‘Then who is all this healthy food for?’ she asks, motioning at the toppling fruit bowl and vegetable stand.
For thirteen years James has tried to stud Kirsten’s junk food diet with healthy alternatives. If she was going to eat that CaraCrunch, then she should have a low-fruc Minneola, too. Slap chips? The mitigating snack was a handful of edamame. He would tempt her with fresh chilli gazpachos, honeyed veg-juices spiked with galangal, wild salmon salami. He ate as if he could reverse the diseases he saw in the world.
‘He always stocks up the house before he goes, hoping I’ll run out of junk and resort to eating some kind of plant matter. He says we should buy shares in Bilchen and then at least we’ll have money for the double bypass surgery I’ll need one day.’
Bilchen is the Swiss-owned megacorp that produces the majority of processed food in the world: cheap, tasty, and full of unpronounceable ingredients. In addition to their plants in China and Indonesia they own hundreds of factories in SA, producing mountains of consumables, from food to hygiene products to pet snacks.
When James sees her eating something like her staple Tato-Mato crispheres he would say to her: ‘You know that there is no actual food in there, right?’ and she would laugh her fake laugh to annoy him, and lick her fingers. Point at the pictures on the foil packet and say: ‘Tato-Mato, Doctor Killjoy. It’s made out of potatoes and tomatoes. A vegetable and a fruit. You heard it here first,’ and he would shake his head as if Kirsten was beyond help.
Bilchen was perennially in the news for one scandal or another. Anti-freeze contamination in their iguana food, horse-DNA in their schmeat rolls, sweat-shopping kids in Sri Lanka, big bad GMO. They owned so many brands that they could just kill whichever had caused the controversy and re-label their product, market it as ‘new’ to hook the early adopters, and deep-discount it to the couponers. The leftovers would feed the freegans. Et Voila, a new brand is born. P-banners and virtual stickers plead with you to ‘vote with your feet’ and ‘consume consciously’: ‘Boycott Bilchen’ is the new ‘Save the Rhino.’
Keke sighs theatrically. ‘How lucky does a girl get?’
‘Ja, yum, look at all those… shiny green apples.’
‘No, I meant Marmalade. Kind, generous, god-like in appearance, saves little children, AND does the grocery shopping!’
‘Well, he gets cars loaned to him all the time, for his job, so it’s easier for him.’
‘Pssh. There is a Man-Lotto and you won. uLula.’
‘He also has his faults, you know.’
‘Ha! Not likely.’
Kirsten hides her smile.
‘Seriously though,’ says Keke, ‘his parental units did an amazing job.’
‘They didn’t, actually,’ says Kirsten.
‘Hai, stoppit.’
‘I’m not kidding. His mother was never around and his father is a real nutcase. Horrible guy.’
‘I can’t imagine that.’
‘He left home at fifteen. He just couldn’t live with his dad any more. He won’t even talk about him. Cut all ties.’
‘An evil father… so is that why he keeps trying to save the world?’
‘Probably. Good premise for a superhero story, anyway,’ says Kirsten.
‘It’s been done before.’
‘What hasn’t?’
‘Funny you should say that,’ says Keke.
‘Huh?’
‘I have a… story for you.’
‘You found something? About my parents?’ Kirsten turns the ring on her finger.
‘I tried to get something out of the cops, anything, but they completely closed ranks. Even my contact there, in profiling, said only certain creeps are allowed access to the case. Who’s that inspector?’
‘The thug? Mouton. Marius Mouton.’
‘Yes, Mouton is handling the thing, doesn’t want too many other creeps involved. Can’t have any leaks jeopardising the investigation. Apparently this happens sometimes on high profile cases, according to my guy, but it’s not like your parents were, like, diplomats or anything? But then he said it could be that the criminal is high profile, you know, like a serial killer, or in this case, maybe a terror gang. So maybe they’re close to getting someone, and they want the case to be really tight.’
‘Ack. We’ll never get anything out of Mouton.’
‘Ja, we’d have better luck asking a gorilla.’
‘The gorilla would have more manners.’
‘A better vocabulary.’
‘Better teeth. And smell better. A gorilla would smell better.’
‘More sex appeal?’
‘Okay, I think you just crossed a line there,’ laughs Kirsten, ‘as in, a legal one.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway, I don’t see us getting much out of them, so I asked my FWB, Hackerboy Genius, to see what he could find, under the radar.’
‘Remind me?’
‘Friend With Benefits. Marko. The hacktivist.’
Keke was the only person Kirsten knew who went bi-curious speed-dating to gather work contacts. The fact that they came in useful for her journalistic grind didn’t mean that there was no sex on the table. From Keke’s cryptic hints Kirsten gathered that there was, indeed, a great deal – and variety – of sex on the table. As well as being ‘a raging bisexual,’ (‘Isn’t everyone bi these days?’) she was what she liked to call ‘ambisextrous.’
‘Marko is a very – talented – individual,’ she sparkles, sitting up a little straighter.
Uh-huh, Kirsten thinks.
‘Speed dating?’
‘Yawn! Speed dating is so last season, old lady. How ancient are you? Now it’s DNA dating. Very New York.’
Kirsten was glad she didn’t have to date anymore. The dating pool in Jo’burg made her think of a tank of Piranhas; Keke loved it.
‘Chemically compatible couples, what’s not to love? And boy, are we… compatible. You’d never believe it if you met him. Anyway, so he’s actually the one who found this for me,’ she says, putting her hand on the folder.
‘It’s big. Really big. Cosmic. You ready for a mind-fuck?’
Kirsten’s fingers tingle. Keke slides it over to her, and she opens it.
TOMMYKNOCKERS
5
Johannesburg, 2021
The TommyKnockers club is underground. You have to know a person who knows a person to get in. There isn’t any secret code-word to gain access; the club is so difficult to find, you either know where it is or you don’t. That, and a giant Yoruba bouncer called Rolo, ensured that only the right kind of people got in. As he approaches the nondescript front door Rolo steps into the grey frame and tips his invisible hat to him. Diamond fingers catch the light.
‘Mister Denicker,’ he says in a voice as deep as a platinum mineshaft.
‘Rolo,’ Seth nods back.
On the other side of the door is another world. You step from the bleak and broken inner city street into a gaudy 40s Parisian-style steampunk bordello, replete with scarlet velvet bolted in gold, chain tassels, and oiled men and women wearing very few clothes and too much eye make-up. The twist comes later: as you move from room to room, and deeper underground, the imagery becomes more exaggerated, bizarre, sinister, as if someone had decided to cross a brothel with a spooky amusement ride. As if TommyKnockers was the representation of someone’s erotic dream turning into a nightmare.
The deeper you go, the less mainstream the dancers become, catering to more exotic tastes: a voluptuous woman with three breasts, a freakishly well-endowed man, a heavily-inked hermaphrodite with a clock etched into her back. The art on the walls changes from chat noir and Marmorhaus prints to surreal landscapes, obscured faces, bizarre vintage pornography, disturbing portraits hung at strange angles. Luminous sex toys alongside hallucinogenic shooters at the spinning bars, lit by deranged copper pipe chandeliers. Sex shows featuring Dali-esque hardcore fuckbots.