Zoo City Part 36

"Get it through your head, Giovanni. It's over!" I may be overdoing it. The gin sings in my head. "There was never anything between us! And I'm sick of you following me!"

"Oh yeah?" Gio says, getting into it. "Well... what about the baby?"

"It wasn't yours," I spit, improvising.

"b.i.t.c.h!" He raises his hand to pretend-slap me, but his arm gets stuck before it can begin its descent, clamped firmly in a fist the size of Gio's head.

"Your evening's festivities have come to a premature end, my friend," the man attached to the fist says. "Why don't you run along?" Ronaldo twists Gio's wrist down, forcing him to buckle to follow the trajectory of his arm.

"Ow. It's not what you think," Gio squeaks. "Ow."

"That's what I keep telling you, you stalker freak!" I say, my voice hitching. "It's over. Leave me alone!"

"You heard her. You have everything from inside?" Ronaldo keeps twisting until Gio is on his knees. Gio nods.

"Then have a lovely evening, sir," says Ronaldo, releasing his wrist. Gio scrambles to his feet. "Don't let me see you back here for a while."

"Jesus." Gio gives me a look so filthy it would make a sewer blush. "I hope you're f.u.c.king happy." He stalks away down the block, flexing his wrist and swearing under his breath.

"Thank you. You won't believe"

"And you." He takes my arm firmly and speaks low: "I don't want to see you back here for a while either. I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but I'm not into it."

"Okay, I'm sorry..." I fumble, decide to come clean. "I was trying to get your attention. I know you helped Song Radebe and"

"And look where it got me," he interrupts, taking off his shades, leaning close so I can get the full picture. Someone beat him ugly. His face is bruised, his right eye is a watering slit in a purple sack. There are cigarette burns on the inside of his wrist where he is gripping my arm. Perhaps the splinted fingers aren"t boxing damage after all.

"I need to know where she is."

"I didn't tell them," he says, frogmarching me to the corner. "Why would I tell you?"

"Because I'm trying to help her."

"I don't know that. Maybe you you don't know that." don't know that."

"At least tell me who they they are." are."

"I'm so sick of you f.u.c.king zoos."

"Wait, does that mean it was the Marabou? The Maltese?"

"It means, don't come back." He shoves me towards the corner so hard that my ankle twists and my heel snaps off. He turns and heads back towards the doors with the light and ba.s.s spilling from inside, leaving me standing under the streetlight with less shoe than I arrived with. Dignity, too.

Sloth opens his mouth to sigh in an I-told-you-so way. "Don't even think about it," I say, popping a breath mint to cover the gin.

"We can't keep doing this," Benoit says, lifting my arm from the sweaty rumple of sheets. He turns over my hand and touches his mouth to my fingertips each in turn, the lightest of kisses.

"What, stating the obvious? What difference does one more time make to your wife? She'll have you for the rest of your life. Or until you get divorced over something incidental, like squeezing the toothpaste from the top of the tube. Or, you know, being total strangers to each other after five years."

"It makes a difference to me."

"Well, you'll have you for the rest of your life, too." I roll over to straddle him. "So, can you live with it?"

"Get off, wench."

"You don't mean that." I dip down to kiss him, leaning on his chest and the smooth dead scar tissue that doesn't feel anything.

"Don't I deserve some recovery time?" he says, pulling at my wrists as if he's going to wrestle me off. But he doesn't have any such intention.

"I'll show you what you deserve," I say, dipping lower.

I sit on the edge of the bed afterwards, my foot folded under me and fight with the cheap plastic lighter I stole from Ronaldo, which clicks like the luckiest game of Russian roulette ever. "Do you know where you're going?"

"Burundi. They're in a camp called Bwagiriza in the east, in Ruyigi. Safe from the fighting, they say. They're consolidating, moving all the people to one place. It's better."

"But still not exactly a holiday resort."

"They had to close the supertubes, it's true." He smiles, but it's as fake as the designer labels at Bruma Lake.

"Candyfloss machine broke down. The balloons have drifted away. The rebels took all the stuffed fluffy toys when they left. Have you spoken to her?"

"There's only one satellite phone."

"So you don't actually know it's them." I get a spark, but it doesn't last long enough for the cigarette to catch. Dammit. Flick-flick.

"The UN aid worker scanned a copy of her carte d'ident.i.te carte d'ident.i.te."

"Could be stolen. a.s.sumed ident.i.ty. They do genetic testing in the UK refugee centres now to make sure you're actually from wherever you say you are. Have you asked for a DNA match to your actual wife? Do they have her dental records?" Flick. Flick.

"This isn't easy for me either," he says.

"Oh p.i.s.s off, Benoit," I say, flick-flick-flicking the

lighter.

"I'm glad you've found someone else."

"That spying pigdog D'Nice can p.i.s.s off too." Flick. Flick. Flick.

"It's good, Zinzi, it's what you need."

I toss the G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.king useless piece of f.u.c.king s.h.i.t lighter against the f.u.c.king wall. And instantly regret it. Now I'll have to go down the f.u.c.king stairs and buy another f.u.c.king lighter at the f.u.c.king spaza, which will probably be f.u.c.king closed at this time of the f.u.c.king night. I prowl over to the wall and pick up the lighter. The little plastic nib has broken off. It's well and truly f.u.c.ked.

"Whatever is or isn't between me and Giovanni you don't have a say in my life anymore, Benoit."

"I didn't know I ever did." He looks at me like I'm I'm the bad guy. "Do you want to see photographs of them?" the bad guy. "Do you want to see photographs of them?"

"Why would I want to see photographs of the people you're leaving me for?"

"Because I'd like to show you."

"Oh for G.o.d's sake. Fine."