That’s if we survive today, thinks Kirsten, which is looking increasingly unlikely.
They stop at a red light in the middle of the CBD. A man dressed in filth appears out of nowhere and peers into the passenger side, giving Kirsten a shock.
‘Jesus,’ she says, in fright, ‘I’m not used to seeing beggars anymore.’ A gun appears in the ragman’s hand.
Oh, she thinks.
His wrist is inked with prison scrawls. A Crim Colony graduate. In other words: an ex-con, or in this case: a con.
‘Out,’ he barks, shaking the weapon at her. She tries to go for her handbag, reach for her own gun, but the man loads the mechanism and something tells her that he won’t hesitate to put a bullet in her brain. She puts her hands up.
‘You have got to be kidding me!’ shouts Seth, flames in his cheeks. ‘Not today!’ he shouts at the hijacker, ‘not today! You can fucking HAVE the car tomorrow, but not today!’
‘Out,’ says the man, his voice iced with violence.
‘Fuck!’ shouts Seth, hitting the steering wheel, ‘Fuck you!’ he gets out, slams the door, sending a lightning bolt of silver through Kirsten. Kicks the car door, kicks the tyre.
‘I need my handbag,’ says Kirsten to the hijacker, ‘and that other bag. It’s medicine. I’m keeping both bags, you take the car.’
The man is annoyed, looks around: This is taking too much time. Kirsten unzips the insulin, shows him, but he searches her handbag himself, takes her Ruger with a loud whistle, and her empty slimpurse. He throws both bags onto the road and Kirsten scoops them up off the tar, picking up the lipstick taser and keeping it hidden in her palm. The hijacker loses focus for a moment as he tries to start the car; lowers his gun-hand. Kirsten tasers him; is surprised by the force of the current. A thin blue line connects them for a second (Electric Sapphire), and then he slumps back.
‘Holy fuck!’ she says.
His gun clatters onto the road, his eyes roll back.
‘Is he dead?’ she asks. Seth opens the car door, pulls the slack body out, leaves him on the shoulder of the road. It doesn’t escape his attention that this is the second time he has pulled a limp body out of a car in the last 6 hours. He inspects the man’s gun, a semi-automatic, and finds it empty. Throws it into the car. Passes Kirsten her Ruger.
‘I don’t know, don’t care,’ he says. ‘Let’s go find Ed Miller.’
CHEERIOS
33
Johannesburg, 2021
Kirsten presses the red button (Faded Flag) and a doorbell rings out, jarring in its cheer. Static. It’s an old Melville house, with chunky whitewashed walls and a green tin roof. It has the look of an artist’s residence: slightly run down, a little messy, decorated in a quirky way. The house number is a mosaic. If you look through the pedestrian gate you see a goat, made out of wire and beads, grazing in the garden. The rusted arms of an Adventure Golf windmill inch around. The black-spotted roses need pruning.
She presses the doorbell again, holds it down for longer. More static, and then they hear the phone being picked up. Crackling on the other end.
‘Hello?’ says Kirsten. ‘Ed Miller? I’m Kirsten Lovell. You knew my mother?’
There is a pause, then the gate buzzes. He opens the front door, cautious, sees her, and relaxes. When he sees Seth he looks nervous again.
‘You can trust him,’ she says.
‘How do you know?’ says the man she assumes is Ed Miller.
‘He’s blood of my blood.’
Miller stares at them for a while. He is wearing a creased Hawaiian shirt and ill-fitting chinos. Horrendous tan pleather sandals. He has a full head of snow-white hair that moves when he nods. He comes out to make sure the security gate is closed behind them, sweeps his gaze left and right on the street before he clangs it shut. Kirsten studies him. Can’t imagine her mother dating a hippie.
‘You have something for us?’ she asks.
‘It’s not here,’ he says. ‘Too risky. They’re everywhere. I put it somewhere safe.’
Kirsten closes her eyes, hears the ticking of time she doesn’t have.
‘It’s close,’ he says, ‘I’ll take you.’
His aftershave smells like something with a ship on the label. Small crunchy loops the shape of Cheerios float around him. He shrugs on a light jacket and takes a set of keys off the hook by the door. Seth grabs them out of his hand, startling him.
‘I’ll drive,’ he says.
They climb into the beetle of a car. Miller seems too tall for it and hunches over in the front. Kirsten wonders what kind of person buys a car that is so obviously too small for them.
‘Oh, wait,’ he says, tapping his temple with the side of his index finger. He gets out of the car, walks to the garden shed. Ducks under the door and disappears into darkness. Kirsten and Seth look at each other. They don’t have to say it out loud. They are both thinking: Fuck.
Miller steps out of the shed, back into the sunlight. He is holding a couple of shovels. He holds them above his head and shakes them, as if he has won a race.
‘My mother said we could trust him,’ Kirsten says.
‘By ‘mother’, you mean, ‘kidnapper’?’
She pulls a face at him. What choice did they have?
The walks back to the car, folds the passenger seat forward, takes in Kirsten’s long legs.
‘Move up, honey,’ he says, dumping the shovels next to her. He winks at her before he slams the chair back in place and climbs in. She kicks the back of his seat.
Seth starts the car. It’s a prehistoric thing, and chokes twice before it comes to life. Miller smacks the dashboard twice.
‘Good girl!’ he shouts, making them both jump.
Kirsten is still staring at him, trying to imagine what on earth they had to talk about. She had thought of her ‘mother’ as a dry, sexless, beige, irritated woman. She can’t imagine the two of them having a conversation, never mind a twenty-six-year-long affair.
‘Which one to open the garage door?’ asks Seth, looking at the rubber buttons on the ancient remote.
‘Uh, the blue one,’ he says, but nothing happens. Pins of dread on Kirsten’s skin. Seth is slowly reaching for his gun.
‘I mean, the orange one. Sorry,’ he laughs, ‘nervous.’
Seth clicks the orange button and the garage motor heaves the door up. They all exhale. 4 and 5, thinks Kirsten, easy enough to mix up.
The man beats a melody on his khaki-clad thigh.
‘Left,’ he says.
‘Where are we going?’ asks Seth.
‘To the hidey-hole I came up with. Genius, if I don’t say so myself.’
‘Where?’ asks Kirsten. ‘We don’t have much time.’
‘We’ll be there in twenty minutes,’ he says. Kirsten looks at her watch, feels the adrenaline pulling at her stomach. This better pay off, she thinks, or Keke is dead. Seth puts his foot down.
They pull up at a small flower farm on the outskirts of the city. The guard seems to recognise Ed and drags the gate open for them. The metal catches on the hard sand. Miller directs them along the powder dirt road, and they drive along until it comes to an abrupt end. Seth, driving too fast, slams on the brakes and they skid a little, landing in some wild grass. They look around, as if wondering how they got there – sitting in a vast field of flowers.
Kirsten is exhausted, nervous, dirty, and hurt, surrounded by blue skies and blooms. The prettiness around her is not making sense.