Jay took me out for a coffee, apologised for not telling me about Kay – he’d been absorbed with his and Veron’s troubles – and said he was clean now.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m attending the AA.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Alcoholics Anonymous.”
That night, impressed with Jay, I had a double Grouse before calling Klara and ritually asked her whether I could come over.
“No.”
“Why not?” I said, flustered
“Because it’s over.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t live with myself.”
I wanted to say I needed her, but I knew what her response to that would be.
“Can I at least come and say goodbye to you?”
“No.”
“So that’s it? We’re just going to walk past each other on the street and in the park and make like nothing ever happened?”
“Yes.”
The end of another disaster and yet one less reason to stay. But my troubles were far from over; in fact, they were just beginning, for the telephone rang.
“How are you,” a female voice.
“Fine,” I said, instantly annoyed.
“It’s Kay.”
I modified my tone and asked her how she was, though I didn’t have the slightest interest in how – or where – she was. She responded equally civilly. She was coming to “town” on Wednesday and would like to end things face to face. This was not a good idea, but she said I owed it to her. I said I didn’t but was impressed when she quoted Wilde’s dictum that laughter is a good way to end things too. She’d probably picked up the quote of the day at the bottom of her executive diary, I thought after I’d rung off.
She had traded in her old BM for a veritable ship of the same brand, the better, no doubt, to serve the stinking poor with her pearls of radical amateurism. At least Butch was happy to see her again and she looked exceptionally elegant in her black pant suit, her skin clear and her cheeks glowing with good health. Also, she was wearing a matching necklace that a magazine hack might say combined traditional African elegance with twenty-first-century corporate realities, resting coolly above breasts that were either bigger or more propped up than usual.
“What’s happened to you?” I said.
“Nothing,” she smiled in a manner that was meant to be mysterious.
“You’re looking good.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m in love.”
“That’s nice. But there’s something else about you that’s changed.”
She loved the power she had and asked me what I thought it was.
“I don’t – wait a bit. You’re not wearing your specs. Have you got contact lenses?”
“Yes. Well spotted.”
“No pun intended, no doubt. So who’s the lucky guy – or gal?”
“You know who it is.”
“No, I don’t. I wouldn’t presume to know such things, though I’ve just realised something.”
“What?”
“That night I was in your flat, there was a necklace in your bathroom. It was an African woman’s necklace; more traditional than the one you’re wearing now, and I’ve just remembered where I’d seen it before – afterwards, actually.”
“Where?”
“At Jack Schwartz’s dinner party. Around Ezmerelda Davids’s imperious neck. Is she the new love in your life?”
She continued playing the mysterious femme fatale, sat down and took a small, folded piece of white paper from her jacket pocket, and proceeded with the noble art of preparing two lines of coke with her gold card on Shanti’s glass table.
“What is this all about,” I asked. “You call me about breaking off our relationship – such as it is, or was – you come here looking good and telling me you’re in love without telling me who it is?”
“I just thought we could break up on good terms.”
“Fair enough. But who is this lucky person?”
“First have a line,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, and duly snorted it.
“Why don’t you make us a drink and light us a smoke?”
“Sorry. I’m forgetting my manners here.”
“That’s the Len I liked.”
“Now it’s just ‘liked’,” I said jokily. “Past tense.”
“Hmm,” she said, also smiling contradictorily.
So I got up and went into the kitchen to prepare the drinks, looking at every object as if I were seeing it for the first time again. Everything was heightened, hyper-real, like when someone is born or dies. Details become irrelevant. I grabbed the bottle of Grouse and took a long, pleasantly burning slug before pouring us each a triple, vaguely aware of the fact that something was terribly wrong here.
Kay had prepared another fat line for us, so I gave her her drink and walked over to my sound system.
“Can you play us something African?” she said.
“I’ll play you some Moses Molelekwa.”
“Who is he?”
“A muzo from Tembisa.”
“Cool,” she said.
“Pity he strangled the mother of his child and then hanged himself.”
“Eish.”
We snorted our two lines.
“So who is this lucky person?” I asked.
“‘Lucky’?”
“Ja. You’re a beautiful woman.”
“Then why did you break up with me? Is there someone else?”
“No. I’m a divorcee trying to get his life back. That’s all. So are you going to tell me who it is or not?”
“Were you just on the rebound?”
“Kay, who is it?”
“You were right about Ezmerelda. I mean, that it was her necklace. She had been in my flat almost every Saturday night. I was letting it out to Ed, who was doing her there, every Saturday night.”
“So you’d come and pass the time with an old fart who made you feel ‘safe’?”
Kay nodded.
“But why couldn’t he just do it at his own place?”
“He’s married.”
“Wonderful. So you weren’t trying to make Shunt jealous at the dinner party. You were trying to make ‘Ez’ jealous?”
Kay tried her enigmatic smile and I was so bored with this little game that I asked her how her father’s cancer was doing.
“It’s Ed,” she said.
“Ed?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I hope you’ll be very happy.”
“Now you’re being sarcastic.”
“No, I’m – well, personally I think he’s a prick, as you well know. So, honestly, I don’t think it’ll last.”
“And that’s because he’s black.”
“Not really. But if it makes you feel better, fine. But why are you telling me this? Have you come here to gloat?”
“No. I thought you might find it ironic that he’s resigned and is now moving to the Department of Labour.”
“As what?”
“Speech writer for the minister. Spokesman. It’s a logical step, he says.”
“And the money no doubt is much better, not to mention the power. But why are you really here?”
“I’ve come here to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” I said. “And well done, by the way, for conducting a conversation without having to like everything.”
At which point she stood up, but it wasn’t to leave, it was to turn her back on me – literally.
“What are you doing,” I wondered.
“I thought I’d give you a farewell gift,” she said, starting to take off her clothes, showing me her perfect young legs, buttocks and back, made all the more sexy because she’d put on a little weight, a bit of grip, as they say in certain circles. “Show you what you’ll be missing.”
“Okay,” I said, as high as a thunder cloud and suddenly thinking about that woman I’d met in the bush, sensing her body through her mild green eyes, the way she’d smiled at me.
“You’re not a bad lover,” Kay said. “But Ed is so much better. So much bigger. And stronger.”
“Well, I’m very glad for you. And I’m very impressed at your ingenuity.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean suddenly wanting me to come over to your place when he was away in Queenstown, as if to show that you were being equitable. Giving me a blowjob just to get me to the dinner party in order to get him jealous. Where do you get so much energy for so much deception? Doesn’t it get tiring, if not boring?”
She shrugged.
“And that’s why you thought it was so funny that I said ‘fuck him’ that night after the dinner party, because that’s exactly what you were doing, or wanted him to do.”
“We never used a condom, you know.”
“That would have been during the week, but what is your point?”
“I suppose now you want to go for an AIDS test.”
“Kay, what are you trying to tell me?”
“That you’re nothing but an ageing, racist, white male. Look what you’re going to miss,” she said, and bent over forwards, away from me, stark naked, apart from her pornographically clichéd high heels.
“I think you’re quite right,” I said, beyond the point of ideology or morality, “and therefore I’d better start licking management’s arse.”