THE NEXT MORNING KATE SLEPT IN and woke to find that the others had as well. She rolled over and squinted at her watch. It was nearly 9:00 a.m., but the bed felt wonderful and she snuggled back down. After her fright with Dumi the previous night, she was glad to be safely surrounded by the familiar gang. She decided once again that she needed to arm herself with some kind of protection. She dozed for a while but the sunshine outside was too tempting and she slid down off her bed.
Marika sat up slowly, looking like a startled sparrow, her hair sticking up in all directions. “I should get up too,” she said, lying back down, “but my bed feels too good.”
Kate grinned at her. “Then you should enjoy it,” she whispered. She dressed quickly, grabbed her camera bag and left, closing the door quietly behind her. She contemplated grabbing breakfast on her way out but could not be bothered. She made for the beach and enjoyed a long walk, with the blue-green waves curving high and crashing down hard beside her. The sea seemed so energized and powerful compared to the deep still lakes of Ontario. Kate studied the strength of the frenzied water and tested the frothy white foam of the Atlantic Ocean with her fingertips, but Jono was right, the water was freezing.
And while she was happy to be by herself, with only the swooping seagulls for company and a tiny crab scuttling across the sand, she nervously kept one eye over her shoulder and was careful not to walk too far from the main street. She was more shaken from her encounter with Dumi than she liked to admit. She sat down for a while in the soft white sand, enjoying the hiss and pull of the water as it reached for the shore and then sank back into the sea. She dug in her camera bag for an energy bar but came up empty and decided it was time to head back into town.
Kate scoured the stores and found what she wanted: André’s Guns and Ammo. The sign hung above a bright yellow door; the store front was sandblasted red brick and barred windows were set high up near the roof. Kate looked up and noticed a security camera. She pressed the small white buzzer.
“Yes?” the voice did not sound particularly welcoming.
“I … uh,” Kate cleared her throat and spoke into the intercom. “I’d like to come in” A buzzing noise sounded and Kate pushed at the heavy reinforced steel door. She walked up to a glass counter filled with knives and gun accessories. The walls displayed all kinds of weaponry; antique rifles and spears, and ornamental antique jerry cans were stashed neatly in the corner.
A large muscular man was leaning on the counter filling in a crossword puzzle. His shaggy dark blonde hair was in need of a comb and his yellow Che Guevara T-shirt was wrinkled. He glanced up briefly and did a double-take. Kate assumed she was not his usual clientele.
She cleared her throat. “Um, hello. I’m traveling through Africa by myself and I need something to protect me, can you help me?”
“I’m sure I can be of assistance.” The man stood up and groaned as his back made a cracking noise. “What did you have in mind?”
He leaned forward, so close to her that she could see the blonde, brown and gray of his facial stubble. She looked into his deep-set blue eyes and thought that he smelled good, a combination of aftershave and gun oil.
“I’m not sure really,” she said, “having never been in this situation before.”
“And what situation would that be? I’m André by the way, owner of this fine establishment and purveyor of all manner of protective devices.”
“I’m Kate. I’m with a tour group and it’s just that there’s been some weird stuff going on and last night I walked home from the restaurant by myself…”
André scowled at her. “You walked home by yourself at night? I’m sorry but are you looking for trouble or what? I don’t get you tourists, always going on about the crime and then you do a stupid thing like that.”
Kate was defensive. “I wasn’t thinking. I was exhausted and I just wanted to be by myself. And then this young guy from the market suddenly appeared, Dumi, and he seemed to be friendly but I’ve got to admit I got a fright and it just made me think.”
“Ja, well jong, best you don’t do stupid things like that again, hey? Dumi? I’ll keep an eye out for him. Odds are, I hate to tell you, that he would have hurt you if he could have. How did you get away from him?”
“I talked like crazy until we got to the lodge which wasn’t too far, thank heavens. Then I ran into the pub. But now I really want something to help me feel safer, and I won’t ever go strolling around at night by myself.”
She sat down on a tall stool next to the counter. “I don’t know what I want,” she said. “What about a switchblade?”
