Moxyland

Kendra

Jonathan prises apart the carcass of another prawn, a real one, with curled scratches of legs, not the gen-mod easy-peels – which makes it expensive. So expensive, there are conspicuous intimidating blanks on the menu where prices would normally appear. It’s a species removed from the café fare and readymeals I’m used to, or even the upmarket where Jonathan has taken me before – and a whole genus away from my cooking. But I’m secretly disappointed, and somehow that’s more satisfying than if it had lived up to my expectations.

Despite it being my first time, despite the ultraglam pink Black Coffee dress Jonathan sent over by courier to the house this afternoon, and the industria minimalism of the décor, fit for any of the style mags with its bare-stripped walls and sharp white scatterlights like an interrogation room, it’s not what I’d imagined. Even Naledi Nxumalo, sitting at a table opposite us, where she’s pointedly not talking to the rugby captain whose name eludes me, is strangely inadequate in person, like she’s a watercolour version of the woman in the soap, somehow diluted by the assertions of the purposely dilapidated interior.

The waiter greets Jonathan by name, which tells me he’s a regular. I’m still feeling frayed and stunned from the newscasts and Toby’s extra report, but I ask anyway, ‘Why haven’t you ever brought me here before?’

‘Why haven’t you, sweetheart?’ He’s intent on his dismemberment, deftly cracking the carapace open and scraping out the meat.

‘I couldn’t even get into this place as a waitress. I don’t think I could afford the breadsticks.’

‘I didn’t want to spoil you.’ His oversize fingers scrabble in the remains. ‘But you know,’ he pecks at his mouth with the linen napkin, ‘now that you’re famous, I expect you to keep me in the manner to which I’m accustomed.’

‘So I get to keep you?’ This comes out more clingy than I intended, but Jonathan takes it in his stride.

‘It’s a little-known fact that you can determine the appropriate time to introduce philosophy into the conversation by using the number of glasses of wine already imbibed as a measurement. And Kendra, my love, we are still at least three glasses shy of being anywhere near that mark. Not least because you are not drinking. Or not anything alcoholic, at least.’

‘I think you’re covering for both of us.’

‘I don’t think I have ever been in a situation where I’ve been forced to pay corkage on a soft drink. We may never be able to return here. So take it all in! While you can.’

‘You know I’ll pay for it. Don’t be patronising.’ If I sound defensive, it’s because I am. Even if the maitre d’ hadn’t handled it with excruciating courtesy that was more telling than a smirk or arched eyebrow.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Not when you already have a patron encouraging your dreadful habit.’

I raise my glass in mock salute and take a long slow sip of Ghost to irritate him. ‘At least it’s not heroin.’

‘I don’t know. I believe heroin can be very stimulating, creatively. And very credible with that whole artist culture thing. You know, we need to cash in on your cachet. We can only coast so far on the scandal. Maybe a lesbian affair with Nkosi, in the wake of her devastation.’

‘You’re a mean drunk. You should stop. ’

‘Someone has to. Or would you rather I switched to your beverage of choice?’ He leans across and takes my glass. ‘Does it have any effect on us mortals?’

‘No. It’s just a soft drink. It’s how it interacts with the nano. Didn’t Andile tell you?’

I don’t know why I entertained the concept for one instant that there was something I could accomplish on my own. I’m furious for not guessing this was Jonathan’s doing from the start, for not recognising the mark of his blunt fingers.

Of course he was the one who recommended me to Andile, old colleagues from when he used to shoot the Nokia Fash Week catalogues. It could just as easily have been any other young up-and-coming. I’ve tried to explain how he’s undermined me, but Jonathan just laughs and trudges out hackneyed clichés about how it’s who you know.

‘Or,’ I snap, ‘who you’re sleeping with.’ Not that we’ve slept together since I had the procedure done.

He tells me I’m too tense, and I am. The articles are freaking me out, but this is something I can’t forgive him, because, dammit, this was supposed to be mine.

He takes a sip. ‘Ugh. That’s nasty. The limevanilla’s quite nice, but the aftertaste. It’s so chemical.’ He thrusts it back at me. ‘I suppose you’re right, though. The lesbian affair is very passé. Right up there with the heroin thing, and you’re a new breed. My little art star.’ He leans over the table to kiss me, awkward.

‘You mean, your meal-ticket.’

‘Same thing. So, how are we going to build on your first success? What’s next? You said something about street kids and their pitiful possessions? Oh, Kendra. Don’t cry.’ He is more impatient than sympathetic.

‘I’m not crying,’ but denying it only makes my face slip more.

‘You’re being way too sensitive. You shouldn’t take it personally.’

‘It’s my work, Jonathan.’ I’m desperately aware of people in the restaurant looking. Naledi Nxumalo leans in to the rugby player with the exact gossipy gleam in her eyes that’s her trademark in Bright City.

‘And your work is very, very good, baby.’

‘I feel hung out in limbo. I want to sledgehammer my cameras. I want to set the film stock alight.’

‘Not a bad idea for a performance piece. Okay, I’m sorry. Don’t look like that. I’m sorry.’

‘I wish you would take me seriously.’

‘Kendra,’ he says, taking my hands across the table. ‘This is the best thing that could have happened to you, career-wise. You couldn’t have planned it.’

There is something in his voice, a wink, a pride that tips me off.

And I realise something that’s been simmering in the back of my brain since I first saw the newscasts.

‘The security footage had audio.’

Jonathan grins. ‘Don’t be so naïve, my darling, of course it did. We had it specially installed.’

I drop my fork with a clatter and shove the chair back from the table so that Naledi Nxumalo and the rugby captain and half a dozen others perk up with interest.

‘Don’t be so dramatic.’ Why is it that half of what he says to me always starts with ‘Don’t’?

‘Come on Kendra, there aren’t even any press here. It’s a wasted effort. Sit down, please.’ And despite my best intentions to defy him, I do.

‘You’re a rational animal, Kendra. You know what this means for you as an artist.’

In my head, I am fashioning scathing putdowns, like I wouldn’t expect someone who never graduated from photographing fashion shoots – even if it is for the likes of Vanity Fair – to be capable of comprehending artistic integrity, but somehow these don’t make it out of my mouth. Because I am afraid. That he’s right. That without him, I am a nonentity. Girl in limbo. Ghost girl.

Jonathan orders me another one, unasked for, which I know the waiter will have to run down to the corner café to get, and I realise this is the end of something. Maybe not limbo so much as the falling space, like the moment after you’ve thrown yourself backwards off the boat, your hand on your regulator to stop it jerking free, but before you hit the water. Poised between.

Tomorrow I will spend the day apartment hunting. I will find a place to stay, no matter how much of a hovel, that is mine. As in, nothing to do with Jonathan. In the evening, I will take the underway down to Replica. Maybe hook up with Damian and Vix. Make new friends. I still have Toby’s comp.

That e-vite suddenly feels like a passport to somewhere other than here. And maybe tomorrow, everything will be different.