LITMIR.BIZ

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wasn’t surprised to see fellow Comic Club member Grace Vuma swathed in her black, floor-length riding coat in the unusually chilly summer weather. Grace was the eldest; she’d recently celebrated her eighteenth birthday, and started a degree in Media Studies at the University of Cape Town. It was the same degree Kitty planned to do, but unlike Kitty, who wanted to make documentaries, Grace wanted to write films with adventure, love, horror and drama; all the things that a young woman craves, films with stories that would make a person happy and sad at the same time, tales into which to escape.

      In a page-high, skinny block outlined with bones and spines, and entitled “Back Story”, Joe wrote about how Grace planned to write a film based on the true life story of an Irish girl pirate called Grace O’Malley who was brave and beautiful and mysterious, independent and witty: an iconoclast. Grace had come from a dysfunctional home – her father was richer than Croesus and her mother, a TV producer, spent most nights snorting coke at parties in Joburg. Grace preferred to live in their apartment in Cape Town.

      As Kitty approached the table, Grace lit a cigarette. The café owner wagged her finger at Grace. After kissing Kitty hello and rolling her eyes at the copy of Twilight sticking out of Kitty’s bag, Grace slunk outside and relit her cigarette. Even in the cool weather, the little café’s glass doors were folded back, so Grace wasn’t cut off from the conversation.

      “For goodness’ sake, Grace,” Tallulah Ruby called to the eighteen-year-old glamour-puss loitering with the cigarette at the café’s roadside tables. “You’re going to get cancer.” The two puppies nestling in Tallulah’s lap growled in agreement.

      “Kid, you sound like my grandmother. She’s always saying that.”

      “Well then, stop smoking.” Vegas and Sinatra agreed again.

      “There’s no point in living, kid, if you can’t have fun.” Grace had heard that often enough; it was her mother’s anthem. Grace’s mom phoned her often, but Grace couldn’t remember when last she’d actually seen her.

      “Great boots,” said Angel to Kitty as they kissed each other on both cheeks.

      Until Grace had moved on to university, the four girls of AKCC had all attended the same school in Cape Town. They were all comic-lovers and aficionados of the graphic novel.

      “Say hello to my new puppies,” Tallulah said, tickling Vegas and Sinatra under their chins. “Aren’t they sweetie-pies?”

      “I’m in love,” said Angel, not about the dogs though: she was inspecting a feature on the stars of Twilight in the latest edition of Teen Vogue.

      Grace rolled her eyes again and sucked on her cigarette. “What’s with all this Twilight, huh? You girls are supposed to be cool; how come you like it so much? They’re not even proper vampires. If you’re going to be into vampires and not zombies – who are obviously a kazillion times cooler – at the very least read True Blood … But frankly vampires suck, unless they’re with Rosario, or …”

      The others ignored Grace’s rant; it was no good trying to win her over to Twilight, and she could never in a zillion years convince them of the direness of vampires in general and that Edward fellow in particular.

      Grace muttered on: “Ja, or that chick from Let the Right One In – now there’s a vampire worth her teeth.”

      “Mother’s giving me the Twilight graphic novel for Christmas,” Angel said, knowing this would irk Grace.

      “Blegh! That thing doesn’t even deserve to be called a graphic novel. It’s a travesty – the illustrator’s too damn lazy to even draw grass, just photoshops in some real grass.”

      “What sort of dogs are they?” Kitty rubbed one pup’s nose.

      “Pavement specials.” Tallulah smiled up at Kitty from under her suede peak cap. “The little girl has rickets, but I’ll get her right.”

      “Can I hold one?” Kitty gathered up a caramel-and-white puppy with the square face of a Boxer and the body of a Bull Mastiff.

      Trying not to be weird about Kitty’s “situation”, trying to pretend like things were the same as before, Angel and Tallulah continued a conversation they’d been having about age. It was prompted by Grace’s most recent heartbreak: a handsome, arrogant, thirty-something director friend of her mother’s who’d told her when she confessed her love for him via SMS with several x’s worth of kisses that she was a cute kid, but too young for his taste.

      “I can’t believe how old my mother is,” Tallulah said. “She always hides her age, but I saw her passport today. She’s ancient.”

      Barely listening, Kitty held Vegas close to her chest and kissed the puppy on her head. She smelled of Johnson’s No More Tears shampoo.

      “Do you know that she’ll be forty-nine next year?” Tallulah said, amazed a person could live to be that old. She ruffled Sinatra’s ears.

      “Crabby old loser.” Grace muttered, thinking of the heartless, gorgeous, sexy director again. One last time, she imagined kissing him, then dropped her cigarette in an abandoned cappuccino cup and came inside.

      “Please,” Angel said. “Your mom’s a spring chicken. Look at Madonna – she’s about a hundred and she’s still famous.”

      Grace snorted. “Famous-schmamous. Her music’s a drag. I’ve been listening to some super cool Indie stuff lately.” She sat down and dished out a choice selection of manga comics – First Girl, Aflame Inferno, Full Metal Alchemist and Rosario+Vampire from her exhaustive stash.

      She said, “Kids, we have to celebrate New Year in style this year. I think we should splurge: hire a limo, go clubbing or eat king crabs and drink champagne. Or maybe do one of those sunset cruises …”

      Evidently, Sinatra agreed; he woofed and licked Tallulah’s face.

      A petite waitress approached the kids with her notepad. “What can I get you ladies?”

      “The usual for all,” Angel said.

      “No, not for me.” Kitty still felt nauseous. She gave Vegas one last kiss on the head and returned the pup to Tallulah’s lap. “I can’t eat a chocolate croissa—”

      “Ignore her,” Grace told the waitress. “Kitty, always remember what the narrator said in X-Files#7: ‘And all the while, the computers dreamed of zeros and ones – unable to imagine a two’.”

      “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “It means of course you can eat a chocolate croissant.”

      Joe Blue paused to tickle Sinatra. He couldn’t resist putting them in, like he couldn’t resist writing his friends and relatives into his stories, and playing Robin Hood when he did: making them super-rich, super-beautiful and somehow solving all their problems. He chuckled as he wrote in the next bit of dialogue.

      “We should do Christmas dinner and New Year dinner on a yacht,” Grace said. “Why not? And then we’ll hit the clubs after dinner, in time for midnight, and play high-stakes blackjack before dawn at the secret casino in Long Street.” She held out her hand. “Let me see.” She examined the picture of the Twilight stars with disdain. “So, are you all up for clubbing? And maybe a big dinner at your Mount Nelson Hotel …”

      Kitty felt worse than bad, not because she wasn’t allowed to go clubbing, but because it was her dad who had forbidden it. How could things have gone so wrong? Kitty stared at the puppies. What did I do wrong?, she wondered. Everything was going so well. Only a few days before she’d overheard her parents discussing the possibility of having another baby; Kitty would have loved to have a sister.

      “Another tragedy,” Angel was reading about the divorce of a glittery Hollywood couple. “There are so many these days, I’m losing count.”

      There was a knock on Joe’s studio door and the real Beatrice came in. “Lunchtime, Joe.” She put a plate in front of

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