André laughed, deep from his belly. “What do you think this is, the Gangs of New York? But, as a matter of fact, I do have one.” He ducked down and pulled open a drawer, brandishing a traditional switchblade, leaning towards her and pressing the switch. Kate shot backwards off her chair, her heart pounding in fright and her face turned bright red when she saw that all it released was a man’s hair comb.
“Very funny,” she said, feeling stung.
“Caught a skrik did you?” André replied, laughing. “It’s a 1980 classic I got off ebay. But in all seriousness bokkie, I don’t have any switchblades. What’s next on your shopping list? A gun? I can’t sell you that either because you need a license that you register with the police — it’s a whole song and dance, believe me.”
“I don’t want a gun,” Kate was horrified. “What about pepper spray?”
“Now you’re talking. I’ve got the perfect thing. It’s a very dynamic combo of pepper spray, tear gas and UV dye. Plus it comes in a nice little pouch so that you can keep it with you all the time. Here, I’ll show you.”
Kate examined it. “Yes,” she said, “this is more me.” She gave a sigh of relief. “Just looking at it makes me feel safer.”
She found she was in no hurry to leave the sanctuary of André’s store. Sunlight streamed in through the small barred windows and dust motes floated on stripes of warmth while township jazz played a pennywhistle jive. “This is nice,” she said dreamily and André grinned and his dimples cut deep into his cheeks.
“That will be a hundred and fifty dollars,” he said, leaning forward. “Namibian dollars, not U.S.”
“I can manage that,” she said, “it’s only about twenty dollars back home.” She dug in her wallet and handed him the money.
“So, jong,” he said, “are you free for lunch now, even if it’s a bit early?”
“Yes,” Kate said, astonishing herself with the speediness of her reply. She wondered what was going on with her; her attraction to Thaalu and now André but she pushed her analyzing thoughts aside.
“Good. I’ll take you somewhere nice.” He grabbed a knapsack from behind the counter and threw a few things into it. He locked his laptop away, turned off the radio, and set the security alarm for the store.
“Come on.” André put his hand on the small of her back and led her down the street. Kate felt a thrill of heat at his touch and she noticed that André appeared to be in no hurry to remove his hand either.
“Up these stairs,” he said, guiding her into a small courtyard. The whitewashed walls were covered in scarlet bougainvillea and the sounds of the busy town faded away.
“Le Bistro Afrique.” Kate read the restaurant’s name that was scrolled in gold script. “This looks very five-star. I’m not exactly dressed for it.” She looked down at her white shorts and yellow T-shirt and wished she’d known that her day was going to entail meeting a gorgeous man who’d take her out for some fine dining.
“You look fantastic,” André said with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm that was matched when the owner came over to greet them, giving André a complicated hand-shake and Kate an admiring glance.
He led them to a table out on the open balcony overlooking the ocean and Kate sank into her chair and smiled. She spread her linen napkin over her lap and admired the view. “Very nice,” she said, the breeze lifting her hair. “Very, very nice.”
André was studying the wine menu. “Like I said, it’s a bit early in the day but what the hell. Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio? I recommend a lovely South African Sauvignon Blanc, if you’re game?”
“André, I know as much about wine as I do about switchblades, so you go ahead and order for me.”
She realized she was ravenous. “I feel as if I haven’t eaten properly in days,” she said. “although we did go to dinner last night but I just had pizza.” She opened the menu and read the quote embossed on the first page. “All glory comes from daring to begin. Kind of weird, to have a quote on a menu. It’s by Eugene F. Ware and I like it.”
“Well bokkie, let’s you and I begin,” André said, having ordered the wine. He leaned close to her and she immediately lost interest in food and wished they were lying on a blanket behind a dune on the beach and letting things develop as they may.
Lost in her daydream, she lost track of what he was saying and she blushed when she had to ask him to repeat his question.
“Where are you from?” he repeated. “Thought I’d start with the easy questions first although even that one seemed to baffle you.”
Kate, not used to being teased, turned plum. “I’m from Canada,” she said. “A town near Toronto. And you?”
“I was born here. Then my parents separated and I moved to Boston to live with my mom from when I was eight until I was sixteen. I got myself into a bit of trouble there, substance over-enthusiasm and all that. So my mom shipped me back to my Afrikaans dad who knocked some sense into me and I liked it better here, so I stayed. I still visit my mom, pretty much every year. If you think about it, Toronto and Boston aren’t that far away from each other.”
