Authors: S. L. Grey
The plump agent smiles at him and he gets to his feet. I try and attract the anorexic one’s attention, but she’s suddenly found something fascinating on her computer screen. I watch
the five clocks on the wall ticking my morning away. Tokyo, New York, London, New Delhi, Johannesburg. The minute hand flicks over to 10:17.
A tall bleach-blonde woman clatters into the shop, talking on her cellphone. Her eyes scan the room and she immediately sits down in front of Skinny, who smiles at her and instantly stops what
she’s doing.
No fucking way.
‘Excuse me,’ I say loudly.
Plump looks up. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute, ma’am,’ she says.
‘It’s not you I was speaking to,’ I say, nodding in Skinny’s direction. The blonde turns around to look at me curiously, and I point at her. ‘I was here before she
was.’
‘I won’t be long,’ the blonde says. ‘I have a very important meeting—’
‘Like I care less,’ I say. ‘I’ve been waiting. You pushed in.’
The blonde and Skinny share a look. I glance at the elderly guy for backup, but he drops his eyes. Bastard.
‘I’ll be with you in a moment, ma’am,’ Plump repeats. ‘Please, just be patient.’
‘Why should I be patient? I have been patient. That bitch just pushed in!’
The agents gasp, and the blonde purses her collagened lips and immediately starts texting someone.
Am I overreacting? But fuck it. I’m not putting up with this shit twice in one morning. Plump runs a hand over her hair and does her best to smile at me. ‘Ma’am, please calm
down. There’s no need to—’
‘Who are you telling to calm down?’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘What, you think because I haven’t shelled out for fake tits and botox that I’m just going to let
myself be treated like this?’
Plump’s chins wobble slightly. ‘Ma’am? If you don’t calm down then I’ll have to call security.’
The elderly man starts to mumble in disapproval. Skinny’s fingers reach for the phone.
‘Oh fuck you,’ I say. ‘Fuck all of you. You wouldn’t last five fucking minutes in…’
In where?
I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here right now.
My heart is speeding up again, and my fingers are beginning to stiffen up again. If I don’t get out of here immediately I’ll be right in the throes of a full-force panic attack.
I leave at a run, barging past a cleaner pushing a trolley, not looking in which direction I’m heading.
‘Lady?’ a familiar voice says behind me.
It’s Yellow Eyes. Oh
fuuuuck
. I shake the hair over my face, making sure the scar is hidden, and turn around. I tense myself to make a run for it, but there’s still no trace
of recognition in his eyes.
Now what?
But I suddenly know exactly what to do.
I stand up straighter, look him up and down as if he’s a piece of dog shit, and blast out waves of Shopper superiority. It feels good. It feels
right
. And it’s working, he
seems to shrink into his uniform, and he nods deferentially at me.
‘Is everything all right, ma’am?’ he says.
‘No, everything is
not
all right. I’ve just been robbed.’
‘Robbed?’
‘My wallet was taken. Pick-pocketed.’
I point back to the travel agency. ‘I saw him run in there.’
Yellow Eyes hesitates. He’s such a fucking useless bastard. How many scarred black women with British accents has he come across lately?
It’s not just your appearance that’s changed, Rhoda.
‘Well?’ I say. ‘What are you going to do about it? I’m on holiday here. Is this how you treat tourists?’
He fingers his walkie-talkie. The mention of the word tourist seems to jog something in his memory. But I hold my ground.
‘Wait here, please, ma’am,’ he says. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Now’s your chance
.
My phone beeps. I grab it out of my pocket, thumb through to the message.
Oh
fuck
.
chapter 28
DANIEL
There’s so little money in my account, I can draw it all at the ATM. No longer in the mood for getting wasted, I buy a soft drink at the supermarket and start heading
towards Only Books. I check my phone to see if Rhoda has left a message. Fuck, one missed call. Rhoda. I check the time – 10:17. I’ll call her back when I’m done. Just thinking
about facing that fuckwit Bradley makes my heart thunder. But I need to keep calm. I’ve just come for my back pay, I’m not looking for a confrontation.
