A couple staring into each others eyes on the opposite end of the café, a mother with her little girl chatting back and forth, another man struggling with the WiFi. We were all in this café with the chefs in the back and the over worked waiters serving us. My cup was half empty, my plate empty except some crumbs of Black Forest cake left in it — her favourite. She’s never late. Never. We’ve known each other for years now and in all those years I was the late one. After a while she accepted that time would just slip out of my hands. The cake I ate was for her, the plan was that I surprise her with it, but the clock ticked and ticked and she still didn’t appear. Her phone unreachable, she hasn’t replied to any of my texts. I scrolled through text bubbles, our conversations flowing form one topic to another. I read over what we agreed yesterday, in between us complaining about work we agreed to meet up today. She signed her yes with a smiley — a semi-colon and bracket. I wasn’t confused about the day, unlike last time.

Clouds were greying, the sky darkening. The café thinned out until it was only a few of us left, miles apart from each other. The man that was struggling with the WiFi looked out the window, his bag packed and slung over one shoulder. I followed his gaze, looking at the traffic blur past and the store fronts close. Herds of people flow down the sidewalk going home,different shapes and sizes but the same expression: heads low, sleepy eyes and worn out cheeks. At the same time another group of people head upstream. Night-shift. I looked back, the man left, his chair tucked in. I signalled for the waiter, she walked up with a practised smile and the bill. I swiped and packed my stuff ready to leave when the same waitress called out to me, “Call her… she probably got caught up”. I nodded and left the café.

I kicked off my shoes as I entered my apartment, walked to the fridge and opened it. I stared at the empty racks and a singular pizza box in the middle. I closed the fridge and headed bedroom, skipping between discount furniture. I texted her again: “You good J? I ate some black forest cake in your honour”. I plugged my phone in the wall, sat my laptop on my desk and headed back to the kitchen. I through in two slices of pizza in the microwave, found a clean cup and poured a tall glass of water. When the microwave rang I pulled out the slices — the cheese spitting and the meat re-cooked — and ate the burning slices, when the heat got too hot I had the water to save me.

From the way the light in my room looked, it was around seven. Outside traffic was still roaring — car engines, radios, road-rage — keeping my apartment from going dead. I was looking for a quite place near where I worked, two things I thought were impossible but some how I landed this place. At first the silence was great. I could unwind from the day, then a month in I realized I had neighbours. A ghost quite couple, only nodding when I greeted them; an old man who lived on the bottom floor under my apartment, only talked to me when I make “too much noise”; a young guy my age who reads all day when he’s at home and disappears for half the month; we haven’t spoken yet. The traffic is mostly the only sound that breaks the silence and on weekends the traffic disappears. I’ve been thinking of moving. Searching on the internet for a places, snooping around too, but I haven’t moved or made plans to move. No commitment. I scroll through pages and pages looking at the interiors, imagining myself in them then scroll through the next picture. Maybe I’m a captive to this place, maybe I can’t live anywhere else, or maybe I’m too scared to leave this place. To pack my stuff in a truck. To meet new people. To have a new bedroom.

The sun’s gone. The pizza is finished. I put my plate in the sink, let the water run for a while then headed to my bedroom. Inside my bedroom I pull out my laptop, plug it into the wall and open the lid. A half-finished Word Doc opens up, five paragraphs, 700 words. I skim through the paragraphs editing bits and pieces, here and there. I want this story to be about this depressed kid and his hyper religious parents, how his parents take him to all sorts of places to help the kid but nothing works and he is still depressed. The parents struggle, using everything that they no to fix this kid — even shouting at him — but nothing works. I think I’ll throw in a couple supernatural elements to; a couple angels, a demon, maybe a portal to the underworld. I have some ideas for the ending too; one ending could be that the kid dies or gets seriously injured in a suicide attempt; another one could be that an angel saves the kid and the parents see it; the last one could be that an angel tells this kids parents how to help their son and the last line would be them in a group hug. I type a few words then backspace the paragraph to nothing. I save, close Word and open YouTube.

My phone rings. Janet. She breathes in my ear — in, out — does one of those tongue that she does, then more silence. For a while we both say nothing. I pause the video, close the laptop and wait.

“Hey”, I said.

“Hey”, she whispered.