“Practically neighbours,” she said, smiling, wishing she could grab him and wondering how she was going to get through lunch without doing just that. She could feel his knee touching hers and just that slight touch had her feeling like a schoolgirl on a date with the quarterback hero. She gulped back some wine and reminded herself that alcohol was not going to help her curb her inhibitions. She reached for a crisp breadroll and broke it in half, scattering crumbs across the table and quickly brushing them off the pristine cloth.
André laughed and pushed the dish of butter towards her. “We’re going to make much more of a mess than that, trust me.”
She grinned at him and then a thought occurred to her and her face fell. “André, do you have a girlfriend, or a wife?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you think I’d be here if I did? I’m a one-woman man, when I have a woman that is, which I currently do not. You’re single too, I presume?”
“Yes, single. But from what I gather, lots of men these days like to have a few women to choose from.”
“Not me, sweetheart. Now, as for food, unless you object, we’re having prawns.” He poured more wine into their glasses that were the size of jam jars. “And lobsters and langoustines and more prawns. With lemon butter and garlic butter and peri peri sauce. Is that okay? You do eat seafood?”
Kate nodded enthusiastically and took another generous sip of her wine. She giggled and then frowned. “I never giggle,” she said, “look what you’re doing to me.”
He laughed. “You’re on holiday. That means you’re even allowed to partake of a giggle or two.”
“André,” she said, serious for a moment, “you would not believe some of the things that have happened on my trip and I’m not going to go into them because it’s too perfect a day. But let’s just say that this is exactly what I needed.”
He pulled his chair even closer to her and brushed her hair away from her neck. “And you, sunshine, were a very nice surprise in my day too, believe me.”
Several hours later, they were still at the restaurant. The food had long since been cleared and they had nearly finished a second bottle of wine.
Kate looked at her watch with regret. “I have to get going soon,” she said. “We get back on the bus tomorrow and I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff I must get done at the lodge. Everything’s a mess, I need to pack.”
“Really?” André leaned in and cupped the back of her neck with his hand. “Or we could take this back to my place and…”
Kate burst out laughing. “A nice thought,” she said, “a very nice thought but hardly likely.”
André grinned. “I had to ask,” he said. “Where does your trip end?”
“Windhoek.”
“Then, I’ll come and see you there. I simply cannot not see you again, it’s as simple as that.”
“I think there might have been an easier way to say that,” Kate said, wishing she had agreed to go back to his place but knowing that she could not.
“At the very least, let me walk you back to your lodge,” André said. He bounded up out of his chair, looking way more sober than she felt.
Outside on the sidewalk, in the hot sun, André took hold of her hand and before she knew it, Kate grabbed him and pulled him towards her. Kate, whose sex life with Cam had been predicable at best, and whose sexual history before him had been pale and disinteresting, was kissing a man she hardly knew with passion she had no idea she possessed.
“You see, that’s why you should come home with me,” André said, when they finally pulled apart. He sounded out of breath.
“That’s exactly why I shouldn’t,” Kate countered. She grabbed his hand and started walking in the direction of the lodge, her thoughts spinning with desire and every nerve ending in her body aflame.
André pulled her to a stop for a moment and dug in his knapsack. He tore a piece of paper out of a notebook and fished for a pen.
“Here’s my home phone number, my cell number, my work number and my email address.” He smiled at her and handed her the list which she folded and tucked carefully into her money belt.
“Kate, wait, do you have a cellphone with you?” he asked.
“No, I don’t,” she said.
“Jirre, so how were you going to phone me? Trying to pull a fast one, were you?”
“I thought there must be payphones,” Kate said. She had no intention of seeing him again; he made her feel reckless and crazy, it was safer to avoid him entirely.
“We’re going to get you a pay-as-you-go phone,” he said, guiding her into a store. “My treat, okay?”
He bought her a phone and showed her how to use it, storing his numbers in the memory.
“One more thing,” he said. “A souvenir for you.” He handed her the fake switchblade comb and Kate pocketed it with delight.
