We arrived at our consulting room just in time to beat the morning rush. I suppose I should explain what I mean by “consulting room”. Let me put it this way: people came to me with problems, and I made the problems go away. The biggest problem most of my clients had was what I like to call FEID Syndrome. That’s Financial Excess and Intelligence Deficit, or as Vusi liked to say, money to burn and no clue how lighters work. That’s where we came in. I was the match, Vusi was the flame and together we made magic happen. Just like old times.
Me and Vusi had come a long way since our school days. Maybe not in terms of education – we both got our matric but never bothered with varsity. But all those books I “borrowed” from the school library had paid off. We read and read and read, and practised all the big words until we could speak like professors. We used to sit in Vusi’s house listening to the radio and copying all the different accents. The ability to switch seamlessly from tsotsi taal to upper crust English was essential in our line of work. We never knew what opportunities might come up, or who we’d have to be in order to make the best of them.
The consulting room had very specific decor. Skulls, beads, animal hides. There were also a couple of tortoise shells and a stuffed vulture for good measure. As soon as we had set up for the day, Vusi disappeared behind a thick black curtain and I put on my uniform – shades and a dreadlock wig – and took my spot on the reed mat on the floor.
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