Julian looks like a deep-water mutant, Ruan says.
Cissie and I laugh. I inhale and blow out smoke.
To defend herself against the cold, Cissie’s wearing a green hoodie. The strings on the sides are pulled and knotted under her chin. She leans out over the balcony.
You know, Julian asked about my documentary, she says.
Cissie has an audio documentary she edits for two hours each month. The subject is a twenty-eight-year-old from Langa called Thobile. Last year, Thobile quit his job to live on eight rand a day. It was in solidarity with his community, he said, and in the clips Cissie played back for us at West Ridge, we could hear the difference in his tone at the beginning of the experiment, and then a month later. Cissie, who planned to paint a portrait of him — using only her memory and her recording as a guide— said he lost eight kilograms in three weeks.
Leaning on the railing, I turn to face her. How’s it going? I say.
Cissie shrugs. I don’t know. They all started getting sick.
I remember listening to Thobile in the clips Cissie played for us. He described how he hadn’t robbed anyone, yet.
He has this little brother, you know. In June, Vuyisa contracted bronchitis. That’s why Thobile had to go back to work.
I nod.
Cissie digs in her pocket and retrieves a soft pack of filters. The two of us watch as a car speeds down the narrow lane below. Its headlights illuminate a piece of graffiti on the opposite walclass="underline" PLEASE DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS.
You know, Cissie says, I don’t mind my job.
Since our wine is almost finished, we drink what’s left of it in shallow sips.
No, really, she says, but there’s all this shit in between. I mean, what are we even doing here? My aunt died today, Cissie says, and here I am, standing on a balcony, listening to people talk shit about Nietzsche.
Ruan looks over her shoulder. Loud enough for the ecology student to hear, he says, Nietzsche’s the Nazi one, isn’t he?
On the floor, the student shrugs under his balaclava. The leaking pipe is laced with methamphetamine. I start to feel awake when I try a hit. My pulse begins to pick up and I turn to Ruan. Then I decide to tell Cissie about my job.
When I’m done, Cissie releases the rail and takes a long drag from her cigarette.
Then she tells me that’s good. She says to me, now we have to go to Mowbray.
Julian spots us making our way down the wood-paneled hallway. Maybe it’s his new eyes. He follows after Ruan and raises his arms.
You can’t be leaving, he says.
We are, Cissie tells him.
I haven’t even thought of doing the lock-up yet.
Well, something came up, she says.
Julian shakes his head. He walks past us and starts working the latch.
I get it, he says, you’re a team. I like that.
We watch him struggle over the lock for a while.
I get the feeling that I don’t mind waiting here. I can still hear the laughter coming in from Julian’s balcony. It rings over the music. When I look over Ruan’s shoulder, I notice the ecologist and linguist walking back inside, hand in hand, both of them giggling and shaky on their feet. The ecologist moves in towards her and they kiss. The two of them stand like that for a while, wobbling, kissing and keeping each other in balance. Then Julian gets the door to unlock and holds it open for us.
We file out onto the walkway.
The other couple comes running up from the fire escape. The girl carries their placard like a crucifix. Dude, she laughs, you almost locked us out.
She pushes past Julian and the guy from the landing trails behind her.
I turn around and jog towards Cissie and Ruan. They’ve walked ahead to the lift, where they’re holding it open and waiting.
Inside, when the doors draw shut, the laughter from the flat fades again, and the three of us watch ourselves in the mirrors once more. Cissie inches towards me, and without speaking, she places her head flat against my shoulder. Then the lift grumbles, and a few floors down, she says, there’s nothing to envy about this place or the people inside it.
I nod. Then I look up at the silver ceiling and watch as the fluorescent light falls on her hair. Cissie’s hand clutches my shoulder as we reach the ground floor.
The three of us sit side by side inside a taxi headed out to Mowbray. Up front, behind a cracked windscreen and a GET RICH OR DIE TRYING sticker, our driver shifts his stick up another gear and we hurtle through Woodstock with rising speed, the Hi-Ace gliding past a U-Save store, a hair salon and an internet café that pawns second-hand jewelry.
I can’t control my thinking, again, Cissie says.
From our seats, Ruan and I watch her scratch the bridge of her nose. Then Cissie takes off her green hoodie and says, my head’s doing this thing where my aunt isn’t dead yet.
I don’t think I want it to be doing that, she says.
We drive past another U-Save store. Then Cissie tells us this is how her thinking turned when her mother died of stomach cancer when she was twelve.
This isn’t about either one of them, though, she adds.
I nod at her. Then I turn to look out at the road.
Through my window, the sky looks dull and impenetrable, like the screen of a malfunctioning cellphone. I imagine it made of plastic, each corner suppressing the passage of vital information. Perhaps we’ve all come to malfunction this way. Perhaps language, having once begun as a system of indistinct symbols, would never develop beyond what we knew, but instead, would continue to function as a barrier between ourselves and others.
I’m not sure what to tell her.
I circle my hand around the fingers she’s left on my thigh.
Then our driver stops just before we list into Obs, dropping off an elderly couple who only paid enough to get as far as Salt River. The door slides shut and we move down the main road again.
On my right, Cissie says, we need to make a plan. She widens her eyes and says we need a strategy on how we’re ending our lives, tonight.
Ruan and I laugh.
Or at least we try to.
I thought I could go in first, I say. You guys could wait for me outside the bar. I remind them that after all, I’m the one who’s halfway dead.
They nod, but neither one of them laughs.
I tell them I think we need a strategy for how we talk to him. We should give out as little information as we can, I say.
Ruan and Cissie nod.
Then our taxi pulls over at the McDonald’s in Obs. A few people get off, and the gaartjie leaps out and calls for more passengers. He shouts out Claremont, Wynberg, and then repeats it. I watch him cross over the main road, searching for passengers leaving St Peter’s Square. The sky seems to darken as the minutes pass, and, turning back, I tell my friends I can’t think of anything else.
Dude, I’m sold, Ruan says.
He seems nervous. This is how Ruan talks when he’s nervous. I watch him pound a fist into his palm.
Then Cissie nods. I mean, what else is there to do?
She’s right. There’s nothing else we can do, I say.
The worst thing that can happen in this story, Cissie says, is that someone dies, and that’s already kind of happened, hasn’t it?
From across the road, the gaartjie calls for Claremont.
He doesn’t look much older than us. He’s wearing blue overall pants and a black woolen beanie. I watch him skip between shoppers. He offers to help carry their packages.
On Station Road, we get off and walk past three lit-up hair salons on the main road. Most of the salons are still open in this area, even this late in the evening. Their windows throw yellow puddles of light onto the curb, drawing us a path to the four-way stop at Shoprite: a blurry line that changes this part of town into another suburb, before Rosebank becomes Rondebosch. We head east just before the police station, down St Peter’s Road. We find Champs on the right, close to the bend. It has wide window panes with white vinyl letters on the glass. There’s an eight-ball pattern on each side of the door.