Zoo City - Lauren Beukes

"Be?"

"No, shit-for-brains, the other fat white boy." Des smirks at me as if we're in on this together.

"I jusd, you know, hang oud."

"What do you enjoy most about him?"

"Uh. He's weally funny? And cool. And he's weally good ad gambes."

"He seems pretty tense about his sister, though?"

"Ag. They fight a lot, but they love each other. They're just pulling in different directions and S'bu's kind of… sensitive," Des answers, getting antsy at no longer being in the spotlight. "Are we done here?"

"Yeah, okay. I might want to check in with you guys some other time though, if that's cool? Here's my card."

I hand over an old card to each of them, from FL. Cringingly, it reads:

ZINZI DECEMBER WORD PIMP

That's just the kind of cocky idiot I was. "Wordsmith" was too wanky. But why I couldn't have just gone with "writer" or "freelance journalist", only my cocky idiot FL self knows. At least I managed to keep my old number.

"What's a word pimp? Like you rent out words by the hour?"

"For dodgy assignations in tacky motel bedrooms. Yeah."

"That's so random."

"I'm planning to get new cards."

"As your manager, I'd say that's a very good idea."

"Yeah. Id's jusd… lambe," Arno says.

"I'll take it under advisement. Thanks."

When I get back to the townhouse, there is a red Toyota Conquest parked outside, with the boot open as if ready to swallow the woman who is leaning into it to retrieve the shopping bags inside.

"Give you a hand?"

"Ngiyabonga, sisi," says Prim Luthuli, emerging from the car. She manages to contain her double-take at seeing Sloth, and hands over three bags in each hand, loaded with two-litre soft drinks and frozen mini-pizzas and chips. She is in her late forties, a large mama in a floral skirt and an over-bleached white blouse.

"Just a guess. Teenage boys?"

She smiles wanly, but there's a tightness to her face. "I try to cook healthy for them, but, hei, teenagers are difficult."

She fumbles open the lock, while balancing four bags, and bumps the door open with her hip, revealing a mirror layout of H4-303. The walls are a warm yellow, leading into a bright red kitchen with a corkboard against the wall, plastered with family photos and news clippings featuring iJusi.

I set the bags down on the counter, nearly knocking over a vase of white roses which Mrs Luthuli deftly saves without comment.

"Do you live in the complex, dear?" she asks, opening the fridge and shelving a pack of strawberries, the milk, carrots, chicken pieces, tomatoes. "I don't think we've spoken before?"

"My name is Zinzi December. Odysseus Huron sent me to talk to you about Songweza."

She closes the fridge door and sits down heavily on one of the bar stools attached to the breakfast nook. She knots her hands in her floral skirt. She is clearly upset.

"You? Why hasn't he called the police?"

"You tell me."

She sighs heavily. "He thinks she's playing games. But even if she is, she could still be in danger! Who knows where she is. She's been gone four days." She starts sniffling.

For the second time in an hour, I've managed to make someone cry. At Sloth's urging, I go over and put an arm around her, awkwardly.

"It's going to be okay," I murmur. "It's going to be fine. Look, this is going to sound a little strange. But do you have anything of Songweza's she might have lost? Something with sentimental value? I don't know, a favourite earring that fell behind the couch? A book or a letter? A sock, even?" I'm clutching at straws or, worse, laundry.

"No. I don't know what you mean. I don't have anything like that." She looks at me like I'm crazy.

"Okay. How about her phone number?"

"I've been trying it every day. It just goes to her voicemail."

"Can I try it?" Because wouldn't it be crazy if she answered? Easiest money in the bank ever. But as predicted, it kicks straight to voicemail.

"You know who this is. If I feel like it, I'll get back to you." The voice is sassy, sexy. Even with the faux-bored veneer, it comes through like a dare.

It's followed by the automated network pre-record, a decidedly less enticing voice: "This mailbox is full. Please try again later. This mailbox is full. Please try again later." Okay, so it's not going to be that easy. Of course, just because it's on voicemail doesn't mean that she's not using the phone to make calls.

"Do you have any idea where she might have gone? No other relatives? No close friends she might be bunking with?"

"I called her friends from school. Nonkuleko. Priya. They haven't seen her."

"What about her friends outside school?"

She looks at me blankly. "No, I…"

"Never mind. How long have you been the twins' guardian?"

"When their grandmother died, she wrote in her will that she wanted me to look after them. We were neighbours. But I would have anyway. It's traditional to look after orphans."

"Helluva inheritance."

