Jaz & Miguel (19 page)

But already she was starting to miss the dreams. Already she was
feeling the wrenching of Miguel away from her like one of her own limbs, life
without an arm or leg or … a heart. His heart.

She couldn't let him go. Like the crashing Durban waves, she started
to think of ways out of this. They could push it to the end and—who knew—
work
something out
for Christ's sake!

"Miguel, we can work something out. Maybe—maybe I
could
live here. I don't know—"

"No, Jaz. No. It's … not going to work out."

What. The. Fuck?

It was something else. It
wasn't
about where they were going to live, was it?

He'd played her.

He'd
fucking played
her! Oh, my God. And to think she'd been almost
ready to sleep with him this last week!

He was a liar. A goddamn liar!

"You make me sick," she said. "You fucking played me."

Miguel, as always, remained silent.

So this was it. This was ... the end.

She saw her landmark of a half-torn poster on a wall saying, ANC
MEET— One more minute and they'd be at the International House. She only
thanked her lucky stars that Thandie would be there. At least
one
thing
was going right.

Because she couldn't be alone tonight. Her lungs had started pushing
against her rib-cage as if the grief was a ton of TNT within them and the fuse
had been lit.

One more minute ... and Miguel would be gone from her life forever. Only
worse—he wouldn't be gone. She'd see him every day, at school, but she would
never again feel his hand on the small of her back, or twiddle the hairs on his
tanned chest as he dozed off to sleep as if there were nothing else in the
world but the two of them and the rumbling ocean outside in Xai-Xai.

"We're here," he finally said.

Jaz lifted her head and looked out the window. That they were. They
really were there. Home. The end.

Her arm felt like lead as she opened her door, her entire body
resisting any effort to move.

Miguel motioned to open his door.

"No," she whispered to him. And then she shook her head.
She couldn't say any more. Surely he'd seen her tears. He'd embarrassed her
enough for the night, and she hoped that her simple
No
had told him all
that her larynx could not.

She hoped it told him that he'd hurt her more than she'd ever been
hurt by anyone, ever. She hoped it told him that, in her mind, she hated him
more than the worst possible scum of the worst possible place that could be
found anywhere on earth. She hoped her
No
had told him that there was no
thing, no animal, no insect, no
vermin
more loathsome than he at this moment.

These were all the things she felt about him. These, and one other:

Despite all of it, despite all his betrayal and what she could tell
now had merely been a lie and a dream—despite
all
of that—she still … loved
him.

Damn it, how did this all go so wrong
?

Jaz lumbered over to the trunk, feeling seasick and steadying
herself on the body of the car as she walked. She grabbed her suitcase.

She needed to tell him one more thing.

Just. One. More. Thing.

He had to know it.

She knocked on his window. He rolled it down, still looking forward.

His eyes were red. He was crying.

Why? What the fuck is going on here?!

She didn't ask.

"Miguel," she whispered, forcing the words from her mouth,
"I still …
love
you. And I always will."

He swallowed and tightened his lips, giving a tight nod.

He drove away.

Jaz climbed up the stairs to the first floor, turned left by the HIV
poster but, instead of heading two doors down, went to the end and turned
right, knocking on door number 72A. When Thandie opened, it didn't take even a
second for her to know what had happened from the look on Jaz's face. Thandie pulled
her in and held her.
She hugged her with such force that
Jaz could not help but explode with tears. Then she felt another set of hands
around her and recognized the voice as it told her everything would be OK.

It was Nita Kapur. She was also there! Thandie must've changed
roommates! For a very brief moment Jaz smiled at having both of them there but the
momentary uplift in joy suddenly had the opposite effect, throwing her back
down the well of tears and bringing up gasps so loud that they prompted the
arrival of Maxine and Candy from all the way down the hall (as well as a "Shut
up we're trying to fucking sleep in here!" from somewhere else).

Thandie's floor was strewn with papers and magazines and posters of
men with bodies that, for just a moment, made Jaz stop thinking of Miguel—but the
moment was brief. Two pin-ups were stuck to her wall: Lunga Shabalala (wearing
Calvin Klein boxers) and someone called Tazz Nginda (with his name and the words
Soul City
imprinted at the bottom). Thandie was in her underwear and a
shirt that said (across her well-endowed breasts),
My face is there
and then an arrow pointing up.

Thandie made a phone call and spoke irately to someone on the line
in Xhosa (Jaz assumed).

To Jaz it still all seemed like a dream. She thought back to when
she'd sat with Miguel at the beach and watched the sun go down, a glass of rosé
in both their hands.

"What the hell happened?" asked Maxine.

"Can't you see Miguel broke up with her, stupid!" retorted
Thandie.

"Oh, God! Sweetie!" Candy went over to Jaz and hugged her,
but it only had the effect of making her sob even more. Jaz sank her head into a
pillow and lay down while Candy rubbed her shoulders.

The girls talked amongst themselves while Jaz's mind drifted into
thoughts of the previous week, as if holding onto them would somehow keep
Miguel there with her. An unknown amount of time went by when a knock at the
door made her wonder in a half dreamy state if it was him.

"I got one of my slaves to go and get us ice cream," said Thandie.

Jaz turned to face the door.
An attractive
boy with short hair and a smooth look on his face was on the other side of it. Thandie
spoke to him in the same irate manner that Jaz had heard her use on the phone
earlier. The boy's eyes twinkled with some sort of hope or joy that was
unmatched in Thandie's stance. He started to say something but Thandie closed
the door in his face and turned to the girls with a plastic bag in her hands.
The boy shouted from outside and Thandie's smile turned, momentarily, to a look
of haughtiness and she said in the direction of the door, "Hai!
Voetsek
!" and then said a
bunch of other things that Jaz didn't understand. Whatever she said, the boy disappeared.

