Luckily, Mia was a peaceful soul who shunned confrontation. She noticed Vee’s energy pulsed with an edge of resentment, and to preserve the friendship had decided to move to Observatory. Now the big bedroom was all Vee’s, as were the small bedroom (study-library) and the parking space and the crooked tree in the tiny square of garden with the braai stand and the orange picket fence. The rent was all hers, too.
She removed two items from the postbox without bothering to look them over. It was nearly dark, and her gut was snarling. The good folks of suburban Claremont were already parked inside their fences, another working day over. A shiny luxury vehicle lounged a little too close to her gate, and she made a mental note to ask that her neighbour abide by the parking restrictions when he bought new toys.
Inside, she dumped bag and laptop on the nearest counter, and without switching on any lights opened the fridge. Milk. Water. Leftover fragments of fried fish gravy, jollof rice and sweet potatoes. Bread and Windhoek lager. Fresh salad ingredients. Vee scratched her nose and popped the freezer compartment. Free-range chicken and prime beef cuts. She closed both doors, paused in the dark and then sniffed. Asian food. No dog.
“You want another beer?” she called out to the emptiness.
“Nah, I’m good, just opened this one,” a male voice called back.
She grabbed a bottle and headed for the lounge, still not flipping any switches. Criminals were best confronted in the dark.
“Didn’t I warn you to stop breaking into my house?”
Through the open curtains, enough light filtered from the street to reveal Joshua’s grin as she took a seat. The black husky near his feet didn’t budge, but offered swishes of the tail in welcome. Treachery and deceit in her own home. Males always stuck together.
“Come on, don’t act like you’re not happy to see me again. Besides, breaking and entering’s a skill I learned from the best.” He tipped his beer at her in salute. “Like all skills, if you don’t put it to use it rots away. Hungry?”
Vee was already munching gratefully on a mouthful of Thai noodles. It was very good. Too good to be cheap takeaway. It was better not to ask.
“I don’t taste any meat in this.” She stirred the aromatic mix accusingly with the chopsticks. “There’s no meat? It’s meat-free?”
Joshua shook his head and chuckled. “That’s mine. Yours is in the microwave.”
When seated again and blowing steam off her supper, she said: “Don’t park your capitalist monstrosity of a car so close to my driveway. I could hardly squeeze past it. How am I supposed to back out?”
“I’ll be long gone before it comes to that. Or you asking me to spend the night?”
“Dream on. And for your information, I don’t keep bread in the fridge. Or buy pinot noir. And free-range chicken? What’s wrong with normal chicken?”
“That’s an excellent pinot from a grateful client, you refugee. Don’t refrigerate it. And chicken’s the most abused animal on earth. It’s all hormones, crappy feed and jumbo creatures with flavourless muscle. You should only be eating the healthy stuff.” He looked severe when she rolled her eyes. “Remember you’ve only got one ovary, cripple.”
“One and a half,” Vee corrected. Aside from their encounter outside the supermarket, she hadn’t seen Joshua in weeks. He wasn’t given to speech-making. It must’ve been a lonely wait in the dark for her to get home; he hadn’t even changed the bum clothes. “How’s the girlfriend?”
“Here we go.”
“What? I’m just asking. I can’t ask questions now?”
“Lyla,” he corrected, “who isn’t my girlfriend, is just fine. You’re just mad because you wish you were in her shoes.”
With a sage nod Vee crunched on vegetables. “Damn right. I do wish I were in her shoes; those were hot shoes. I see you’re still paying top dollar for poor company.”
“Why not? She’s not that bad.”
She returned a sceptical look. His shrewd exterior overlaid a good heart that only a select few were acquainted with. No enemy to feminism, he simply held the view that women were mistresses of their own choices, good or bad. Shallow beauty was a fair exchange for his occasional attentions, in whatever form.
“When are you going to get tired of nasty women, Joshua Allen?”
“Easy enough. Tell me to get rid of her.”
Vee chewed on, mutely.
“See.” He lazily extended a hand across the table but stopped short of touching hers. His skin tone was red-brown and reminded Vee of the soil outside her childhood home. Warm, friendly hands. They’d seen her through a lot, and had been trying to offer more for some time. “Problem is, I never get the nice girls. The best woman I know won’t give me the time of day.”
“I’m not so great any more,” she muttered.
“Wasn’t talking about you, but all right. Hypothetically speaking, say a plain, desperate girl like yourself were to say, ‘My, my, Joshua Allen! I got all this lingerie and massage oil and dirty movies and I just can’t think what to do with it.’ I wouldn’t be averse to –”
Vee burst out laughing and sprayed beer.
She loved their complex relationship. Based on grudging respect and liberal scoops of abuse, over time they’d come to admit to enjoying each other’s company. After the first introduction, they’d maintained a wary distance but soon lost the energy to keep the frostiness going. Just as quickly, Titus resigned his position of wariness and settled for being amused by their sparring.
Now Titus was gone, and they were left nursing a somewhat perverted companionship. Apart from breaking into her place and stocking it with overpriced food, Joshua demonstrated how to theoretically slice chunks off people’s fortunes and re-route it to global tax havens. She showed him how to shoplift and house-break, and posted bail when he got caught. He provided the precise, international units of small, medium and large penis sizes, with an impressive live demonstration. She patronised his women and broke up with the insipid ones by email when he couldn’t be bothered to. At the lowest point of her crushing year he’d given her his apartment, a bank card and lots of time. Sex didn’t factor highly, though occasionally it tried to insinuate itself, with little success.
Taking advantage of the good mood, he asked: “So what’s this article you’re working on?”
She told him, omitting the strange visions and anxiety attacks.
“Sounds like heavy stuff.”
“That’s not the half of it. As dysfunctional goes, this family sounds like textbook material. The strangest part is, Adele Paulsen hates their wealthy guts but won’t go as far as accusing them of wrongdoing, least not as far as murder goes. Her kid goes AWOL, and none of the Fouries appear to give a damn. In her book they’ve moved on with their lives and are ignoring the whole thing like it never happened. You know that big-time healthcare facility that’s been constructed, the Wellness Institute?”
Joshua flashed a smile of mock smugness. Illness was a luxury he couldn’t afford, not on his bonuses.
“Well,” she continued, “some of us are still human enough