'No, Dad, Rohan picked up a Ford Bantam for thirty-two. A guy doesn't need a grand car to start with.'
'Where did he get the thirty-two?'
'From his father.'
'And where are you going to get thirty-two from?'
'I... er ...'
'Well, let's say you save two thousand a month for a car, then that's only fifteen months, a year and a half, then you'll have your Bantam, but we are already at expenses of four thousand, and you haven't bought any clothes, or airtime for your phone, strings for your guitar, razor blades, aftershave, deodorant, or taken a chick out for dinner ...'
'We don't call them "chicks" any more, Dad.' But the first signs of understanding crept into his son's voice and the enthusiasm had begun to wane.
'What do you call them?'
'Girls, Dad.'
'When the tour is over, Fritz, where will the next six thousand a month come from?'
'Something will come up.'
'And if it doesn't?'
'Why do you always have to be so negative, Dad? You don't want me to be happy.'
'How can you be happy if you don't have an income?'
'We're going to make a CD. We're going to take the money from the tour and make a CD and then ...'
'But if you use the money from the tour for a CD, what are you going to live on?'
Silence. 'You never let me do anything. A dude can't even dream.'
'I want you to have everything, my son. That's why I am asking these questions.'
No reaction.
'Will you think it over a little, Fritz?'
'Why do I have to know about the sex life of the snail, Dad?'
'That's a whole other argument. Will you think about it?'
A slow and reluctant 'Yeeeaah, sure.'
'OK, we'll talk again.'
'OK, Dad.'
He smiled to himself in the car on the N1. His boy. Just like he was. Lots of plans.
Then he thought ahead. To Anna. His smile faded. A feeling of anxiety descended on him.
She was sitting outside where she could see the water. A good sign, he thought. He paused a moment in the door of Primi and looked at her. His Anna. Forty-two, but looking good. In the past months she seemed to have thrown off the yoke of her husband's alcoholism, and there was a youthfulness about her again. The white blouse, blue jeans, the little cardigan thrown over her shoulders.
Then she spotted him. He watched her face carefully as he approached her. She smiled but not broadly.
'Hello, Anna.'
'Hello, Benny.'
He kissed her on the cheek. She didn't turn her head away. Good sign.
He pulled out a chair. 'You must excuse the way I look, it's been a crazy day.'
Her eyes went to the hole in his breast pocket. 'What happened?'
'They shot me.' He sat down.
'Lord, Benny.'
Good sign.
'Luckiest break of my life. Only an hour before, I put a Leatherman in my pocket, you know, one of those plier thingies.'
'You could have been killed.'
He shrugged. 'If it's your time, it's your time.' She looked at him, running her gaze over his face. He ached for that moment when she would put out her hand, like in the old days, smooth his ruffled hair, say, 'Benny, this bush ...'
He saw her hand move. She put it down again. 'Benny ...' she said.
'I'm sober,' he said. 'It's been nearly six months.'
'I know. I am very proud of you.'
Good sign. He grinned at her in expectation.
She took a deep breath. 'Benny ... there's only one way to say this. There's someone else, Benny.'
Chapter 50
In his car, Fransman Dekker took out the list of names and telephone numbers. Natasha Abader's was first on the list.
What woman can look at you and not think of sex?
Time to see if she was a bullshitter.
He entered the number in his cell phone.
It's a drug for the soul. I think they have an emptiness inside here, a hole that is never filled, it might help for a little while, then in a day or two it starts all over again. I think there's a reason, I think they don't like themselves.
His own words, to Alexa Barnard.
He had a wife at home. A good, beautiful, sexy, smart woman. Crystal. Waiting for him.
He looked at the small green button on his phone.
He thought about Natasha Abader's legs. That bottom. Her breasts. Small and pert, he knew what they would look like, he could picture the nipples, particularly. She would be a handful. In every meaning of the word.
There was something broken inside him. A hurt that had come a long way with him, that never went away completely; every time it came back, worse, but the medicine helped less and less.
Some time or other he would have to stop this nonsense. He loved his wife, for fuck's sake, he couldn't live without Crystal, she was everything to him. And if she found out...
How would she find out?
The fever was in him. He pressed the button.
'Hello, Natasha.'
'This is Vusi Ndabeni. The detective from this morning, at the church.'
'Oh, hi,' said Tiffany October, the pathologist. She sounded tired.
'You must have had a busy day.'
'They're all busy,' she said.
'I was wondering,' Vusi said, feeling his heart thump in his chest. 'If you would like ...'
The silence on the line was deafening.
'If you would like to go and have something to eat. Or drink ...'
'Now?'
'No, I mean, any time, maybe another day ...'
'No,' she said and Vusi's heart plummeted. 'No, now,' she said. 'Please. A beer. A Windhoek Light and a plate of slap chips, that would be wonderful. After a day like today ...'
He drove down the Nl, thinking ahead. He would draw money at the ABSA autobank at the bottom of Long Street near the offices of the Receiver. He had given the last of his cash to Mat Joubert for the Steers burgers he had brought. Then to the bottle store up in Buitengracht, it was open till eight. He would buy a bottle of Jack and a two-litre Coke and then he was going to drink himself into a coma.
There's someone else, Benny.
He had asked 'Who?'
And she said: 'It doesn't matter. Benny, I'm so sorry, it just happened.'
Fuck that. Things don't just happen. You look for them. She demands that he give up the booze for six months, and then off she goes looking for a man. He would blow the fucker moer toe. He would find out who it was, he would fucking follow her and shoot the bastard between the eyes. Probably some or other boy lawyer where she worked, too shit useless to get a girl of his own, showing off with his BMW and his suits to a policeman's wife. He would kill the bastard, then we'll see.
He had stood up. 'I'm so sorry, Benny, it just happened.' He sat down again and just stared at her, waiting for her to say she wasn't serious. He refused to accept the full impact. They were here so she could say that, because he had quit drinking, he could come home. But she just sat there with tears in her fucking eyes, so terribly sorry for herself. There were a thousand things in his head. He'd nearly died today. He'd fought the craving to drink for one hundred and fifty-six days, he'd paid maintenance, he'd looked after them; he'd done everything right. She couldn't do this, she didn't have the right, Jesus, but her teary eyes had looked back at him with bewildering finality, until the full weight of all the implications crashed down on him like a badly built house. He got up and left.
'Benny!' she called after him.
Benny was going to get drunk, that was what he should have told her, but he just kept walking, out of the fucking restaurant, to his car, with his torn shirt and unkempt hair, he saw nothing, heard nothing, just felt this, thing, this anger, it was all for nothing, all for fucking nothing.