They reached the lodge entrance and André walked her to her room. “Jirre,” he said, peering inside the doorway, “not exactly the lap of luxury, né?”
The tiny room looked as if a frat house had exploded and Kate nodded. “Close quarters,” she said, “and I need to tidy up my part.”
“Can I see you tonight?” He stepped inside the room with her, tempting her.
She looked up at him. “Not tonight,” she said, caressing his forearm, unable to resist touching him.
“I thought that’s what you’d say. Okay, Miss goody-two-shoes that’s fine by me. But I’ll tell you this much, this could be the start of a very nice friendship and it would be a pity to let it go to waste. It’s not every day that a gorgeous little meisie walks into my shop and gives me CPR. Because that’s how it felt, hey, like you gave me the kiss of life by showing up like that. Listen to me, talking too much, and saying stupid things but I’m scared you’re going to disappear and I’ll never see you again, so I’m saying anything I can think of.” He grinned at her. “But I’m going to shut up now for sure.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead.
“Come on, Kate,” he said, “please, tell me you won’t just disappear.”
“André, I promise I won’t just disappear,” she said, “I promise.”
She pulled his head down and kissed him. She took his hand and slid it up inside her T-shirt, inside her bra. She cupped his thick, strong fingers around her breast and she felt the breath catch in his throat and his body tense. He caressed her; her nipple was so taut it was nearly painful and his hand felt hot against her skin. She could feel his erection digging at her through his trousers and before she knew it, her hand was rubbing him and he was groaning with pleasure.
“What on earth’s going on?” A dislocated voice spoke from the depths of a bunk bed.
Kate and André shot apart, and Kate could not help smiling at the tent pole projection of his trousers.
It was Ellie waking up. She rubbed her face and looked around. “Oh, it’s you, Kate.” She hardly seemed to notice André. “I must have a shower.” She climbed down off the bed and ambled past André. “Hello,” she said vaguely and went into the washroom.
Kate and André looked at each other and doubled over laughing.
“A couple more seconds and we’d have been naked on the floor,” he whispered and Kate nodded.
André ran a hand through his hair and let out a whistle. “Okay bokkie, I’ll respect your wishes and be on my way before we ignite our flame again. Not that it’s going to be easy to walk, if you get my meaning. But listen, I want to hear from you often, okay?”
“Constant updates,” she said and he grinned.
He walked away, down the driveway, stopping to look back. She waved and he smiled. Then he turned the corner and was gone.
Kate sank down on her bed and touched her lips with her fingertips. “What on earth was that about?” she asked herself. “Oh, my.”
While Kate was out having a fine adventure, the same could not be said for other members of the group. Helen, in particular, was not having a good day. She was sitting at the top of the stairs that led down to the market, feeling angry and resentful. She had had no idea it would be this hard to get what she wanted.
Helen’s revenge had fast become Helen’s frustration. No one was willing, or able, to help her. The only spells she could find were tourist potions for love which were useless to her, while all the really virulent stuff was apparently locked up in the vault of some secret society that would not let her in.
She had thought that Peter’s Antiques, self-proclaimed stockist of a wide range of fetishes, would be able to help her and she had marched in the minute the store opened. But all she found was a wide array of German antiquities, jewelry, statues, masks and calabashes; an amazing plethora of artistic African treasures as well as a few fearsome objects, but nothing of any use to her.
She was also facing the problem of postage. She could not send Robbie a godawful ugly fetish telling him he was cursed, because it would lead straight back to her. Besides, her goal was not to momentarily alarm him but to infect a virus of hurt into his life that would leave a permanent scar just as he had done to her. But she was coming up short and she was running out of time.
As for Richard, she had been luckier there. She had stopped in at a pharmacy and found a shelf stocked with herbal African mutis and cures. She picked up a large plastic bottle of Ingwe Izifozonke, The Strong One, Amazing Mixture for All Diseases. She examined the label; an orange cheetah roared with teeth bared and the logo was a fearsome yellow and black, and it looked, she thought, like pretty authentic stuff.
“Whatever you do, don’t drop that or open it,” one of the shop assistants walked up and warned her. “Ag, liewe hemel, that stuff stinks to high heaven. I can’t imagine why they’d ever drink it. We opened a bottle one time out of curiosity and the smell was enough to kill seven cats.”
