“You should have told me. I gave them to someone who has not paid me yet. So will you help me or what? The buyer has called me three times already confirming the time.”
“How much will my cut be?” Musa said.
“The guy will buy everything for R8 000. I’ll give you R3 000. You can put in the quiet king of drifting and cut half with him. I am serious, Musa, this is an emergency job. We should be on it as we speak.”
Musa looked at me with an inquiring smile.
“What do you say, Sipho? Are you down for R1 500?”
I just nodded my head.
“Good then, Musa. You will be on the doors, bonnet and boot. Sipho, you will be inside, and I can take the engine apart.”
“No ways,” Musa said. “I have money to collect and people to see. I’ll check you grease monkeys after two.”
It was just after eleven when we started. From his room in the back yard, Vusi salvaged a tool box my father would have died for, an angle grinder and a six-pack of beer.
“Is beer alright? I have water and cold drink if not.”
I settled for water.
“You have to be neat, now. The buyer owns a scrapyard so he is looking to resell the parts.”
Vusi handed me a set of screwdrivers and small spanners.
He changed into overalls, the top half rolled and tied at his waist, but the gold remained. I took off my T-shirt and sat down on a beer crate for balance inside the car. The front seats were already stripped out.
Vusi was short and thin. Tiny in a way that made it a certainty that not much about his frame would change in the future. Musa and I looked young, but with elongated frames. Vusi looked fourteen. What he lacked in stature he made up for in boundless energy.
Vusi looked young, yet his words were driven by a force twice his real age. There was a smooth way to his demeanour that strongly hinted at criminal experience. His shoulders were strong and muscled in a weird way, too defined for the rest of his body, like they developed too soon and the rest was still catching up. He went through the task with a relaxed face, but worked fast, with controlled energy, like a person doing what they know they are good at.
Through the gap of the open bonnet I saw that it was not trial and error with Vusi. He knew the correct spanner sizes for the engine parts. When he reached for his tools, his hand returned with the exact-sized spanner. His shoulders locked, muscles strained, bolts and nuts popped and his tiny hands swivelled them out. Vusi took the engine apart methodically. He was mechanical in the task, clear about what came out first, like he had done it a thousand times before. Neat too, with all the nuts in one pile. Consumed by the task at hand, he did not say a word as he worked. I concentrated on my part of the job inside the cabin and mimicked Vusi’s mechanical ways.
In thirty minutes the inside of the cabin was finished, and just the pedals and wires remained. I joined Vusi on the outside. Ten minutes for the front and back lights, as well as the grille. We took a five-minute smoke break and cooled our faces with tap water.
“Will you smoke if I roll a blunt?”
Vusi was busy crushing weed.
“Sure. I want to smoke it sober today. Yesterday your weed killed my night with the darkest blackout I ever had.”
“After you finished spinning, nothing happened anyway. Those cowboy country nuts – the Cold Hearts – started fights and shot guns in the air. All the girls were scared. You can spin a car, Sipho. All the crooks were asking about you.”
“I was raised around cars. My father is a mechanic, and you know how some people leave their scraps and never return for them. I helped my father fix the scraps, and in return he let me drive around in them. When he was away, I practised spins in them. But the 325is, Vusi, that machine was made for spinning.”
We revved the blunt. I downed it with water. Vusi guzzled beer. I looked at the Nissan Sentra – the victim of our destruction. It smiled a toothless grin.
The midday sun chased away the morning breeze, so we worked faster.
“Better we sweat once and finish. It will be hotter soon. We are almost done anyway. It is just the shell we have to cut in half, and the engine block, but the block I am not selling. I’ll take it to the recycling people at Isipingo. There they pay by weight. I must get a quotation from your father, Sipho. There is a chisel-shaped RSI he needs to look at for me,” Vusi shouted through the sound and sparks of the angle grinder.
“What is wrong with it?” I shouted back.
“It mixed water and oil, so the engine has no power. It has been parked for two months now. How much do you think he will charge me?”
“He’ll take the cylinder head to the engineers to skim or do whatever is needed. Then put it back again. The engineers’ fee will determine the price.”
“And like that we are finished. You can wash your face and hands in the bathroom inside the house. Do it quietly because my uncle is asleep.”
I heard the horn of the 325is through the bathroom window over the beeps and rumble of a reversing truck. A violent cough from a room opposite the bathroom echoed through the house. Two men were loading the broken Sentra, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, onto the back of the truck.
“Here is your money, Sipho. Thank you, my brother. You really helped me out. Musa is waiting for you outside.”
“I am the one who should be thanking you, Vusi,” I said.
“We will organise about the RSI.”
“No problem. Come see me when you are ready, Musa knows the way to my house.”
I left Vusi arguing with the driver of the truck about the engine block.
“How much did he give you?” Musa said.
“I did not count it.”
“Count it before we leave.”
“It is R3 000 exactly. Here is your share.”
I placed fifteen R100 notes in Musa’s palm. He returned five of them.
“Thank you for this, Musa,” I said.
“No need, Sipho, you worked for it.”
“Can we go to the city? My girlfriend is at the movies with her friends at Musgrave Centre. I must also buy a SIM card for my phone.”
“Is she pretty? I made a resolution this year: only pretty girls ride in my car.”
“You’ll see,” I said.
3. The Plan
3
The Plan
We arrived at Musgrave Centre to the end-of-the-day buzz of shopping malls. Elongated afternoon shadows rushed to the bus stop, some to taxis, a few to their cars, while others stuck together in the various steady walks of love. I parked the 325is behind the metered taxis opposite the bus stop. Musa turned his head faster than a meerkat as girls passed by. He was like a glutton at a buffet, uncertain about which pavement to choose – our side of the road, where girls in two-piece suits headed for the parking lot to their cars, or the bus stop, where mostly students waited for public transport. His gaze fastened on the bus-stop side.
“Check out the dark-skinned one holding oranges in that clique of fair skins,” he said.
“I told you you’ll see. That’s her. That is Nana, my girlfriend.”
“That is a girlfriend and a half, Sipho!”
I knew Musa did not believe me, but Nana