Despite being happily married – if there is such a thing, but that is a conversation for another day – Sifiso only hires gorgeous Girl Fridays. They are his own Playboy Bunnies in the little mansion that is his mind. Eve seemed to be the most delicious so far. I wanted to grandstand a little, fluff my tail feathers, show this pretty lady who The Big Guy was.
Eve (smiling): “That’s a shame.”
Me (caught off guard by her blazing smile): “Why’s that?” I see rainbows. Lots of little rainbows emanating from her skin. Mmm, pretty.
Eve: “Because I was really looking forward to working with you.” (Exit Eve.)
Me (under my breath): “Crap.”
Then, on second thoughts: “Can I get some more morphine?”
Sifiso called me later that day to let me know how annoyed he was. He had spent weeks trying to persuade Eve to agree to do a cover for us. She was then an up-and-coming artist who was receiving great press for her latest exhibition and not keen to do anything too commercial.
Sifiso has a short temper and shouts a lot. He’s short and shouty. Or perhaps shouty because he’s short. He likes putting a lot of emphasis on the keywords in his admonitions; he especially loves shouting over the phone. Usually editors are quite nice to their writers, but not mine.
“She’s an ARTIST!” he screamed down the phone. “A REAL artist! Not like the two-bit Corel Draw designers we usually get! I finally pull someone fantastic to do it as a FAVOUR and you tell her you’d like to WHIP her? What was THAT about?”
“I didn’t quite say…”
“You didn’t know it would OFFEND her? Telling her she looked like an wild pig and that she should be BURNED at the STAKE?”
“Now, I don’t think I quite said that…” I mumbled, hoping to God that I hadn’t. “But you need to shoulder a bit of the blame here, man. I mean what were you thinking?”
“What was I thinking?” he shouted.
Despite my shattered collarbone I was doing lots of forehead-holding and frowning.
Nasty silence from Sifiso.
“I was out of my head with the drugs! I was seeing in goddamn Technicolor! No wonder I was saying bizarre things. What did you expect? Besides, what on earth were you doing sending the artist on a run? Are things that bad?”
“Eish,” he said.
“Don’t speak Zulu to me. What the hell does that mean?”
“Slade,” he sighs, “I am Xhosa.” All I can hear is clicking.
“And?” I shout.
“And I had the courier all set up but Eve’s such a great fan of your work, she asked if she could take it in person, so she could meet you.”
“Oh,” I said. Crap.
So Sifiso sent Eve flowers and I called to apologise. I outright lied to her and said that I didn’t really remember much but, apparently, I had been rude to her and I was very sorry, would she please reconsider the contract she had shredded, burned and posted back to Sifiso. She laughed a lot and I knew from that moment that I liked her. She told me the contract was in fact still in fine form and sitting on her desk, and she would be happy to work on a new cover with us. It seemed Eve, unlike Sifiso and me, was a Grown-Up.
I’m sure she knows I’m in love with her but she’s never been that into me. She is my Unattainable. Daisy Buchanan to my Gatsby. Rosebud to my Kane. Even though I live in hope, I know I will never have her. When I have sex with other women I am mostly fantasizing about Eve. Her petite frame; her generous tits; her cheekbones; her distracted glance; her creative mind; her short-nailed fingers. I am rougher when I think of her, and usually don’t last long enough. I forget myself.
She cares about me, I know that. Even after I was such a prick to her in the hospital that day, she continued to visit to see how I was doing. That’s probably when it happened. When I fell in love with her. Psychobabblers will tell you I’m obsessed with Eve because of my unresolved Oedipus complex, exacerbated by my mother leaving me at such a vulnerable age.
She brought me grapes, for God’s sake. What did she expect?
4
SHAKING OFF SNOW AFTER A LONG WALK HOME
“Harris, where have you BEEN?” shouts Sifiso into my ear.
“I’ve been around. What’s up?” I think that maybe, if I’m really casual about everything, I will be able to diffuse his anger. I hold the phone away from my ear just in case.
“What’s UP? I’ll tell you what’s UP!” he yells. Oh boy.
