The morning is slow and the air is cold and wet. The droplets of a thin impotent drizzle cling to people’s faces and clothing like frost. The place smells like a damp dog. The man standing at the roadside decides to cross the street to get to the small coffee and sandwich shop. The traffic is thin. He steps to the edge of the road and looks right, then left, just like he was taught when he was five. He doesn’t look right again and the beat up Nissan van with bad brakes and the cuckolded driver slams into his side.

He clearly hears the humerus and collarbone on his right side snap as he is flung like a limp rag doll into the filthy drainage trench running along the side of the road. The van driver brings his under serviced and uninsured vehicle to a shuddering halt (the brakes cannot grip enough to screech). He jumps out of the vehicle and runs across the road into an alley and disappears. A small crowd gathers, converging like neophytes of some arcane religion approaching the sacrificial altar, from the thin mist that hangs everywhere. They are more curious about the driver suddenly stopping his van and running off than the man lying unconscious in the ditch. Only she notices him, the people are crowded around the Nissan, which is still sputtering in the middle of the street.

She looks down at the figure lying in the muck. The water is so polluted it has become a semi-solid thick ooze that fills the nose with memories of pit latrines and blocked communal low level flush toilets. She folds up her skirt around her thighs and steps gingerly into the trench. The muck comes up to mid shin. She quickly dips her fingers into the unconscious man’s jacket and pulls out his wallet. She hops out of the ditch and scuttles away in the same direction as the bus driver as the crowd around the vehicle now starts to move in her direction, some people pointing at the figure lying in the ditch.

In the mouth of the alley she pauses and opens the wallet. There is better than ten thousand shillings in cash there. And credit cards, business cards, an insurance card and two condoms. She takes the cash and flings the wallet away. She walks further into the alley, knowing that it comes out onto a parallel street where there are a number of small second hand clothes stalls and she can get a nice pair of jeans for about three hundred bob. Before she leaves the alley she wipes her legs clean with her grimy tattered scarf which she tosses away afterwards. She knows she can get another one anyway.

She walks up to a clothes stall that boasts the name ‘Shiro’s Apparel’. Does this Shiro even know what ‘apparel’ means? Maybe. She buys a pair of tight blue jeans and a light blue t-shirt with dolphins printed on it. She forgets to get the scarf. Shiro, if that’s her real name, holds a tattered bed sheet up for her to change behind. She emerges from the stall looking much better than she did twenty minutes ago as is testified by the glances and the odd catcall she gets from a group of drivers lingering at a taxi rank. She gives the group the finger. They jeer. The sun is engaged in a futile struggle against the hulking clouds, sending grey light to the earth below. But she is warm. She has cash in her pocket, and she can afford what the slimy dealer outside Yaya Centre has to offer.



Cocaine is a hell of a drug. She fingers the three small sachets in her pocket like the beads on a rosary. Much like Catholicism, the redemption nestled there is empty and unfulfilling. She finds the drug an allusion to office white-out. A few snorts and the depression that is her universe is erased, twenty minutes at a time. Maybe later she will try to contact Rita again. See if their father will relent on his stand about rehab. It has been what...three weeks now? The drug clinic is a hazy memory in the fog of her poisoned mind. Sweaty, sleepless nights and horrible dreams from the past, the present and the future that will not happen.  Her fingers tighten around the sachets. Don’t dwell on it. She walks up Ring Road Kilimani towards Ngong Road. She wants to visit The Junction. The toilets there are clean and hidden, perfect for a leisurely snort. And The Junction holds pleasant memories of movies, coffee, shopping and dinner with the Crowd, the Koro, the Peeps. That was two months ago.

The matatu she boards is crowded and humid inside. It smells like feet, sweaty clothing and vegetables. The music is too loud and comes through too small speakers, giving it a nerve grating quality that does not well for her mind. She wrings her hands and chomps down harder on the gum she’s been chewing for three hours now. The cold outside makes the fat woman sitting next to her hesitant to slide open the window. It’s a short trip anyway. She’ll survive. The unkempt conductor asks for twenty bob. She hands over a thousand shilling note. He curses in Kikuyu and asks whether she has loose money. She has sixty shillings twenty shilling coins in her hip pocket but she doesn’t give him. Muttering to himself, he grudgingly hands over her change. A small smile creases the corners of her mouth.

Fifteen minutes of the ill smelling mobile sauna later, she is at The Junction. The large parking lot is almost full despite it being half past nine in the morning on a weekday. She remembers the days again. She was part of these people once. Not too long ago actually. She walks across the parking lot towards the entrance. The sun is winning in the sky; its peeks are turning into stares with the promise of a glare in the offing. The drizzle had been heavier here and the herringbone patterned concrete paving steams in places. Early shoppers walk out with their trolleys full. The loos are to the right, near the entrance to the humongous supermarket where the express counter is slower than a stoned retarded tree sloth.  She walks down the corridor that leads to the Ladies’. She’s fingering the sachets again, the craving rising so much she grinds her teeth. She opens the door and the lingering smell of disinfectant wafts into her face. The place is blessedly empty and she scurries into a stall like someone with a bad case of the runs.

She sits on the bowl, her trembling hands clutching the sachets. She rips one open and carefully pours out the powder onto the back of her left hand. A quick snort. She closes her eyes as a series of small strobe lights go off in the middle of her brain. The joy, the release, the ecstasy of it makes her head loll back so she’s staring at the ceiling. She hears the main door swing open but it seems so far away. She is riding the wave, man. She is there. She stands up, flushes and walks out. The toilet’s pastel coloured walls are bright, the overhead lights are blinding. The tap handle she slowly reaches for has a brilliant sheen to it. She runs the water over he hands, they are not shaking now. Behind her, a toilet flushes and a young woman emerges from the stall adjusting her skirt. She looks up and says hi. The word echoes in her head. A casual greeting, simple, harmless. Unless it comes from the guy who fucked up your life. The guy who introduced you to this shit with the pretext that it was cool. It was cool, no one would know. And you can afford it.

Shehasnothingtodowithyouandyourshitleaveheralone.

She shakes the droplets off her hands and nods an acknowledgment to the lady. She walks to the hand dryer and for three full minutes enjoys the warm air blast on her hands. The other woman waits her turn but realises the futility and uses the paper napkins from the dispenser instead. The toilet is empty again. There are two sachets remaining. She walks out into the main lobby of the mall fingering them again.

***********