"It's hard. I get stressed. All the Starmakerz nonsense. The city, all the parties, warra-warra. It's a bad influence,

Joburg. But they're good kids."

"I get the idea that the boys don't know about Song. I told them I was a journalist, don't worry."

"Des knows. My son. Did he mention…" She looks to me for acknowledgment that I'm up on the family ties. "He said I shouldn't tell them. They're young. They're emotional. Especially S'busiso. He takes everything to heart."

"I noticed."

"I think he gets bullied at school. He doesn't tell me, but sometimes he comes home with bruises. And what if something has happened to her? How would they deal with it? It's better that they don't know. They shouldn't have to carry the worry. I told them she's visiting a friend."

"What is she like, Songweza?"

"She's smart, very smart. A's at school. But she's not like S'bu. She's popular with the girls. And the boys too," she says, with a little grimace of concern.

I'll bet, if that voice is any reflection of the rest of the package.

"Does she have a boyfriend?"

"Oh no." She looks shocked. 'Song would tell me. We have an agreement. No boyfriends until she finishes high school."

"Would you say she's happy?"

"Sometimes it feels like Songweza is angry at the whole world. But she doesn't really mean it. She just has her ups and downs."

"Which is why she's on medication?" She seems confused. "No, I don't think so."

"Nothing? Not even homeopathic? Muti?"

"Oh yes. Yes, she sees a sangoma once a month. They both do. He gives them treatment to help with the stress. All this stress of being famous."

"I'm slightly – concerned – that you might not know as much about the kids as you think you do."

"We talk all the time. I cook dinner for them every night. Make their lunch for school. We go to church on Sundays."

"You know they're drinking beer? Smoking weed?"

She twitches and then looks at me with frank appeal. "They're just letting off steam. They're good kids. Don't tell Mr Huron. Please. They're good kids."

12.

I get the taxi to drop me off in Rosebank and find the nearest payphone. It's an anachronism that the mall even has a working payphone, but I guess it caters to the traders at the African market and teens who have run out of airtime. Or the dubiously agenda'd, like me. I don't want to use my cellphone, don't want my number showing up on caller ID, in case I still decide to hang up. As if he'd still have it saved on his phone.

Because the truth is that I don't know if I can do it. Unless Prim Luthuli can dig up a useful lost thing, I am going to need a back-up plan. And the back-up plan involves summoning up the demons of my Former Life. Sloth does not approve of this plan.

"Ninth Floor Publishing amp; Print," the receptionist says, in a tone shot through with contempt. 'Hello?"

I find my voice. "Can I speak to Gio – Giovanni Conti, please. Features editor on Mach."

"Deputy editor. Putting you through."

There is a brief snatch of radio playing a housey number with a marimba riff, and then there's that signature drawl. "'Lo?" Giovanni has bed-voice the way other guys have bed-hair, apparently careless, but in reality, as meticulously styled as his irony t-shirts and cultishly obscure Russian designer jeans.

"Hey, Gio."

There is a long pause for processing time. Maybe even response-modifying time. And then he says, "Zinzi? Holy crapola. Where are you?"

"Downstairs. Can I come up?"

"No. Wait. I'll come down. Meet me at Reputation. It's the hotel bar across the road."

"I think they have a policy," I say, leaving it hanging.

"Oh. Oh right," he says.

Which is how we end up meeting under the fluorescent lights of the local Kauai, attracting the rapt attention of a cluster of well-pierced teens sitting around a plastic table loaded down with bile-green smoothies. While other passersby, the black-diamond hipsters and mall rats and suits, spare me only the sliding glances reserved for people in wheelchairs and burn victims, the Goth kids have no shame. They're practically staking me out. I raise one hand, busted-celebrity-mode, acknowledging, yes, it really is me, now please leave me alone, for fuck's sake. It doesn't put them off in the slightest. It must be something about dressing all in black that gives you a sense of social invulnerability. I'd be tempted to try it, but they're only playing at being outcasts.

Gio puts his hand on my shoulder. "Zinz?" He hastily removes it as Sloth snaps at his fingers.

"You were expecting someone else?"

He leans in awkwardly to give me a hug, thinks better of it and slips into the chair opposite.

"I like the beard," I say. "And the new cut. You're looking good."

"Thanks." He scrubs absently at the fine stubble over his skull with his palm.

But what I mean is, he's looking different. He's filled out, his face especially, and there's a hint of paunch under his button-up shirt. I wonder if he's quit the irony tees or it's just a button-up shirt kinda day. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing the tattoo that loops up his right arm, a neat line of dashes tracing the trajectory of a paper jet set to fly away up his sleeve; a tribute to idealism, to the absurd frailty of flight. I used to walk my fingertips up that line of dashes. It used to suit him.

