Jaz & Miguel (7 page)

Miguel choked as they all shared a fractional moment of silence
which seemed so much longer than it actually was. And Jaz could've sworn that
Elize broke a smile, and that Sandile looked at her with a knowing smirk on his
face as well.

But it was too late to go back now, Jaz had to make out like she'd
planned the whole thing (except for the hand part). "Yeah, tell us,"
she said.

Miguel hesitated, and for a moment she felt awkward, thinking that
maybe Miguel had a problem being around people and that's why he had been so
quiet and now here she had gone and put him on the spot, forcing him to say
something about himself when he was clearly shy.

But he proved her wrong. "I'm this fucking bastard's keeper. That's
my story," he said, gesturing with his long-eyelashed-eyes at Sandile who
quickly stood up and shouted, "Hai, you!" And then they were at each
other's necks, wrestling over the table like they were in a UFC match, almost
knocking their drinks over.

Elize laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed and so did Jaz,
some of her beer even coming out of her nose (Jaz had stopped counting the
number of embarrassing moments she'd had around either of these two guys). Soon
the table was shaking and they were swearing at each other so loudly that a man
finally came over to break them up, thinking they'd been having an actual
fight.

The boys explained that they were only joking and the manager (or
whoever the overweight buzz-cut guy was) looked at them funny, telling them to "just
keep it down, okes" (she made a note to ask what that word meant). "This
is a family place," the man finished, and when he was gone, the four of
them looked at each other silently for a moment and then cracked up once again
at the absurdity of the man's statement.

"This is a family place," said Miguel quietly,
exaggerating the statement with grotesque facial expressions. The four of them
suppressed some more laughs like they were talking badly about a high school
teacher in class.

But Miguel went serious again, and looked over at the manager, then
looked away quickly—as if not wanting to pick a fight.

Jaz's attention went to Miguel, her laughter slowly subsiding as
well.

This is a family place
. What had he
meant by that?

There was something unique about this Jaz, Miguel pondered to
himself as they sat there making jokes about the manager, and just generally
being loud and obnoxious. There was this unusual sense of
comfort
he
felt around her, like they could just sit in silence and say nothing for hours
and all would be OK.

It wasn't the first time Sandile had tried to set him up with
someone. The poor guy had been trying (and failing) for close on a year now. It
was
the first time, however, that he'd set
someone up with him while he and Elize were there—a double-date.

That had been a bold move on his part (and had taken more than a bit
of convincing to have Miguel go along with it.
You'd be doing me a favor!
That had been Sandile's final argument—a low blow if Miguel had ever seen one!)
But this American chick seemed safe enough. I mean, these Americans, they had
that Martin Luther King guy and all those marches and speeches and stuff.

The snide comment from the manager had not bothered Miguel. As he
was sure it hadn't (not even in the slightest) bothered Sandile.
Because a snide comment here and there from some dumb-fuck was not
what they really had to worry about. That, there would always be. And, so what?
Sticks and stones.

No, they had more to worry about than some hairy fart-head who
smelled of beer and maybe had forgotten to take a shower that morning, telling
them about "a family place."

Where Elize lived, sticks and stones were the call of the day—that,
and guns.

Guns aimed at black people.

Really, it had been bad timing, that's all—the news that had come
the week just before she and Sandile had met, putting the entire country into a
panic. On the few occasions when Miguel had gone to Elize's house for dinner on
the guise of being her boyfriend, it was true that the men of the family had sent
out the K-word a few times, but it was also true that Miguel had noted her
mother's discomfort at them using the word. Whereas she'd let it slide the
first two or three times, she then came out and told them that
times have
changed
and that
we are not like the people they wrote about a few weeks
ago in our neighborhood. Absolutely not!

Right. Those people. The ones who killed that black kid (and his
white girlfriend) only two weeks before Sandile and Elize had met each other.
The ones who lived only a few houses away from Elize herself.

Talk about timing.

RACIST KILLINGS DARKEN THE RAINBOW NATION. That was one headline.

BLACK ROMEO AND WHITE JULIET DEAD IN AFRICA. That one Miguel hated
the most.

Because the truth is, no one really knew what happened that night.
And probably no one ever would. There'd been three bodies (the two lovers and
the girl's father). Bullets from the lovers' bodies matched the father's gun,
but the bullets in his own body had been fired from an unknown gun. A
mysterious third person.