The bookshop’s doors are closed. What the hell? I check the time again. Then I see Bradley through the window wandering around with his iPod on and a checklist on a clipboard and I realise
he’s doing the monthly stock reconciliation. Taking his time about it too. The recon only involves a spot check of thirty titles and running a routine on the computer. It should take half an
hour at the most. Fucking hypocrite. He would be all over me if I took this long. I rattle on the door and wave my arms but he’s bopping away to his Barry Manilow or Britney Spears or
whatever the fuck pricks like him are into, and it’s only when he turns around that he eventually sees me. He startles, goes red then white then red again, then puts on his boss face, removes
the earphones and comes to the door.
He opens it a crack like I’m some sort of mugger, and says, ‘What do you want?’
‘I’ve come for my back pay.’
‘Huh?’
‘My money. I want my money.’ The waitresses at the coffee shop next door are watching. ‘Come on, let me in, man.’
Grudgingly he opens the door a little, just wide enough for me to squeeze in. Then he slams the door behind me as if he’s afraid he’ll be inundated by a flood of insatiable customers
who don’t realise that the shop is closed for his Very Important and Highly Skilled Stock Reconciliation.
It’s Thursday morning, dickweed, there’s nobody here.
‘If you think you’re getting your job back, you’ve got another thing coming,’ he says. He’s in his early thirties yet he talks like an old man.
‘I just want my back pay. I worked seven shifts this month.’
‘You – let’s put it politely – resigned.’ He grins to himself. ‘What makes you think that you’re entitled to anything?’
‘The law,’ I say, trying to sound convincing. I have no idea whether I’m legally entitled to anything or not. I just need to get my fucking pay and go. Every minute I spend in
here is a minute too many. He makes a show of checking his list and moves across to poetry. Ja, right. Stock thieves are going to steal poetry.
‘You want to do it the legal way, buddy?’ says Bradley. ‘Fine. Let’s do the whole grievance procedure, a disciplinary enquiry. Let’s see after six months of that
how much back pay you’re entitled to. We’ll have you on malicious damage to property, we’ll have you on gross insubordination, we’ll—’
I’ve had enough. ‘Just shut the fuck up.’
‘What?’ Bradley’s eyes widen. Then I realise: he’s scared of me. He thinks I’m going to beat him up or something.
Jesus, I wish I could do something like that. But instead I store up my rage inside me. After how many shifts did I walk home, screaming inside because of this petty cunt, because of the
aggressive, loaded, 4x4-driving bitches who take out the pain of their dry vaginas and their failed marriages and their failed affairs and their failed facelifts on us automatons behind the
counter? I made myself worthless, all for three peanuts an hour.
‘You heard me. I’m fucking sick of this place.’ I’m trying hard not to start whining, or worse, crying. This place makes me into someone I’m not, into someone I
don’t want to be. I just want to leave here for ever. ‘Just give me my money and you never have to see me again.’
He’s back to his old smug self, that wary look gone from his eyes. Fuck, I’ve let myself down, shown him my weakness. ‘There’s no way I’m going to help you now,
Daniel. File your paperwork with head office and I’ll see you at the hearing. I’m done with you.’ He turns to walk away.
The hole beneath my ear starts throbbing with a buzzing, electric pulse. I grab him by his shoulder as he goes.
‘Don’t walk away. I swear I’m going to—’
He swats at my hand. ‘I’ll have you for assault! I told you I—’
I feel a surge of power, the rush of a lifetime’s rage flooding through me, the pressure centred at that hole in my skull. My muscles seem to swell. I feel a slickness oozing down my neck,
into my collar. Then all the pressure snaps, every molecule pushing towards a single, overwhelming movement. I shove Bradley into the side of the bookshelf.
He squeaks and then his face spasms, his head kicks back.
‘If you just give me my money…’ I say, but he’s not listening. He’s got this strange expression on his face. I can’t tell if he’s laughing or what. But
then his arms start juddering and his knees slacken. Fuck, is he having some sort of fit?
‘Bradley?’ I say. His head lolls to the side, but he stays upright, his heel’s knocking spasmodically into the side of the bookshelf behind. Thump, thump, thump, thump,
thump.
Oh fuck.
From the side I can see the two slatwall hooks that spear deep into Bradley’s back.
For a second, his rolling eyes find mine but his stare is empty. Then there’s a rattling gurgle like a cough full of phlegm and Bradley sinks inwards like a deflated toy.