“What’s UP is THIS: you’ve been AVOIDING my calls! Now why would you want to do THAT?”
I wind my watch.
“Are you angry about something, man? Want to talk about it?”
“You don’t have time to TALK, my friend! That’s unless you have been so quiet because you’ve been finishing the NOVEL you’ve owed me since FEBRUARY.”
Eish. I didn’t realise it had been that long.
Ha. Who am I kidding? Every month since February has slid by like barbed wire on naked flesh.
“Sorry. I wasn’t avoiding you on purpose. Things have just been a bit slow around here. I’m battling with the ending.”
More like, I’m battling with the opening sentence, but he doesn’t need to know that. This seems to calm him down a little. He sighs, martyr-like, down the line.
“Look, Harris, I KNOW you don’t need the extra pressure from me but it’s my JOB, you know? I need to get that finished manuscript from you. Everyone here is breathing down my NECK.” I visualise the veins in his neck almost popping out of the skin.
“Yes.”
There is a welcome respite as he takes some time to gather himself.
“People are SAYING THINGS, Harris.”
I harrumph at that. As if anyone would dare. I have more talent than this whole fucking city combined. I don’t give a flying shit-arse what they’re saying.
“What are they saying?”
“I don’t want to upset you. I don’t want you to think about it. I want you to concentrate on finishing the MANUSCRIPT. That’s ALL I want you to think about.”
“What are they saying?” I ask again, an edge to my voice.
“They’re imbeciles. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“Sifiso…”
“They’re saying you’ve lost it. You’re dried up. BILTONG. You’re finished.”
“Oh.” Expected, but it still stings.
“They say you only had three books in you and now you’re empty. Finito.”
“Okay, I get the message.”
“Kaput.”
“Sifiso…”
“Toosuccessfultoofast. That it’s over. IS it over, Harris?”
“Of course not. This one has just been a little slow. Tolstoy took ten years to write War and Peace, for God’s Sake. Sometimes you can’t rush these things.”
I think I hear him stifle a chuckle.
“THAT’S what I TOLD them! And then I flipped them the birdie.”
“Good.”
“I told them to pick a finger!”
“Thanks, Sifiso.”
“But it’s still my ARSE on the line, my reputation, Harris, so for fuck’s sake just FINISH IT!”
There’s no way I can write after such a grilling so I decide to go for a walk around the neighbourhood, get some air. The air is fresh and the roads quiet. I suppose most people are at work. Thank Christ I don’t have to sit in a smelly open-plan nine-to-five. Or have those humiliating office parties where you invariably end up vomiting punch into the accountant’s dustbin, or shagging the half-conscious intern over the photocopy machine. Or have a manager of sorts, someone with receding hair and a boep who dresses in chinos and walks around in a loud tie with a mug in his hand, bestowing pie charts and spiky performance reports. The horror! I walk past a little black cat that looks at me with dubious yellow eyes, sleek body poised, ready to dart. Skinny and elegant except for her short legs. Munchkins, I think they’re called. Dwarf-cats. Perhaps if I weren’t so selfish I would get a pet. Pets are good. Pets are normal. You can’t spiral into the darkness when you have a dog to walk, a cat to feed. I’ve never really had my own, apart from Maxwell, who didn’t really count. He had fleas that were more entertaining than him. And I’ve never really liked cats much. Too damn self-assured. And a little scary. They have this way of just appearing out of nowhere. Witches’ familiars. Munchkin and I stare each other down. She’s pretty. Despite myself, I want to touch her, so I take a tentative step forward. She’s up and through the fence before my trainer touches the ground. I won’t take it personally: I know thoroughbreds are skittish. I’m tempted to tell Starling & Co. to take a running jump with their three-book deal but then think of the advance money I have spent. Which is all of it. Despite the generous royalty cheques I get, I’m in a little debt. I’m a bit over my head with life in general. There’s no need to panic, really. If I’ve written a bestseller before – three times before – then I can do it again. It will come, I sigh to myself, when the time is right. Bless you Jesus. I keep walking.