He sighs and lowers the camera to look at me. "I'm working on it. D'Nice says he knows some people."
"D'Nice would. How are you going to pay for it?"
"I'm working on that too."
"How?"
"Always with the questions, cherie. Can you stop being such a journalist for one minute?" He kisses me, as if that's an answer and, raising the camera again, teases. "Now hold still, will you?"
And I think: No, you.
The call comes later. At 2 am – that hour of sleepless brooding.
"She's dwying to sabodage him," the voice says urgently into the phone, without so much as a hola or unjani. The only reason I recognise it is because of the nasal honk.
"Arno?"
"She's going to fug evewyding up. Song and da boyfwienb. Dey're supposed to be in sdudio. And she's jusd gone. She's so selfidg. She jusd wants to ruin evewyding for him." He is choking back tears, and I realise I was wrong about his crush. It's not on Songweza. It's S'bu.
14.
I spend the morning making phone calls to a list of Songweza's friends culled from Mrs Luthuli and, more usefully, Des. Most of them are a bust, even though her friends open up to me like an oyster come shucking time at that magic introduction "I'm a journalist". Even vague proximity to celebrity turns people into attention whores, especially teenagers. They spill their guts on her first crush, how she cheated on a Maths paper in grade seven and got bust so the whole class had to write the test again, how much she loves music, how talented she is, how much she talks in class, and on her phone, on MXit, how much she loves to party. How sometimes she gets really down on the world, "like seriously dark, hey, but not, like suicidal" the girl called Priya tells me.
My notes give me an outline only. The details are lacking, like a Polaroid that is still developing. I get the idea that there are names missing on Mrs Luthuli's list, names she might not approve of, like this boyfriend she doesn't even know about.
I look up the people written up on Des's action whiteboard. The designer and the publicity chick are dead-ends, straight business, slightly perplexed as to why I'd be calling. The only person of interest is Heather Yalo, who just so happens to be the manager for mega names like Leah and Noluthando Meje. When I introduce myself, she says, "It wouldn't be appropriate to talk to the media yet," and hangs up on me. I wonder if Huron knows that Des is planning a coup.
I set something up for tonight, with help from Gio, who "knows people". I also put in a message to Vuyo.
››Kahlo999: I need a favour.
››Vuyo: I heard about ur mkwerekwere. I can help. U write the letter. Ill get an official letterhead.
I'm too busy wrestling the spiteful flip of hope in my chest to care about where Vuyo got his intel from. The Company has more eyes than the inner-city CCTV surveillance system when it comes to protecting its interests. And I have my suspicions about who has been informing on me. I wouldn't be at all surprised if his name is D'Nice Languza.
››Kahlo999: What are you talking about?
››Vuyo: "Tragically, the International Red Cross DRC were misinformed. Benoit Bocangas wife and children are dead."
››Kahlo999: You are a twisted SHIT of a human being.
››Vuyo: Could even provide photos of the bodies. U need to get me references for Photoshopping tho.
››Kahlo999: Shut the fuck up, Vuyo. It's not an option.
››Vuyo: Touchy.
››Kahlo999: You're not listening to me. I need three things: I need to find out if a cellphone number has been used in the last four days. I need to access a MXit account. And I need to find out if a life insurance policy has been registered on a particular party.
››Vuyo: Itll cost u.
››Kahlo999: R5000. Add it to my tab.
››Vuyo: 12. With interest. Send me details.
››Kahlo999: Out of curiosity. Does the Company do trafficking?
››Vuyo: Are u sure u don't have police sitting next to u?
››Kahlo999: Pretty sure.
››Vuyo: U havent installed the firewall.
››Kahlo999: I think you're up in my business enough already. C'mon, Vuyo. Trafficking? Sex slavery?
››Vuyo: Company has wide interests.
››Kahlo999: If I wanted to find out if someone had been kidnapped? By a dealer? Forced into prostitution?
››Vuyo: Not kidnapping if they come of own accord.
››Kahlo999: I think our definitions of "own accord" may differ. Can I give you a name?
››Vuyo: This is an expensive favour girl. There is a price for what happens next.
››Kahlo999: I think I know someone who can pay that price.
It turns out that slipping back into Former Life is as easy as pulling on a dress. Fashion is only different skins for different flavours of you. Tonight, I am peach schnapps. Nervous as a fourteen year-old trying to sneak into a club for the first time. Did I say "a" dress? I meant nine. Which is the total extent of what I own.
Sloth huffs grumpily, sprawled out on the floor with a bunch of cassava leaves I got at the market downstairs to placate him (along with a tub of wood lice for the Mongoose). If I could leave Sloth behind, I would. But the feedback loop of the separation anxiety is crippling. Crack cravings have nothing on being away from your animal.
After trying on all nine dresses, twice, with an intermission period spent trying to recapture the wood lice that escaped when Sloth grumpily up-ended the tub, I settle on skinny jeans and a surprisingly tasteful black strappy top I borrow from one of the prostitutes on the third floor, after giving up in disgust on my wardrobe. When I say borrow, I mean rent. She assures me it's clean. For thirty bucks, I'm dubious, but it passes the sniff test, so fuck it.
I catch a taxi into Auckland Park with the late-night cleaners, the nurses and the restaurant dish-washers: the invisible tribe of behind-the-scenes. I get off after Media Park and walk up to 7th Street with its scramble of restaurants, bars and Internet cafés. Outside the Mozambican deli-cum-Internet café, a hawker tries to sell me a star lantern made of wire and paper and, when I decline, offers me marijuana instead.
I used to stomp here. Got bust smoking dope in my readily identifiable school uniform on the koppie and was suspended for two weeks. Did my first line of coke in the bathrooms of Buzz 9. Had snatched sex in a driveway on 8th before the homeowner called armed response. This should not be so intimidating. But when I see Gio fiddling intently with his phone on the kerb outside the Biko Bar, it's a relief.
"Hey, you."
He looks up guiltily and stashes his phone in his jacket pocket. "Hey, baby, you made it! C'mon, the guys are already inside." He ushers me towards the velvet ropes that have seen better days, and a short, wiry bouncer who is wearing a t-shirt that reads TRY IT MOTHERFUCKER.
"She's with me," Gio says and, although the bouncer is not happy to see Sloth, he gives us the tiniest of head tilts to indicate, yeah, sure, whatever.
The Biko Bar is to Steve Biko as crappy t-shirt design is to Che Guevara. His portrait stares down from various cheeky interpretations. A hand-painted barber-shop sign with a line-up of Bikos in profile modelling different hairstyles and headgear; a chiskop, a mullet, a makarapa mining helmet. Steve stares out with that trademark mix of determination and wistful heroism from the centre of a PAC-style Africa made of bold rays of sunlight. Steve, with a lion's mane, is the focal point of a crest of struggle symbols, power fists, soccer balls and a cursive "The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed". My academic dad would have hated it. Reduced by irony and iconography to a brand.