I shuffle in reverse to the back office, my eyes stuck on him until he’s lost behind another bay of shelves. I tap in the office access code automatically and slump down on the stock
receiver’s chair. What the fuck just happened? Remember, think. It’s important that you remember every detail.
What did you just do?
All I wanted was to get my money.
Oh shit.
Oh shit.
Oh fuck.
Fuck
.
What the fuck have I just done?
This is it. This is the end. It’s over.
No flowers. No happily ever after.
Christ, I’ve fucked it up.
And Rhoda is the only person I can ask for help.
My phone’s display reads: <10:27>. Just ten minutes since I got here. In just ten minutes you can break your entire life.
I key in a message.
I immediately regret pressing send. I shouldn’t involve Rhoda in this. But I can’t unsend the message, can I? I pray for a failure message back, but there’s nothing, then a
little green tick next to her name. Shit, man. I need her.
My stain just keeps spreading.
I fiddle with Rhoda’s knife in my pocket.
I pace over to the office’s small window, feeling sunlight on my face. A Woolworths delivery truck reverses into a delivery bay below me. That’s the bay Rhoda and I went in all that
time ago. It seems like a different life. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be standing here, trapped. I wouldn’t have met Rhoda either.
The trees in the high-end cluster development across the road are bright green this morning, and the cars that drive by are a palette of shiny tones. A swirl of pied crows is catching a thermal
above the clusters, rolling and flickering black and bright white, black and white, black and white, rolling and lolling like they’ve got all day. I close my eyes, and I hear singing. I watch
the crows flickering, black and bright white, elegant outcasts, black and white like lights, like beacons in the sky, calling, soaring like they own the sky. The sky is a perfect, washed blue.
‘You almost ready to open, sweetie?’
The voice snaps me out of my trance. I wheel around.
‘Oh, it’s you, Daniel,’ says Josie. She’s wearing jeans and a pert white sweatshirt and carrying two cups of coffee. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Uh…’ Then it hits me. I’m such an idiot. There I was with a primary-school crush on Josie, while all along she and Bradley were behaving – and fucking –
like adults. I didn’t understand what that meant until I met Rhoda. And what surprises me most is that I don’t even care.
‘Brad was really pissed off with you,’ she says with a laugh. ‘He’s never going to give you your job back. Did you speak to him already?’
‘Um, no.’
‘I’ll never tell Brad, of course, but Katrien and I thought it was great. Everyone fantasises about telling their boss to fuck off. We had a drink for you after work.’
‘Oh.’
‘So? Are you going to ask him for your job back, or what?’
‘No. I just want my back pay. He told me to wait here till he’s done.’
Josie sits at Bradley’s desk and hands me one of the coffees. ‘I got this for Brad, but you can have it. Two sugars okay?’
‘Uh, thanks.’ I sit down next to her. I can’t fool myself that this is a game this time, but if I
were
playing a game, I’d want to keep Josie sitting here for as
long as possible. Anything but let her go out onto the shop floor and discover Bradley.
‘So, uh, are you and Bradley… together?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But not exclusively or anything.’ She smiles at me over the lip of her cup. What the fuck? Suddenly I’m emitting Josie-attracting pheromones? The
truth is I’d rather never see Josie again in my life. She’s everything that was wrong with me. I’m trying to convince myself that I’ve changed, but this shop, having to deal
with these people, just drags me down into the past. But the longer Josie sits here, the more time I have to make a plan.
‘I guess I acted a bit stupid around you. You’re very pretty. You know that.’
I’m not asking, I’m saying, but she answers, ‘Weeelll. No, I’m not.’
‘You are.’
‘Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself. You know Katrien totally has the hots for you?’
‘No way.’
‘Ja. I couldn’t see it myself. But now I think I know what she means.’
Fuck. My brain is whirring. All this time… Katrien?
‘Here’s the part where you ask me out for a drink,’ she says, nibbling at the edge of the cup.
Something snaps. ‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘Not interested.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve met someone. Someone real.’ Josie looks at me, tilting her head like a poodle thinking, and then starts to blush. I can see her trying to fight it, but the harder she
does, the more red and blotchy her face becomes. A couple of beads of sweat prickle out around the fluff on her lip. ‘And now I realise the difference between a crush and
real…’