The Memory of Water

²⁶ SEVEN LIVES LEFT

Denise wakes me by licking me. She tongues my lips, my neck, and sucks my nipples. My cock grows stiff against the groove just under her ribcage, and she moves up and down, stroking it with her soft belly. I let out a groan. As often happens when having sex with Denise, I feel like I am dying. Not that I want to die, not really, but it is usually so good that if I were to meet my end I honestly wouldn’t mind.

Freud said that the goal of all life is death. Thanatos: the death instinct. It’s supposed to be the opposite of Eros, but with Denise it feels like the same thing. Sweet, delicious cuntess Denise. She puts me deep in her mouth and I am so turned on that I have to stop myself from thrusting. I stop her before it’s too late, sit up and turn her around so that she’s on her hands and knees. I spread her legs, kneel between her calves and run my tongue along her cheeks, slowly, stopping only to bite. I put my whole mouth over her pussy and lick and suck her. I drag my flat tongue over her clit again and again and then plunge it into her hole. She is quivering. I feel an electric current zip through me and I have to pause for a second. Three seconds. I put two fingers inside her and reach her g-spot. I find her swollen clit with my other hand and massage it. God, she is so warm and so wet. Her moans get louder and louder. I know she wants me to move faster but I can feel how hot and alive her body is and I want to draw this out. She can’t help moving her hips. Suddenly she is silent, holding her breath, and her muscles tighten around my fingers in waves. She hollers into the pillow. As my fingers are squeezed I almost come. I keep still until the contractions stop and her body relaxes, then I rake my left hand down her back and spank her ass. She breathes in gasps. She murmurs something and I ask her to repeat it.

“Fuck me,” she moans, “please, fuck me.”

She is so swollen I have to force my way in. I think it will crush me but then it’s so smooth I am able to move. Every thrust is a rush of stars in my head. I can’t feel any part of my body except for where my skin is touching hers. There’s no chance of stretching this out, I have so much pressure in my body that if I don’t come now, I’m sure I will have a stroke. She is bracing herself by holding the headboard. Again her body tenses up and again she shouts out while her muscles contract around me. I grab her hips and fuck her with everything I have, and my whole body erupts.

Afterwards, while spooning, her body seems lifeless and I ask her if she is all right. She turns her head and gives me a lazy smile. I notice for the first time a thread-thin silver scar running like a seam over her ribs.

“Seven lives left,” she murmurs, and her eyes flutter shut again.

Despite having given up years ago, I crave a cigarette.

I listen to my voicemail and don’t like any of the messages. The man from the bank wants to set up a meeting to see if we can consolidate my debt. He recommends debt counselling. He doesn’t see there is no point: my finances are past the point of no return. I know I should sell the painting but I just can’t. It’s here for a reason. Denise says there’s no point in having a painting but no wall to hang it on. I appreciate the irony, but I’m not selling. If I end up in a soup kitchen I’ll be taking the painting with me. The second message was from my father, wanting to know how I am and when I’ll be visiting. He has probably run out of whisky. Then Sifiso, wanting the usual. The most interesting message was from Detective Inspector Sello, asking if I’ll come down to the station. Very polite. Too polite. I think they must be waiting with hungry handcuffs. I play Russian roulette with the messages in my brain, then acquiesce to the boys in blue. At least if they lock me up I won’t have to worry about the other two.

Usually I would do anything to avoid going anywhere with bars on the windows, but I have a feeling that if I don’t oblige today I will be hauled away by SAPS thugs, amongst wailing sirens and camera flashes. Also, I want to take advantage of this strange numb feeling I have, God knows I wouldn’t be this calm about the situation without it. I drive to the Parkview Police Station with the top down, looking at the sky and feeling the summer wind on my cheeks. If they arrest me, who knows how long I will go without this? I have my lawyer’s number on speed dial but I don’t want to use it unless I have to. I don’t want to be defensive. An innocent man doesn’t bring his lawyer into every meeting with the authorities, does he?

I park my car on a yellow line and push open the worn, heavy entrance door. I interrupt a man stamping documents to introduce myself, and he looks confused. He yells to the other man behind the counter, who looks at me and also shakes his head. Typical, I think, only in South Africa do you practically hand yourself over to the cops only to be rebuffed by inefficient bureaucracy. It reminds me of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Next I’ll be carrying a towel over my shoulder and be tortured by being forced to listen to someone’s disgracefully bad poetry. So long and thanks for all the fish.

