“Sixty-five kilograms. Half of me is gone,” he says.
“How did you do it? You look amazing.” It’s true and it’s not: he’s slim, sure, but he has suffered – sunken skin, dark rings under his eyes. Even his black hair, always thick and curly, looks less lustrous, or perhaps it’s because he has clipped it close against his head and there’s no bounce left. He looks shorter, Maria’s height now, as though his great girth had added stature.
“Extreme makeover, man. People hardly recognise me any more.” He’s smoking (clearly the Bio Café has no rules against this), drawing deep drags, tapping the cigarette at intervals so that the ash falls to the carpet. “I was doing this rich guy’s machine. Lives in this mansion up in Camps Bay. He couldn’t believe the change – he said, ‘You’re not a fat slob any more.’”
“Nice.”
“It’s true, M. I’m not a big fat slob any more.” He slaps his lean stomach aggressively.
“Incredible. I’m so impressed.”
He reaches for the machine: “So, is this the baby that’s giving you a hard time?”
She nods. “You think you can crack it?” She wonders if she’s trying too hard to use his lingo. She’s at least fifteen years older than any of the students here.
“You know I can do anything.” A lazy grin, and he puts the cigarette, still burning, on a nearby table. She hands the machine over and he balances it on his palm, levering the top open with his other hand: “Why don’t you have a quick coffee and I’ll see what I can do now.”
“Okay.”
“My advice – go next door. This place –” He shakes his head.
She passes a bin choked with rubbish, a black fly busy around its perimeter. Outside the film school, another young woman sits with her legs stretched out in front of the door. Passing her, Maria can hear the repetitive beat of the music from the girl’s earphones. She is grateful to move away, even when she finds the coffee place next door almost full. She sits at a table on the pavement, preferring the bustle of the street. The coffee is strong and aromatic, and a large outdoor heater warms her back. Perhaps a short SMS to Lionel, just to see how he’s doing, would be okay. She extracts her cellphone from her handbag and begins to tap.
She had met Lionel at a gathering for reformed addicts who were now sponsors, helping others to overcome their dependencies. The meeting took place at the counselling centre, directly opposite Christ’s Kitchen, a self-service restaurant for the reborn. Frequently, people went straight to the restaurant afterwards, ex-addicts finding religion as enticing as a new drug. Maria had been part of the programme, providing guidance to the sponsors, for a few years. The structure of the meetings was always similar: an expert in addiction, the label loosely interpreted, would give input on some topic, but most of the time was reserved for sponsors to discuss issues relating to the people they were helping – a kind of case supervision. There were always a couple of psychologists, sometimes a psychiatrist as well.
Typically for these monthly affairs, the room had too few chairs. This scarcity of resources created an edge of aggression, causing people to mark their space with briefcases and handbags. The fluorescent lighting sucked colour from faces, reducing the attendees to uglier versions of themselves. It was a functional venue, allowed to go to seed as a mark of its integrity; even the armchairs, fundamental equipment for any psychologist, needed replacing. Their seats, made from a brown synthetic material, had worn away in places from so much sitting: a hazard of the job. There were about thirty people there that night – two psychologists, the rest sponsors, most of whom Maria knew – and about half had nowhere to sit.
She stood by an open window, not willing to struggle for a chair. The room was stuffy on this hot summer’s night, and she sensed that she was flushing. The skin felt tight above her cheekbones, as though it had been pulled and stretched to cover the bones in her face.
Already Maria felt sluggish and irritable from the heat of the room, the lack of planning with the chairs. As she waited for someone else to sort out the chair shortage, she idly stretched across a long wooden table to scoop up a handful of peanuts. The tips of her fingers grazed the edge of the bowl.
“Here. Let me help you.” A man picked up the bowl and moved to her side of the table. Average height, stocky, a touch of grey at the temples, a flattened nose like a boxer. None of the puppyish need to please shown by some of the other sponsors. Instead, he peered at her over the top of his glasses, which were pushed down to the bridge of his nose – the look of an exasperated teacher. “Lionel Lightly.” He offered a hand. “Yes, I know, I should have been a singer.” She let his powerful fingers squeeze hers.
She knew Lionel Lightly, or, more precisely, she knew of him. Who didn’t? He seldom came to these meetings; she’d seen him only once previously, and then he’d been involved with a group in another room. But everyone had read in the newspapers about his coke addiction – “a minor experimentation”, as he called it. Unfortunately it had skewered his chances of becoming Minister of something or other (perhaps Health, she thought), and he’d checked himself into a private clinic. That was a few years back, and now he had returned to politics as an ANC MP, more popular than ever. Who can’t help but admire someone who has beaten his demons, and wasn’t that what Lionel had done? He was often in the papers, outspoken and charismatic, as comfortable in Bishopscourt as he was in Manenberg. If she remembered correctly, he’d grown up outside Malmesbury, the son of farm workers. Part of his legend.
“Do you sing?” she asked.
“Only in the shower. I’m full of bravado when there’s no one around to watch me. I’m pretty good then.”
Someone had finally located more chairs – office seats – and people were wheeling them in, two at a time. He went to fetch one for her, hoisted it above his head and plonked it down next to the open window. “Getting hot as hell in here. I’m up front tonight, otherwise I’d join you. If it gets too boring you can always walk along here.” He pointed to a wide ledge located right outside the window. “Climb down the drainpipe and make a dash for it.”
“How far will I get before I’m caught?”
“Pretty far, I reckon. But if I see you doing that, I’m going to give chase. With this heat and my talk, I’ll probably be the only one active enough. We’ll be a sleepy lot tonight.”
He was wrong. She was fascinated by Lionel, observing the effect he had on his audience, how alert people were when he spoke: their sidelong glances to neighbours, the vigorous head-nodding, their laughter that was a touch too loud. A charismatic speaker creates a sense of unity within the audience, she thought; he bonds them to one another.
He spoke about how, when he came out the addiction clinic, after he had been given the “all clean” (two thumbs raised), he took up squash. “Boy, did I play hard,” he said. “I was a lean, mean . . .” Here he paused, allowing the audience to fill in the missing words. Maria’s eyes swept over his body: he sat with thighs spread, elbows resting on knees, leaning in towards his listeners. “. . . squash machine,” he finished, to a titter from the audience. “Believe me, no sex, I wasn’t in a space to have a lover. Of course now, seven years later, things are a little different.” Again laughter. “The point is” – he paused, held up a finger – “once an addict, always an addict. You need replacement activities, and for a long time, squash, instead of . . .” – here he closed a nostril, sniffing loudly and animatedly – “worked. Still does. The thing is,” he repeated, before pausing, taking his time, knowing the audience was enjoying his show, “that as sponsors we have to help our sponsees find those replacement activities to take their minds away from the drugs. That’s why I’m here to introduce Dr Alexander Voget, a psychiatrist, with a strong interest in music therapy, and how it can help us with our addictions.”
Maria doesn’t remember much about Dr Voget apart from his eyebrows: bushy and grey, voluptuous, overflowing the upper wire rim of his glasses, reminding her of a river in flood. But one line from Voget’s talk, which was