I'm aware that he's evaluating me in the same way, comparing this Zinzi with the images in his database. Like a spot-the-difference game. Circle the lines around the eyes. Circle the torn left ear, where the bullet caught me. Circle the Sloth with his weirdly disproportionate arms draped over my shoulders like a furry backpack.

"So. Jeez. It's good to see you. What, how – I mean, the newspapers said ten years…"

"I got parole. Good behaviour. Didn't you hear?"

"No, I-"

"It's okay. I haven't been following your life either."

"Well, it's not like you've been posting status updates. Look, do you want something? A smoothie? A drink? A… what does that thing drink anyway?"

"Water, Gio. We're both fine. Don't sweat it. It's good to see you."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." He ducks his head boyishly, but the effect is diluted in the absence of tousled fringe. The tectonic plates of whatever we were have shifted out from under us – call it contextual drift. Mind the gap.

We're saved from risking being the first to breach the divide, by the approach of Goth girl and her posse.

"Excuse me," she says, with the kind of boldness that means she doesn't give a damn that her blonde roots are showing under the black dye (although she's still tried to obliterate her freckles under a thick coat of base).

"Nothing to see here. Run along, kiddies." Gio makes a shooing gesture.

"I'm not talking to you. Asshat." The girl scrunches her face in adolescent scorn and then touches my sleeve as lightly as a butterfly sneeze, like I'm a saint, or possibly a blood relation of Dita Von Teese. "I just wanted you to know, it doesn't matter what you did."

"Well, it does, actually," I say. But my retort bounces off her like a ping-pong ball off an armoured car.

"We still think you're cool."

"Okay. Thank you." One alligator. Two alligator. Three alligator. The others watch reverentially, and when it's clear I'm not going to say anything else, or give her a blessing or something, she nods, and leads her posse off in the general direction of the movies.

"That was odd," I say, watching the black pack ascend the escalator.

"It's that Hyena rapper guy, Slinger. He's made zoos cool. You're counter-culture aspirational, baby."

"My life's ambition." But the encounter has cracked the awkwardness between us.

"You still eat sushi?" he says, and we relocate to a conveyor-belt place round the corner.

"So, what's up, Zinz?" he says, shovelling a salmon California roll into his mouth with plastic chopsticks, errant grains of rice plopping into the soya sauce. I once saw MRI scans of sushi in a magazine. In the stuff prepared by a master sushi chef, the rice runs laterally, so it's less likely to come apart. Not a bad life philosophy. Stick close, keep your head down, and you won't fall to pieces.

"What brings you to this part of town?" Gio persists, spearing a maki roll with one chopstick and cramming it into his mouth. He always had a rough edge.

"Research," I say, skirting the clamour of questions I don't particularly feel like dancing with right now. "I'm working on something, and I thought you might be able to give me some pointers."

"Autobiographical?" He's fishing.

"Ah, no. It's an article, a book actually," I ad-lib. "It's pretty early stages. It's on that kwaito band? IJusi?"

"Aren't they more Afropop?"

"Same thing."

"Not quite. And isn't it a little early to be immortalising the one-hit-wonder kids anyway? They won't last six months."

"Okay, look, it's for a feature I'm hoping to sell to Credo, so I can maybe spin it into a book on music and Jozi youth culture, part coffee-table book, part trend bible. Something that might actually make money." Even I'm beginning to buy this.

"So this is it," he says, clacking his chopsticks at me for emphasis.

"What?"

"Zinzi's Big Comeback." I learned to speak in capital letters from Giovanni. Learned to use a crack pipe, too.

"Hope so. Of course, I'm handicapped," I tilt my head at Sloth, who has gone to sleep on my shoulder. "I suspect this guy's going to make it a little harder to get interviews."

"You'd be surprised," Gio says, breaking out his lopsided smile. I find it's grown on me.

13.

People who would happily speed through Zoo City during the day won't detour here at night, not even to avoid police roadblocks. They're too scared, but that's precisely when Zoo City is at its most sociable. From 6 pm, when the day-jobbers start getting back from whatever work they've been able to pick up, apartment doors are flung open. Kids chase each other down the corridors. People take their animals out for fresh air or a friendly sniff of each other's bums. The smell of cooking – mostly food, but also meth – temporarily drowns out the stench of rot, the urine in the stairwells. The crack whores emerge from their dingy apartments to chat and smoke cigarettes on the fire-escape, and catcall the commuters heading to the taxi rank on the street below.