Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [16]
This must be what Americans go through, the sour disappointment, expecting to encounter the exotic when it's all the same homogeneous crap the world over. Only it's Mugg & Bean rather than McDonald's. And this is what we are striving for? Give me Lagos any day, screw the crush and the dirt and the traffic. It's better than that blandly innocuous dust-pit.
Did I mention the dust? I arrived with a minor chest infection, but it's like breathing silt; the air is thick with it. And it's stinking, sticky humid. Two days in, negotiations are fraught, Mpho is on the verge of a breakdown from the tension, which makes me wonder why I even need a design architect along if he can't take the pace, and I'm getting uncontrollable coughing fits for ten minutes straight. I had to excuse myself from the Bula Metalo meeting. Khan-Ross sent his PA to come see if I was okay.
The whole thing was hideous. The city. The coughing. Mpho getting all clingy. The problem. It took us four working days to resolve it, and it all came down to the technicalities. My department. Pure fluke that the channel code our push ads were coming in on just happened to be identical to within a digit of the Botswana police authority's defuse signals. Sorting out the code was simple: it was the PR that was a total nightmare, not helped by the fact that Mpho has the EQ of a gecko. Sweet, but not exactly socially adept. He hasn't caught on, for example, that our little sexual sojourn was a one-time limited offer, valid for this particular business trip only – and only then because there's fuck-all else to do in Gaborone except fuck.
Mpho's about as good in bed as he is a systems designer. Same technique even – mechanical as a piston shaft and unwavering from whatever approach worked last time. And it'll work this time too, if only because he'll eventually wear you down.
It meant I had to do a shit load of managing in both scenarios, especially with Bula Metalo. Let's face it, I can get myself off, but soothing feathers that weren't so much ruffled as plucked (because Mercedes is a major Bula Metalo client, and they were not pleased that their customers were being electrocuted by their advertising) took a lot more time and effort.
So eventually, it was all sorted, and we're on our way home, flying deluxe economy, which is one more reason I have to get a new job, but I'm still coughing like I'm about to hack up a lung, and this fat chick across the aisle keeps giving me these dirty looks, and I know exactly what the paranoid wench is thinking. Don't think I didn't notice her call over the flight attendant, the fervent whispering.
It's no surprise then when Customs pulls me aside at OR Tambo International, ready to slam me into quarantine with the rest of the medical refugees in the camps converted from hangars. Which is not great, considering I have a sortof illegal (in the sense of sort-of dead or sort-of pregnant) cellphone nestled in the lining of my suitcase. A chipped one – defuser-free. Needless to say, Mpho is completely ignorant of this, and manages to make the situation worse by working himself into a state of outrage on my behalf.
I'm not concerned. A dry cough isn't exactly a typical symptom, but I am not in the mood to play coy with Customs, even if they should be commended for being so vigilant. I have my trump card. Why take the path of least resistance when you can simply eliminate it?
When the uniform at the counter asks me for my immune status, I snap, 'I think you'll find my company does regular, Health-Dept approved screenings,' and slap down my Communique exec ID, which has the intended effect. Which is that they back the fuck off and fast-track me into the priority queue, the Customs guy apologising all the way. 'We're so sorry, Ms. Mazwai, if we'd known, it's just the risk, and there's been an outbreak in Tanzania; they've closed down Dar es Saalam…' Like I care.
'It's so boring,' I tell Mpho, who agrees absolutely with