YD6~10 - Opulent City Shuttle to Jacqueline Outpost Metaurgic City
After noon, with a bird’s-eye view of the M1 past the Hillbrow Tower, with enough lee time, I’m precipitating to surprise Jacqueline. I’m stepping from the porch to the Knowles’ brick-paved courtyard, around my Mercedes to the driver’s seat. pose my wallet open to my Seven Star diary. page exposed on the passenger seat, the route in the corner of my eye to Jacqueline. Tweak the ignition keys, back up along the double-story facade to the double garage doors, toggle the gears to drive, pulling toward the dirt road through the gateway, across the paused brick paving, a novice’s drive with ample leeway.
Dead in my path on the Hillbrow television tower, to a sleek contour and arousing glittery skyscrapers from Johannesburg’s hollow. Approached the city’s clustered towers, unknotting and aerating. I crossed the lower city, headed south, riding the double-deck to a stressful encounter. With the upcoming splitting highway, I doubt, but in an afternoon’s meager traffic. in mind mapping my approach, to heed for a slew across lanes, from a course heading east around the city.
Glittery uncluttering city towers, the rearview mirror winked, to upcoming yellow mine dumps. I rounded the mine dump. Far in mind, as the highway slew a single lane branch southward, at finding a thoroughfare westward — reminiscing the odd wooden mine shaft derelict head, to my twentyish, and short of Florida’s upcoming suburb, when I raised out the ground, a cluster of houses, when subject to a police raid of my illegal workers — I’m searching for signs of my whereabout on the leading floating asphaltic roadway torqued and swayed. Under the wheels of a to-and-fro trickling industrial traffic, to a golden pan worming mined tunnels. My way cut through shabby accidented grasslands, to raise on the horizon a landing twin-propeller DC3 aircraft, nose leveled fuselage, and tail, seized on the rooftop of a derelict roadhouse. as I cut across the upcoming van and pickup lane, to the driveway apron, I spare a thought. ‘_A tank full for the journey._’ In my gas station approach, the silvery muzzle and widespread wings vanish above the canopy to face the derelict roadhouse out of a past lifestyle.
I’m picking my wallet from the passenger seat, step out the car, in the footwell’s shadows grip and pull the hood lever, while across the fuel pumps, a pair of natives dressed in a bright turquoise outfits approach. I overlook the orange rooftop while the fuel pump attendants split ways. The man with a coin dispenser pouch to his waist, handles the nozzle clanging, to drag the black hose toward the rear fender. He’s asking. “How much, Boss?” As the fuel tank’s neck clangs, I reply. “Fill her up.” He leaves the nozzle behind, turning away a few paces by the pump and off the plinth he grabs a watering can, heads toward the front rounds the junior attendant, a bottle at hand spraying the windshield foaming.
The pump attendant square to the hood, as I’m watching the Cents to Rand roll and mounting. The attendant, leaning body language, fingers, unlatches the radiator grill, lifting the hood. Through the cracks, he twists the radiator cap off, tops up with water. Offside, he unscrews the battery caps in the series to pose alongside the open cap necks, to six short spurs of water before re-capping and bangs the hood’s lid, clearing the windshield.
I pick a banknote from the purse behind my Seven Stars diary, as across the orange rooftop, the attendant turns away past the displaying, “Liters — 70.8.” clenched, clings the nozzle to the pump’s flank, clanging below the fuel pulser. Steps away with fingers’ pick in his breast pocket brings to light a cash receipt pad, and ballpoint pen squaring the pump, eying the display, noting. The attendant turns around, steps toward the rear of the car, descends the plinth, rounds the rear fender, squaring up to the trunk, noting the vehicle registration plate. I’m meeting him, handing a hundred Rand bills. he tears from the pad the receipt handing me.
Upon glancing at the handed receipt, “FRL 060 T,” I read such as a Microsoft Disk Operating System’s command. but Aurras, her silvery melody, rhymes in my mind, ‘_Fraulein_.’ Incessant, beautiful arrangement, since I first filled up the Mercedes, at Brian’s service station, in Kelvin —.