Helen laughed. “That bad?”
The girl held her nose with two dainty fingers, her little finger stuck up in the air. “We couldn’t get it closed fast enough, I tell you. Let me know if I can help you with anything.” She wandered off to straighten the fragrance bottles.
Helen wondered how Richard would feel, climbing into his sleeping bag at the end of the day and sticking his feet into this gunk. Or maybe she would pour it into his backpack and ruin his things … yes, she would find a way to make his life as unpleasant as possible.
But Robbie was proving to be tough. She was beginning to wonder if she should fly back to Cape Town from Windhoek, and confront him. Perhaps seeing him face to face would give her the closure she needed. Or she could scratch the beloved convertible he had talked about so often, gouge the paintwork and rip the upholstery into shreds. He would never know it was her; he would think she had long since left the country.
She sat on the stairs in the hot sun, staring down at her mannish, capable toes and feeling miserable. Below, the market vendors outnumbered the buyers thirty to one, with old men selling postcards for a rand a piece, while the young boys fought with each other and squabbled like chickens scratching in a yard.
Helen wondered idly what to do with the rest of her day. She had longed for this time to be alone but oddly enough, all she wanted now was to be back on the bus with the group, reading while they talked and argued and slept around her. There was something reassuring about being carried along on a wave of communal activity; it offered a sanctuary from loneliness and the bigger questions in life.
She sat up straighter, and rested her elbows on her knees and realized that the last thing in the world she wanted to do, once the trip was over, was return to Canada. There was nothing there for her, apart from her drunken mother shrieking to pass the time while she waited for her next welfare cheque, or a visit from her crackhead brother. Helen was friendless and without a job or a home to return to, and the bleakness of her future settled in her chest like a large stone. She pulled at the strap of her shoe, thinking that she had somehow had it in her head that she would find a way to stay in Africa and when Robbie had fallen in love with her, it had seemed like everything had fallen into place and all the hurts and battles she had suffered were part of a terrible past, a past soon to be banished and replaced by her happy-ever-after life. She had worked so hard, she deserved things to be good at long last, but now what did she have? Nothing. For the first time in her life, Helen was without a clear sense of purpose, and it was not, as she discovered, a pleasant place to be.
She stared at her feet again, not wanting to think about her mother but unable to push back the unwelcome memories. When she was growing up, she had thought that everyone had a mother like hers, that the way her mother behaved was normal. It was only when she went to a friend’s house after school one day, that she realized the chasm of differences that existed.
Standing in her friend’s kitchen, Helen had dropped a glass of milk. Her hand shot to her mouth in horror as she watched the glass falling in terrible slow motion, while the milk fanned out in a graceful arch and white drops sprayed the room. The glass had finally hit the floor and shattered.
Wide-eyed with terror, Helen held her breath, waiting for the shrieking and the yelling. Her hand was still pressed to her mouth. She was seven years old.
But her friend’s mother had laughed kindly, “I’m sorry, love,” she said, “my fault for giving you a glass straight out the dishwasher; they’re always wet and slippery. Did you get any on your dress? I hope the glass didn’t cut you.”
She wiped Helen’s dress and to her everlasting shame, Helen began to cry, silently, endlessly. To the startled mother, it seemed as if she had opened an endless reservoir of pain, her kindness only making it worse. In the end, she had taken tear-stained, weeping Helen home. She had waited with Helen on the doorstep, holding her hand, until Helen’s mother, Carol, answering with screeches from deep inside the house, had come to the door in a cheap pink satin negligee that barely covered the top of her thighs, with all manner of stains encrusting the fabric.
“Ya, can I help ya? What the fuck ya want?” she had asked the woman, provocatively posed against the peeling doorframe, smoothing her flyaway wiry bleached blonde hair, her fingernails filthy and ragged.
“I brought Helen home,” the woman tried to explain, “something upset her, she dropped a glass of milk but it wasn’t her fault…”
“Ah, it’s always her fault, eh, stupid kid.” Helen’s mother’s smile was gapped with missing teeth. She cuffed Helen on the head. “She’s clumsy, I tell ya, you should have kids like mine, you got kids? Tell me? You got kids? Ha? Well my kids are a fuckin’ nightmare, I tell ya. You didn’t need to bring her home, she woulda found her own way, she’s got ways, that one.”
