Victoria took the plate off my lap.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Very yummy!’
She shook her head and walked out the room.
Sitting in the driver’s seat I looked at my face in the rear-view mirror. My eyes were still red. I unlocked the passenger door for her.
‘We going to Cavendish, Byron. Do you know how to get there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You won’t get lost, will you?’
‘Uh-uh.’
I avoided using my car when Victoria was with me. I’d made a secret compartment under the driver’s seat by slicing a long line across the material and fixing Velcro to either side. I’d taken to visiting her in the evenings after work, and to avoid a trip home I’d hide the skins in the compartment, and seal it up. I didn’t want her to find out that I was really still a translator. Before leaving work I would also lift up the felt that lined the boot of my car, and place the shield and spear on top of the spare tyre, before shutting it down again.
But I was in enough trouble already. If I started dreaming up excuses not to use my car I risked sending her over the edge. So we drove along High Level Road. It was what most people would describe as a glorious day. The sun was up and all the little cunts who like tanning were probably flocking to the beach. Anyway, it was the end of summer, and these happy bright days would soon be behind us.
‘Maybe we should go to the beach later,’ Victoria said, as if reading my thoughts.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘You could get a tan. Maybe then you can get a better job.’
‘What?’
‘I’m only joking.’
‘Oh.’
We stopped at the robots opposite the Waterfront. To our right was the convention centre. It was supposed to look like a ship, but looked more like the back of a boot. It’s surrounded by a collection of exclusive hotels and the handful of high-rise buildings the city has.
I turned left into the Waterfront.
‘What are you doing, Byron?’
‘Oh shit,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot. I thought we were going … ’
‘We meant to be going to Cavendish, Byron!’
‘I forgot.’
‘You’re a pothead moron!’
I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t do stupid things today. I wanted to get some respect from her, but it would never happen if I kept doing things like that. She sighed loudly and made a show of taking her cellphone out of her bag and looking at the time. Then she looked at me again, and smiled.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean it, you know, like that.’
I smiled a stupid smile. I really hate myself sometimes.
On the other side of the mountain it was quite a lot colder. I knew this without opening my window, because I was unable to shut the air vents in my car. Victoria also seemed to feel the difference in temperature and put her hands in front of the vents then rubbed them together.
‘Are you still, I mean, you said you might at the beginning, are you getting a car allowance?’
‘What?’
‘You said. From your work, you know, now that you’re a manager.’
‘Oh. It’s in the pipeline. Ja.’
Black clouds were coming down over Devil’s Peak and into the thick forest below. I was very stoned and imagined for a moment that I was in Africa. Then remembered that I was.
I opened my window. The cold air came blowing in. I lit myself a cigarette, looked down at my feet and noticed that the scuff mark on the top of my right shoe had been coloured in with something too dark to be soil. I wondered if it might be dog shit, and where it would have come from.
‘Byron!’
‘What?’
‘You nearly drove into that car.’
I’d misjudged a corner. A car next to me, with about five people in their mid-twenties, had slowed down. They were all giving me hand signals, pointing at their eyes, pointing at their heads.
‘You must be careful!’ she said to me.
‘Ja.’
We finally made it into the Cavendish Square parkade.
Victoria pulled down the sunshade in front of her, expecting to find a mirror in which to examine her face. But there was none.
‘Oh,’ she said.
Without hesitating for more than second, she turned sideways, pulled the rear-view mirror toward her, looked at herself – coldly, as a surgeon might look at a patient – touched her pointy chin, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
‘Come!’ she said, then unlocked the door and hopped out.
I walked behind her. She never once turned around to see if I was following. She walked past the large mirror at the top of the escalators, paused for a second to look at her reflection, again coldly, hopped on the machine and began the descent. I followed.
The escalators are right in the centre of the mall, in a large chasm of space filled with sunlight. In front of me was a Muslim family. The father was dressed in a robe, as was his young son. The woman’s entire body was covered, with only a small slit for the eyes. I was very stoned and suddenly realised I’d been staring at her for too long. And staring is wrong. We embrace diversity and barely notice minor differences like that. The truth was, I envied her. I was starting to get paranoid and would have killed to hide myself inside a full body veil. Perhaps I should invest in one.
Then I was at the bottom of the escalator standing in front of a Levi’s shop with all the pretty models smiling at me. Victoria had already rounded the corner and walked into Truworths. I ran after her. She was winding her way through the women’s clothing section. I noticed that the mannequins were getting slightly chubbier, and yes, some of them were charcoal coloured. I wondered if veil shops invested in mannequins.
I started moving faster and nearly bumped into a trendy black girl of high-school age. She was with a large group of friends and they were holding up clothes against their bodies and giggling. And Victoria was climbing onto the escalator. I ran toward her and grabbed hold of her arm.
‘Byron. What are you doing?’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
It had been such a long time since I was last in the shoe section of a shop. Nothing had changed. A pop song was playing over the stereo. There were countless mirrors and large pictures of men kicking balls and girls sitting on haystacks and smiling. And then the shoes. There they were. The sevens with the sevens. The eights with the eights. All
