Love, loss and trusting your first instincts

“Dude, call it what it is. You’re trying to get back together with her.”
“What makes you say that?”
Louis is in denial about the status of his renewed friendship with his former girlfriend Carmen. She is back in Jo’burg for a brief visit, before she heads back to London. She holds a mysterious power over her ex-boyfriend.
“You’re bunking work so you can drive to Vanderbijlpark and meet her for lunch. Who does that?”
His mate Butch is trying to get him to admit.
“No-no, china. We just good friends.”
“Ah, come on, man. Be honest with yourself. She’s your ex, she’s been in town for two days and you’ve been chasing her around the place like a pig hunting truffles.”
“What are truffles, anyway?”
“Does she know you’re trying to get her back? Or is she just using you as dial-a-date?”
“Dude, I don’t know. I don’t think she’s over her last ex. The oke died.”
“What from”
“Dunno. She doesn’t wanna talk about it.”
“Then she’s definitely not over him.”
By 2am that evening, Louis is beginning to agree with Butch that Carmen is far from over her last boyfriend, the one after he had broken up with her.
As he gloomily watches Vanderbijlpark’s Emerald Casino gradually empty out around them, his role in Carmen’s life becomes all too clear to him. He is now that thing he so did not want to be. He is a shoulder to cry on.
He is a nice guy. Someone to turn to in a time of need. In a throbbing, agonising irony, he is exactly what he’s been claiming to be. He is just a good friend.
What he hadn’t known about Carmen’s ex – Colin, his name was – he certainly knows now.
The guy died in someone’s lounge. The guys came home late from a nightclub, sat on the couch to watch TV and passed out. He woke up dead.
No one knew what killed him. His heart just stopped. There was no trace of drugs in his body, he was 28 years old, and a regular gym-goer. It was just one of those things that happen. People die.
What complicated the situation was that he had died in the lounge of another woman. The infamous Tatiana, “That Russian bitch”, as she was known in Carmen’s telling of the story.
It seems clear to Louis that Colin was conducting an affair with Tatiana when he inconveniently died in her lounge. But Carmen never raises this possibility, so neither does he. He merely nods and beckons the barman closer, as Carmen rants on about how, “She must have killed him. She put a spell on him. I know she did.”
“Mmmm. Ja. Shame, man.”
All that remains to be seen is how much Carmen will be able to drink before she deems herself ready to be taken home.
Then, somewhere around 3am, the barman takes pity on him and calls last drinks. Louis begins jingling his keys, hopefully. But Carmen has other plans…
“I’m far too tired to possibly drive back to Jo’burg. Come, why don’t you get us a room at the hotel. We can spend the night here.”
For no other reason besides extreme fatigue, Louis jumps at the offer. Within 20 minutes they are tucking themselves in, a chaste couple of metres apart in separate beds.
In the second screaming irony of the night, Louis finds himself alone in a hotel room with the woman of his dreams. Sadly, he’s now convinced she’s more than a bit loopy. He wouldn’t dream of trying anything.
As he drifts off to merciful sleep, Louis thinks to himself that on further reflection, it might have been the right idea to break up with Carmen all those years ago.
He was correct too, it had been the right thing to do.
Sadly, he is now back in the same position, sharing a room with the slightly loopy Carmen whom he wronged back in 2001 by sleeping with her best friend.
Around midday the next day, Louis’s body is found in the hotel room by a housekeeper. He is dead. His heart has just stopped. There are no traces of drugs in his body. It’s just one of those things.
By that time Carmen’s flight back to London has already taken off.