“You good?”

“Yeah… sorry for today, hey. I just…”

“No, it’s okay…. I’m glad to hear from you. Really, really missed you.”

“Me too!” She giggled.

Silence. “Can I come over? You know to make up for today and everything….”

“Don’t worry about it. We can resched—”

“No, no, no… I want to see you today. Please can I come over?”

“Sure… I don’t have much food here sadly. Just some sad pizza.”

“How sad?”

“Umm… clinically depressed”

“That’s really bad. I guess I’ll have to buy some buddies for it. Chinese? Or some Fast-food junk?”

“Janet, don’t worry about it —”

“No it’s fine. It will be fun… like a party for just the two of us!”

“Okay”

“Okay… see you soon”

Janet hung up. I walked into my living room picking up different knick-knacks from the floor, the sofa’s and the table. I ran some water through a swab added a dash of dishwashing liquid and scrubbed down my counters and cupboard doors. I gave all the floor a quick mop; kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom. After all that work, I changed out my day clothes and put on a white shirt, hoodie and shorts. I went back to YouTube, after three or so football videos I went over to the window. Opposite my apartment complex, past the court yard dotted and greenery, prostitutes line the sidewalks. Each one occupying their own little pocket of space, waiting impatiently for a customer to roll by. A car stops and the closest three swarm the driver window. One gets in the car and the others fall back into formation. This is why I try to get home as soon as possible, to avoid them. Avoiding their tight clothes, micro-skirts and fake hair. Once I say a poor guy being hounded by them. As he walked past their ranks, one-by-one they swarmed him, probably saying all sorts of things, “Baby, you want a good time?” or other things. They surrounded him and started touching him. He shook his head like a swarm of bees attacked him, then he dashed through a small gap, bumping into one of them. He crossed the road and paced out of my view. The prostitutes went back in formation.

An hour or so flies past, the same five prostitutes on the street. Janet flies thought the street and stops by the gate. I walk over to my console just in time for the buzz. “Hey Jonny! Open up!”. I press open. I hear her walk out the stairs, stomping like mad as she gets closer to my door.

I swung open my door. “Janet… noise”

“Yeah I know… you told me about the guy”

“So you want to get me in trouble?”

“A little”, she smiled.

We hugged. I took the plastic bag steaming with Chinese food, weighted by a six-pack of soda drinks. We entered my apartment and Janet shut the down and stomped around a bit, laughing the whole way. She wore over sized nude trousers, a yellow top, a cape-like wind breaker — also nude — and white sneakers. Her long black hair glistened with her jewellery in my kitchen light.

“Those bitches are getting desperate. Business must be low”

“You think?”

“Totally… while I was walking here they were like ‘Hey Babe!’ I walked faster and they started calling some more. I swear they were about to cross the road but they didn’t. Weird isn’t it?”

“They do that. It’s like they are stuck to their place on the sidewalk”

“Social distancing huh”

“Probably” I laughed.

I brought the pizza from the fridge as Janet threw her handbag on my sofa, she waltzed over to the counter and ripped a can out the package. I took out some plates — one white, one lime-green — and poured out the Chinese take-out in them. Janet opened the pizza box and laughed ate the sad slices. I jumped in to with quips of my own, joking about how much it longed to die and be in our stomachs. She wanted to give them anti-depressants. We both bowed over laughing.

We ate the Chinese food next to each other on my sofa. We talked about work. Her boss was getting more and more aggressive, Janet thinkings it’s a divorce because she isn’t wearing her ring anymore; some of her collogues don’t believe it’s a divorce but they do agree it’s something to do with her marriage. I talked about how the work internet keeps on dropping and how its put the entire office into chaos, everyone blaming someone else; the IT guys blaming the marketing guys for using too much, marketing blaming accounts and so on. The conversation died a bit. We started talking about friends we had. A friend of mine had a birthday coming up. One of her friends got a new car from her boyfriend — SUV, black, brand new. We started shipping Oscar, a mutual friend, with other people we knew. We tried finding girls that matched his type — short black hair, glasses, likes arcades — finding no one he hasn’t dated before. We tried others and some wild cards. I went over to get my phone and we scrolled Instagram looking for potential matches. After an hour or so we concluded that it was hopeless. We laughed.