I am busy dictating a message to the man behind the counter when I see Sello through the window. I tell the man to forget the message and head outside.

“Glad you could make it,” says Sello, breathing hard. He has a light sheen on his forehead and looks a bit ruffled. Maybe he has just come from a crime scene. Despite my morbid curiosity I resist asking him about it.

“Didn’t feel I had much of a choice,” I say, but he has already turned and begun walking away. I catch up and he leads me around the building to a back door. It seems to be disconnected, somewhere they use only on special occasions. Rapists, serial killers, writers. I am not worried till Sello double-bolts the door from the inside. The walls are thick and the air holds a slight chill. The cold clamminess reminds me of The Old Fort on Constitutional Hill. There is no one else around and it unnerves me. We walk down a passage and turn into the first open door on the left. It is an interrogation room, empty except for two plastic chairs and a table made from an old door. There is a two-way mirror on the far wall, which tricks you into thinking the room is bigger than it really is. Sello motions for me to sit down and excuses himself. I take a chair and sit in a way that I hope makes me look relaxed, so that the people behind the mirror will say: “He looks innocent.” There are no windows.

Sello comes back with a grubby folder in his hands. It is the same one he and Madinga brought to my house before they searched it, but it’s now considerably thicker and a great deal more foxed.

“Where is Madinga?” I ask.

Sello purses his lips and his eyes move up towards the corner of the room: a classic indication of lying.

“He’s busy with another case today.”

He shouldn’t have bothered; I am not that interested.

“Cash-in-transit heist,” he adds, seemingly enjoying the small deception.

“So he is trying to catch actual criminals,” I say.

Detective Inspector Sello ignores this and opens his folder. I start to feel the first gnawing of nerves. My underarms are wet, despite the frosty surroundings, and my stomach is tight. I hope he can’t see the patches of sweat blooming from my pits. I keep my arms close to my body.

“Mister Harris,” he says, “we found some disturbing things in the last few days.” His face gives nothing away. I try to follow suit.

“In your house. Powder residue… an illegal drug.”

God, I thought I had used all the coke in my house.

“GHB,” he says, tasting all the letters.

Now I don’t know whether to tell the truth or not. You shouldn’t lie to cops. But wouldn’t not lying be stupid?

“What is that?” I ask.

“You don’t know?” he asks, knowing the answer.

“No,” I say.

He is quiet for a moment. Scratches his scalp in a measured, practised way.

“Mister Harris,” he says, speaking slowly. “I thought you came in to co-operate.”

It’s my turn to be quiet.

“Look,” he says, “it doesn’t matter if you admit to knowing what it is or not, or whether you have ever used it. The point is that we found some in your house.”

“I’m finding it hard to see the relevance,” I say. Now I can feel perspiration on my face, and I wipe my upper lip.

“The relevance is that GHB can be used as a date rape drug, like Rohypnol. Miss Shaw had it in her labs.”

I laugh out loud. This has become ridiculous. It’s as if someone had seen the mind map and followed it step by step. I wonder if I am dreaming. If one night after working on Eve’s Graceful Demise I went to sleep and this has just been one big, ugly dream. I pinch myself. It hurts.

So much for GHB being untraceable. I guess that’s what you get from doing your research on Google instead of asking your drug dealer. Sello is watching me. I close my eyes and try not to sweat. He turns a few pages until he finds what he is looking for.

“We also found blood,” he says.

“Bullshit.” The word is out of my mouth before I’ve even thought it. “You’re making this shit up.”

Sello just looks at me.

“Okay,” I say. “I may have had some illegal drugs in my house, but there was no blood. There was no blood because there was no fucking murder. You’re trying to break me, get a confession out of me to make your job easier. Well, it won’t fucking work. I was in special training in the army. I laid landmines in Angola. I was in a hellhole in Bangkok where they interviewed me with a piece of hosepipe every day for two weeks. I will not confess to something I didn’t do. You can’t change my mind. I am not breakable.”

With his mouth closed, Sello runs his tongue over his teeth. He knows I’m lying.