The Mall (22 page)

‘Here we are!’

Both assistants are standing in front of me, clothes draped over their arms. ‘Now, I hope you don’t think I’m too forward,’ Camp Assistant says, ‘but with your
colouring, I was thinking olive green. What do you think?’

He holds up a silk dress that even I have to admit is beautiful.

‘Would you like to try it on?’

‘Sure,’ I say with a shrug.

No. No you don’t. It’s not even your colour!

One-Arm ushers me towards a changing booth, and Camp Assistant hurries over and hands me a leather jacket and a pair of silk stockings. Both of them are acting as if they’re assisting the
Queen of England and not some down-and-out ex-druggie who smells like death on toast. But who am I to fucking well argue? Worst-case scenario, I can always grab the clothes and do a runner.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

The booth is surrounded by mirrors, but for some reason they make me look taller, less skinny and shapeless, and for once I don’t actually mind looking at my reflection. Even the scar
looks less disfiguring. A trick?

Of course! It’s all bullshit. The shop assistants are fucking chained up! How can this be a good thing?

I’m suddenly aware of how much I loathe the clothes I’m wearing and I pull them off as fast as I can. I hold the olive green dress up to my naked body. I haven’t worn a dress
since I was seven or so, but it’s got to be better than the damp T-shirt and the combats that still hold the stink of Horrible Rat Woman’s shitinfested lair. I slide the dress over my
head. It fits perfectly, skimming over my non-existent hips, the hem finishing a good twelve centimetres above my knees. I pull on the tights, snagging them on my toes, and pick up the leather
jacket. It feels impossibly soft and buttery, and not like any leather I’ve ever felt before.

I check out my reflection. Fuck me. A stranger stares back. I really don’t look like me at all. I look…

Elegant? Yeah right. Come on, you’re not that deluded.

‘Yoo-hoo!’ Camp Assistant calls. ‘Don’t leave us in suspense!’

I open the changing-room curtain and step out.

‘Oh my! You look beautiful! Simply stunning!’ Camp Assistant claps his hands. ‘Patrice! Come and see!’

One-Arm pops up from his perch behind the counter and checks me out, looking as if he’s about to burst into tears of rapture. ‘Oh! How
divine
!’ he says. ‘You must
have the lot!’

‘Oh, you must!’ Camp Assistant says. ‘Really!’

‘Yeah right,’ I say. ‘Like I can afford to pay for them.’

‘Pay?’ They both look at each other as if I’ve said something totally outlandish. ‘But you’re a Shopper!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re a Shopper,’ Camp Assistant repeats as if saying it twice will make it clearer.

‘You just said that…’ Both of them are looking at me with that concerned expression people use when patronising the temporarily deranged.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘What the hell. I’ll take the lot.’

‘Wonderful!’ Camp Assistant says, clearly relieved.

‘Clive!’ One-Arm says. ‘Haven’t we forgotten something?’

Here we go… don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Fuck. Maybe I should have listened to schizo voice. And Christ, my knife is still in the pocket of my combats that are pooled on the changing-room floor. I should have known it was too good to
be true. I wait for Camp Assistant to say something horrible: perhaps that the leather jacket is made out of human skin, or maybe he’s about to point out that all the mannequins are actually
cadavers or something.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, Rhoda. They’ll want some kind of payment. Here’s the part where they ask you to lop off one of your fingers. Maybe dig out an
eyeball.

Camp Assistant cocks his head to one side and clicks his fingers. ‘Of course! Patrice, you’re absolutely right.’ He turns to me. ‘How remiss of me! Ma’am, please,
let me show you the handbags, they are to
die
for.’

‘Lovely jacket,’ a wannabe Shopper with a diamanté eye-patch and a severe case of psoriasis says to me as he passes me on the escalators. I ignore him and
concentrate on balancing on the escalator’s steps in the unfamiliar high heels. I almost stumble as I reach the top and start clacking my way towards the phone store.

I keep catching glimpses of my reflection in the shop windows and it’s really starting to freak me out. The boots I picked up in Toe Jam next to the clothes store are the same chestnut
brown leather as my bag and jacket, and the scarf I found in Splurge complements the dress underneath perfectly, but my hair just doesn’t go.

Haven’t you got more important things to worry about, Rhoda? Like finding Dan, like staying alive?

‘Shut up!’