Aurras nurtured my mind, until I became aware, but a latent meaning of numerology said. “the number 6 associated with vibrations and energies of love,” Like two pillars, amid a pair of 0s, the zeros, said. “Associated with potential and possibilities.” I’ll have to live our consciousness to witness.
The pump attendant flicks fingers and out of his pouch returns two ten Rand bills. we turn our backs; he heads toward the derelict convenient store’s adjacent cubicle door, while I’m prolonging the Mercedes’ flank. I grip the door, step into the driver’s seat, closing behind. With a glance through the squeegee clean windshield, I tweak the ignition key, toggle into drive, across a shaggy grassland to a future highway, with glances mirroring the distancing attendants at the gas pump station.
At the two-way thoroughfare, I yield to vans, pulling across, continuing a search. A short stretch ahead, the scorching scrubby grassland arises a shadowy straight edge athwart. Cracks the earth, the hollow deepens, until bridged by an overpass. I crawl by the meek sign to descend the ramp, the asphalt lanes emerging from the ground, converging on deserted lanes, destined to lead me into virgin grasslands.
As I’m settled in my leather seat, I sensed myself piloting an aircraft’s incessant touchdown, taxing the pitch-black landing strip, perpetuating to venture into the vast waving grasslands. The sun scorching bearing across the windshield, to call my attention to the windowsill bearing the brunt augmenting slivers of shadows. I’m riding through a perpetual yellow neon plasmatic dome, while Helios overhead descends in his chariot — The crosshairs of the three-pointed star into a shimmering roadway. While wayside, a gentle subservient breeze waves buffed hands across the eastern grasslands, sleek virgin golden shines. While on the western horizon, Aurras arouses Janine’s melodic voice, as I’m passing in the vicinity, and distant, her grandfather’s Meyerton land expanse.
My foot feathered the throttle, the landing strip, across the wide cropped grass median, arouse distant glitters, shaping a passing car. Believed such lonesome highway into a blurry horizon. ‘_Constructed for fast army deployment to scattered native township outposts._’ — I reach the dashboard’s fingers dial, turn the loitering air conditioner, under the hood the compressor frozen, to wild kick, on-off, successive burst straining the engine. Arouse the asphalt bands margin the wide cropped grass median, awakening my biological clock. As I’m awaking, the steeplechase ride of the straight black tarmac skipping the rippling golden grasslands. Until the hazy horizon unmasks an ice-white sheet shining, before cracking athwart a barbed shadow, to a rising jagged skyline. I glanced at the passenger seat as the road signs doubled in rapid succession. Lift my Seven-Star diary to read. “1st Vanderbijlpark off ramp.”
With a glance at my wristwatch, to the fast approaching strewn raw charcoal rising jagged across, I steer leaning away from the straight lanes. My deception grew descending the splitting off-ramp, with the rise of blackened buffer fields to distant laboratories morphing to an amalgam of factory sheds. I’m steering away from meeting a wild hedgerow’s in-leaf branches, clawing like starved prisoners clinging to the wire mesh security fence to soot blackened industrial wasteland. I’m called across the inbound straight country road. A herd of suburban pitched rooftops approached through the golden grassland. As eaves cast stretched shades to the fenestrated white box-facades. The Afrikaners workmen’s houses neared the roadside with Kikuyu shaggy girdles to the sidewalk’s concrete curb. Little did I know, in the midst, Jacqueline Stein’s family home.
I’m guided by generations earlier’s corrugated iron roofed houses style. Squeeze out the interstice to girdling yards, approach the sidewalk, to raise the facades in a row. I cruise by the homes, conceding windows and door to deep cast shades squatted under a lean-to roof to retailers’ storefront. The classic retailers curve right, and swiftly I exit the outpost. But the security fence across the street, caught up cornering the metallurgic city’s industrial sheds, paused, opening a crack to a widening gap in my approach. I steered the car across the lane oncoming lane, to an augmenting evening foot traffic, to sprawled stalled passenger vehicles. I’m coasted over the gritty apron, to notice the blatant security fence sealing out the enclave. The car creeps to a halt, offside from lining up a pedestrian turnstile. I tweak the ignition key, the air conditioner fall silent, the hands of my wristwatch, as a reminder. ‘_Fifteen minutes to spare._’
In wait among a few other pickup cars, I’m immersed in the bright white pedestrian path stretching behind the pedestrian turnstile bars. While alongside a dark soil strip, the plum brick facade raised, like a school’s rudimentary, windows’ high strip shielding office workers. Peaked by a cast shade to a wide corrugated iron eave. In a deserted run, far in the blurry shadows, an upright crack to a juxtaposed hangar’s corrugated iron cladding.