Thandie dug her hand in the bag and pulled out a tub of Nestlé
Chocolate ice cream, followed by two more of Häagen-Dazs. "Ach, idiot, I
asked him for a tub of Connoisseur!"

The girls chuckled and Thandie pulled out some orange plastic spoons
from the bag as well and threw them at them. Nita didn't want any and Candy
hesitated for a bit, but eventually gave in. Jaz noticed that Candy's face seemed
a little rounder than two weeks ago, and she wondered if she simply hadn't
noticed before, or if Candy had picked up weight and was now trying to lose it.
Nita, however, hadn't gained an ounce and Jaz wondered if she had one of those
genetic traits that allowed you to eat what you wanted and never put on any weight.

Jaz's eyes burned from all the crying. Nita got up off the floor and
sat next to her, putting her arm around her and saying, "It'll be fine.
You'll figure things out."

Jaz's hand went cold from holding the Häagen-Dazs tub and she gave
it to Thandie who was sitting on the other bed. "I don't know if I will,"
said Jaz, the ice cream seeming to have had the effect of allowing her to speak
again. "All I know is ... that I haven't got a clue who I am or where I
belong or what I even want. I came here because, basically, I hadn't figured
out what to do with my life. And now I'm even more confused than before. And in
love
on top of it."

As Jaz said it all, she remembered something. "Oh, no." She
went to her bag, ruffled through her clothes and saw it, pulling it out.

"Oh, is that a Kindle?" asked Nita enthusiastically.

"Yeah, it's Miguel's." She threw it next to Nita, dreading
the moment she'd have to give it back to him. But maybe it would give her an
excuse to talk to him. Nita picked it up quickly and started looking through
the books.

Three ice cream tubs later the only person still sitting up straight
was Nita who'd hardly had any, preferring to get lost in some of the fantasy
books Miguel had on his Kindle. Candy and Maxine had pretty much passed out on
the floor, and Jaz and Thandie each lay on a bed, a hand to their stomachs, the
other forearm to their heads—each a mirror image of the other.

As they'd spoken about Elize and Sandile and the lies and Mozambique
and Durban and
everything
that had happened in the last ten days (the
cat was out of the bag now so why bother keeping it a secret from the other
girls), Jaz had started to feel minutely better about it all, as if the lies
had borne their own weight down on her and, getting them out, had finally
alleviated it.

"Has that British reporter come to you yet, Thandie?"
asked Nita, putting the Kindle aside. "The one with the squeaky voice."

"What reporter?" groaned Thandie.

"Some reporter from
The Daily
.
He said he's doing a story on racism in South Africa."

"Ach, old news. It seems the only people who haven't realized
we had free elections in 1994 are those who don't live in this country,"
said Thandie.

Nita snickered.

"Did he come to
you
?" asked Thandie. Jaz simply
listened, a small pain from the ice cream having formed at the top of her
stomach now.

"Yes, this morning. He was lurking around by the quad, asking
students questions. He's got this unmistakable high-pitched voice that sounds
like his vocal cords are wrapped around someone's finger."

Thandie: "Isn't
The Daily
a
tabloid? I thought they only did stories about who's screwing who and the size
of J. Lo's ass."

Nita: "I know. It's a bit weird. And he
acts
weird as well."

"What do you mean he 'acts' weird?" asked Jaz, her
interest now perking up.

"It just seemed like he was
fishing
for a story, instead of just reporting on one."

"You said he was doing a story on what again?" asked Jaz,
helping herself up onto her elbows so she could look at Nita at the end of the
bed. How the girl kept such a straight posture was beyond her.

"Racism ... in South Africa."

Jaz: "Yeah, sounds like something some westerner would want."

Thandie cracked up laughing. "A 'westerner'? And, Miss America,
what would you call yourself?"

Jaz rolled her eyes and lay down again. "Well, I wouldn't call
myself 'Miss America' that's for sure." She smiled, thinking of how Maxine
might actually be one for the pageant.

"Who's going to carry these two to bed?" asked Nita,
motioning to the near corpses of Jaz's compatriots on the ground.
Maxine was sleeping on Candy, a drop of spittle
falling from Candy's open mouth onto the rug below her.

"Classic," said Jaz. "We should take a photo and put
it online." She paused and thought for a moment. "You know what,
guys? I'm gonna miss all of you when I go home."

Silence fell in the room.

"You don't
have
to leave, you
know?" said Nita, as if it were some academic problem that would
immediately surrender itself to reason.

But it was not academic. It was
emotional
.

She thought again of Miguel. Already she sensed the need to call
him, to be with him. Maybe they could work something out. Maybe he'd thought
about it a bit now and changed his mind.

She forced herself up, feeling like the insides of her stomach were
wielding pompoms and singing:
Gimme an I. Gimme a C. Gimme an E!
Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiice
Cream!

She dug in her bag for her phone and almost hoped it was out of
charge when she pulled it out. But it wasn't. And she had full reception.
She hit
two
for speed-dial. Her hand
was shaking. As the phone rang, flickering images of their drive home and the yellow
lights that had bathed Miguel's face struck her. A pressure formed at her
forehead.

His phone rang for a fourth time.

Hi, you've reached Miguel. I'm—

She hung up.

"Not there?" asked Thandie, who Jaz saw, now, had been
watching her all along.

Jaz shook her head.

She tried one more time.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Hi, you've reached—

Jaz put the phone to her knees and stared at its display, as if
Miguel would somehow come through it and into this room and say,
Hey, forget
all that shit. Just pretend it never happened!
But the cheap feature
phone's screen was only green from its backlight, and then, moments later, not
even that.