Miguel had learned one thing about the foreign press in all his
years of watching the Western World focus its kaleidoscope eyes on South
Africa. News about racism in South Africa
always
sold because it was
believable. It was like news about Nazis in Germany, or
gangstas
in
South Central. Immediately, people assume that every person living in Germany is
a Nazi, or that every African-American from the ghetto is a criminal.

Why even bother naming sources? Just putting the words "racist"
and "South Africa" was usually enough to sell papers. Ah, and there
was another word: "alleged"—that's a staple in the industry, he'd
noticed. By using the word "alleged" they could just about say
anything they fucking wanted to.

It was, after all, only
allegedly
so,
sir.

When Miguel had discovered that Sandile was seeing an Afrikaner girl
from the very suburb in which those murders had occurred, he almost killed the
guy himself! He didn't give a rat's ass (or
arse
) who Sandile
dated—white, black or even a friggin Martian. But, man, for a
chick
? To put yourself in danger for a woman?!

That was unheard of in Miguel's mind.

There are plenty of fish in the sea
,
Miguel had told him. Heck, Sandile was a good looking man (or so Miguel had
understood from the way Thandie always went on about him), and there were
plenty of white chicks (if that's really what Sandile wanted) around in
Rosebank or Bedfordview or even flipping Germiston (not the most liberal place,
but better than Elize's neighborhood). But to pick a babe whose family lived in
damn-near the most racist suburb in all of South Africa?!

Fuck!
Why not just put up a flag saying "I
hate white people" in front of the AWB headquarters? It followed about the
same level of intelligence.

The AWB. He had to remind himself constantly that, even though a
large concentration of them lived where Elize lived (although, he had also to
admit, that that was only "allegedly" so and something he had read),
perhaps he too had fallen for all the hype, all the bad news. Was it really the
most racist neighborhood? Were the two of them really in danger after all?

A few prejudiced words did not make people murderers. As
inappropriate as their conversations had been, what would Elize's parents'
reaction be if they found out that their daughter truly
loved
someone of
the opposite race?

It was, however, a risk that none of them were even willing to
consider. Miguel most of all.

But, as the months had rolled by, something else had also become clearer
to Miguel: Sandile was smitten. That was the long and short of it. And so was
Elize. Since that day they'd met in Pretoria, Sandile had become a friggin
Romeo, dreaming and being all poetic and drifting off into the lala-land of wistful
love while he and Miguel were supposed to be shooting hoops. It warmed Miguel's
heart actually. Because the man deserved it at the end of the day, didn't he?
Deserved to be in love? He'd been through enough.

Both of them had.

He knew this is why Sandile was trying to set him up. He'd found
something, and wanted Miguel to find the same. But the idea was so foreign to
Miguel. Since when could a woman ever understand what he had been through?
Women were sappy, melodramatic and maudlin creatures, crying at the break of a
nail or the drop of a baby-shower—he didn't need that. He didn't need any tears
around him.

Because tears around him only brought tears to his own eyes.

And he'd stopped crying a long time ago.

Tears in his own eyes meant he was remembering.

And he didn't want to remember.

So there had been Sandile's constant setups, the endless efforts to
have Miguel meet up with some bimbo that couldn't stop fluttering her eyes or
showing off her friggin cleavage.

Holy mother of—

At least this one—this Jaz girl—seemed interested in people,
intelligent, kind—
aaaaand
, yes, a definite eight on the babe-scale. And
he liked how she
didn't
flaunt her tits (they weren't huge or even that
big, but she could've played the bimbo role with a wonder-bra like so many
other airheaded chicks he'd met in the past). She was soft-spoken and answered
all of Elize's questions fully. And she had guts, judging from the way she'd
(hilariously) put herself in between him and Sandile the day before.

Now
that
had been funny!

But, this Jaz chick—she really did seem alright. If anything, at
least Miguel would not be bored out of his skull while Elize and Sandile went
and gave release to their hormonal urges (or whatever they did together when
Miguel wasn't with them). Jaz seemed to know how to string more than two words
together into a coherent and lucid sentence (oh the people Sandile had found
for Miguel. God bless him for trying). Best of all, she didn't come all up in your
face and act like a fucking "oh look at me I'm so goddamn
hot
" tramp.

