Dust Devils by Roger Smith Page B

back on the mattress and felt the sheaf of e-mails still folded in his pocket. He stood and walked over to the filthy, lidless toilet, filled to overflowing. Fought back his nausea and tore up the pages, dropped them into the bowl. Was taken by a wave of dizziness and had to put a hand to the wall to steady himself. Saw the bodies of his family in the morgue. The memory of the charred flesh hit him and made the stink of the shit seem sweet.

 
    Disaster Zondi found himself in a community center in one of those suburbs in the north of Johannesburg that looked exactly like twenty others. Desperate people moping around a coffee urn on a Sunday night. He'd tracked down the address online. Googled sex addiction.
    The moderator called the meeting to order and the group scraped plastic chairs into a circle. Zondi's the only dark face in the room. People started talking. Stories of lost marriages and lost fortunes. Familiar stories.
    It had always been easy for Zondi, finding casual sex. It had a way of finding him, truth be told. He'd walk into one of those fancy Jo'burg bars – a place pretending that it was in New York or Berlin – not even thinking about a getting laid. Order a drink, ignoring the desperate men around him who tore off women's clothing with their eyes. Then Zondi would look up and there she'd be. The blonde. His female opposite. The yin to his yang. A smile. A few words, and then off to her place for the transaction. Zondi had two rules: no one came to his apartment, and he never stayed the night with his pick-ups.
    Lately, he'd leave the sleeping woman and get into his BMW. Still restless. Find himself driving through the night toward the inner city. A place that had imploded in on itself from poverty and crime and decay. He'd see the feral black whores who lurked outside buildings that looked as if they'd been shelled, the women locking onto his smart car like heat-seeking missiles.
    He'd call one over and sit staring out over the apocalypse while the woman went down on him. Hearing the smack of her mouth on the condom, catching the bushfire stink of meth or crack in her hair. When he didn't come, she'd bitch, want more money and he'd lay a banknote on her and let her go.
    Last week one of them had pulled a knife on him. A long blade with an ornate bone handle. The kind of thing white men had once used to carve Sunday roasts. The whore was so blown on crack she could hardly see and he could have taken the knife from her, but he gave her money and pushed her out of the car. Drove away knowing that he had to stop this before it stopped him.
    Zondi came back to the room, unconsciously making eye contact with a wholesome looking blonde sitting opposite him. He'd never seen her before, but he'd met her a hundred times. Another one curious to merge her whiteness with his blackness. Doing a TopDeck , they called it in South Africa, after the white and dark chocolate combo sold in local stores. He looked away. She didn't. Zondi shifted in his chair, but still felt her eyes on him.
    The moderator got to a gaunt man, called him Horst, and asked him if he was ready to share. The man shook his head and the moderator moved on. Zondi had the feeling that this wasn't the first time it had happened.
    A desiccated woman in her forties spoke about how her serial adultery had caused her husband to commit suicide. She wept. The blonde kept on forcing eye contact. Zondi got up and walked outside. He stood out in the dark, breathing in bougainvillea and eucalyptus from the garden, wishing that he smoked. The man named Horst appeared at his side.
    "You would maybe like a drink?" he asked in a German accent.
    "Yes," Zondi said, suddenly realizing that he would like nothing more.
    He expected the German to suggest a bar in a nearby strip mall, but the man led him to an aging Mercedes parked not far from his own car. Horst slid in behind the wheel and Zondi took the passenger seat. The German produced a bottle of Scotch and a couple of