‘Ma’am, were you talking to me?’ A woman with a white afro and a leg that I’m almost sure has been cadged from a mannequin and stapled to the stump of her thigh smiles at
me. The chain around her ankle is made of heavy spiked metal and disappears into the depths of the store behind her.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t talking to anyone.’

‘Please!’ the woman fawns. ‘Come in. I just know I’ve got the perfect match for you.’

‘The perfect what?’

I look past her to try and gauge what shop she’s attached to. It’s a plainly furnished store with nothing but photographs of apartments in the windows. An estate agency.

Oh shit
.

‘You know, I saw you and I thought, now there’s a Shopper in the market for a super-deluxe-special-three-sleeproomer-with-a-champagne-bar-and-access-to-the-swimming-pool-heated-of-
course-and-don’t-forget-the-sauna-and-it’s-a-stone’s-throw-from-the-modification-Wards.’

She gasps in a deep breath and edges closer, the chain attached to her ankle now almost taut. She cocks her head to one side. ‘It’s just come on the market, the last owner recycled.
Would you like to see it? It’s got underfloor eating and a coruscated massage bed comes as an optional extra.’

Snap out of it, Rhoda!

‘Um…’

The woman smiles brightly at me again. She’s now so close that I can smell the queer medicinal odour that’s wafting out of her pores. ‘Most Shoppers would give their right leg
to live there,’ she says, her voice now a honeyed whisper. ‘Did I mention it has a Jacuzzi?’

‘A Jacuzzi? Really?’

‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘A big one. There’s no harm in looking, is there? What do you say?’

No!

I follow the woman into the agency, tuning out the voice of doom.

‘I say it must be fate,’ I say.

chapter 20

DANIEL

I get back to the phone shop just as Colt is clicking out. She suppresses a laugh when she catches sight of me at the door. ‘Catalogue!’ she says. ‘Are you
ready?’

She leads me to a bank of lifts behind the escalators and presses the up button.

‘Can’t we take the stairs?’

Colt just laughs and shakes her head in that ‘funny brown’ sort of way. ‘You’d walk a long time to get to Management. They’re in the Golden Tower.’

‘I don’t like lifts.’

‘Don’t worry. These are fast. And they have music.’

I bite my tongue and force myself to follow her in. It’ll be fine, nothing will happen. I’m doing what they want, conforming, playing by the rules. I’m with one of their own.
There’s no reason for them to fuck with me now.

The muzak in the lift stays in the background as Colt stares at the doors and fiddles idly with the hair falling over the wound on her neck, humming along with the panpipe-and-synth rendition of
‘Nine to Five’. There’s no display inside the lift to tell us which floor we’re on. The lift hums steadily for a minute or two and I breathe out with relief when the doors
open. We enter a spacious, marble-floored reception area with a large sign saying Personnel behind the wide counter. My heart thunders. We’re in the lion’s den. I can almost feel them
nearby, I can almost smell the funk of evil seeping out from behind the marble façade.

Bright light shines through a bank of windows to our left. Leaving Colt at the counter, I head over to them, hoping to catch a glimpse of Joburg beyond, hoping to orient myself, get some
perspective on where the fuck I am; hoping to discover an escape route. But the windows only look onto a small recess with backlit advertising posters shining through them. One of them shows the
amputated watch model, this time sprawled across the handles of a rusted motorbike. When I get back to the reception desk, Colt is talking to an orange-bewigged person in an expensively tailored
suit. ‘I’m sponsoring a brown for employment.’

‘Its name?’

‘Daniel…’

‘Jacobson,’ I fill in. The woman – I think – doesn’t look at me.

‘And he’s a he,’ Colt adds. She says it so neutrally that I can’t tell if she’s being defiant or simply stating a demographic fact.

‘Business unit?’ the receptionist asks Colt.

‘Retail. Books.’

The receptionist fingers something onto her computer screen, then finally looks at me. I stare into blank, black eyes in a grey face under the absurd orange wig. The receptionist’s hard
face confirms what I already know about the Management. If you defy them in any way, you’ll regret it. They are cruel.

She points a lump of gel at me, pokes at the computer again. ‘Yes. All right. This is one of two browns who entered today. We will update his status pending the result of the application.
Its companion has been assigned as a Shopper.’

