Read Online The Reactive by Masande Ntshanga - Free Book Online

shirt and orange cap, taking in rolled-up twenties and membership cards from the patrons of the Movie Monocle. This is where you’ll find me. Whenever I look up from my hands, I can see movie posters lined up against the yellow walls, about three meters above the gray carpet tiles, each one touching the edges of the next. Directly in front of me, two ceiling fans whop the air, equidistant from my counter and the back wall.
    I dry my hands on my jeans before I settle myself behind the counter. Then I take another look at Ruan’s email. I press reply and ask Cissie and Ruan if this client isn’t a cop.
    They don’t answer me for a while. Then Cissie sends back a reply: I hold reservations about thinking it’s a cop thing…
    I wait for her to finish.
    She writes, I mean, guys, we shouldn’t panic right away, should we? This could just be someone’s idea of a bad joke, right?
    I sigh.
    On Sundays, Cissie takes a train out to visit her aunt in a nursing home in Muizenberg. She uses this time to ease herself into a gentle comedown. In order to organize her body’s depletion of dopamine, and to quell her unease about mortality, Cissie surrounds herself with aging bodies.
    In an octagonal courtyard, she and her aunt pick out grass stalks which they knit into small bows and wreaths. This is where I imagine her now: lying on her back and typing with the sun in her face.
    I decide to let it go. Then I get a message from Ruan.
    I had the same thought about the police, he says.
    This doesn’t surprise me, either. Like me, Ruan rarely shares a moment of Cissie’s tranquility. He gets comedowns no worse and no better than anyone else. Sundays for him just mean another computer in another room. He tells me he knows where I’m coming from.
    I’m about to scroll down when I hear the storeroom door open. I slip my phone in my pocket and place my hands on the counter. I try to keep my back straight.
    My manager appears from the door in the far wall, holding up a plastic clipboard.
    That’s it, keep smiling, he tells me.
    I nod.
    Until two months ago, Clifton was just another peon who worked the counter here at the Monocle. He got promoted after Red, our last manager, gave notice and moved to Knysna. Clifton’s been giving us orders ever since. I wait for him to turn the other way before I pull out my phone.
    Placing it on the counter, I read the rest of the message from Ruan.
    This guy isn’t a cop, he says, but he knows who we are.
    He forwards Cissie and me a new mail. We each take a moment to read it. The message was delivered by the client at noon. It includes our names, where we live and where we work, and at the bottom it says, I am not the police. Then the client tells us he’ll pay us first. We can decide what we want after that.
    Meaning we can just take the money, am I right? Cissie says.
    I’m about to answer her when I hear Clifton meandering into our store’s Action section. He’s run out of things to do again. He raises his clipboard and scratches the back of his neck, powdering his black collar with a mist of dandruff. I go back to my phone.
    To Ruan and Cissie: okay, what’s going on here?
    Neither of them replies for close to a minute and I start to feel concerned. This returns me to Bhut’ Vuyo, and on impulse I open my uncle’s second message. I’m about to reply when Clifton raps his knuckles on the counter.
    Hey, he says, there’s no sleeping on the job.
    I nod.
    No chatting on the phone, either.
    I close the text from my uncle and put the phone away.
    Good, he says.
    I watch Clifton turn his head towards the unit we’ve got mounted above the counter. Slowly, his face pinches inward.
    Jesus,
okes,
he says. This is not on. This won’t work at all.
    I turn and look up at the unit. It’s a black-and-white horror movie Dean’s put on mute. Cornered by a hideous monster, a young woman backs up against a dungeon