Dr Lionel Banda still received emails and texts and WhatsApps, but fewer and fewer as time went by – the shadows he had cast in the world were slowly receding. Joseph scanned through the latest messages and was in the middle of deleting invitations from Nigerians to take their money and from Russians to suck their nipples when a text bubbled up from ‘The Doctor’. It read: Pos CXCR4 mut in #11! That abbreviation looked vaguely familiar.
Joseph looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember where he had seen it, and that’s when his eye caught a movement across the room. A hand had vanished into someone’s pocket. It reappeared again but he couldn’t see to whom it was attached. It was small and light-skinned – it gleamed under the strobe lights – and for a moment, Joseph watched it dart like a silver fish in the murky abyss of the bar. Then he pushed off the wall and moved across the room, navigating around the dancing students, tracking the thieving hand.
When he got near enough, he grabbed the wrist above it. The girl turned with surprise, then smiled and began to dance with him, her wrist still in his grip. She was tall and thin but her hips were wide, built to carry a bum. Joseph was neither a good nor a willing dancer but the look in her eye plucked something in him, made it vibrate. He swayed side to side. She drew so close that he could see her shimmery lipstick and smell her scent, a dark bitter nut inside the fruit of her deodorant.
He felt his shirt catch. She was tugging at it, trying to show him something. She pointed across the bar to two guys dancing on either side of a girl with long gold and purple plaits, her hips spinning like a centrifuge. The guys had raised their arms over her with the Digit-All Beads in their fingers switched on to make a spotlight. Everyone was watching them, more for the technological novelty than the dance performance. The thief grinned at him, nodding her head to the music.
‘I’ve never seen one of those Bead thingies in real life,’ she called out, still bouncing her bum. She spun and dropped it, then pulled it back up, dragging it just inches from his crotch. She smirked over her shoulder.
‘I’m Lila,’ she shouted. Her breath smelled like freshly baked pound cake.
He bent slightly and spoke in her ear. ‘You’re a thief.’
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders to the beat. Then she pranced towards the exit, a finger beckoning him to follow. Once they were in the car park out front, she turned to him.
‘Smoke?’ she asked, her voice like velvet stroked the wrong direction.
‘Nah,’ he said.
There were four butahs leaning against the outside wall, wearing those new MC Hammer-style sweatpants – tight at the calves, loose at the thighs. She begged a cigarette off one of the guys, who lit it for her. She walked back to Joseph, fully aware of the smokers’ eyes on her ass. Under the street lamp, Joseph saw that her tight black t-shirt had a white blur in the centre – an image of fogged glass with two words finger-scrawled in it: MANIC PIXIES. Under it was a unicorn with a dagger for a horn.
‘It’s an Iranian punk band.’
‘Ah,’ he raised an eyebrow and glanced away.
‘You don’t like?’ She stretched it down and away so she could peer at it. ‘It’s salaula.’
‘Salaula? You know that word?’
‘Ah-ah, ndine mu Zambia, iwe.’
He laughed. Her Nyanja wasn’t bad. ‘You were born here?’
‘Born and bred, exay.’
‘But your parents are what?’
‘Guess.’ She spoked her fingers up into her hair – long, purpleblack, shaved on one side.
‘I give up,’ he said then tried anyway: ‘Ethiopian?’
‘You’re mixed too, ya? Green eyes and that.’
‘We say coloured here, but yes. Are you sure you’re from Lusaka?’
‘What kind of mutt are you?’ She blew smoke from the side of her mouth like Popeye.
‘Muntu-muzungu. I’m not exactly sure what proportion. You?’
‘Muzungu-mwenye. Exactly half,’ she said. ‘My mum’s Italian.’
‘So basically muzungu,’ he said.
She stepped back and scanned him. He felt spotty and sickly.
‘With a Zambian passport, what’s the frikkin difference, right?’ She smiled and he felt forgiven. She gathered her hair, twisted it into a bun, and pulled two pens from her jeans pocket to pin it up.
‘Wait. You were stealing pens in there?’
‘Ya,’ she laughed. Her teeth were insanely white, like an actress. ‘You down with OPP?’