Getting what you want, and other rites of passage

It was a simple moment, nothing spectacular. Just an evening conversation between father and son.
Michael said, “I think I’d like to go to the Download Festival. I need to see Stone Sour live. The okes are making such killer music right now. They’re probably the best in the business at the moment.”
“Mmm. Good band, hey,” said his dad Angus, without looking up from his copy of The Star. ‘Tow truckers bribe cops’ bellowed the ten-column headline. The evening edition hadn’t changed much from the morning.
“Ja, great band,” continued Michael. “The best.”
Meanwhile, in the Grayston Drive Woolworths Food outlet, Angus’s wife Shelly was doing the shopping with their other son Shaun.
The Super M chocolate milks were in the dairy aisle right next to the full-cream litre bottles.
“C’n’ive one of these, Ma?”
“No, my boy. You’ve already got a juice and a two-litre Coke. Put it back, Shaunie!”
“Aw, Ma-a! You never let me get anything. I don’t care, I’ll get it with my own money. I don’t need you!”
And with that, Shaun flung the Super M into the shopping basket with an impetuous flick of his 14-year-old wrist.
“Stop shouting, Shaun!”
Meanwhile, back in the family TV room in greater Morningside, Michael was drifting slowly but surely towards his moment of truth.
“Ja, it’s just that if I want the band to succeed, I’ve got to see what the best guys in the world are doing, so we can be world class…”
“Mmm…” responded his father. “Where’s this festival?”
“The UK. It’s in June.”
“Oh. Then you better start saving,” continued Angus, now focused on a page three piece about a radio news editor who’d been stabbed at his home in Melville. “I’m sure those air tickets won’t be cheap.”
“No,” Michael tried again. “That’s the thing, hey.”
Back in Woolies, Shelly and Shaun were at the tills already. Shaun had secured his Super M, and was going for a final Lunch Bar.
“Come on, Ma. You can take it out of my pocket money.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” snapped Shelley, throwing the chocolate into the pile of groceries the cashier was busily swiping. By this time Shaun had begun wandering towards the exit. She clearly wouldn’t be getting any help with the bags.
She took a deep breath. Shoo. Another ten years and this one would be off their hands too.
Michael, meanwhile, a decade older than his junior sibling, was beginning to see that crossroads approaching at a scary rate.
“Aw, come on, Dad,” he tried forlornly, desperately. This in a tone Angus hadn’t been subjected to since the notorious mountain-bike incident of 1999. It was time to put down the paper.
“Look, Michael,” he began. “You’re 25. If you want to be a full-time musician, you’re going to have to start funding it yourself. I’m afraid you’ve already had the last of your pocket money.
“Ag, Dad,” Michael adopted a more grown-up tone. “I’m not earning. How do you expect me to pay for…”
“That’s exactly it, my boy. I think you’re starting to get it. It’s time to find a job. You’ve tried three different degrees, I’ve been buying you band equipment since Grade 10. You’ve never paid us a day’s rent in your life…”
“Rent?” Michael was flabbergasted. “But you’re my parents…”
“We are your parents,” replied Angus, a little too smugly. “And as your parent, it’s my duty to inform you that you’re now officially grown up. No more hand-outs. As from now, you’re off the payroll.
He stood up from the couch and left the room with an air of finality. He had to try not to do it with too much of a spring in his step. It just felt so good to finally say it. He walked to the drinks cabinet and fixed himself a scotch. The house was dead silent.
One down and one to go, thought Angus.
In the family X5 on the way back from the shops, things were equally quiet. Michael wasn’t allowed his Lunch Bar until after supper.
Shelly took another of her deep breaths. She wondered if Angus had had that talk with Michael yet.
In the passenger seat Shaun plugged his earphones in and cranked Stone Sour at a level he knew would be audible to his mom. Punishment for her being so unfair.
She just kept her eyes on the road and repeated her silent mantra.
One down and one to go.