The woman, horrified, did not know what to say. “I’ll leave you now,” she said, and she rubbed Helen’s back, a departing gesture of kindness Helen would never forget. Then she turned and walked down the narrow muddy pathway that was lined with dead weeds and junk and made her way out through the chickenwire gate.
Helen’s mother watched her go and she flipped the finger at the woman’s parting back. She looked down at Helen, her mouth twisted around her cigarette, one hand on the torn screen door, the other holding a beer. “Ya gonna get ya skinny ass in here or what?” she barked at Helen who slid inside underneath her mother’s arm.
Her mother sneered at her and slammed the door shut. “You think ya fancy, coming home with ya friends, who do you think ya are, missy? You think ya better than me? You’re not better, I’m your ma, you never forget that.” She pointed at Helen as she spoke and her hand shook, her eyes rheumy in her sallow, haggard face.
She was twenty-eight, she looked fifty.
Helen tried to escape to the relative sanctuary of her tiny attic room. She slipped past her mother and ran up the steep wooden stairs of the dark, narrow house.
“Oh no, you don’t,” her mother screeched, and her furious scream pierced every cell in Helen’s body. Her mother rushed up after her, stamping loudly on the old wooden stairs that echoed and reverberated as if an army were marching through.
Helen dove onto her bed and lay face down, her hands over her ears. Her mother rushed into the room after her and slammed the door with a loud bang. It seemed to Helen that there were three parts to her mother; the cigarettes, the beer and the endless slamming. Cupboards, closets, doors, drawers, shelves, stairs; she slammed and stamped, shrieking all the while like a banshee.
Her mother stood, quiet for a second, inside the closed door of Helen’s room while Helen waited for the onslaught of deranged agony to spew forth. But then her mother paused, her ear cocked, listening for a sound.
“Jimmy’s back,” she exclaimed, “ya lucky kid. But I’ll be back.”
She flung the door open and rushed down the stairs, pounding with the force of a three-hundred-pound woman, although she was no more than a hundred, soaking wet.
“Jimmy!” she yelled, “ya got the beer, eh? Ya lousy fuckin’ loser, turn the fuckin’ music down, what’s the matter with ya, ya come in and the first thing ya do is turn on the fuckin’ radio station to ya stupid rock music, you know the neighbours call the fuckin’ police when ya does that, for fuck’s sake…”
And on it went.
Helen, never wanting to be vulnerable again, had refused to visit any of the other children from school ever again. She also refused to have them come to her home. She rarely spoke to anyone outside of class and walked to and from school by herself, with her head down. She studied hard and would not participate in extracurricular activities, mainly because she lacked the necessary gear. She learned to fend for herself at home; she padlocked the door to her room from the time she was ten, even when she went to the bathroom.
Helen’s father was a high-school teacher, he’d had the two kids, Helen and Tommy, and then he’d left in a hurry when it was clear that Carol had lost her marbles. Helen’s little brother, Tommy, was a loser from the start, born to be a druggie. He had learned to swig beer when he was four; Carol thought it was cute. “Thanks dad, for taking us with you,” Helen told him, the one time she met him. She had tracked him down, though he had been slippery to find, and not keen to reunite.
He shrugged. “Sheila said no contact was better,” he said. Sheila was the second wife, a churchgoing teetotaler he had met at an A.A. meeting.
“Your mother was a real looker once,” Helen’s father had said, smiling at the memory. “Before she started hitting the booze big time. And she had to take those meds, they said she was bipolar, manic depressive, borderline personality, you name it. Course, she never stayed on them like she was supposed to, only stayed on them long enough to feel better, then she’d go off them and wham, the maniac was back. But my theory is that getting pregnant screwed her up, all those hormones out of whack, or maybe the hard work of being a mother. She was pretty good fun when I met her. I mean she’d party hard but she wasn’t crazy, not like she is now.”
Helen, sitting across from him at a McDonald’s, looked him in the eye. “Help me get through teacher’s college,” she’d said, “and I’ll never ask you for anything again. And I’ll never contact you again, either.”