A motion in the shade crack, I’m left to squint, until the path seems to wax out figures. uncluttered a group approaching. herd women’s approach, prolong the fenestrated wall, to stream for the bright path. From jumbled figures, a woman draws with in long stride from their midst, closing in on the turnpike, as I seek Jacqueline upstream. women cross the turnstile bars, after the first woman spun out. I staggered back and forth in the trickle of women, scrutinizing faces until women hidden behind another, is cleared, to abandon finding Jacqueline, to retrieve to the driveway apron, the mirror winks the women scattering, escaping in their routine for home, disappearing in diagonal across onto animating the street. Others in part rounded the fence, to a blind bus halt waiting. When a woman heading straight to pass by my window, in her wake, Jacqueline appears. I slew my pinky hook on the door lever, to a hesitant jump confronting Jacqueline. Then Jacqueline departs from the woman’s course. Her eyes ramming. ‘_Why are you coming here_?’ She contours the hood to the passenger window. The door swings open, she steps in. Her harsh regard softens, startled in disbelief by my stunt, eyes raise her to smile, snarling. “What are you doing here?”
Against the silence, and docile Snake’s genie in Jacqueline, coiled in her bucket seat, neither a finger forthcoming, pointing, neither saying a few words. ‘_An evening in town and afterward, I’ll take her home._’ I daren’t ask, but tasking myself. ‘_What now?_’
Thoughtful, my hand drifts. ‘_Where in this foreign town can I take her?_’ fingers reach the ignition key, pinch, with a hearty pleading. ‘_Jacqueline! say something._’ Me hideous, as she’s comfortable and silent in her seat, obliged to turn the ignition key, kicking the air conditioning, chilling the air, pleading. ‘_Jacqueline! What would you like to do?_’ My fingers crawl to curling over the gear knob, and couldn’t sit back, instructions not forthcoming. I pulled out of the Park, toggle to reverse. The hydraulics mechanics’ release through neutral, engaging drive, the car creeping. I feared Jacqueline voicing her questioning gaze. ‘_Where are you taking me?_’ Rotate the still turnpike across the windshield past the pillar to her window, slipping to the rear. The fenced enclave kicked back at the sidewalk corner, we creep toward the asphalt, across the accidented curbs, to women straggling in their strides out of the factory grounds, steer away my foot feathering the throttle, without her dropping a hint, tracking back my earlier approach to the leading street ahead.
Jacqueline whispers, “home,” in passing suburb, to wonder. But approached the on-ramp, to hit the highway, as Helios shies away for me to take care of the upcoming evening. Along the stretch of highway, to peer Jacqueline profiling until amid Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. Cars streamed for home, the highway split lanes to engage the off-ramp and merging in the hollow of an evening suburban trickling traffic, trough across the valley. Weave through a siding to a middle class thickening leafy suburbs. Over the rolling hill, the creeping business center to sunset harsh refection off the sky poking Sandton Office Tower.
Across the traffic lenses, we gain passage by still traffic, to Sandton City’s incumbent street block pedestal, the tower to vanishing above the architectural beige brick plinth. Reached the crack widening to a perpetrating sunlight squared off the cave entrance, to which I steer the car by the raised boom, for the evening restaurant and cinema crowds. We creep through a sandwiched atmosphere, past pools of sleek, gleaming cars undulation. through a forest of concrete columns and overhead beams. I’m nearing the squared off fluorescent spill to the driveway, to pose the heel of my hand on the steering wheel, spinning, turning away from the quadruple plate-glass doorway, stalling the car.
Jacqueline and I alight and step away from the Mercedes, to cross the driveway, press the plate-glass to hinge, and after a brief passageway, egress to the run of shadow box window display. Such as a latent call to conscious knot a string, past the fashion stores’ closed doors for the night, to the translucent white fascia. manifested the level of the Central News Agency, passing under the red initials, of the Central News Agency. The open-back window display, the stationery store’s bright decor, the storefront doors folded against an alternative series of structural columns.