“I once wanted to be one of them, you know”, Janet said.

“Who?”

“One of those… hoes…”

“You lie!”

“No seriously… I once wanted to be one of them for real. For real. When I was a little girl I swear I wanted to be like them”

“No you didn’t”

“Serious”

“Why?”

“It’s actually quite funny” She laughed, “My mom was driving, I was in the back just looking around. I was really late, I forgot why we were driving so late, but I was looking out and I saw these hoes standing on the sidewalk. So I asked my mom, ‘What are these ladies doing on the sidewalk?’ and my mom told me, ‘Oh… they are standing around looking pretty.’ So I was like ‘why?’ and do you know what my mom told me?”

“What?”

“She said, ‘For money’. So in my little girl mind I thought that was so cool, to stand on the sidewalk and look pretty for money! For a long time, John, a really long time I wanted to be a prostitute until I learned about what they do and everything…”

“Serious?” I laughed. “How old were you?”

“Young. Like… maybe seven? Like really young…”

“That’s mad”

“And you know what? I learned about prostitutes the same day I learned about sex. Like I wanted to die that day it was so bad”

“A double gut punch”

“You know….”

Janet buried her face in her hands, laughing the whole time. She started snorting, my sides started burning. I told her about they day I learned about sex. It was a normal grade seven day — play in the morning, some classes then break-time. But after break-time we were set to our home-rooms, nothing too strange about that, but the mood was strange. We could feel it. We all sat on our desks not whispering or anything. Our home-room teacher told us that she was going to bring in a new teacher for the “special talk”. I remember giving a letter to my parents about the “special talk” but I thought it was something fun. Our home-room teacher left, talked to the new teacher for a bit behind the door and the new teacher walked in. She had wrinkles and some of her skin sagged, especially around her hands. She also wore that perfume that all the teachers wore, all the teachers were old. But she smiled more than all the other teachers, she wore younger clothes — a t-shirt, and jeans — and she had short hair, not pulled back but actually cut short. This new teacher walked holding a tripod with diagrams on them and addressed the class. Then she began with her talk. I’ve mostly forgotten what she said exactly, but I do remember how the whole class started wincing as the talk continued, the more we winced the more she smiled. I believe we learned all about the male and female reproductive system, the general mechanics of sex, girl periods and where babies come from. Then it ended, she asked if anyone had questions but no hands went up. I had a lot of question, the whole class too, but I didn’t raise my hand, I just wanted it to end.

Janet’s eyes darting through me. My eyes meeting hers then I looked away. We sat in silence, my legs were crossed, hers too. My throat got very dry suddenly. I wanted to get up and drink something, but I couldn’t. Janet sniffed, whipped away her tears with her sleeve but the tear still flowed. Right before I could ask her what was wrong, she grabbed my hand.

“You are probably wondering where I was today?”

“No not at all —”

“I went to a place… Crystal told me about it. You know Crystal, right?”

“Yeah”

“She told me about this place, she gave me a flier for this place —”

“What place?”

“It’s a place… it’s like confession booths, but without priests.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you go in and there’s a waiting room full of seats and a receptionist and you wait for a free spot and then you go into one of these booths. And there’s a seat for you and a wall and behind the wall there’s like a psychologist or something, but a mental health profession and you start saying shit…”

“Hey… Hey, Janet… are you okay?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I’m okay... I’m a bad person”

“Hey, hey… what makes you think like that?”

“Because I am… I did something really bad once”

“Janet… tell me what happened in that ‘place’, what happened?”

“I… I confessed. I told the… person about what I did to a boyfriend I had once. He was so good and I did love him for real, but… I don’t know… I just felt that he was cheating. I checked his texts, Instagram even his e-mail but found nothing. I accused him tons of times and we got in tons of arguments, and he kept on telling me he wouldn’t do such a thing. But I could feel it. I knew he was cheating.

I cheated on him… I figure that if he is cheating on me then I better return the favour. I fucking hate the guy I was cheating with… but I just wanted to hurt my boyfriend so I continued. My boyfriend found out and we got in this crazy argument. I was crying. He was so pissed he started punching the walls and breaking shit with his bare hands. I told him why I cheated, because he was cheating and he lost his shit, telling me ‘I have never done any shit like that ever, I don’t even watch porn anymore!’ then he broke a glass cup with his hand, cutting it really badly. Then he asked me for proof on his phone. I didn’t have any. So he threw his phone across the room and it shattered. We broke up.