Moving in, moving out and moving on

Awkward didn’t even begin to cover it. But desperation is the mother of all forwardness, and thus Tony had basically invited himself.
The truth was, Jo’burg was the last city in South Africa that would have him, so, hey. Pete was moving to Jo’burg.
He’d had a bit of a misunderstanding with his folks in PE, he’d been fired from the only newspaper group in Cape Town… And now the cops were looking for him in Durban, following a money-making venture that had left a few customers less than satisfied.
That left Jozi. And since Errol was the only person living in Jo’burg whose phone number he had, Errol was the lucky winner of a new houseguest in the form of Tony Fick, originally from PE.
Errol and Tony had been to Newton Park pre-primary school together, and their moms belonged to the same book club in PE, so they were like family friends. Even though they hadn’t seen each other for about 11 years.
At first Errol was very cool about it. He agreed to let Tony stay at his place until he found a spot of his own, and he kindly gave him real-time phone directions him all the way into Troyeville.
“Take the R21. Take the R21! You should see Eastgate on your left. D’you see Eastgate? Never mind! Just keep going. That should turn into Broadway… Just trust me, keep going. Try not to stop at the robots…”
Errol shared with a oke called Quinton. That was fine, because they had a nice big couch and Tony had his sleeping bag.
The okes welcomed him with the leftovers of some pasta, they watched some Prison Break, and the next thing it was time for bed. Remembering his manners, Tony was, like, “Ay, thanks so much for letting me dos on the couch.”
“Oh no! Don’t be stupid,” says Quinton. “You can have my room.”
He doesn’t elaborate. Tony opens his mouth, about to enquire where Quinton would be sleeping, but there’s only one place he could be sleeping. And it’s none of Tony’s business, he’s just the houseguest.
Errol and Quinton are more than just housemates.
So Tony gets Quinton’s bed, and spends a fitful evening contemplating what might have taken place on it.
The next day, Quinton has something to share with him.
Errol goes off to work, which gives the two of them ample time to hang out and get to know each other.
“Do you know that we’ve actually broken up?” Quinton say-asks while they’re doing the dishes and listening to Mansfield wrap up his morning show on Highveld. “but don’t worry, I’m going to win him back…”
“Jeez, I had no idea,” Tony stutters, “I’ll move back onto the couch immediately!”
“No, no, no,” Quinton insists. “You’re our guest. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
So Tony spent his first two weeks in Jo’burg alternately guilt tripping about interfering in the endgame of a dying relationship and wondering how well his mom’s book-club mate really knew her son.
By week three Errol and Quinton were having nightly domestic spats and Tony was so desperate to get a place of his own that he walked into the Star newsroom and offered to dash sub for free until they could afford to pay him.
Desperation is also the handmaiden of diligence. The Star night editor was so impressed with Tony’s dedication that he offered him a downtable subbing job. Tony got his first paycheque a month after arriving in Jozi, and he moved out the day after that. Followed the time-honoured path of Joburg newcomers from Troyeville to Melville to the suburbs.
To everyone’s great benefit, the holiday club scheme that had seen Tony railroaded out of Durban was mothballed indefinitely.
The next time Tony and Errol met was on a quiet Thursday night at Capital Records in Rosebank, About three years had passed.
It was just Errol, no sign of Quinton. Errol looked older, he’d gone completely grey, and he had a sad look about him.
Errol seemed down because simply seeing Tony again had reminded him of Quinton. It seemed that even saying something like, “Thanks for letting me stay at your place that time,” would have been in bad taste.”
Tony made his excuses and left. And he stopped going to Capital Records for a while. Errol did too.
People move on in Joburg too. And the beauty of it is that no one has to leave town.

The Blues, the red top and moment of truth

Liz was at the gym when she first saw him. He arrived with the entire Blues rugby team for a warmdown at the Sandton Personal Training Gym.
It pretty much brought the gym to a standstill – 26 enormous men of varying levels of Polynesian ancestry entering the swimming-pool area, stripping to their shorts and then slowly climbing into the pool.
She was on the exercise bikes when she spotted him. He was shorter than the others, but wider, with a vast Maori tattoo across the upper right quadrant of his chest. He wore his hair in tumbling curls down his broad shoulders.
His deep-set eyes were hooded with concentration as the team solemnly executed their routine of wading down the length of the swimming pool five times. But Liz’s bike was the one right opposite the pool ladder, so she knew it was only a matter of time…
Sure enough, the time came, and as the gorgeous man hoisted himself out of the pool, his muscles rippling with the exertion, he glanced up, and they looked into each other’s eyes.
For Liz, time stopped.
He had a caramel complexion, full, chocolate lips, and a plaster across his left eyebrow, which was raised in a mischievous way that reminded her of the The Rock.
Her monitor told her that her heart rate had gone up to 150bpm.
“Who’s that?” she gasped to the guy on the bike next to her.
“That’s Pete Paki. He’s the eighthman.”
From that moment, the course of the next two weeks of Liz’s life were determined. She would be stalking Pete Paki.
She timed her departure from the gym to coincide with that of the Blues team bus, which returned to the team hotel, the Sandton Holiday Inn on Katherine Street
From super14.com, she determined that the Blues would be playing the Cheetahs that weekend and the Cats the one after. After that she went out and bought a bright red, low-cut top.
It was the kind of top that would turn heads no matter what colour it was, but the colour – a kind of luminous magenta – ensured Liz’s bust would be the main attraction in any room she found herself in.
She immediately headed for the Holiday Inn, where she sipped a cocktail at the hotel bar until, inevitably, The Blues came down for lunch. Sure enough, Pete Paki was among them.
Liz turned and watched the team parade past. As Pete Paki passed, she brushed her left hand through her hair and tossed it over her shoulder. Again they shared a look.
She spent the rest of Wednesday hanging around Sandton City in her red top. Foreign sports teams are famous for their shopping trips to Jo’burg’s 30-year-old shopping mecca.
And eventually, sure enough, there was Pete Paki in the cellphone shop down from Mugg & Bean.
She wandered in, as if not noticing him at first. Then shrieked with recognition. “God! I keep bumping into you. Who are you guys!”
“Rugby players, ay,” responded Pete, quick as a flash. “The Blues, from New Zealand.”
“Oh, great. Well welcome to South Africa,” she gushed, a little more than she should’ve.
That Saturday she filled up her car and headed down south, to Bloemfontein, where she again donned her red shirt, then found a seat near the players’ tunnel. Pete Paki could not help noticing her both times he left the field.
By the next week, their paths had crossed three more times.
Pete was thinking, “If we can put enough pressure on Pretorius, we’ll take their backline out of the game. He’ll be forced to kick and it’ll become a lineout battle.”
Liz was thinking, “I’ll start calling myself Elizabeth. Elizabeth Paki.”
By the time the Cats had beaten the Blues 34-33, and the post-match function was into its fourth hour, Pete Paki was ripe for the picking.
As he lurked in the corner behind a potplant, rueing the missed tackled that had let Wylie Human in for the winning try, a buxom woman in a luminous magenta top sidled up to him.
“Hey, Mr Bluesman,” she said with a sly grin.
“Have you been following me?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.
“Mmm. I must admit, I have,” she said. “But don’t worry. I’ll let you get even with me.”
And with that, she turned and walked out of the room.
All he had to do was follow her…
Pete Paki finished his drink and for a moment, looked deep inside himself.

