Broken Monsters. Lauren Beukes

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СКАЧАТЬ he checks the stove, so he can make a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, it’s electric – probably came installed with the house. Worth fifty bucks if he can disconnect it and figure a way to cart it to the junk store. He’s already cataloging in his head.

      But a man’s got to have his caffeine fix, so he spoons in a mouthful of instant coffee mixed with brown sugar and washes it down with water. The faucet sputters and chugs ominously. The city’ll have turned that off too. House like this with three kids probably has a good-size cylinder, though, enough for him to have a wash and a shave and still be able to flush the toilet after he’s done the necessary. You got to live on the streets to appreciate the sheer decadence of that white porcelain flushing commode.

      He was a landlord once upon a time, when he was thirteen and the most together of all the dopeheads. He moved into a deserted building, pulled down the boards, put up curtains, cut the grass, paid a nice Chinese lady a cut to come by once a week to take in the rent money, ’cos who was going to give it to a kid? He got an old electrician to teach him the basics of stealing power from the circuit box without frying himself like an egg, and every time the neighbors went out, they’d fill buckets with water from the garden hose. It worked fine as long as his tenants kept up appearances, looked after the place, but you can’t trust a bunch of dopeheads not to fuck up a good thing. Eventually, they’d started partying on the front lawn, and the neighbors caught on and called the cops, and they’d had to abandon their abandominium.

      He was going to start up someplace else, but then his momma got herself killed, bled to death in his arms, and he got taken off the streets by the justice system. Ten years straight, and then on and off. Prison’s like booze, it’s a tough habit to break. He used to drown the memories with whatever he could get his hands on, which would get him in trouble all over again. Now he’s learned to block it out in his head, like windows boarded up with plywood.

      TK digs in the kitchen cupboards until he finds a bunch of black plastic trash bags, and then heads upstairs to go through every room with care. They’ve packed in a rush, leaving clothes on hangers, others tossed on the floor. He folds everything up and puts it in the bags. A pile for him, one to send to Florrie, leftovers for Ramón to pick through, and the rest they’ll take down to the church.

      He tries on a checked flannel shirt, but the arms are too short. Same with the suit jacket. That’s the trouble with being a big guy. But the red pair of kicks he finds in a box at the back of the closet fit him just fine. Nothing wrong with them either, practically brand-new, apart from the black oil smear over the right toe. He tucks them under his arm and piles up the old broken toys and baby wipes, a half-full tub of nappy-rash cream (everything’s half-full when you’re in asset reclamation), and dumps it in a bag.

      All he needs is to strike it lucky. Find the one house with a suitcase full of money. He could probably buy this place off the bank for what, ten large? Maybe less in this neighborhood. Fix it up, move his sister in, fill it up with his friends, legitimate this time.

      They say possessions tie you down, but maybe not tightly enough, if you look at this town. The sum total of his stuff fits into a shoe box. Photos, a map of Africa, a pair of reading glasses, his AA medals, and an old sixty-minute cassette tape with his family talking on it, made before his little brother died. Cassettes wear out eventually. He knows he should get it digitized. He knows a bit about computers, he’s a self-taught man, but Reverend Alan’s promised to send him on a real course, and that’s the first thing he’s gonna ask them to show him how to do. Photographs, voices – those things are what you pull close when you’re missing connections to people, not fancy sneakers and big-screen TVs.

      The sudden hammering on the door downstairs nearly makes him crap his pants, and he hasn’t even had a chance to use the facilities yet. Maybe the family had a change of heart and called the cops on him. The cops are not kind to stray dogs, even loner ones with more bark than bite.

      He could probably make out the back. He’s already calculating which bags are worth taking with him when he hears Ramón’s voice over the knocking: ‘Yo, let a brother in, it’s cold out!’

      He opens the door on his friend, who looks especially squirrelly today, hunched over a battered shopping cart, glancing up and down the street. His face transforms from skittish mistrust to a huge grin when he sees TK, and he waves the free Tracker phone Obama gives away to people like them so they can apply for jobs. Good for making plans to raid a house too, although Ramón insists on sending elaborately neutral texts in case it does what it says on the box, and the government is tracking them.

      ‘Hey, Papi, got your message. Took me a little while to find a cart. Damn Whole Foods chains ’em up.’

      ‘That’s the problem with gentrification right there, brother. The power’s out, but I found some lunch meat and cheese in the icebox if you want a bite.’

      Ramón peers into the interior of the house, fiddling with the rosary beads he keeps in his pocket. His eyes dart around, finally settling on TK and the red Chuck Taylors under his arm. They’re hard to miss. ‘Nice shoes,’ he says.

      ‘I think they’re my color. It brings out my eyes.’

      Ramón looks confused.

      ‘They’re bloodshot,’ TK explains.

      ‘Right.’ He snorts out a laugh, but the envy leaks through anyway.

      ‘You know I’d give you the shirt off my back, Ramón,’ TK tries again, ‘but the shoes on my feet …’

      ‘Probably wouldn’t fit me anyhow.’ He shuffles on the step. Which only emphasizes his soles flapping as they pull away from the bottoms of his black lace-ups.

      TK sighs. Sucker. ‘I never did like red shoes.’ Which is not true, but hell, Ramón’s face brightens like a lightbulb turned on inside it. ‘Now get your ass inside already. You’re letting all the cold in,’ he says, helping his friend wrangle the shopping cart up the porch stairs.

       The Detective’s Daughter

      Layla is late for her Sunday rehearsal. Blame her mother, shaking her awake at four in the morning because she has to go out to a scene and ‘don’t forget the code to the gun safe, beanie, just-in-case’. When she had two parents working different shifts, there was always someone home, and she didn’t need a just-in-case, and there was always someone to drive her to where she needed to be, like rehearsals on a Sunday, because she has a scene of her own to get to, thanks Mom. Instead she has to wait for an hour at the bus stop, bundled up against the cold and doodling in her notebook, resisting the temptation to scribble on the bench like so many others before her. She plans to leave her mark on the world in other ways.

      Doing extramurals is supposed to help bring Layla out of her shell. Like she doesn’t know it’s cheap babysitting so her mom doesn’t have to feel guilty all the time. But she should feel guilty. It’s her fault they moved downtown after the divorce, her fault all Layla’s real friends live in Pleasant Ridge, which is only on the other side of Eight Mile, but might as well be a world away when you don’t have a car.

      She shoves through the double doors of the Masque Theater School and gallops up two flights of stairs to the main stage area. She’s relieved to hear from the chanting – all echoey and strange in the stairwell – that they’re still doing warm-up exercises. She dumps her bag by the door and looks for Cas – not hard in a room full of black kids. She slips in beside her, and falls in with the chorus of tongue-twisting vowel sounds that rise and fall. СКАЧАТЬ