Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [77]
'Got any Ghost?'
'You really don't let up on that shit. Have some sugar, it'll chill you out.'
'No, I really don't–'
'Whatever you want to do, sweetness. Doesn't affect me in the slightest.'
He stands up and disappears barefoot into the kitchen. A cupboard door bangs harder than necessary. I sit down on a folder chair at the dining-desk, so that he can't sit next to me.
'Maybe it's not a good idea to take drugs on top of whatever we've been infected with.' The desk is stacked with neat piles of epaper, the edges perfectly aligned.
'Best time,' he shouts back. Another bang disproportionate to whatever the hell he's doing.
I start flipping through the pages, careful not to mar that perfectly aligned edge, even though I know he's not the one who stacked it so anally in the first place. It looks like legal documents, contracts. A broadcast agreement. When I see my name near the head of a page, I drop it, burnt.
He stalks back in, carrying a silver cocktail shaker.
'Hey, cut it out. Do I come to your domestic and go through your shit?' He sits down in another folder chair, pulling it up so he's right next to me, and unscrews the shaker, knocking a fair quantity of sticky white powder onto the surface of the desk.
'You didn't have to be so mean.'
'In the streamcast? I wasn't mean. To Khanyi, maybe, not you.'
I shove the chair back, stand up, and prowl to the other side of the room, checking his book
shelf while he sifts the powder for clumps.
'Shouldn't we contact your friend?'
'When I've had a joint, okay? Besides. You may not have noticed, with all that beauty sleep you got in, but it's really late.'
'I said thanks.'
'Don't need your appreciation, baby girl.' He sweeps the powder into a tidy line with a pencil and wraps it up with two short twists of Rizla.
'Well, I appreciate it anyway.'
'Noted duly.' He seals the joint with the edge of his thumb.
'Look, should I just go? If I'm an inconvenience to you? I was so stupid to come here. Shit.' I'm ready to leave, walk another eight kays across town in this oversize shirt and my ruined dress and my broken heel, but I can't find my damn bag.
'Would you just sit down?'
And then I remember that it's still at the station. With my camera. Jesus. I wonder if it's still there, if anyone's taken it, if the pumped-up defuser has fritzed the Zion. But then I start thinking about what's on the memchip, what I've lost, what I can try and duplicate.
'Hey.' Toby takes my shoulders and presses me down into the couch. 'Sit down and have some sugar with me. All right? And then we can do whatever the fuck you want. Get hold of Lerato or your dad or the cops or your boyfriend or whoever. Okay?'
'I've left my camera behind.'
'Least of our worries, sweet K. We could be dead in forty-eight.'
'And he's not my boyfriend. We broke up. Although it's not like we were really together before, I mean–' I'm rambling. 'He was a prick.'
'How are you feeling?'
'Not thinking about it.'
'I have a headache.'
'Me too. Sugar will chase it. Here.'
He hands me the joint and squeezes in next to me.
'I'm not supposed to. The nano. It was in the contract.' On page sixteen, a list of non-standard chems and supplements that are absolutely prohibited, accompanied by dire warnings, long-term damage potential, unpredictable results, permanent health risk, possible heart failure.
'Don't fret it. They're just covering their asses. They know all about you creative types. They would have tested it. They just don't want some supersmack freak ODing and making bad publicity noises. What did you think they were going to say, "mix it up"?'
'I haven't done–'
'I know. It's cool. Hold it like this.'
He lights it for me, putting his arm around me to cup the flame. I take a deep breath, and instantly the room spins and the air takes on a puffy consistency, like we're the centre of a candyfloss