaps about your last appointment with your doctor and what was discussed there? Or maybe the library titles you have borrowed? Or the fingerprints we found all over Miss Shaw’s apartment?”
So they have been watching me. But before Eve’s body was found? Not necessarily. They could have discovered it all afterwards. I swallow again.
“Perhaps the fingerprints are the most compelling,” I say.
“We found at least six areas in Miss Shaw’s flat with your fingerprints,” says Madinga, “and some of your hair.”
“So what?” I say, knowing I sound guilty. “We were friends. I spent time there. I was over there just the other day having lunch.”