Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

"Yeah. Can you take this back, now?" he whines, shoving Sloth back at me. He's finally figured out that zoo doesn't mix with paisley.

Back at the booth, Gio and Juliette have returned, and the girls have been replaced by a quartet of ski-masked youths with microphones. These can only be the Tsotsis. "Having a good time?" Gio says, his mouth right up against my ear because the Tsotsis are raucously loud – high-wire kasi hip hop acrobatically riffing off maskandi folk.

"It's been educational," I shout back.

"Wanna get out of here?" Gio breaks out his best mischief smile. "Seven and a half minutes to my place."

"I'll take a ride back to Zoo City." I grin at his expression. "Don't worry. Your chances of being shot are only one in three." And then I'm blinded by a camera flash as Dave reappears and snaps a close-up.

"Say paparazzi," he says.

It turns into a group outing. The chance of a guided tour is too much for Dave to resist.

"You been into Zoo City much?" I ask him.

"Well, our offices are nearby. And I picked up Lily Nobomvu once about seven years ago, hitching from her crack dealer's place on Kotze Street," Dave says. "Covered in bruises. Her manager was beating her up. She seemed happy enough, though. Asked me to lend her a hundred bucks when I dropped her off in Parktown."

"Odi Huron, by any chance?"

"That's the one. Dodgy motherfucker, by all accounts." Dave leans forward between the seats to take photographs through the windshield, of the trees hung with plastic bags like Christmas decorations, the prostitutes outside Joubert Park posing under the streetlights (the working ones, anyway) like their own personal spotlights.

"You know they never found her body? She could still be out there."

"Lily? You mean like Elvis? I can see them cruising truckstop bars on Route 66, playing drinking games with grey aliens." Gio giggles. "Hey, didn't Odious have a bar? Remember, Zinz? Bass Station?"

"I remember being too drunk to remember anything about Bass Station. Like I don't remember anything about

206 or Alcatraz."

"Oh, Bass Station closed down years and years ago," Dave says. "There was a robbery that went bad. Couple of people died, if I remember correctly. Maybe that's why it took Huron so long to make a comeback."

"We should go to Counter Rev, sometime. You'd like it," Gio interrupts.

"Sounds like hipster hell."

"Alright, you'd find it interesting, then. Anthropological."

"Turn left and pull over at the sign for His Believers," I say, indicating the billboard for the charismatic church.

"This is the stuff you should be doing," says Dave, suddenly very animated. "Why are you writing about pop bands when you could write about Zoo City from the inside?"

"But would people read it? Dogfight exposés and vice?"

"What's a dogfight?" Gio pipes up.

"Use your imagination."

"I'm seeing glitz and blood, money on the table, fur in the ring, mobsters with glamour models on their arms watching from the sidelines."

"Minus the glamour and glitz, add a heavy dose of illegal, and you've got it."

"To the death?"

"Not unless it gets really ugly. We do try to avoid the Undertow as much as possible."

"Sounds like a good night out. Maybe we should do Counter Rev and then an evening at the dogfighting."

"Or not."

But Dave won't let up. "More like insight pieces. Scenes from the street, what it's like to live here."

"It's kak , Dave. What more do you want to know?"

"Just think about it."

"So, can I walk you up?" Gio asks as we pull over.

"You probably shouldn't leave your car alone in this neighbourhood."

"It's cool, I'll stay," Dave volunteers.

"You can walk me to security. Longer than that, and I can't speak for Dave's safety."

There is a small group of men, teens really, sitting on the steps leading up to Aurum Place opposite. Spare time and beer make them dangerous. Candlelight flickers in the windows of the squatter blocks where the electricity has long since been disconnected. A thudding bass line ramps up from the chop-shop in the alley. Testing the sound system. In the distance, sirens, the occasional gunshot. Gio flinches, pretends he hasn't. We reach the security gate and I turn to say goodnight. Gio pouts.

"I don't get to come up?"

"Next time. Maybe."

"It was good seeing you."

"Like old times." This is not necessarily a good thing.

"So Counter Revolutionary? Saturday? Consider it research."

"How about tomorrow?"

"Done." He moves to kiss me. I pull my head back just enough to thwart the intention.

"What are you doing, Giovanni?"

"Uh-oh," he says. "Full Name Rebuke. That's serious stuff. You won't let me walk you up? You won't let me kiss you?"

"We broke up. In bad circumstances."

"Four years ago. Things change. People change. You have."

"And you haven't. In the slightest."

"One kiss," he says. "Quick, before I get raped and murdered by the evil zoos."

"You just don't give up." I grab his button-up shirt and press my mouth against his. His lips are warm. Surprised, it takes him a millisecond to respond, and then we are kissing like starving people intent on devouring each other, familiar and new at once. Which is right when Sloth leans forward and bites his ear. Gio yelps, and the boys on the steps pause in their banter to look.

"Jesus! Get it off! Fuck! Ow!"

"Sloth!"

Sloth lets go and hides his head behind my neck. Gio grabs at his bleeding ear and raises his fist, snarling. I angle my head so that any blow will hit me first. "You're lucky he's a herbivore," I say, calmly.

"Lucky, fuck. That fucking thing nearly fucking bit my fucking ear off. " He touches his ear, which is only nipped, and examines the smear of blood on his fingertips.

"I can tell you work with words."

"Not now, Zinzi. Ow. Fuck. Do you think I need a

tetanus shot? I'm going to have to go to the fucking ER."

"You'll be fine. Thank you. I had a wonderful evening."

"Yeah, great. No, okay, I mean it. Apart from Dr Hannibal Lecter on your back."

"I'll see you tomorrow."

As the car pulls away into the night, D'Nice separates from the group across the road and saunters over, swinging an empty lengolongola . His Vervet Monkey hugs his neck for balance.

"What's a sweet darkie girl like you doing with an umlungu like him?" D'Nice says.

"Maybe he's my long-lost husband," I snap.

"Uh-huh," D'Nice says and there is something sharp and mean behind the drunk in his eyes.

CREDO August 2010

The Once and Future King?

Moja Records' hitmaker has been in hiding for almost a decade. Evan Milton pinned him down for his first one-onone interview in forever to talk teen pop, new club culture and the second coming of Odi Huron.

"I believe in second chances," Odysseus Huron says, sitting behind the mixing-desk in his analogue/digital studio, an airy bunker built into the koppie at the back of his house, which is the base of operations for Moja Records. Necessary, as the notoriously reclusive Huron hasn't set foot outside this rambling Westcliff property since 2001. He's not talking about himself, perhaps because he's already on his third or fourth go-around of chances. This is a man who has been dogged by controversy and tragedy through four decades of music-making, who has somehow managed to rise from the ashes again and again. He makes light of his past – and his recent return to prominence. "I don't think anyone walks through this industry unscathed," he muses. "The only thing you can really do is become better equipped."

Every era has its reclusive musical genius; every genre has its behind-the-scenes starmaker trailed by hints of controversy. Brian Wilson disappeared for decades before returning with P et Sounds ; James Brown always surfed a little too close to the law; and let's just say the name of the Death Row Records rap empire wasn't entirely coincidental. Closer to home, Africa's world music stars have been accused of human trafcking, embezzlement and involve ment with blood diamonds, while the Nigerian government slapped Fela Kuti with a currency smuggling rap.