Zoo City - By Lauren Beukes Page 0,68

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 fucking 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 don't know that."

"At least tell me who they are."

"I'm so sick of you fucking 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 bass 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.

22.

"We can't keep doing this," Benoît 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'identité."

"Could be stolen. Assumed identity. 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 piss off, Benoît," I say, flick-flick-flicking the

lighter.

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

"That spying pigdog D'Nice can piss off too." Flick. Flick. Flick.

"It's good, Zinzi, it's