In the Knowles’ home ground-floor, I’m sitting as I often did, across my desk, pondering, nurturing the gleaming plastic to bundled books’ wrap. Until peaked my best, triggered by an idea, I jump in the car, precipitating to drive out to Sun City. Once in the mall, in long strides, I approach the CNA fascia, veered to a slow pace, hold my motivation to a stroll, entering the stationery store, probing the stacked shelves.
I shoved scholar books aside, by eyesight jump to pens hanging in a box, on to changing aisles. skipped business stationery, and the rear store scattered with shelved toys and gadgets, to head for the last egress aisle to the cashier upfront of the mall’s brilliant walkway. I turned away from the racked wall of magazines displays across the aisle, calmed finding my domain. Scrutinized the covers of shelved magazines, at imagining my booklet stacked on the shelf, sowing a nationwide distribution, a dream, the sponsoring of the launch of professional cycling in South Africa. I stepped toward the horseshoe boxed young cashier to paused patient in line ringing up a woman customer’s frills, to slip the till slip in the paper bag. I moved into the woman’s spot, to the cashier’s eyes, and ready to pay attention, I’m asking. “Who can I contact to have my books on your shelves?”
The young cashier turns toward a countertop pillar, from which she unhooks the intercom’s handset to a fistful of fingers to her cheek, saying. “There’s a customer who’s asking about packing shelves with books?” She hangs up to face me, saying. “The manager is coming.” while waiting, I sense being undressed, to a naked exposure, shifting eyesight circling the store, following the cashier’s eyes past the shelving, into the store’s depths. Until a woman emerges from the distant door, in her approach, she drops her busy schedule, gazing at me, until at speaking distance she’s asking. “What can I do for you?”
“I have a book. Can you tell me how to go about getting it onto your shelves?”
The CNA manager says. “You’ll have to contact the distribution center.” Her eyes falling onto the cashier, while coming around behind me, as the cashier bends after her hand reaching underneath the counter. She brings the postcard to light, which blank passed onto the manager, to lie alongside the cash register. From the ball-chain holder’s ballpoint pen, she wrote a name, encircles the post card’s phone number. Hands the card, saying. “Contact him.” Excused herself, rushing past behind me.
I pulled up in the driveway, alighting and walking around the Mercedes. The CNA manager’s command echoed in my head. I entered the Knowles’ hallway to descend to the conversation pit. sway my hips around my desk, swiping the handset off its cradle, to square in front of my chair, composing the eastern city’s three digits phone exchange, and the extension number, holding to a distant ringing tone. A man’s blatant answer, when I’m expecting a receptionist musical voice announcing CNA?
As my idea flows, with bureaucratic boulders to contour, by the easy-going man extending me an invitation. I hung up the handset, whisk my keys off my desk’s corner, on my way out, grabbed a copy of the booklet, to head out around the Mercedes, jump in the driver’s seat to reverse, onto driving away. I entered Johannesburg’s business district, but the entrance door numbers lead outbound along the street grid from the glittery retailers, into the textile industry’s depressive soot covered facades. Pulled up in the car, across from the classic CNA building, to stall. I step out, jaywalked through the traffic, weary of the edging a truck warehouse door, to the stone sculptured portal.
I’m about to discover the Central News agency’s roots, to the entrance hallway, fresh air. My way offside, alongside an elaborate atrium glass roof nearly a century’s windows thick in dust. Carrying a daylight’s spill to a somber hallway, without a definite light source than a ghostly breeze. An inviting ajar office door, in my approach, at a knock, awakes a wispy soul, saying. “Come in.” I pace forward, around the door, clearing a man behind a desk. At sight inviting me in and to a visitor’s chair. I’m repeating myself from the Sandton City’s CNA manageress, saying. “I’ve published a book. Can you sell it through your stores?” He lifts a weight lifts off my shoulders, in my chest, my heart throbs faster. But after a brief negotiation, his words a fist swing punch my chest, as I rose beaten, thinking. ‘_If you take fifty percent of the sales, what’s left for me?_’
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