Jaz was far from the typical girl he would've normally gone for. She
wasn't blonde; she wasn't curvaceous; she wasn't particularly muscular. In
fact, today, Jaz looked almost plain, but only because she hadn't made herself
up very much—just a bit of eyeshadow from what he could see. Which was another
thing he liked: she wasn't trying to impress him in the slightest!  She did
have a nice figure—not hard, but soft in all the right places. She had a
pleasantly curved face with a small pointed up nose. Her eyes were large and
deep-set and dark and they swallowed you in whole when you looked at them. Her
hair was straight and auburn-brown. Today she'd brushed it so that it was
floating loosely above her shoulders. Yesterday it had been tied up.

Yeah, he'd noticed. He'd noticed everything about her the moment she
put out her hand in that classic move so as to be the intervening force in all
that was evil in the world.

God bless these Americans.

He'd almost cracked up after seeing it. Almost—he'd forced himself
not to laugh so as to keep up appearances.

It was … endearing.

In a way, Sandile had gotten Miguel's hopes up. And that made him a
bit nervous. Sure Sandile played it down, saying that she was nice to talk to
(according to Thandie—Miguel should've known that Thandie had been involved!)
Sandile had told him that, in the worst case, he would get to spend the day
with a decent looking girl. What was there to lose? She read a lot, which Miguel
also liked to do, and she was interested in Johannesburg and South Africa so there
wouldn't be any of those awkward moments of silence because, if they cropped up,
then Miguel could simply tell her some tidbit about South Africa and they'd
have something to talk about all day.

He had a point and Miguel did get bored whenever he spent the day
out here waiting for Sandile and Elize.

Miguel didn't like getting his hopes up—not for anything. So he took
the middle road: he dressed in noncommittal clothes, but reserved tickets at
the Barnyard for the four of them to see a play called
African Footprint
which was all about Soweto and Jozi and had lots of singing and dancing.
Depending on how this first meeting over drinks went down, he would then decide
whether or not he'd actually pay for the tickets and see if the rest of them
would like to go.

So far, he was having a good time.

"Um, guys, before you head off," he said, "I reserved
some tickets for
African Footprint
for tonight. I just wanted to see if
you wanted to watch it—before I paid for them, I mean."

He noted the glint in Sandile's eyes and the casual look he threw at
Jaz, a look so subtle that only Miguel would've ever spotted it. Sandile knew
that Miguel was starting to like her.

After some explanation to Jaz of what the Barnyard Theater was, and
to Elize about the
African Footprint
play, they all agreed that it would
be a great idea, so Miguel said he'd treat them and they'd meet up at the
theater just before six p.m.
He
called Computicket to finalize the payment, and Elize and Sandile left
(probably to go find a room somewhere—Miguel never really asked).

Miguel liked paying for things for his friends—it was the least he
could do. He respected that people like Sandile and Elize had gone straight to university
after school. Miguel, however, had been working even before he'd finished high
school. He'd just needed to keep busy. It's not even that his dad paid him that
much (he didn't). But, with a traditional Portuguese father who wouldn't
consider taking rent from his child even if someone threatened to cut his leg
off, and over two years of working and saving, Miguel had more saved up than he
knew what to do with—far from loaded, but buying a few drinks and paying for a
few theater tickets barely even dented his pocketbook.

In the ensuing minutes that followed after Elize and Sandile had
left, he and Jaz talked about the most god-awful boring shit like what Seattle
was like and he, in turn, told her what Johannesburg was like (he knew there
was more to this chick which is what bothered him most about these kinds of
topics). The conversation eventually deteriorated into a boring zero of sipping
at his straw and Jaz nursing her second Amstel. It didn't make him
uncomfortable (he'd never particularly had a problem getting a girl to talk),
but he just wasn't interested in chit-chatting about crap, so he sort of let
the moment carry them to see where it would go. Jaz sipped her beer nervously
and looked around, not really asking him much about anything. He didn't feel
awkward. He felt a little mischievous actually, and a smirk began to cross his
face.

"What's so funny?" she asked, now looking at him.

He let out an involuntary laugh.

"N—nothing." He was smiling now.

"Bullshit. What is it?"

My, how he loved her accent. "No, it's—well, it's not the first
time Sandile has ... you know ... tried to set me up and ...."

"Well, it's a little awkward isn't it?" She smiled.

Ahwkworrd
. How cute.