Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

While the menfolk sort out the matter of exchanging a tog-bag full of cash for phony bearer bonds from a nonexistent bank, I order tea for both of us.

"May I ask what you are going to do with the money?" I say to Cheryl.

"Buy a house. For us and the kids. Amanda and Simon and their families. I mean, two-and-a-half million bucks, you could buy a place in Malibu. But we're going to stay in Aurora, get Mandy to move back from Chicago, so we can spend more time with the grandkids. Wait a minute, here's a photo." Cheryl pulls out her phone to show me a snapshot of an unfortunate-looking baby covered in slobber and a smiley girl with pigtails and a strawberry birthmark over her cheek. "That's Archie, and this is Becky – Mandy's little ones. And Simon, well, Simon and his partner are planning to adopt."

"So cute." I hand the phone back.

"What about you, dear?"

"I will try to make a new life as best I can. It is better here in this country."

"And the orphanage?"

"Oh yes, the orphanage. Um. We have been looking at buildings. There is an old retirement home that we could convert. It's lovely. Big garden with a mulberry tree, swimming pool. Near the botanical gardens. It will be lovely." I am thinking of a version of the house I grew up in.

"It's nice to feel like suddenly you have possibilities, isn"t it?"

"Yes."

We lapse into silence.

"Did you have much trouble getting out of the camp?"

"Please, Cheryl, it is too painful to talk about." I bury my face in my hands for emphasis. Through the gaps between my fingers, I can see my bag start to squirm again. I prod Sloth with my shoe to make him cut it out.

"Oh. Of course." She puts her arm around my shoulders and pulls me into an awkward embrace, stroking my back. "There, there," she says, "There, there."

"All taken care of." Jerry is grinning broadly, like a man who has had an incredible burden lifted from his back. Doubt weighs a lot. "Can I give you a hand with this, Frances?" He hefts the rattan bag before I can stop him. "Whoof, what do you got in here, all your earthly goods?"

"Jerry!" Cheryl says, scandalised.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean …" and then Sloth pokes his head out and bleats grumpily.

Jerry drops the bag. Luckily, it's only five inches to the floor, but Sloth yelps like he's gone over the Victoria Falls.

"Mary, Mother of God! What is that thing?"

"Jerry Barber! You know perfectly well what that is! Oh Frances, honey, you should have told us." Over her shoulder, Vuyo is giving me a stare that says "you better fix this".

"I was – ashamed," I mutter.

"Now, baby, there's nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means you've done bad things once upon a time." She shoots Jerry a fierce look. "You're a good girl, honey, a good girl." Her eyes brim with tears all over again.

We watch Cheryl and Jerry pull out of the parking lot packed with X5s and A4s in their white VW Polo rental, and wave cheerily until they pull around the corner.

"You are a good girl," Vuyo says, imitating Cheryl.

"Shut up, Vuyo."

"We should do this again."

"I want twenty per cent."

"Next time, maybe."

"This was a one-time-only event. I'm not doing a re

peat performance."

"I have R94,235.82 that says different."

"I'll write more formats."

"I'll double your interest rate."

"I don't care."

"What was your brother's name again?" he says slyly. "The dead one?"

"Fuck you."

"And your lover? That handsome mkwerekwere? Benoît, is it? Be careful, Zinzi. You know what happened last time you fucked with gangsters."

Vuyo gets into one of the X5s. I memorise the licence plate. It's undoubtedly fake, but I'm a packrat for information. I rap on the window. He slides it down. "What is it?"

"Give me a ride."

"Get a car," he says and pulls away, wheels spinning.

Makhaza's Place is already vibey at three in the afternoon. This is a reflection of the lack of recreational facilities in the area. Although Mak's popularity in a neighbourhood packed with bars and churches can be ascribed to two things: the Lagos-style chicken, and the view. The bar is situated on the second floor of what used to be a shopping arcade back when this part of town was cosmopolitan central, with its glitzy hotels and restaurants and outdoor cafés and malls packed to the skylights with premium luxury goods. Even Zoo City had a Former Life.

There was big talk about comebacks and gentrification a few years ago, which led to months of eviction raids by the Red Ants, with their red helmets and sledgehammers and bullhorns, and bright-eyed landlords buoyed up on the property boom bricking up the lower storeys of buildings. But the squatters always found a way back in. We're an enterprising bunch. And it helps to have a certain reputation.

Mak's is situated in what used to be an oversized display window looking out over the street. It was modelled on Macy's, rotating exhibits of aspirational fashion and lifestyle products, roomy enough that they once put a convertible Chevrolet in here as part of their Christmas display, Santa in shades and a Hawaiian shirt at the wheel.