Stretched truths and affirmative dating actions

“I really told a shocker this time, hey.”
And she had too. Of all the lies that Anneline had told, in all her years of telling lies, this was the doozie. This one just took the cake.
On the plane back from conference in Cape Town, she’d found herself up front in business class with the two sales executives, Thandeka and Queen. Being newly hired, she’d seen it as an ideal opportunity to impress her superiors.
To her horror, the conversation had taken a swift turn into Xhosa – or perhaps it was Zulu – minutes after take-off. With the town of Darling still visible below them, she found herself marooned on a monolingual island in her window seat.
Dying to make some kind of impact, and with an isiXhosa vocab of about 12 words, she just about flapped her ears off their hinges trying to make sense of the two women’s conversation.
After half an hour of picking up serious stompies, she determined through their brief lapses into English, that they were talking about men.
“Yuh, hayi! They don’t like to admit they are wrong!” Queen exclaimed at one point, and Annelise saw her gap.
“Yes, they’re so stubborn, hey!” she contributed in a tone that matched her neighbours’ amused exasperation.
There was a beat, as Queen and Thandeka turned and looked at her, as if they’d just noticed the woman with the platinum-blonde bob on their left.
Eventually Queen said in a condescending tone, “Ja, well at least white men are a bit less chauvinistic…”
And they went back to talking in Xhosa, or Zulu, or whatever it was. Anneline enjoys being the centre of attention, so she just couldn’t handle being dismissed like that. She said something she shouldn’t have.
“I wouldn’t know. My boyfriend’s black as well.”
There was another beat, and during this one, Thandeka just about choked on her Johnny Walker.
“Black? Your boyfriend’s black? What’s his name?”
And of course, Anneline had replied, “Thando. He’s from Soweto.”
Without missing any further beats, Queen and Thandeka had insisted on meeting Thando. All of a sudden Anneline was the most popular girl in the company.
In the ensuing week, she found herself invited to dinner with the board at The Meat Company at Melrose Arch. They even brought her along to the strategy session at Riverside Spa. Her star had never shone brighter.
One drawback, of course, was that there was no Thando. She had no boyfriend at all – let alone a black one. She’d been to an all-girls high school, the only boy she’d ever been intimate with had been a snow-white, slightly pimply teenager from Stellenbosch. And frankly she was a bit afraid of black men.
But if she was nothing else, Anneline was ambitious, so here she was, cap in hand at the home of her only black friend.
She wanted one thing from Lesego and one thing only: a boyfriend named Thabo.
“Well I do know one Thabo. But he stays in Bryanston. He works at the Absa call centre. I’m not sure he’s single, though.”
“That doesn’t matter. I only need him for one night. We can break up after that. We’ve got the AdMag awards on Wednesday night. I need to show up with a black man named Thabo. It would help if he was stubborn too.”
“He’s not stubborn at all. He’s actually quite nice. I’d be onto him like a shot if I wasn’t already going out with Gift. D’you want me to introduce you?”
“No, I think I’ll just call the call centre.”
And thus it came to pass that Thabo Mnguni had a call patched through to him from a flirtatious white woman who wanted someone to explain how the bank charges on her Absa account were determined.
He gave her the usual breakdown and commiserated with her about the exorbitant rates she was paying. So “considerate” did she find his service, that she hoped he wouldn’t mind if she was so bold as to ask him out.
Thabo didn’t mind. In fact he was flattered. It was encouraging to know that he still had the old charisma. Who said the visually impaired couldn’t be sexy?
“We’re on for Wednesday night,” he said at last, and then by force of habit… “And thank you for banking with Absa.
“Oh no, it’s my pleasure,” said Anneline. “It’s my pleasure.”
And indeed it would be, for Thabo Mnguni was a lover without equal in all of Bryanston. Affirmative dating would never feel so good.

