Moxyland

Tendeka

‘So what are you gonna do with all your worldly after you’re gone? Donate it to the street kids? Auction it off? Martyr relics get top price on eBay.’ Toby bounces beside me, facing backwards on the street, so that he nearly crashes into a flower-seller struggling with two plastic buckets bristling with bouquets.

‘I’m dying,’ I tell the flower-seller, who is cursing at Toby, by way of apology. She recoils behind her buckets and the flowers. I can’t tell what they are. The colours blur when I try to focus. ‘No sir, I don’t got no flowers for that!’

‘Too dramatic,’ Toby muses. ‘Cliché. Flowers. Bad. No. I thought you planned all this meticulously. You can’t go whimsical all of a sudden. And, besides, you’re frightening the lady.’

‘She should be frightened. We all should be. Can your friend hook us up? Lerato?’

‘To what?’

‘Remote link-up. So we can transmit your coat’s cameras to the billboards? The city is going to bear witness.’

He looks uncomfortable. ‘Yeah, about that.’

‘You can back out. I don’t mind. Go running to an immunity centre, get your life-saving shot and your arrest warrant all in one, let them fuck you, let them fuck all of us. Just leave me with the coat.’

‘Jesus, all right. Don’t get so worked up.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say, ignoring the smear of bright red on the back of my hand when I wipe my mouth. ‘You still don’t believe it, do you? We’re dying, Toby. Both of us.’

‘See, here’s the thing. I don’t feel like I’m dying, as a matter of fact, I… Jesus motherfuck.’ He catches me as I list forward, bracing me against his chest and his shoulder, laughing. I hadn’t realised how skinny he is.

‘This shit does not agree with you, Tendeka.’

‘It’s my fucking asthma. Accelerating the virus. Fuck, it’s the steroids in my meds. I’m immuno-compromised.’

‘Didn’t Che Guevara have asthma?’ chirps Toby. ‘What is it with you revolutionaries and lung issues?’

‘I can’t be the only one. What about the kids who were there? Old people? This is happening way too fucking fast. Bastards. Fucking bastards. They didn’t think it through.’

‘Hate to blow your big momentous revelatory, but whatever it is, you’re going to have to get to a hospital.’

‘No.’

‘Okay, well, then we have to get away from here. People are staring.’

‘I want them to. They should see.’

‘But you don’t want the cops to come ruin all your fun, right? You don’t want to premature, not on your martyrdom. Trust me. Come on.’ He slips in under my arm and we slope down the street.

‘I’m fucking dying!’ I scream at two young men, about to step into Steers. ‘Pay attention. Open your eyes!’

‘And I have fucking leprosy!’ Toby shouts. ‘And scabies!’

‘Stop it! This is real. Stop fucking around for once in your goddamn life.’

‘Hey, Ten, can you walk on your own?’

He shrugs me half-off, leaves me unbalanced for long enough to admit that I can’t.

‘Thought so. C’mon. Let’s find a locale appropriate to making your last stand.’

I’m forced to sling my arm over his shoulders and stagger on.