Mak kept some of the mannequins for the ambience; a double-amputee guy in sharp-pressed corduroy pants, a lime sweater vest and a fedora, and a woman with a pockmarked melamine face to match her moth-eaten white mini-dress and go-go boots, both arrested in some forlorn pose of retro cool. The patrons don't dress half as nice.

I shrug Sloth off at the holding pen by the door. He sways himself onto the branch of a dead tree hung with fairylights and already well populated. A doughy Squirrel quickly stuffs the remains of a chocolate bar into her mouth and chitters reproachfully at Sloth, then bounds higher, past a preening Indian Mynah and a Boomslang looped casually from a fork in the branch, as motionless as the mannequins.

"Don't get too close, buddy,' I warn Sloth. Unofficially, there's a code of conduct, but animals are still animals. And animals can be assholes, too. The Mongoose is curled up in the corner in the sawdust. He slits his eyes open, then pretends to go back to sleep.

Benoît and two of his boys, his roommate Emmanuel and that sgebenga D'Nice, are in the usual spot by the foosball table. I pick up a tonic water at the bar (the closest I get these days to the full equation of gin amp;), and drop down next to them in the corner booth. The aircon is on the fritz as per usual and their beers are sweating. D'Nice's Vervet Monkey is sitting on the table surrounded by at least two rounds of 750 ml empties, toying with a coaster nicked from the Carlton Hotel circa 1987.

The TV is blasting some godawful crunk rap thing, jiggling sweaty bodies intercut with gritty images of a city burning. Giant fireballs light up the Las Vegas skyline. The singer, wearing a leopard-print vest and chains, skulks between the girls with a Hyena padding beside him. The animal snarls in close-up, baring yellowed teeth. It's an act so dramatic, it causes the girls to burst into flames too. Luckily, it doesn't seem to bother them too much. Flames lick over their taut gyrating bellies, fiery arcs tracing the curve of buttocks peeking out from sprayed-on hot pants.

"That for real?" I say, indicating the TV by way of greeting.

"You're kidding." Emmanuel is deeply shocked. He's a sweet Rwandan kid, only twenty, working piecemeal jobs. Doesn't have an animal, but there's no rule saying it's obligatory. We're all about tolerance in Zoo City. Or mutually assured desperation.

"Give me a break, Emmanuel. I'm thirty-two. I don't know this shit anymore."

"Cha! Zinzi! How do you not know Slinger?"

"What kind of a name is Slinger? That's so metal."

"You hurt me. Your words. They physically hurt me."

"You haven't seen me try to hurt you, Emmanuel."

"Yes, it's real!" he says, defensively. "Nigga took a bullet to the face and lived to tell. Bounced off the side of his skull, shattered his jaw, they had to wire him up, reconstruct the whole thing."

D'Nice chips in, waving his beer, slopping it around. "You know a hyena's jaws are stronger than a lion's. Got to get through skulls, to the marrow." The Vervet Monkey perks up at the sight of the spillage. She drops the coaster and leans forward with great deliberation.

"Skulls don't have marrow," Benoît says. I realise they're all already slightly drunk.

"You know what I mean," D'Nice mutters. The Vervet Monkey wipes her paw through the puddle of beer. She raises her hand to her face and examines it before licking her palm. She shivers at the aftertaste. Then licks her hand again, pink tongue searching out the cracks. Did I say slightly drunk?

"Listen!" Emmanuel says. "So Slinger's not standing for that, right? Gets out of hospital, half robot with all the metal bits they've had to graft into his head, and goes looking for the niggas who did this to him. Finds them in some strip joint in South Central. Walks right through the front doors. And bam! bam! bam!" Emmanuel mimes blowing the motherfuckers away with an imaginary gun so gigantic he has to hold it with both hands.

"Takes them out, like eight of them. Half don't even get a chance to react, the other half get as far as reaching for their guns, maybe standing up before he blows them away. Strippers running out of the building naked and screaming and stuff, all covered in blood!"

"You know, I think I saw that movie."

Emmanuel's grin drops from his face like a kicked puppy, bounces on the pavement and tumbles into the gutter with a little pitiful yelp. On the TV, Slinger and his Hyena have given way to a Mouseketeered kwaito duo, a boy and a girl, all sweet teen provocado.

"Zinzi, stop being a mean old cynic." Benoît's breath smells like three, maybe four rounds of lengolongola. "I'm sorry, Emmanuel. I can't take her anywhere."