I wasn’t going to let him break the story first… so I broke the story to all my friends and his friends that he cheated on me… and I made shit up to hurt him… and… and it worked. It worked…. they all believed me.”

Janet threw her face into my chest; her tears seeping warmth through my shirt, her muffled cries, her shivering body. Over a thousand thoughts race through my mind, all urgent, all a blur. Her face appears, then disappears. My living room, my apartment, the whole day. All is left is her body on mine. I put my arms around her. She cries harder. I squeeze some more and she latches around my neck, her face gliding past my our face. Her legs wrapped around me, I fell on the sofa; a cushion under my head, a plate under my tail bone.

For a while she cried while held her. I felt her breathing, the little rumbles in and the jerky out. Her heartbeat jumping on and off beat when she tried to hold back only to blurt out everything, her digging nails into my back. I whispered “It’s okay” as softly as I could, rubbing her back. She screamed in my ear, and I continued to tell her it was okay. Soon her grip loosened, her legs unwrapped and her breathing cooled. Her heartbeat ran a steady rhythm, her breathing softer.

I slid under her, moving my hips first then torso and my limbs. I slid on the floor, then I pulled the plate from under her, inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre. Once I got the plate free I headed to the sink. I opened the tap slightly, letting the faucet drip. When the plate was fully waterlogged, I cleared the rest of my place; whipping the coffee table, organising the cushions. From my room I took a dark grey, thick blanket and headed to Janet. She was balled up in the middle of the sofa, peaceful as a meadow. As I place the blanket, Janet automatically latched on to it and rolled. I lifted her head and slid a cushion under, pulling her hair away from her face.

I went to my room and watched YouTube, I watched the Youtubers move, the animations and graphics but not the video itself. I closed my browser and stared at the blank desktop, watching the minutes tick by. It was eleven, outside a car stopped and left off minutes later. Three prostitutes were left on the sidewalk. One squatted taking huffing away at a cigarette, another leaned against the wall, the last one scouted the street for a car.

I walked out the bedroom and sat on a chair, stared at the blank wall with Janet in the corner of my eye. I wasn’t trying to be creepy or anything. I just couldn’t sleep or bare to have her sleep in the living room. Perhaps it’s my chivalry telling me to do this. Or maybe it was because she cried all over my chest that I feel I need to watch over her. Maybe. But there was something else. I looked at her, analysed how she slept; the way her body rose and shrunk as she breathed, the way the blanket outlined her body, the peacefulness on her face. I remember when my parents left the house for the night, they went to a night prayer or something. We ate all the sweets in the sweets cupboard and drank all the soda, mom left real food in the oven but decided to have a party instead. We got all our pillows and played Playstation until the late hours of the night. My brother knocked out first, sleeping on the bare carpet. I played a couple more game by myself then packed everything up and….

Maybe Janet reminds me of my brother. Maybe I miss him after all these years. I went to his Instagram page, scrolled through his new life away from me. Him posing with new people, in new places. His clothes are new. His job is new. His smile is new. Janet’s here. I have pictures with Janet. Janet always wears those white sneaks. Janet brought Chinese.

“Morning” Janet said. I wake up covered in my blanket and Janet’s sheepish smile. “I woke up sometime ago… I used your shower, hope you don’t mind…”

“No, not at all” I yawned.

“You know… you didn’t need to… watch over me. But thanks”

“Oh… no I just slept on this chair…”

“Okay…” she whispered. She looked down, bit her lip then walked over to the window. “Am I the first girl to sleep over in this apartment?”

“... kinda…”

“Serious?”

“Unfortunately”

“Like not even one of those hoes from down the street?”

“They actually frighten me… they might mug me”

“So I’m a pioneer? The first one, right?”

“Well not like that —”

“No like what?”

“I mean we didn’t do… anything. I mean… we didn’t sleep… with… each other”

“John, what the fuck are you talking about?” she laughed, “Am I the first girl to sleep over here, yes or no?”

“Yes”

“That’s all I wanted know… Silly”

Twitter: @TJohnShumba