Melody threw her handbag into the back seat and sighed. This was the last day of her day duty and she had a full week of rest before she went on night duty. Ever since the hospital had resorted to cutting down the number of days nurses reported to work in order to cut on transport and lunch costs, life had become better for most of the nursing folk. She worked two days a week from seven in the morning to seven in the evening. On the days that she was off duty she would help her husband change money illegally on the streets. Dumo-- her husband-- was a National University of Science and Technology (NUST) graduate who had never used his engineering degree to earn a living. Soon after graduation his mother had introduced him to money changing.
His mother, Mrs Hadebe was a well-known money changer who ‘owned’ the whole of Herbert Chitepo street. She was still a beauty whose looks were slow to succumb to the ravages of time. She always spotted fancy bright coloured hairpieces. Her face was a perfect exhibition of art: painted eye lids, rogue cheeks, darkened eyebrows, bright red lips and glistening earrings. Her fingers also had numerous rings. At one time in the past before the year 2016 her head was always covered in a white doek but she had since renounced that faith. She was the queen of the territory and every illegal money changer reported to her at the close of business. The word ‘illegal’ there is debatable but, well, that's a topic for another day.
Read more"The air hung cool but heavy at Kapālama in the early evening. The muted sound of a hundred and fifty voices lilted through the dense mist and over the waves to a hundred thousand radios. The campus sat, regally, on a mountainside, as a general surveying the common people on the plains below."
Read more"We still do not understand most of it and we rely on your Uncle Benji to explain sometimes. He says there is nothing happening now that did not happen when he was there as a student. I cannot imagine what it feels like being so young and finding yourself in a place where you are suddenly black before anything else. Especially in a place where it is the worst thing you can be."
Read more"It’s 9:57 at night and the highway, unpopulated, seems as though it will never end, but end it must—United Airlines is waiting for me. Two sleeping pills later it’s like this: I’m here and here is the city. Unlike home, there are bridges here, from Covent Garden to Waterloo, from St. Paul’s to Tate, from station to station, from she and I, between Anna and I—mind the gap."
Read more"Plenty times before, Pastor Cooke had surfaced from deep sleep to find he was stuck inside himself. On those mornings it was normal to wake with heat and tightness in the chest, and like a shifting under the skin––just like organs rubbing, grinding, maybe. Sometimes he’d panic."
Read more"Herb drives a 17-year-old white Chevy van. The vehicle he owned before this one was also an old white van, and he’d liked it—the first one—though a friend used to call it Herb’s Rape-Mobile. Herb actually got his first van in Ohio because of the Chevy Van song of the 1970s."
Read more"It’s his common name, he suspects, that keeps him camouflaged. According to Wikipedia, “Chris Carter” could be a screenwriter, a synthesizer player, a honcho in the music biz, a politician in New Zealand or one of numerous sports figures—his favorite being the slugger who led the American League in strikeouts with 212, a heroic number of misses."
Read more"Even worse was the amused glint in the fantail’s eye, like it was laughing. Sure, Māui was trying to win immortality for humankind by crawling into the giant Hine Nui Te Po’s massive birth canal and out of her mouth while she was sleeping."
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