Unexpected detours on the winding trail of dreams

All Dennis wanted was to follow his dreams. But they wouldn’t let him follow his dreams.
He was an employees of Star Security and they simply wouldn’t let him go. And the problem was that he was too good at his job.
The South African security guards at the guard hut of the Via Arrezzio townhouse complex tended to fall asleep after 1am, waking only when impatient residents hooted at the gate. They were also lazy – they seldom left the hut when they were on shift, whereas Dennis was always willing to help old Mrs Friedman with her rubbish bags, or to rake the leaves in the parking lot.
They seemed to take their jobs for granted, where Dennis worked that security guard’s job like it was all that stood between him and oblivion, which is exactly what it was.
Perhaps they knew he didn’t have papers. Maybe the foreman had told them, but whenever it became time to roll the rubbish bins out onto the street for Wednesday morning’s garbage trucks, the other guard would become absorbed in his newspaper and leave Dennis to do it all himself.
And Dennis would bite his tongue and roll out the bins, all 20 of them. Because as long as he rolled out the bins and raked the leaves and stayed awake at his post, he would have a job. And as long as he was earning, he would be able to make the deposits into his mother’s account and the family would survive another month.
The residents of Via Arrezzio saw that the difference in workplace performance between Dennis and the other guards was chalk and cheese. So, pretty soon, the body corporate made him a proposal: why didn’t he resign from Star Security and come and work for the complex as their private security guard?
He and Miriam would get a living quarters behind the swimming pool area, he’d get paid extra for all his maintenance work and, best of all, the money the body corporate paid him would all go into his pocket and not to Star Security.
There was another thing. Dennis and Miriam would be getting married in December. And that would mean going home.
So, in late October, Dennis tendered his resignation in a handwritten note to Mr Reynecke of Star Security. Then they packed their belongings, locked their room in Alexandra and headed north.
Of course, the departure was not the problem. The question was whether they’d be able to come back.
Husband and wife returned to the Beitbridge border post on December 24. After four failed attempts to enter the country by road, they eventually managed to do so by foot.
They abandoned their bags in town and then paid R200 for a guide. They then hiked a few kilometres east down the Limpopo riverbank. Near an overhanging tree, they boarded a boat, in which they were ferried across. The guide then accompanied them to a hole in the fence and gave them directions to Nyundo.
The four-hour hike through the bush to Nyundo was awkward. Dennis and Miriam were city people, with no bush knowledge, and dressed more for a day at the shops than a trek through the dusty thornveld.
They arrived at the Nyundo taxi rank drenched in sweat, their clothes torn in places and famished beyond belief. A bowl of porridge was all they could afford before they handed over the last of their precious savings as taxi fare back to their old life – and the beginnings of Dennis’s new one.
But upon their return to Jo’burg, Dennis learnt that his dream was a while further off than he’d thought.
It had come to light that Via Arrezzio’s original contract with Star Security included an undertaking that they would not poach any of their employees. So if they hired Dennis after inducing him to leave Star, they could be sued.
So Mr Friedman of the body corporate informed Dennis, with regret, that there was no longer a security job for him at Via Arrezzio. They would be sticking with Star for now.
But Mr Reynecke of Star had told him that he would be able to employ him as a gardener without breaking their contract. He’d noticed that Dennis enjoyed raking the leaves and that…
The job didn’t pay much, Friedman conceded, and there’d be no living quarters by the pool, but it was better than being unemployed.
And so Dennis kicked off married life as a gardener.
Elusive things, dreams. Dennis had followed his for 1 000km. Twice. And still they eluded him.