towards Shortmarket Street, the owner of the Pannekoek Paleis pancake box waved to catch her attention, but Kitty was consumed with her cowboy boots moving over the old stones, striding through the frames of How Horrible. The icing-sugar smell of the Pannekoek Paleis stuck in Kitty’s throat and she thought she might be sick.
Kitty forced her way through stall after stall, not daring to look up at anyone. Outside the Africa Wax and Locks hairdressing salon she climbed into a minibus taxi called Summer Lovin with a Green Point destination sign in its window. Two other men got into the taxi and when they’d paid, the driver revved Summer’s engine and pulled away.
CHUK VRRRRRRMMM! Joe filled a frame with the taxi’s sounds.
PAARP PAARP! SKREEE.
ZOOOM!
VRRRRMMM! Without indicating, the driver veered across a lane of traffic. TOOT! TOOT! SCREETCH! He stopped beneath a no-stopping sign. “There you go, beautiful.”
“Cool.” Kitty got out and walked up the steep and chilly road towards the awnings of La Petite Tarte coloured a notable shade of Sky No.7, Deep Blue Of Night. Unseasonable December rain seemed imminent. Through the glass front door she saw three familiar faces: the AKs, the members of the African Kids’ Comic Club, were sitting at the restaurant’s alcove table with velvet cushions and French toile wall-cladding behind them. Other walls were covered in paintings and photographs of dancers and families and historic architecture. Kitty turned off her camera. The AKs would not tell Kitty how sorry they were or ask for details about how it all happened.
The owner of the establishment was pulling a tray of warm apple tartlets from the oven. Above her were shelves of tea caddies; candles flickered in a white metal chandelier.
Inside the place smelled of double cappuccinos, chocolate spread, marzipan, spices and the polished parquet floor. Billie Holiday was crooning about moons that “ain’t got no time for blueing”.
“Allo, Kitty,” said the owner, a one-time Paris catwalk model, who wore a heart on her sleeve. In the middle of the heart Joe Blue wrote a name: Ebenezer. His brother Ebenezer was smitten with the real owner of the real patisserie.
“Mwah, mwah!” She blew Kitty many kisses as she arranged her tarts on a cooling tray. “Oh, la, la, Kitty. Your boots are beautiful! So sexy, eh!”
“Over here,” called Angelique Mashamba, Angel for short, self-proclaimed leader of the AKCC.
Angel. Joe Blue thought again of that kid sister, gone from his life before she even came into his life; he wondered what she’d be like: what would be her idea of perfect happiness, what would be her favourite food, her favourite film, her favourite journey, what living person would she most admire. One thing was sure, she’d be a beauty, no matter what she looked like, and of course, she’d be a graphic novel addict.
As usual, Angel had raided her mother’s safe and wardrobe. Angel’s gold bracelets, glossy curls and diamond rings glimmered in the yellow warmth of the patisserie as she beckoned Kitty to join them at the table. Her gold was bright, heavenly – Joe Blue coloured it Sun No.2, February Rays of Illumination – and her skin was rich – Earth No.2, Paradise Valley Brown.
Kitty wasn’t surprised to see fellow Comic Club member Grace Vuma swathed in her black, floor-length riding coat in the unusually chilly summer weather. Grace was the eldest; she’d recently celebrated her eighteenth birthday, and started a degree in Media Studies at the University of Cape Town. It was the same degree Kitty planned to do, but unlike Kitty, who wanted to make documentaries, Grace wanted to write films with adventure, love, horror and drama; all the things that a young woman craves, films with stories that would make a person happy and sad at the same time, tales into which to escape.
In a page-high, skinny block outlined with bones and spines, and entitled “Back Story”, Joe wrote about how Grace planned to write a film based on the true life story of an Irish girl pirate called Grace O’Malley who was brave and beautiful and mysterious, independent and witty: an iconoclast. Grace had come from a dysfunctional home – her father was richer than Croesus and her mother, a TV producer, spent most nights snorting coke at parties in Joburg. Grace preferred to live in their apartment in Cape Town.
As Kitty approached the table, Grace lit a cigarette. The café owner wagged her finger at Grace. After kissing Kitty hello and rolling her eyes at the copy of Twilight sticking out of Kitty’s bag, Grace slunk outside and relit her cigarette. Even in the cool weather, the little café’s glass doors were folded back, so Grace wasn’t cut off from the conversation.
“For goodness’ sake, Grace,” Tallulah Ruby called to the eighteen-year-old glamour-puss loitering with the cigarette at the café’s roadside tables. “You’re going to get cancer.” The two puppies nestling in Tallulah’s lap growled in agreement.
“Kid, you sound like my grandmother. She’s always saying that.”
“Well then, stop smoking.” Vegas and Sinatra agreed again.
“There’s no point in living, kid, if you can’t have fun.” Grace had heard that often enough; it was her mother’s anthem. Grace’s mom phoned her often, but Grace couldn’t remember when last she’d actually seen her.
“Great boots,” said Angel to Kitty as they kissed each other on both cheeks.
Until Grace had moved on to university, the four girls of AKCC had all attended the same school in Cape Town. They were all comic-lovers and aficionados of the graphic novel.
“Say hello to my new puppies,” Tallulah said, tickling Vegas and Sinatra under their chins. “Aren’t they sweetie-pies?”
“I’m in love,” said Angel, not about the dogs though: she was inspecting a feature on the stars of Twilight in the latest edition of Teen Vogue.
Grace rolled her eyes again and sucked on her cigarette. “What’s with all this Twilight, huh? You girls are supposed to be cool; how come you like it so much? They’re not even proper vampires. If you’re going to be into vampires and not zombies – who are obviously a kazillion times cooler – at the very least read True Blood … But frankly vampires suck, unless they’re with Rosario, or …”
The others ignored Grace’s rant; it was no good trying to win her over to Twilight, and she could never in a zillion years convince them of the direness of vampires in general and that Edward fellow in particular.
Grace muttered on: “Ja, or that chick from Let the Right One In – now there’s a vampire worth her teeth.”
“Mother’s giving me the Twilight graphic novel for Christmas,” Angel said, knowing this would irk Grace.
“Blegh! That thing doesn’t even deserve to be called a graphic novel. It’s a travesty – the illustrator’s too damn lazy to even draw grass, just photoshops in some real grass.”
“What sort of dogs are they?” Kitty rubbed one pup’s nose.
“Pavement specials.” Tallulah smiled up at Kitty from under her suede peak cap. “The little girl has rickets, but I’ll get her right.”
“Can I hold one?” Kitty gathered up a caramel-and-white puppy with the square face of a Boxer and the body of a Bull Mastiff.
Trying