‘Wow!’ says Colt. ’You didn’t tell me, Daniel. She’s a Shopper! Wow!’ She’s beaming dreamily like a teenager at a poster of a semi-naked movie vampire.
‘I’d do anything to be a Shopper. And you actually
know
one.’ Orange Hair clears her throat, the sound of cheese graters meeting funny bones, and Colt tails off.

‘I lost contact with her,’ I say. ‘I thought she was trying to leave the mall.’

‘Leave?’ says Colt, in that confused tone of hers.

The receptionist shoots a look at Colt and pulls a face. Browns. Lying and stupid, all of them.

‘Please present at Welcome Room 387 in five moments.’ She dismisses us to sit in the waiting area.

Colt whispers to me, ‘I would never have thought your… friend… could be a Shopper. No offence, but she was really… rough. But I suppose now that I think of it, she
definitely has the look. She’s self-starved, and she’s even got natural scarification. God, people pay a fortune to get that done. You know, when I wen—’

She’s starting to babble so I interrupt her. ‘I don’t know what that means – a Shopper. Does it mean that she’s okay? What will happen to her? Can she leave? Where
do you think I could find her?’

‘Find her? CCOs don’t find Shoppers, Daniel. If we’re lucky – and only
if
– Shoppers come to us. My God, Daniel, and
you knew
her. You knew a Shopper.
You’re
so
lucky.’ She pauses, looks away, looks back at me again. ‘How well did you know her?’

In a few moments I’m about to come face to face with people who have tried to kill me, I have no idea of where I am or where I’m going, but the tone of Colt’s question makes me
happy. She’s jealous of Rhoda. This hot girl is jealous of Rhoda!

I shrug. ‘I don’t know…’

Colt looks away from me. ‘You knew a Shopper,’ she mumbles.

We’re ushered into the interview room by an Abnormal with a rudimentary steel shaft for an arm. She has a kind, almost regular face; she’s probably a specialist in interviewing
browns because of her familiar looks. The round table is set with empty vases and a small sheaf of papers. At one modified seat sits a squat and sweaty man who looks like an octopus in a suit. His
down-mouth disappears into his slick jowls and gives him a look of utter disgust.

‘Welcome, Darneel,’ says the woman. ‘I am Welcome Agent Jossiefeen, and this is the Lonly Books Management Representative, Badly.’ She speaks the names like misremembered
foreign phrases. ‘I am so glad you have decided to seek employment with us. We find that brown persons like yourself are an asset to the company and add a range of experience and diversity
and empathy to our operations that is demonstrably appreciated by the clientele of the various business units. We find that when brown persons serve our clients, purchases are processed more
quickly, and queries handled with more alacrity than the average. Result: more brown persons in our employ, more income for the company. It’s a win situation.’

As she shuffles the pages in front of her, the steel arm smacks against the table top and the octopus man judders inside his swiftly moistening suit.

‘This is not to say that our own are not highly prized CCOs, of course. Your sponsor, CCO Colt, has excellent numbers, despite her… her… challenges… which we have
discussed with her.’ Colt looks at the floor. I wonder if they’re referring to her body shape. Christ, what a place to bring that up.

‘Right. Let’s just go through the standard security questions, then. And then if Representative Badly has any further questions for you, Darneel, you may answer them. Remember, CCO
Colt, that as Sponsor, you may be held liable for any false declarations on this application. And, of course, for any disregard on behalf of the applicant.’ The agent says this in a serious
tone and I wonder what exactly will happen to Colt if I fuck it up.

‘Yes, Agent,’ Colt says, equally gravely, as if she’s just sworn some sort of oath to the company. I’d just better not fuck it up, for her sake as much as mine.

‘All right. To your knowledge or in your experience has this brown ever belonged to an underground cult or organic terrorist group?’ How is Colt supposed to know anything about me?
Of course, I’d better keep my mouth shut. Octopus Man glares at me through wet eyes.

‘No,’ Colt says.

‘To your knowledge or in your experience has this brown ever beheaded one of our own?’
Huh?

‘No.’

‘To your knowledge or in your experience has this brown ever devoured offspring – his own or that of others?’

‘No.’

Jossiefeen is rattling off the questions in a bored tone as if this is a standard immigration questionnaire. The questions are evidently just as stupid. ‘To your knowledge or in your
experience has this brown ever been sought by the Guardian?’ What the fuck is the guardian? I wouldn’t even know if I’ve been—