"Ha. Like you do take me anywhere. Sorry, Emmanuel. Didn't mean to disrespect your boy." I punch his arm to show no hard feelings. Emmanuel looks less downcast – in fact, looks like all is entirely forgiven, and to show just how forgiven I am, he's going to regale me with more riveting details of Slinger's totally-not-fabricated biography. I cut him off as he takes the breath that will power the next paragraph of Slinger trivia, throwing a proprietary arm over Benoît. "So, you boys talking business or can I take this one away?"

"What's the rush, Zee-zee?" D'Nice is one of those guys who assign nicknames unasked for. He's also one of those guys with his fingers gravy-deep in all kinds of dodgy pies. He's wearing a woollen beanie, his mouth hanging slightly open, like always, which makes him look stupid. But you'd be stupid to underestimate him.

"Stay and have a drink with us," he says.

I raise my tonic water. "Sorted, thanks, nicey-nice. And cut it out," I add, as I feel something like insect feet brushing against my temples. His Vervet is leaning forward, tense, suddenly focused through the glaze of alcohol. An animal at work.

"Cut what out?" he says innocently, as if he weren't extending little magic suckers towards me, but the skittery sensations fades away and the Monkey leans back in disappointment. She gives D'Nice a dirty look and goes back to fumbling with the beer.

"You've been hitting them heavy, Zee-zee," D'Nice says, but he's trying to deflect attention because Emmanuel isn't in on his party trick.

D'Nice is the opposite of nice. His shavi is soaking up little moments of happiness, absorbing them haphazardly like a sponge. He lies about it, of course. A lot of zoos have a cover story for talents more deviant than normal. If you ask him, D'Nice will tell you his talent is scavenging information and, admittedly, he does a lot of that too. He lifts it off the street and flips it for cash to whoever is paying – but his snitching isn't magically enabled.

You'd think if you were a seratonin vampire, you might internalise some of that happiness. Not D'Nice. As far as I can tell, Benoît is his only friend, or at least the only person who can tolerate him for longer than twenty minutes sober.

"You know me, D'Nice. Party animal. Speaking of which, I think yours has had one too many." The Vervet topples the bottle.

"Fuck's sake," D'Nice says, grabbing for it, but not before the Vervet has managed to pull it over, dominoing three other glasses and the remains of my tonic water in the process. Emmanuel leaps up with a shout, knocking over his chair in the scramble to avoid spillage. There is the crash of glass. D'Nice is yelling, alternately at the Vervet for being an idiot, and for Mak to bring a rag to clean up the mess – and a new round, while he's at it, on the house 'cos it wouldn't have happened if the table wasn't wonky like all the shitty reject furniture in here. Mak disagrees with the diagnosis, loudly, which gets Carlos, the very large, very bald Portuguese bouncer involved. Emmanuel wisely uses the opportunity to take a slash or get

another drink and melts away.

The chaos gives Benoît and me a moment to converse like grown-ups.

"You okay?" he says, being the kind of smart, sensitive guy who picks up on not-so-subtle hints. Not so smart and sensitive that he's discerning about his friends and roommates, but hey.

"As shitty days go, this one's been raw sewage so far."

"What happened with Mrs Luditsky?"

"She died. Murdered, if you want to be technical. I was practically there and the connection just… withered up." Saying it, I feel the kick in my gut again. Like a lost heart attack that's wandered into my intestines by mistake.

"Is that where you've-"

"Cops. Three hours. Total bullshit. Oh, and they need you to go down to the station in the next couple of days and give a statement about my whereabouts this morning."

Benoît doesn't say anything. His hand goes absently to the burn scars on his throat where the skin is Barbie-plasticky and shiny under the collar of his t-shirt.

"Sorry, Benoît. I know it's a pain in the testicles." His thumb traces tight little spirals up his neck to his jawline, and I lose my patience. "Is it your papers? Because I thought your extension came through last week. If it's a hassle, I can ask one of my other lovers to cover for me."

Benoît smiles wanly. FL, the idea of other lovers would have been more than credible. But since Sloth I've been so monogamous I make the demonstration banana that Aids educators use to show how to put on a condom, look slutty.

"I got a phone call," he says.

"From?" But I know. I know exactly who it is.

"Come on, Zinzi. My wife. My family."

And there's that feeling again. Twice in one day. Heart attack in the guts. A wrenching squeeze and twist. From the other side of the room, Sloth looks up with an enquiring squeak. I give the tiniest shake of my head.