LITMIR.BIZ

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umbrellas. Another put bunches of orange and pink silk tiger lilies into the rope fence that cordoned off the eatery from the street. Kitty shivered as she walked by a table piled with vintage summer dresses, shoes and clutch bags. The stall proprietor was busy with a customer and didn’t notice her, a relief; she had escaped another pair of sorrowful eyes telling her how awful the situation was.

      CLINK-SUCK-MMMM. “That’s so good.”

      It distressed Kitty to see a pair of lovers sharing a malva pudding with custard in the Africa Image café’s outside enclosure: her parents used to do that, and she realised they never would again. Umojah’s music floated from the café with striped walls (Sky No.5, Evening Pink; Edible Green No.6, Lime Skins; and Sun No.4, Sunset Orange), multi-printed Congolese table cloths and Zambia Lili coffee percolating. Jolly coloured strings of plastic bottle tops hung like bead curtains around the enclosure and fluttered in spasmodic breaths from the wind known as the Cape Doctor. The bright café with its flamingo caged in papier mâché was unbearably happy for Kitty, whose mood teetered between disbelief and devastation.

      At the antiquarian book stall outside Bukhara, the Indian restaurant, she made the mistake of stopping to look, as was her usual habit, at the leather-bound poetry books with gilt-panelled spines and foxed endpapers. Browsing through these old books had been one of Felix’s cherished pastimes.

      “Poor Elsa,” said the white mama tending the stall. She looked like Joe Blue’s art teacher at the University of Cape Town and was dressed in a sleeveless chiffon ball gown which showed her arms, plump enough to jiggle. The mama bustled between her table and that of the neighbouring silver-and-linen seller, and came to give Kitty a hug. “Poor, Kitty, I’m so sorry. It’s horrible. I just don’t understand. How did it happen?”

      Instead of answering the question, Kitty held up her camcorder, superzoomed to the dried lipstick flesh of that woman’s mouth, and said: “Ask me again. I’m making a documentary called How Horrible.”

      The manager at Café Mozart spotted Kitty too. She came running over and would have hugged Kitty if the camera hadn’t got in the way. “You’ll be okay, Kitty.” The manager at Café Mozart in the comic looked a lot like the real manager at Joe Blue’s Café Mozart where he often went to play cards with his patron, Ellis, his brother Ebenezer and his girlfriend. “Shame, Kitty,” the manager of Café Mozart said. “Tell me, what happened?”

      Didn’t they realise that the last thing Kitty felt like doing was talk about it? People had been phoning and they all asked the same questions. At first she had wanted to talk about it to process what she couldn’t believe, but now her brain did not want to go through it all again. “Mrs Gumede was asking about it too.”

      The manager of Café Mozart tried to look over the lens and at Kitty, but Kitty didn’t want to face her and held the camera higher, so the manager said on the screen: “Your dad was a prince of a man. Don’t you worry what that gossip with her head in the hats says.”

      The bookstall mama nodded. “She’s a snoop, that woman. For five years Felix bought books from me and I know he was a good man.”

      Kitty supposed that by now everyone at the market must know the circumstances of Felix’s death, no doubt due to Mrs Gumede’s big mouth. Floors and walls were thin in their Victorian apartment block. That’s why Kitty knew quite a bit about her dad’s business, and that’s why at night they used to fall asleep to the sound of reggae on the left and belly-dancing music on the right, and the smells of shish kebab and nan bread cooking in the restaurant in the next block. Mrs Gumede must have overheard the discussion with Detective Dupeer. On more than one occasion, Felix had remarked that he never conducted meetings at the Agency Blue office because he’d once caught Mrs Gumede eavesdropping.

      “Here,” said the bookstall mama. She brought out a bag of chocolate brownies. “I made them to cheer you up.”

      Kitty lowered the camera. “That was very sweet. Thanks.”

      Kitty moved on from the bookseller. She turned left into Burg Street and walked, staring down at the camera’s screen, towards Greenmarket Square. In better times she’d relished strolling around the cobblestoned square between the drum-sellers and she’d always enjoyed the smells of the place too. But that day they were cloying and made her queasy: the market’s teak menagerie of carved elephants, rhinos, giraffes, leopards and hippos, the stink of Nugget – the boot polish used to shine them up – and the strawy reek of the appendages around worm-eaten tribal masks, musty kente cloth, frangipani incense and then samoosas and hotdogs with cheap ketchup and oily bunny-chow-filling – onions and stockfish and curry – being fried over a Cadac stove at a makeshift take-away stand. That day, the sheer life of it all was suffocating.

      Joe Blue drew Kitty gasping in a cloud of wafting scents and sadness as she looked up at the Central Methodist Church. He made its High Victorian arches and spires especially jagged, almost claw-like and capable of slashing open the clouds.

      CLIP-CLOP-CLIP-CLOP. Two mounted police officers trotted past her on chestnut horses. As she walked towards Shortmarket Street, the owner of the Pannekoek Paleis pancake box waved to catch her attention, but Kitty was consumed with her cowboy boots moving over the old stones, striding through the frames of How Horrible. The icing-sugar smell of the Pannekoek Paleis stuck in Kitty’s throat and she thought she might be sick.

      Kitty forced her way through stall after stall, not daring to look up at anyone. Outside the Africa Wax and Locks hairdressing salon she climbed into a minibus taxi called Summer Lovin with a Green Point destination sign in its window. Two other men got into the taxi and when they’d paid, the driver revved Summer’s engine and pulled away.

      CHUK VRRRRRRMMM! Joe filled a frame with the taxi’s sounds.

      PAARP PAARP! SKREEE.

      ZOOOM!

      VRRRRMMM! Without indicating, the driver veered across a lane of traffic. TOOT! TOOT! SCREETCH! He stopped beneath a no-stopping sign. “There you go, beautiful.”

      “Cool.” Kitty got out and walked up the steep and chilly road towards the awnings of La Petite Tarte coloured a notable shade of Sky No.7, Deep Blue Of Night. Unseasonable December rain seemed imminent. Through the glass front door she saw three familiar faces: the AKs, the members of the African Kids’ Comic Club, were sitting at the restaurant’s alcove table with velvet cushions and French toile wall-cladding behind them. Other walls were covered in paintings and photographs of dancers and families and historic architecture. Kitty turned off her camera. The AKs would not tell Kitty how sorry they were or ask for details about how it all happened.

      The owner of the establishment was pulling a tray of warm apple tartlets from the oven. Above her were shelves of tea caddies; candles flickered in a white metal chandelier.

      Inside the place smelled of double cappuccinos, chocolate spread, marzipan, spices and the polished parquet floor. Billie Holiday was crooning about moons that “ain’t got no time for blueing”.

      “Allo, Kitty,” said the owner, a one-time Paris catwalk model, who wore a heart on her sleeve. In the middle of the heart Joe Blue wrote a name: Ebenezer. His brother Ebenezer was smitten with the real owner of the real patisserie.

      “Mwah, mwah!” She blew Kitty many kisses as she arranged her tarts on a cooling tray. “Oh, la, la, Kitty. Your boots are beautiful! So sexy, eh!”

      “Over here,” called Angelique Mashamba, Angel for short, self-proclaimed leader of the AKCC.

      Angel. Joe Blue thought again of that kid sister, gone from his life before she even came into his life; he wondered what she’d be like: what would be her idea of perfect happiness, what would be her favourite food, her favourite film, her favourite journey, what living person would she most admire. One thing was sure, she’d be a beauty, no matter what she looked like, and of course, she’d be a graphic novel addict.

      As usual, Angel had raided her mother’s safe and wardrobe. Angel’s gold bracelets,

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