She was fourteen at the time. “You’ve got a deal,” he said. She never saw him again but he put money into a bank account for her, while he went off and had two more kids with Sheila. Helen never met them, never wanted to.
Helen distanced herself from all her family. She came and went like a quiet ghost, learned to earn her money, and she found ways to shave what she could from what her mother and Jimmy carelessly left lying around. She guarded her belongings, studied at the library, and took up running. She had a clear goal for her life and with that, came hope.
She took to sex with the same passion she had taken to running; it was a way of working off her pent-up energies, it was a release. She joined an online dating site making sure that her prospective lovers knew the emotional boundaries were set at point zero; encounters were physical only and that had worked fine–until Robbie.
And as much as her mother was an untidy, out of control slagheap of a woman, Helen was precise, neat, practical, contained. These traits were woven into the fabric of the life-raft that saved her, but now she had nothing, no plan, and no recourse to rescue from any quarter. Without warning she began to cry and the market vanished in a blur. She brushed the tears away with her capable fingers and hugged her knees to her chest. She had no idea what to do next.
Kate looked down the driveway that André had just left. She could still taste him and smell his skin, feel the coarseness of his unshaven cheek, and her breast still tingled where his hand had been. She lay down on her bed, thinking she would just rest for a moment when the next thing she knew, she was waking from a deep sleep, disorientated and confused.
“You were fast asleep,” Eva laughed. She was sitting on her bed across from Kate, scribbling in a notebook.
Kate sat up. “Look at the time, and I still want to go shopping.”
“Let’s go then.” Eva hopped down off her bed and Kate followed.
“How was last night?” Kate asked, not really interested but hoping to distract herself from thoughts of André.
Eva laughed. “We had great fun. Enrique and I are now married and we’re going to have lots of babies. We were so drunk, I felt really sick. Still, it was fun. Wait, we must go into this store.” It was a small boutique with an unusual window display; three wooden giraffes of varying sizes had purses and scarves slung around their necks, with brightly-coloured cushions at their feet.
Kate was quickly enthralled by the one-of-a-kind couture garments she found on the racks. “I love this skirt, it’s so vibrant.”
“And I want to try this on,” Eva held up a short dress with zebra patterns and splashes of vibrant green.
Kate bought the brightly-coloured skirt, while Eva bought the dress.
“Let’s go into the thrift store,” Kate said as they stepped out into the bright sunlight. She pointed to a dimly-lit shop next to the boutique. The store had stacks of brown ceramic glazed pottery in the window, and a dusty spider plant hung from a macamé basket.
“Really?” Eva was disbelieving.
“I’ll find a treasure,” Kate assured her.
She quickly scored a gem that had Eva shuddering; an unusual handmade doll with long skinny witch-like fingers and a little hat fashioned like cattle horns. Her long, pale blue, thickly-padded Victorian dress was patterned with cornflowers.
“Fourteen dollars,” Kate calculated the price from Namibian dollars and paid while Eva shook her head.
“Totally creepy,” she said. “I need to go and email but first gossip: Ellie hit on Stepfan last night but only after she hit on Jono and she was aiming for Enrique first but he wasn’t interested.”
“Not Stepfan,” Kate said. “No way.”
“Yes, way. Stepfan wanted her to go to a hotel with him.”
“That’s too gross for words. I hope she didn’t go?”
“No, but he did. Into a totally trashy place. Ellie ended up coming with us and carried on drinking and some local guy tried to chat her up but she threw up on him.”
“What was he like, this local guy?” Kate thought that perhaps André had been out on the town, chatting up tourists.
Eva gave her an odd look. “Average height, dark hair, kinda skinny, about twenty. He was disgusted and he left but we stayed. Sofie was so drunk, she was talking at the top of her lungs but the music was so loud no one could hear.”
“And Harrison?” Kate asked. “Was he okay?”
“Last I saw of him, he had Treasure hanging all over him and they left the restaurant in a big hurry — they didn’t come dancing. Harrison looked like he was having the time of his life. Don’t ask me about Rydell-the-psycho because I’ve got no idea where he was and I couldn’t care less. I’m going to email, see you later!”
Eva hugged Kate and rushed off up the street.