Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [86]
'This isn't a pawn shop, china. And even if it was,' he rubs a pinch of the BabyStrange between his fingers, the picture distorting, 'this thing is not well.'
'Yeah, well, neither am I.' And I know I check it too. I've got the shivers and the damp sweats and I can't stop scratching, like a junkie with no fix in sight.
'Man,' he sighs, with resignation, 'don't make me call in a defuse at this time of the morning.'
'Go right ahead. I don't have a fucking phone, my friend.'
He looks sceptical. 'Well, that's even more reassuring. Do you know what kind of shitsville liability you are to me in here?'
'Come on. Give me a break. The quicker you let me use a machine, the quicker I'm gone. As opposed to standing in here, breathing my disease all over your establishment.'
He is unmoved, starts reaching for the phone.
'It's designer. It's worth thirty-k at least new, fifteen secondhand. Cost you maybe two to get it rewired. Five minutes, man. Doesn't sound like a raw deal to me.'
'How do I know it's not stolen?' He shakes it out, cursory, looking for bloodstains.
'Aw c'mon, like you care? And besides, I got the sneaks to match. You get a lot of colour coordinated scumbags in here hawking previously owned?'
'Okay, okay. Five minutes.'
'Thirty.'
'You just said–'
'Yeah, but I got stuff to do. Takes longer than five. And you only get the coat after.' Send Lerato a chirpy, check the newscasts to see what's already out there, upload my own footage off the BabyStrange while I've still got it.
'Whatever. Just do me a favour and take one of the consoles at the back.'
'So I don't freak out the paying customers?'
'Sharp as your sense of style,' he quips, pinching the sleeve of my coat with a proprietary gesture. I feel a twinge of loss. Or another coughing fit about to hit.
Kendra
Is it perverse to feel liberated? Not just ditching that asshole, just another Jonathan, but the grounding of being disconnect that separates me from the swirl of the city around me. The dissociation is real for once, not artificially imposed and filtered through my camera. I'm a stranger among the commuters and people opening up the storefronts. It's beautiful. And totally impractical, the squeeze in my stomach reminds me.
I realise I'm not so far from District Six, but without my SIM ID, the front door to Mr. Muller's subterr doesn't recognise me. It takes a long time for him to answer the intercom.
'Who's that?'
'It's me, Mr. Muller. Kendra.'
'Kendra! Why don't you just come down, my girl?'
'It's my phone, Mr. Muller. It's…' My voice cracks. There is a brittle pause. I haven't seen him since the exhibition. I should have called, just to see if he was okay, but I've been preoccupied.
'Come down. I'll put on the ultra.'
By the time I get down, it's just starting to infuse. And he has food. A slightly stale bagel with peanut butter. But no Ghost. I wonder if I can convince him to get me one from the building's café, when he points to the news footage, which he has maximised so that it's playing all over the walls, tuned to different channels.
'Did you see this? The bombing?'
I haven't.
The footage focuses on the wall of the old city library, where a mural of a soccer ball and two hands forming a heart shape with the fingers has been painted. The words UBUNTU appear above it, spangled with glitter – no, lightbulbs, LEDs forming lightshow patterns. The soccer ball becomes a globe, a skull, a heart. And then the bulbs suddenly all pop, not exactly co-ordinated, with a noise like firecrackers, spraying twinkles of glass, so that people below cringe and duck.
A few of them sort of run away, hands up above their heads before they catch themselves and look back. The bulbs crackle and snap for another few seconds and then a thin drift of chemical-coloured smoke peels off, leaving the wall cratered and pitted.